Wearables

Flexible televisions, tablets and phones as well as ‘truly wearable’ smart tech are a step closer thanks to a nanoscale transistor created by researchers at The University of Manchester and Shandong University in China. The international team has developed an ultrafast, nanoscale transistor – known as a thin film transistor, or TFT, - made out of an oxide semiconductor. The TFT is the first oxide-semiconductor based transistor that is capable of operating at a benchmark speed of 1GHz.

  The IDTechEx Wearable Europe conference and exhibition, to be held on 11th-12th April in Berlin Germany, will bring together the ecosystem global brands with technology developers, focusing on the commercial growth opportunities for wearable technology.

  Alpha Micro Components has announced the availability of the u-blox ZOE-M8B, a GNSS System-in-Package (SiP) that looks set to revolutionise small battery powered consumer devices, including portables and wearables. The ZOE-M8B SiP offers the best possible balance of power consumption and positional accuracy in its class.

A team of researchers at UC San Diego and San Diego State University has developed a pair of '4D goggles' that allows wearers to be physically 'touched' by a movie when they see a looming object on the screen, such as an approaching spacecraft. The device was developed based on a study conducted by the neuroscientists to map brain areas that integrate the sight and touch of a looming object and aid in their understanding of the perceptual and neural mechanisms of multisensory integration.

After the lasting successes of Smartphones and Smart TV’s, wearable technology has emerged as the next big player in the technology field. The 'quantified self' ideology (logging a person’s life to bring objectivity to areas normally clouded by feelings and impressions) is beginning to catch on in Europe, and German industry association Bitkom forecasts wearable revenues to climb to as much as 8.8 billion euros in 2018.

According to Statista, there were 453 million connected wearable devices worldwide in 2018, a figure that is predicted to increase to 593 million this year. While, the market is currently dominated by smart watches, you may be surprised at the benefits wearables can bring to a manufacturing facility. Jonathan Wilkins, Marketing Director of EU Automation explains how wearables could transform your factory.

Contactless technology company, Fidesmo, and Bravida, access control systems company, have announced their partnership to bring more flexibility and choice to users. This collaboration enables the use of watches, cards and other gadgets connected to Fidesmo as the key carrier in Bravida’s customers access systems.

The majority of people today will be wearing or have previously worn a wearable device of some sort. It is safe to say wearables are a huge part of the technology industry nowadays and it is impressive to look at how much they have progressed, and how much more advanced they soon will be. Electronic Specifier's Anna Flockett went along to this month’s Hardware Pioneers event which was all about developing wearable products in IoT and the opportunities they can bring.

OKW has added a new size M and two stations to its BODY-CASE range of fully wearable enclosures. Smart and comfortable BODY-CASE is designed for a wide range of wearable electronics applications including tracking and monitoring; emergency call and notification; bio-feedback sensors for healthcare, wellness and sports fitness. It can also be used for industrial electronics.

Delivering the right combination of power and performance in GNSS receivers demands an innovative and adaptive approach to signal acquisition, satellite tracking and position decoding. By: Florian Bousquet, Market Development Manager, Product Center Positioning, u-blox.