Category Technology/Electronics

Purdue University researchers have created wearable electronic devices that someone can easily attach to their skin. They can be used to monitor physical activity and alert a wearer about possible health risks in real time.
Credit: Ramses Martinez/Purdue University

Researchers have created wearable medical electronic devices that someone can easily attach to their skin. The devices are made out of paper to lower the cost of personalized medicine. Heart surgery can be traumatic for patients. Having to continuously monitor your status without a doctor when you are back home can be even scarier. Imagine being able to do that with a simple sticker applied to your body.

“For the first time, we have created wearable electronic devices that someone can easily attach to their skin and are made out ...

A single silicon beam (red), along with its drive (yellow) and readout (green and blue) electrodes, implements a MEMS capable of nontrivial computations.
Credit: Guillaume Dion

A group of researchers reports the construction of the first reservoir computing device built with a microelectromechanical system. The neural network exploits the nonlinear dynamics of a microscale silicon beam to perform its calculations. The group’s work looks to create devices that can act simultaneously as a sensor and a computer using a fraction of the energy a normal computer would use.

As artificial intelligence has become increasingly sophisticated, it has inspired renewed efforts to develop computers whose physical architecture mimics the human brain...

Dr. Gianluca Memoli, Mohd Adili Norasikin and Dr. Diego Martinez Plasencia with SoundBender.
Credit: University of Sussex

Researchers at the University of Sussex have become the first in the world to develop technology which can bend sound waves around an obstacle and levitate an object above it. SoundBender, developed by Professor Sriram Subramanian, Dr Gianluca Memoli and Dr Diego Martinez Plasencia at the University of Sussex, is an interface capable of producing dynamic self-bending beams that enable both levitation of small objects and tactile feedback around an obstacle.

The technology, to be presented at the 31st ACM User Interface Software and Technology Symposium in Berlin this Monday [October 15], overcomes two key limitations of previous ultrasound levitation set-ups, which were ...

Diagrammatic comparison of our bioinspired high-dynamic-range polarization camera with its biological counterpart, the mantis shrimp ommatidium.

New camera mimics mantis shrimp vision to significantly improve dynamic range and add polarization information. Inspired by the visual system of the mantis shrimp – among the most complex found in nature – researchers have created a new type of camera that could greatly improve the ability of cars to spot hazards in challenging imaging conditions.

The new camera accomplishes this feat by detecting a property of light known as polarization and featuring a dynamic range about 10,000 times higher than today’s commercial cameras. Dynamic range is a measure of the brightest and darkest areas a camera can capture simultaneously...