Wearables
Putting a spring back in your step
What is stopping you from becoming at one with nature? Why do we persist in putting on shoes on a daily basis? Cuts, slashes and broken glass are all factors, however, what if there was a product that allows you to feel as if nothing were on your feet but in actual fact you would be protected against everything?
Prosthetic arm tech detects spinal nerve signals
Scientists have developed sensor technology for a robotic prosthetic arm that detects signals from nerves in the spinal cord. To control the prosthetic, the patient has to think like they are controlling a phantom arm and imagine some simple manoeuvres, such as pinching two fingers together. The sensor technology interprets the electrical signals sent from spinal motor neurons and uses them as commands.
Em-bark on a fitness quest for your dog
Royal & Sun Alliance (RSA) and Neovia have expressed clear confidence in the growing 'pet telematics' sector through recent equity investments in Pitpatpet (PitPat). Pet telematics, part of the burgeoning IoT revolution, is the latest application of low-cost, lightweight sensing and measurement technology that generates big data to improve business decision making.
Smartwatch software may now verify signatures
The handwritten signature is still the most widely accepted biometric used to verify a person's identity. Banks, corporations, and government bodies rely on the human eye and digital devices such as tablets or smart pens to capture, analyse, and verify people's autographs. New software developed by researchers at Tel Aviv University and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev now enables smartwatches, currently worn by one in six people around th...
Smart glasses automatically adjust focus
The days of wearing bifocals or constantly swapping out reading glasses might soon come to an end. A team led by University of Utah electrical and computer engineering professor Carlos Mastrangelo and doctoral student Nazmul Hasan has created "smart glasses" with liquid-based lenses that can automatically adjust the focus on what a person is seeing, whether it is far away or close up.
Techniques allow greater control of smartwatches
Smartwatches aren’t the easiest things to control, with their small screens and owners’ bulky fingers. Georgia Institute of Technology researchers have invented new ways to interact that provide a little more control. Among their enhancements using LG and Sony watches:
Protective wear inspired by fish scales
Over a two-year period, researchers went through about 50 bass, puncturing or fracturing hundreds of fish scales under the microscope, to try to understand their properties and mechanics better.
Building wearables that sense, think, and communicate: part 2
This article is part of a two part series by Jaya Kathuria and Anbarasu Samiappan. In Part 1 they discussed several design challenges of wearable product design, including always-ON applications and power implications, analogue front-end and sensor integration, board or system real estate, sleek user interface through gestures, and privacy and secure communications.
Building wearables that sense, think, and communicate: part 1
The design requirements for modern wearable products include sleek design, embedded intelligence, energy efficiency, expandability and cost-effectiveness. These create many design challenges for manufactures of these types of devices. The pressure from never-ending improvement forces designers to look for ways to integrate more functionality into a single chip to simplify design.
Walking in a winter wearable wonderland
With the support of Robotae, a robotics and mechatronics consultancy, Motion Metrics has developed Carv – the world’s first digital ski coach that uses a smart boot insert to capture motion and pressure.