Category Technology/Electronics

Researchers reported developing a cardiac patch made from fully rubbery electronics that can be placed directly on the heart to collect electrophysiological activity, temperature, heartbeat and other indicators, all at the same time.

Pacemakers and other implantable cardiac devices used to monitor and treat arrhythmias and other heart problems have generally had one of two drawbacks — they are made with rigid materials that can’t move to accommodate a beating heart,...

Researchers have designed a smart fabric that can detect non-metallic objects ranging from avocadoes to credit cards, according to a study from Dartmouth College and Microsoft Research. The fabric, named Capacitivo, senses shifts in electrical charge to identify items of varying shapes and sizes.

A study and demonstration video describing the sensing system were presented at the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST 2020).

“This research has the potential to change the way people interact with computing through everyday soft objects made of fabrics,” said Xing-Dong Yang, an assistant professor of...

Researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory and their collaborators from the University of California, Irvine have created fundamental electronic building blocks out of tiny structures known as quantum dots and used them to assemble functional logic circuits. The innovation promises a cheaper and manufacturing-friendly approach to complex electronic devices that can be fabricated in a chemistry laboratory via simple, solution-based techniques, and offer long-sought components for a host of innovative devices.

“Potential applications of the new approach to electronic devices based on non-toxic ...

With a training technique commonly used to teach dogs to sit and stay, Johns Hopkins University computer scientists showed a robot how to teach itself several new tricks, including stacking blocks. With the method, the robot, named Spot, was able to learn in days what typically takes a month.

By using positive reinforcement, an approach familiar to anyone who’s used treats to change a dog’s behavior, the team dramatically improved the robot’s skills and did it quickly enough to make training robots for real-world work a more feasible enterprise. The findings are newly published in a paper called, “Good Robot!”

“The question here was how ...