Some researchers at Northwestern University and University of Illinois have managed to build an eye-like camera that's actually shaped like an eye. Sure, that sounds a tad unimpressive, but the real contribution of this project is the idea of electronics on a curved, flexible surface. The researchers have developed a mesh-like material that carries the photodetectors and electronic components necessary, and they say the resulting camera has a better field of vision than a traditional camera, in addition to conveniently resembling a human eye. Of course, they're a long ways away from communicating with the brain well enough to make an actual fully bionic eyeball, but the curved electronics could have other medical -- and regular form factor-busting, we hope -- applications as well.

The first "completely integrated, extremely bendable circuit" was just demonstrated to the world. The team behind the research is led by John Rogers of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The process bonds circuit sheets measuring just 1.5 micrometers (50 times thinner than human hair) to a piece of pre-stretched rubber. That allows the circuits to buckle like an accordion when pulled or twisted without losing their electrical properties. Unfortunately, the materials used thus far are not compatible with human tissue. In other words, no X-ray vision implant for you. X-ray contacts perhaps... quantum-computers now, please Mr. Scientists? Watch a circuit buckle in the video after the break.

[Via BBC, thanks YoJIMbo]

Believe us when we tell you that we've seen Legos used in ways its creators could have never, ever imagined. Thankfully, a team from the University of Illinois found a way to demonstrate a rather useful (read: not bizarre) technology with everyone's favorite building block. By setting up shop at the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers in Minnesota, students were able to show off an autonomous crop harvesting system that transferred heaps of BBs onto unloaders, which then hurried them away to meet artificial deadlines. The setup was configured using Robolab software, and aside from requiring the creators to dump BBs into the harvester, the entire show was put on sans human interaction. Granted, the idea behind all of this is far from fresh, but there's just something strangely satisfying about putting a stash of spare Legos to work for you.

Instead of fighting about property lines and whose dog is keeping everyone up at night, researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign want you and your neighbors to get together and share your WiFi signal in a method that supposedly delivers better performance to each individual user. Assistant computer science professor Haiyun Luo and graduate student Nathanael Thompson of the school's Systems, Wireless, and Networking Group have released a free download that analyzes local airwaves and exploits unused bandwidth from one network to complement ones experiencing heavy usage, but always gives users priority access to their own signal. Part of the two-year-old PERM project, the application uses flow-scheduling algorithms to determine bandwidth allocation, and has so-far undergone testing on Linux clients and with Linksys routers. Security is obviously a key concern in such a sharing setup, so PERM developed the software to both "preserve a user's privacy and security, and mitigate the free-riding problem."

[Via PCWorld]

In another blundering step towards empowering our future robotic overlords with the ability to recognize when we're being insolent, a group of computer vision researchers at the University of Illinois have invented "shrug-detecting" software that allows a webcam-equipped computer to pick up on the subtle shoulder movements indicative of confusion or disinterest. The application works by looking for sudden movements of the target's shoulders towards his/her face, and is so sophisticated that it cannot be fooled even by covering one shoulder with a piece of paper, as the above picture helpfully illustrates. Future iterations of the technology could be used to detect blinking, hand movements, facial expressions, and other mood indicators, but for the sake of our enslaved decendents forced to toil in the silicon mines, we hope that they leave certain expressive gestures, such as the raising of the middle finger, out of the software's lexicon.

[Via The Raw Feed]