GADGET REVIEWS Just another GADGET NEWS

Video: Stanford University News Service

Making artificial limbs that can perform gross motor functions is relatively easy. Fine motor actions are harder, and wiring the limbs into the nervous system is harder still. But researchers at Berkeley and Stanford are crossing the real frontier: making artificial skin that can touch and feel.

Research teams at Berkeley and Stanford recently announced breakthroughs in producing highly-touch-sensitive artificial skin. In both cases, an extremely thin layer of plastic or rubber are bonded to electronic elements arranged in micropatterns, so the skin can retain flexibility and elasticity while still transmitting a strong signal. Both papers appear in an forthcoming issue of the journal Nature Materials.

At Berkeley, the team used germanium/silicon nanowires, which they compare to microscopic “hairs” on the filmy plastic skin. The Stanford team paired electrodes in a pyramid pattern, which communicate through a thin rubber film (total thickness of the artificial skin, including the rubber layer and both electrodes: less than one millimeter). They also created a flexible transistor, again to retain elasticity.

The density and sensitivity of the electrical transmitters allows the skin to detect and transmit extremely precise patterns and delicate pressure — essential for activites such as typing, handling coins, cracking an egg, loading and unloading dishes, or anything that requires a gentle touch rather than sheer mechanical force.

The sensors could also be used in nonprosthetic applications. Benjamin Tee, a Stanford graduate student, notes that an automobile’s steering wheel could be fitted with pressure-sensitive sensors that could detect whether or not a drunk or sleeping driver’s hands had slipped from the wheel.

It’s difficult to tell at this point which team’s approach might be better suited to particular applications; the Berkeley teams touts its skin’s low energy use, the Stanford team its skin’s extreme sensitivity.

There’s also a sobering link between the two projects. Both Berkeley’s and Stanford’s research was indirectly supported by the U.S. Department of Defense — Berkeley’s by DARPA, and Stanford’s by the Office of Naval Research. The past decade has seen tremendous advances in artificial limb technology, due in no small part to the number of veterans returning from Iraq or Afghanistan after losing arms or legs, or with major burns. This in turn is partly a function of the previous decade’s advances in body armor, which have saved lives at the costs of limbs. Let’s hope that as these wars finally end, our desire to continue to improve the lives of everyone with limb differences continues.

<< Previous
|
Next >>

An optical image of a fully fabricated e-skin device with nanowire active matrix circuitry. Each dark square represents a single pixel. (Credit: Ali Javey and Kuniharu Takei)

<< Previous
|
Next >>

Sources:

• Engineers make artificial skin out of nanowires [Berkeley News]
• Stanford researchers’ new high-sensitivity electronic skin can feel a fly’s footsteps [Stanford Report]

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

<< Previous
|
Next >>

A ride to the stratosphere and back has now become a rite of passage for smartphones.

Space enthusiasts are attaching devices such as the Motorola Droid, G1, HTC Evo, and Nexus One — not to mention an array of digital cameras — to weather balloons or rockets, then sending them high into the stratosphere and beyond.

With integrated GPS systems, cameras and fast processors, smartphones are computing devices available to all. Thats why space enthusiasts are turning to them to do things that would have otherwise required custom components or a number of specialized devices.

What you are seeing is a grassroots initiative to reach for the stars, says Bobby Russell, founder of Quest for Stars, a non-profit organization that works with high school students to promote science and technology.

Driving the interest of hobbyists are the latest crop of smartphones and even digital cameras because the devices are cheap and fairly rugged.

Now, its all there off-the-shelf for the taking, says Russell. So why reinvent the wheel?

Photo: A Google G1 phone gets ready to head into the atmosphere, surrounded by members of the Noisebridge hacker space. Photo courtesy: Mikolaj Horbyn, Andrew Gerrand, Christie Dudley.

<< Previous
|
Next >>

Have you tried to launch a gadget into space? Submit a link to a photo and website where we can learn more about it. If we get enough great submissions, we’ll publish a gallery of your submissions! Your photo needs to be on Flickr, Picasa or another website. Give us the URL of the image file (.jpg, .gif or .png), not the web page containing it.

Show space gadgets that are: hot | new | top-rated or submit your photo

Submit a Spacefaring Gadget

While you can submit as many links as you want, you can only submit one every 30 minutes. No HTML allowed.

Back to top

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

A thread on AdGooroo have declared that the internet (and its younger, tech-savvy partisan users) allowed the Illinois senator to bypass traditional media and claim the Democratic nomination. Recently, the Obama campaign released an iPhone app that helps followers recruit supporters.

UC Berkeley Public Policy professor Jack Glaser told Wired.com in an e-mail that people’s feeling of powerlessness in the election process makes them resort “to all kinds of related (but inefficacious) activities.” And it’s especially true “when they pay close attention” like they are in this election, he said.

Most of the symbols depict Sen. Barack Obama as cutting edge, Sen. Joe Biden as wise, Sen. John McCain as old, and Gov. Sarah Palin as ditzy, and are created by people compelled to express their support.

Still, Glaser says, these are mostly funny “but not too deep.”

Psychologist Brian Nosek of the University of Virginia thinks there’s something more meaningful to this categorization-type of thinking. He suggests the “Obama equals something” illustrations that involve technology could indicate a trend that is tapping into the power of brands.

In an unpublished study by Project Implicit, a public research project where people explore their own biases and attitudes, Nosek reveals they’ve found that “liberals are more pro-Apple and conservatives more pro-Windows … The same is true when the contrast is Open Source versus Microsoft.”

For example, Apple’s slogan “Think Different” is a decidedly unconventional and authority-challenging statement, according to Nosek. “Apple’s brand emphasis on style, hip culture, creativity are all associations that liberals tend to find more attractive than conservatives, and this appeal appears to extend to implicit evaluations of the companies and brands.” So it’s not a huge stretch to say the same type of people would be equating Obama’s barrier-busting candidacy to these same type of gadgets.

Then again, the apparent authority of Apple as a liberal mainstay doesn’t always hold true. Famously conservative pundit and radio shock jock
Rush Limbaugh is a huge Apple fan, as he noted earlier this year in one
of his broadcasts.

All Project Implicit findings are made through the famed Implicit Association Test, which measures the “strength of automatic association between mental representations of objects (concepts) in memory,” and was famously profiled in the book Blink as a measure of racial attitudes.

But the makeup and general interest of the illustrations also suggest that they go beyond political associations, especially the ones featuring the iPhone and the browsers.

Sriram Natarajan, also with Project Implicit, says that if the creative interests of the people who posted these were measured, you’d find similar personality types.

For example, a Flickr user from New York named Andrea posted over 100
of the illustrations she liked best from the Fark site to her own photo
page, in “a fit of boredom and amusement.” A self-described “bleeding
heart liberal,” her favorite illustration is the one depicting Obama as
the iPhone, Biden as a Blackberry, Palin as a toy phone, and McCain as
a lost carrier pigeon.

Natarajan says Andrea’s reason for posting these is likely due to
her savvy understanding of tech culture, even more than just knowing
how to upload Flickr pictures. She is likely a “creative individual” and “probably works in the tech industry and very much plugged
into pop culture,” he said. “It was probably intrinsically rewarding for her.”

Measuring these associations using the Implicit Association Test would be possible only if the people taking the test are familiar with the distinctions between the different gadgets, Natajaran said.

So just like many other internet memes that grow beyond their bounds,
these images tell us more about the people creating them than about the
content implicit in the original images. They also show that people’s election
obsessions easily plug in to their already-established obsessions,
observations, and inevitably, their wish fulfillment.

So when a gadget-happy tech insider sees Obama, they’re likely to envision a multifaceted, high-tech device that will change their lives.

Let’s just hope that if Obama wins, there are no 3G-type, cut-and-paste bumps in the road for his administration.

Posted under Gadget Reviews