Lifeboat Foundation

Rarely a week goes by at Wareable where a patent from some big tech company doesn’t get us guessing about the future.

Like Hansel and Gretel with smartwatches, we follow the proverbial tech crumbs all the way to the end, but we’re quick to forget how many of the ideas actually make the cut — and which get lost along the way.

So we’re going to a mini-series we’re calling ‘The patented history and future of…’, looking at some of the big launches in wearable tech, starting with the Apple Watch. These are going to be miniature timelines, small trips down memory lane looking at the patents that led up to the announcement and those that have happened since, to see what came true, what didn’t, and what might still be to come.

Continue reading “The patented history and future of… the Apple Watch” »

Nice.

Scientists have created an inexpensive technique to print “data skin” — soft wearable electronics — paving way for smart tattoos that can be customised and printed at home.

Researchers created a fully functional “data skin” in under an hour. Since the method is based on inexpensive processing tools and materials, the circuits can be produced for less than a dollar.

Continue reading “Soon, print your own smart tattoos, wearable fitness trackers” »

Imagine if your electronic wearable device, like your Fitbit, adhered to you like a sticker or temporary tattoo and could read your pulse or measure hand gestures. As electronics are becoming thinner, lighter, and more power efficient, they can be populated on stickers and temporary tattoos to create soft wearables that adhere to the skin. And the most exciting news is that one day you may be able to print these wearable electronics from a home printer.

Carnegie Mellon University’s Mechanical Engineering Professor Carmel Majidi, Ph.D. student Eric Markvicka, and previous postdoctoral fellow Michael Bartlett (now a professor at Iowa State University) have created a method to print skin-mountable electronics in a quick and cost-effective way.

“One of the remaining challenges in skin-mounted electronics is to interface soft circuits with the rigid microchips and electronics hardware required for sensing, digital processing, and power,” said Majidi. “We address this with a breakthrough digital fabrication technique that enables efficient creation of wireless electronics on a soft, water-resistant, medical-grade adhesive.”

Continue reading “Breakthrough soft electronics fabrication method is a first step to DIY smart tattoos” »

If you don’t like the thought of bugs crawling all over you, then you might not like one possible direction in which the field of wearable electronics is heading. Researchers from MIT and Stanford University recently showcased their new Rovables robots, which are tiny devices that roam up and down a person’s clothing – and yes, that’s as the clothing is being worn.

The centimeter-sized robots hang on by pinching the fabric between their wheels, with the physically-unconnected wheel on the underside of the material held against the others simply by magnetic attraction.

Continue reading “Roving robots may roam your clothes” »

Electronics that can be embedded in clothing are a growing trend. However, power sources remain a problem. In the journal Angewandte Chemie, scientists have now introduced thin, flexible, lithium ion batteries with self-healing properties that can be safely worn on the body. Even after completely breaking apart, the battery can grow back together without significant impact on its electrochemical properties.

Existing lithium ion batteries for wearable electronics can be bent and rolled up without any problems, but can break when they are twisted too far or accidentally stepped on — which can happen often when being worn. This damage not only causes the battery to fail, it can also cause a safety problem: Flammable, toxic, or corrosive gases or liquids may leak out.

A team led by Yonggang Wang and Huisheng Peng has now developed a new family of lithium ion batteries that can overcome such accidents thanks to their amazing self-healing powers. In order for a complicated object like a battery to be made self-healing, all of its individual components must also be self-healing. The scientists from Fudan University (Shanghai, China), the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (South Korea), and the Samsung R&D Institute China, have now been able to accomplish this.

SEOUL Tech giant Samsung Electronics Co Ltd said on Thursday it is acquiring U.S. artificial intelligence (AI) platform developer Viv Labs Inc, a firm run by a co-creator of Apple Inc’s Siri voice assistant program.

Samsung said in a statement it plans to integrate the San Jose-based company’s AI platform, called Viv, into the Galaxy smartphones and expand voice-assistant services to home appliances and wearable technology devices.

Financial terms were not disclosed.

Though they’re touted as ideal for electronics, two-dimensional materials like graphene may be too flat and hard to stretch to serve in flexible, wearable devices. “Wavy” borophene might be better, according to Rice University scientists.

The Rice lab of theoretical physicist Boris Yakobson and experimental collaborators observed examples of naturally undulating, metallic borophene, an atom-thick layer of boron, and suggested that transferring it onto an elastic surface would preserve the material’s stretchability along with its useful electronic properties.

Highly conductive graphene has promise for flexible electronics, Yakobson said, but it is too stiff for devices that also need to stretch, compress or even twist. But borophene deposited on a silver substrate develops nanoscale corrugations. Weakly bound to the silver, it could be moved to a flexible surface for use.

In Brief.

Interscatter communication has enabled the first Wi-Fi communication between implanted devices, wearables, and smart devices.

Researchers from the University of Washington have created a new form of communication that allows devices like credit cards, smart contact lenses, brain implants, and smaller wearable electronics to use Wi-Fi to talk to everyday devices like watches and smartphones. It’s called “interscatter communication,” and it works by using reflections to convert Bluetooth signals into Wi-Fi transmissions in the air that can be picked up by smart devices.

Continue reading “New ‘Interscatter Communication’ Could Let Your Implants Talk via Wi-Fi” »

As useful as they are, wearable fitness trackers aren’t usually the height of fashion themselves, with many devices blending away out of sight on your wrist or ankle. Now Intel and Luxottica have teamed up to put a fitness tracker front and center on your face, stashing various biometric sensors and a voice-activated AI coach into a stylish, custom-designed pair of Oakley shades.