Now, the company is working on a printer that will work outside the station, in the cold vacuum of actual outer space.
but getting them to collaborate smoothly in such a frenzied environment poses significant hurdles. Their ability to interact with one another
and the world around them is just not quite at the level of your typical wait staff.
showcasing a team of three robots that work together to deliver beer, suggesting the technology responsible could translate to cooperative robotic systems for not only bars and restaurants,
but hospitals and disaster situations. The humans would push a button on the robot to request a drink,
The biggest problem facing the team at MIT's Computer science and Artificial intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) was finding a way for robots to cope with the uncertainties of the human world,
which they say can actually be broken down into three different kinds of uncertainty. These include sensors that aren't as accurate in determining the location
and status of themselves and things around them as they could be, unpredictable outcomes, such as dropped items,
"You like to be able to just tell one robot to go to the first room and one to get the beverage without having to walk them through every move in the process,
"says MIT graduate student Ariel Anders.""This method folds in that level of flexibility.""Putting their new approach to the test,
"It forced us to work on more complex planning algorithms that allow the robots to engage in higher-level reasoning about their location, status, and behavior."
The researchers are now testing out the new planning algorithm on bigger search -and-rescue style problems
#Finnish tech could let smartphones"see"gas Smartphones are already able to monitor things such as light, sound, movement and geographical location.
That because VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland has developed a miniature phone-compatible sensor, that uses light to identify the type and amount of gases in air samples.
The sensor is scaled a-down version of a Fabry-Pérot interferometer. As such, it works by shining light of various wavelengths through an air sample.
Different gases absorb those wavelengths at known rates, so by analyzing how much of what type of light is absorbed,
This could in turn be utilized to test the air quality in workplaces, or to assess peoples'sleep quality by measuring their exhalations.
While there no word on possible commercialization, VTT may be facing some competition when the time comes Variable Technologies, Sensorcon, Homeland security and the University of California,
San diego are also all working on smartphone gas sensors s
#Aluminum"yolk"nanoparticles deliver high-capacity battery recipe Researchers at MIT and Tsinghua University in China have found a way to more than triple the capacity of the anodes,
or negative electrodes, of lithium-ion batteries while also extending their lifetime and potentially allowing for faster battery charging
and discharging. The new electrode, which makes use of aluminum/titanium"yolk -and-shell"nanoparticles, is reportedly simple to manufacture
and is especially promising for high-power applications. The lithium-ion batteries in our phones, tablets and laptops store their energy-carrying ions inside negative electrodes made of graphite.
Other electrode materials could in theory do a far better job by packing in more energy
but these alternatives come with their own drawbacks. Lithium could store about 10 times more energy per unit weight than graphite,
but it's prone to short-circuiting and catching fire; silicon and tin could also vastly outperform graphite,
but only if the battery is charged at a slow rate, which is rarely practical. Many of the high-capacity alternatives also tend to expand
and contract very noticeably as the greatly increased number of lithium ions travel to and from the electrode with each charge cycle.
The repeated deformation exerts a strong mechanical stress that, over time, damages the electrode contacts
and reduces the cell's capacity. The team led by MIT professor Ju Li claim to have found a way around this problem.
They have done so by creating nanoparticles with a solid titanium outer shell and an inner aluminum"yolk"that can freely expand
and contract within the shell, storing and releasing ions without damaging the structure of the electrode and leading to much longer-lasting, high-capacity batteries.
Aluminium is a low-cost material that, like lithium or silicon, can store much more energy per unit weight than conventional graphite.
However, it isn't usually considered a good choice for building lithium-ion batteries because the repeated expansion and shrinkage inside the electrode cause aluminium particles to shed their outer layer.
Encasing the aluminum particles within a titanium dioxide shell, however, prevents the shedding, again prolonging the cell's lifetime.
To produce these nanostructures the researchers began by placing aluminum particles about 50 nanometers in diameter in a solution of sulfuric acid and titanium oxysulfate,
a process that coated the nanoparticles in a hard shell three to four nanometers thick.
After a few hours in the acid, the aluminum particles shrank down to about 30 nanometers while leaving the outer shell unchanged.
This gave the aluminum nanoparticles enough room to collect lithium ions and expand considerably as needed, without damaging the electric contacts of the cell.
In testing, the team found that the outer shells became slightly thicker after 500 charge cycles
but the aluminum particles were damaged hardly, even at very high charging rates. While standard graphite can store approximately 0. 35 ampere-hours per gram (Ah/g),
the new electrode can reportedly store over three times as much energy per unit mass (1. 2 Ah/g) at a normal charging rate.
Even at very fast charging rates (six minutes to full charge), the researchers reported a capacity of 0. 66 Ah/g, nearly double than normal.
The low cost of aluminium, along with the reportedly simple and scalable manufacturing method, bodes well for the future.
Li and colleagues say they have completed already successfully tests for full cells which they fabricated using lithium iron phosphate for the positive electrode.
Once this technology is ready for real world applications, it could lead to batteries that are longer-lasting,
more energy-dense and faster-charging than today's cells s
#Breakthrough photonic processor promises quantum computing leap Optical quantum computers promise to deliver processing performance exponentially faster and more powerful than today's digital electronic microprocessors.
To make this technology a reality, however, photonic circuitry must first become at least as efficient at multitasking as the microprocessors they are designed to replace.
Towards this end, researchers from the University of Bristol and Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT) claim to have developed a fully-reprogrammable quantum optical chip able to encode
and manipulate photons in an infinite number of ways. Created from glass and silicon using standard semiconductor fabrication techniques,
the new device ups the ante on previous photonic chips by incorporating six wave-guides for universal linear optic transformations
and 15 integrated interferometers (devices that superimpose one photon beam over another to look for anomalies in intensity or phase), each
of which is individually programmable. As a result, a range of different quantum processor operations can be performed at one time.
Even better, the stable and quickly reprogrammable nature of the chip's architecture changeable by means of software code means that a vast range of existing
and yet-to-be devised quantum experiments may be conducted rapidly in succession, or simultaneously, to help realize what may well be myriad future protocols."
"Once we wrote the code for each circuit, it took seconds to reprogram the chip,
and milliseconds for the chip to switch to the new experiment,"said University of Bristol Phd student
and research team member, Jacques Carolan.""We carried out a year worth of experiments in a matter of hours.
What wee really excited about is using these chips to discover new science that we haven even thought of yet...
This chip has been fabricated and packaged up, so that we never need to realign it. It sits there,
and we can perform literally 1000s of different experiments in a single day this was simply unthinkable a few years ago."
"The number of photon inputs and outputs also means the the new processor can be applied to new areas of research straight away,
which can be applied to sets of qubits to perform the equivalent of Boolean algebraic functions found in standard electronic logic processors also referred to as quantum gates.
if the researcher's work produces even most of what it promises, significant steps towards designing
then prove the technology for use in the realms of telecommunication through partnership with NTT
and other computer and networking companies. As part of this greater encouragement of quantum computing research and development the University of Bristol has pioneered the"Quantum in the Cloud"service,
which allows public access via the Internet to a working quantum processor, with plans to add even more chips in the near future."
"Over the last decade, we have established an ecosystem for photonic quantum technologies, allowing the best minds in quantum information science to hook up with established research
and engineering expertise in the telecommunications industry, "said Professor Jeremy O'brien, Director of the Centre for Quantum Photonics at Bristol University."
"It a model that we need to encourage if we are to realise our vision for a quantum computer. t
#The Drinkable Book has water-purifying pages For people in developing nations or rural locations,
That the idea behind The Drinkable Book, developed by Carnegie mellon University postdoc Theresa Dankovich. Each of its pages is made from a thick sheet of paper impregnated with silver and copper nanoparticles,
that kill 99.9 percent of microbes in tainted water that filtered through it. Dankovich began work on the technology
when she was earning her doctorate at Mcgill University, continuing it at the University of Virginia Center for Global Health.
She has formed now a nonprofit company page Drinking Paper, to get the book into production and distribution.
She will presenting her work this week at the 250th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, in Boston o
#Snake skin-inspired steel could lead to better hard drives and more When it comes to human phobias,
snakes are frequently found toward the top of the list. But despite the negative reputation, these reptiles make up an important part of our ecosystem
while exhibiting some very unique biological aspects. The way snakes move across surfaces is pretty incredible,
and researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of technology (KIT) have figured out how to potentially use that feature to enhance everything from hip prostheses to computer hard disks.
With a fiber laser, they milled scales into a steel bolt of 8 mm in diameter.
With that in mind, researchers at KIT milled scales into a steel bolt 8 mm in diameter using a fiber laser.
Both designs were tested on lubricated (steel) and unlubricated (sapphire) contacts. For lubricated conditions, the untextured surface generated the least amount of friction
even with hard materials like steel and sapphire, it shows that scale-like texturing has potential application for dry-contact devices and/or environments that benefit from low friction and high wear resistance c
That's why researchers at Britain's Loughborough University have created a system that speaks words based on the user's breathing.
Known as the Augmentative and Alternate Communication (AAC) device, it consists of a nose/mouth mask linked by a hose to a computer.
custom software (via an analog-to-digital converter) recognizes that pattern as representing a certain word or phrase the user initially decides for themselves what patterns will equate to what words,
with the software learning from them as they go along. Once the pattern has been identified, the AAC uses a speech synthesizer to speak the words aloud.
So far, the researchers have had a 97.5 percent success rate at teaching the system to recognize words
or other speech disorders communicate, "says Dr. Atul Gaur, a consultant anesthetist who is collaborating with the Loughborough team."
"In an intensive care setting, the technology has the potential to be used to make an early diagnosis of locked-in syndrome (LIS),
by allowing patients, including those on ventilators, to communicate effectively for the first time by breathing an almost effortless act
which requires no speech, limb or facial movements.""The AAC can be seen (and heard) in use, in the video below b
University of Toronto scientists have developed asymmetrical honeycomb-shaped 2d meshes of protein scaffolding that stick together like Velcro
and imitate the environments in which tissue and muscle cells grow in the body. The meshes are made from a flexible polymer called POMAC
(which is short for this mouthful:""poly (octamethylene maleate (anhydride) citrate"."T-shaped posts bonded onto the top of the mesh act like the tiny hooks on velcro strips they loop through the holes in a mesh placed above
and bend the polymer meshes.""And when we apply electrical field stimulation, we see that they beat in synchrony."
"If you had these little building blocks, you could build the tissue right at the surgery time to be whatever size that you require,
"Radisic says. Surgeons could then graft the scaffold onto the patient's heart, and after a few months the patient would be left with a repaired heart (and no scaffold,
as that gradually gets absorbed by the body as harmless waste). The scaffolds could also be used for other cell types,
such as those found in the liver and lungs, and for drug testing, as artificial tissue grown on them would respond realistically.
One technique used springy, coiled fibers as scaffolding, while another grew the tissue in an injectable hydrogel,
#World's most powerful digital camera gets the go-ahead A smartphone with a 16-megapixel camera may seem cutting edge,
With a resolution of 3. 2-gigapixels (enough to need 1, 500 high-definition television screens to display one image),
The three-mirrored device is the size of a small car, tipping the scales at over 3 tons (2. 7 tonnes).
and SLAC, contains 189 sensors, has a resolution equivalent to 800,000 eight-megapixel cameras, and includes a filter-changing mechanism and shutter for viewing different wavelengths from the near-ultraviolet to the near-infrared.
Having passed Critical Decision 3, the last major approval decision, the camera will be built and tested over the next five years in a new 185-sq m (2, 000-sq ft), two-story-tall clean room at SLAC in Menlo Park,
In 2022, the camera and the LSST will begin a 10-year mission to take digital images of the entire Southern sky every few nights as part of a program to catalog the largest number of visible stars and galaxies yet,
which is expected to generate about six million gigabytes of data per year. It's hoped that this will help astronomers to gain a better understanding of galaxy formations, aid in tracking potentially dangerous asteroids,
#Ultra low-power wireless communication through the human body using magnetic fields Be it on the inside or the outside,
the human body is becoming host to an ever-increasing array of electronic devices that need to wirelessly communicate with each other.
Now engineers working at the University of California, San diego (UCSD) have come up with a different type of wireless communication that sends ultra low-power magnetic fields through the human body.
This makes it extraordinarily more energy efficient and secure from prying eyes than comparable wireless communication technologies.
Connecting and communicating with devices in and around the human body such as smartwatches, implanted smart monitors,
or even ingestible wireless sensors, generally requires that each of these transmit to a receiver using Bluetooth.
Since the electromagnetic radiation used by Bluetooth to transmit data does not easily pass through the human body,
these devices must use a lot of power and therefore also carry relatively bulky batteries to power their transmitters.
Though still in development, the engineers say their new system is superior to existing radio communications technologies in this field,
claiming path losses an incredible 10 million times lower than those associated with comparable Bluetooth device communication."
"In the future, people are going to be wearing more electronics, such as smart watches, fitness trackers and health monitors,"says Patrick Mercier,
a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer engineering at UCSD and lead author of the study."
"All of these devices will need to communicate information with each other. Currently, these devices transmit information using Bluetooth radios,
which use a lot of power to communicate. We're trying to find new ways to communicate information around the human body that use much less power."
the engineers used coils of copper wires insulated with PVC tubing. At one end of this arrangement, the wires terminate at a receiver and analyzer,
while at the other end the wires are formed into coils that wind around three parts of the body:
In this way, the coils act as inductors for the application of energy and the production of magnetic fields and allow the body itself to act as a sort of waveguide for those fields.
Using this system, the researchers were able to transmit and measure ultra-low path loss signals from from arm to arm, from arm to head,
"This technique, to our knowledge, achieves the lowest path losses out of any wireless human body communication system that's been demonstrated so far,
"said professor Mercier.""This technique will allow us to build much lower power wearable devices.""Creating devices with lower power requirements will,
in turn, reduce battery requirements, leading to smaller and more efficient devices. In this way, not only could wearables
and monitors be made smaller with longer battery life, but it would also reduce the size of ingestible transmitters to something much easier to swallow."
"A problem with wearable devices like smart watches is that they have short operating times because they are limited to using small batteries,
said Jiwoong Park, a Ph d student in Mercier's lab. ith this magnetic field human body communication system,
we hope to significantly reduce power consumption as well as how frequently users need to recharge their devices."
"According to the researchers, beyond the benefits of ultra-low-power energy consumption, magnetic field human body communication may offer greater security than current wireless communication technologies.
This is because Bluetooth radio communication links take place through open air and, potentially, someone could possibly intercept these signals and compromise a person's privacy.
With magnetic field human body communication, however, the communication is contained within the body itself and does need not to link to separate wireless devices.
When monitoring the system, the researchers measured a dramatic decrease in signals radiated from the body and almost no possibility of transmitting information from one person magnetic communication system to another,
even in close proximity.""Increased privacy is desirable when you're using your wearable devices to transmit information about your health,
"said Jiwoong Park, a Ph d student in Mercier Energy-efficient Microsystems Lab. The major downside of the technology is,
although it is suitable for devices that wrap around a part of the body, such a smart watches, headbands and belts,
it won't work with things like small patches stuck on the skin. This is because the magnetic fields need circular geometries to propagate through the human body.
The results of this research were presented recently at the 37th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society in Milan
Italy I
#Revolutionary mechanical hand adds a sense of touch to mind-controlled prostheses A mechanical hand utilizing DARPA-developed neural technologies has become the first to allow a paralyzed patient to feel physical sensations through a prosthesis.
The 28 year-old test subject was able to determine which mechanical finger was being touched whilst blindfolded, with total accuracy.
The identity of the patient has not been disclosed for privacy reasons, however a DARPA press release states that he was left paralyzed due to severe spinal injuries.
In the past, test subjects have been able to manipulate prostheses via thought alone but the technology had been a one-way street.
in order to control the prosthesis but received no tactile sensory data in return, making it difficult to direct precise movements.
allowing two-way communication between a mechanical hand and its user. The feat was accomplished by running wires connected to electrodes on the patient's sensory cortex (the part of the brain responsible for identifying tactile sensations)
and motor cortex (the part that directs body movements) to the prosthesis. The mechanical hand that interfaces with the DARPA tech was developed by the Applied Physics laboratory at Johns hopkins university.
Torque sensors integrated into the device are able to detect when pressure is being applied to the prosthesis,
converting force into electrical signals which are transmitted to, and interpreted by the subject's brain.
During laboratory testing, the patient was blindfolded while researchers touched each of the hand's bionic fingers.
and those suffering from paralysis have access to mind control prostheses that allow individuals to feel once more e
#Tadpole-like endoscope swims through gastrointestinal tract in search of cancer Endoscopes are essential tools for the medical examination of many organs of the human body,
and an arrangement of lenses or small cameras in more modern devices the endoscope is a vital,
Now engineers have created a new device dubbed the Tadpole Endoscope, that literally swims around inside the organ of a patient and wirelessly transmits video of
With cancers of the gastrointestinal (GI TRACT such as esophageal cancer, stomach cancer, and colon cancer, being some of the most commmon of all cancers in the world,
a range of procedures are necessary to physically examine all parts of the GI for maximum diagnostic effect.
Of these, gastroscopy is used to help diagnose esophageal and stomach cancer, whilst intestinal and coleorectal cancers can be determined with the use of capsule endoscopy and colonoscopy, respectively.
Unfortunately, all of these procedures are costly to perform and can place a great deal of stress on someone who may already be quite ill.
The new Tadpole Endoscope (TE on the other hand, is a relatively noninvasive device that is simply swallowed like a large pill
and then remotely guided around inside the patient's stomach by a doctor. Created by engineers from the Institute of Precision Engineering at the Chinese University of Hong kong,
the device has a soft-tail that it uses to maneuver about, a 3d printed shell that contains the control electronics,
and a placeholder for a wireless video camera. Not the first stomach-inspecting device ever to be created to wirelessly transmit video from within a patient,
nor even the first to use external magnetic propulsion the Olympus/Siemens ingestible device being one notable example the TE is,
however, potentially much more maneuverable, particularly with its driven tail. The drive unit for the TE is constructed with two permanent magnets, a magnetic coil and a tail.
As the polarity of the two magnets is opposing, when the coil is energized, a repulsive and an attractive force is generated.
With the tail of the device attached to the coil, it then flaps in harmony to the current applied
Magnetic field generation with coils located outside the body supply the electrical current wirelessly to the coil located within the TE,
much like that suggested for use in certain shape-shifting nanoprobes. After the TE has been used in the initial diagnosis of the stomach
natural peristaltic action (the"squeezing"motion of muscles that ordinarily move food down the GI) will push it into the lower GI TRACT.
a sensor pad attached to the person can continue to capture and record subsequent images which a medical professional can then download
and add to the complete diagnostic data Set in testing thus far, the TE has been deployed in both an artificial stomach model and a pig stomach.
Whilst the image system has yet to be fitted to the device the researchers believe that the feasibility of the propulsion model will move their creation toward the next set of experiments and onward to eventual deployment in working medical applications.
The results of this research were published in the journal HKIE Transactions. Source: Taylor & francis Grou n
#Smartdrive MX2 gives wheelchairs an electric boost Even though fully-electric wheelchairs can do amazing things these days,
like go off-road or climb stairs, they are still often too large and cumbersome for the average wheelchair user.
The Smart-Drive MX2 provides a versatile alternative it's an electric drive designed to attach to an ordinary wheelchair
and give a boost up hills, over difficult surfaces, or whenever it's needed. The MX2,
which received FDA approval in August, is a lighter, simple version of the original model the MX1.
It features push to go and tap to stop functionality, so when attached to a chair it automatically engages
if the user wishes to go slowly, they push the chair wheels slowly. To go fast,
the unit also has Bluetooth LE Drive Control to allow access from a smartphone for things like fitness tracking apps.
Perhaps not as lightweight when combined with a standard chair as super-lightweight chairs like the Zinger, the unit is still very manageable not much more than a heavy laptop and a couple of books
Power is produced from a 250w brushless DC motor combined with a Lifepo4 36 V, 3. 4 Ah battery,
According to its creators, the Smartdrive MX2 is easy to install and compatible with most rigid and folding chair wheelchair styles,
The company doesn't list an official price for the Smart-Drive MX2 but expect to pay around the US$6000 mark.
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