Lifeboat Foundation

Wearable displacement sensors—which are attached to a human body, detect movements in real time and convert them into electrical signals—are currently being actively studied. However, research on tensile-capable displacement sensors has many limitations, such as low tensile properties and complex manufacturing processes.

If a displacement sensor that can be easily manufactured with high sensitivity and tensile properties is developed, it can be attached to a human body, allowing large movements of joints or fingers to be used in various applications such as AR and VR. A research team led by Sung-Hoon Ahn, mechanical engineering professor at Seoul National University, has developed a piezoelectric strain sensor with high sensitivity and high stretchability based on kirigami design cutting.

In this research, a stretchable piezoelectric displacement sensor was manufactured and its performance was evaluated by applying the kirigami structure to a film-type piezoelectric material. Various sensing characteristics were shown according to the kirigami pattern, and higher sensitivity and tensile properties were shown compared to existing technologies. Wireless haptic gloves using VR technology were produced using the developed sensor, and a piano could be played successfully using them.

Lightweight and flexible perovskites are highly promising materials for the fabrication of photovoltaics. So far, however, their highest reported efficiencies have been around 20%, which is considerably lower than those of rigid perovskites (25.7%).

Researchers at Nanjing University, Jilin University, Shanghai Tech University, and East China Normal University have recently introduced a new strategy to develop more efficient solar cells based on flexible perovskites. This strategy, introduced in a paper published in Nature Energy, entails the use of two hole-selective molecules based on carbazole cores and phosphonic acid anchoring groups to bridge the perovskite with a low temperature-processed NiO nanocrystal film.

“We believe that lightweight flexible perovskite solar cells are promising for building integrated photovoltaics, wearable electronics, portable energy systems and aerospace applications,” Hairen Tan, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told TechXplore. “However, their highest certified efficiency of 19.9% lags behind their rigid counterparts (highest 25.7%), mainly due to defective interfaces at charge-selective contacts with perovskites atop.”

Forget your bulky AR headsets, smart contact lenses are coming to place augmented reality displays right there on your eyeball. Last week, Mojo Vision CEO Drew Perkins volunteered to test the first feature-complete prototype of his company’s design.

Smart wearables are all about super-portable convenience, and until scientists can plumb an AR display directly into your visual cortex, the smallest and most portable form factor we can imagine is that of a contact lens. Mojo Vision has been working on a smart contact lens design since 2015, and its latest prototype Mojo Lens packs in a pretty impressive amount of gear – especially for something that has to live behind your eyelid.

For starters, it has the world’s smallest and highest-density display capable of showing dynamic content – a green monochrome MicroLED display measuring less than 0.5 mm (0.02 in) in diameter, with a resolution of 14,000 pixels per inch. It’s got an ARM Core M0 processor, a 5-GHz radio capable of communicating at ultra-low latency, and enough accelerometers, gyroscopes and magnetometers to track your eye movements with extreme precision, allowing the image to stay stable even as you move your eyes around.

A team of researchers at ETH Zurich in Switzerland have created an intriguing new exosuit that’s designed to give its wearer an extra layer of muscles.

The suit is intended to give those with limited mobility back their strength — and early trials are already showing plenty of potential, the scientists say.

The soft “wearable exomuscle,” dubbed the Myoshirt, automatically detects its wearer’s movement intentions and use actuators to literally take some of the load off.

Takao Someya and colleagues at the University of Tokyo have developed the first artificial-skin patch that does not affect the touch sensitivity of the real skin beneath it. The new ultrathin sensor could be used in applications as diverse as prosthetics and human-machine interfaces.

“A wearable sensor for your fingers has to be extremely thin,” explains Tokyo’s Sunghoon Lee. “But this obviously makes it very fragile and susceptible to damage from rubbing or repeated physical actions.” For this reason most e-skins developed to date been relatively thick and bulky.

In contrast, the sensor developed by the Tokyo team is thin and porous and consists of two layers (Science 370 966). The first layer is an insulating mesh-like network comprising polyurethane fibres around 200–400 nm thick. The second layer is a network of lines that makes up the functional electronic part of the device – a parallel-plate capacitor. This is made of gold on a supporting scaffold of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), a water-soluble polymer often found in contact lenses. Once this layer has been fabricated, the PVA is washed away to leave only the gold support. The finished pressure sensor is around 13 μ m thick.

Researchers at ETH Zurich have developed a lightweight, wearable textile exomuscle that uses sensors embedded in its fabric to detect a user’s movement intentions and chip in extra force as needed. Initial tests show a significant boost in endurance.

Where powered exoskeletons act as both muscle and bone, providing force as well as structural support, exomuscles make use of the body’s own structure and simply chip in with additional force. As a result, they’re much lighter and less bulky, but they’re also limited in how much force they can deliver, since human bones and joints can only take so much.

Continue reading “Wearable muscles offer an impressive upper-body endurance boost” »

AZoRobotics speaks with Dr. Erik Enegberg from Florida Atlantic University about his research into a wearable soft robotic armband. This could be a life-changing device for prosthetic hands users who have long-desired advances in dexterity.

Typing on a keyboard, pressing buttons on a remote control, or braiding a child’s hair has remained elusive for prosthetic hand users. How does the loss of tactile sensations impact limb-absent people’s lives?

Losing the sensation of touch has a profound impact on people’s lives. Some of the things that may seem simple and a part of everyday life, such as stroking the fur of a pet or the skin of a loved one, are a meaningful and fundamental way to connect with those around us for others. For example, a patient with a bilateral amputation has previously expressed concerns that he might hurt his granddaughter by accidentally squeezing her hand too tightly as he has lost tactile sensation.

With a more sustainable world goal, MIT researchers have succeeded in developing a new LEGO-like AI chip. Imagine a world where cellphones, smartwatches, and other wearable technologies don’t have to be put away or discarded for a new model. Instead, they could be upgraded with the newest sensors and processors that would snap into a device’s internal chip – similar to how LEGO bricks can be incorporated into an existing structure. Such reconfigurable chips might keep devices current while lowering electronic waste. This is really important because green computing is the key to a sustainable future.

MIT engineers have developed a stackable, reprogrammable LEGO-like AI chip. The chip’s layers communicate thanks optically to alternating layers of sensing and processing components, as well as light-emitting diodes (LEDs). Other modular chip designs use conventional wiring to transmit signals between layers. Such intricate connections are difficult, if not impossible, to cut and rewire, making stackable configurations nonreconfigurable.

Rather than relying on physical wires, the MIT design uses light to transfer data across the AI chip. As a result, the chip’s layers may be swapped out or added upon, for example, to include extra sensors or more powerful processors.

Rune Labs, a precision neurology company, has announced its StrivePD software ecosystem for Parkinson’s disease has been granted 510(k) clearance by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to collect patient symptom data through measurements made by Apple Watch.

By combining powerful wearable technology and self-reported symptom information with brain imaging, electrophysiology, genetic and other clinical data, StrivePD enables a data-driven approach to care management and clinical trial design for Parkinson’s.

Longevity. Technology: With this clearance, the Rune Labs’ StrivePD app enables precision clinical care and trial participation for tens of thousands of Parkinson’s patients who already use these devices in their daily lives.