sensors
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Robots to benefit from highly-touch-sensitive material
We'd thought that with all the robotic doctors, bartenders, and baseball players out there that our autonomous frenemies already possessed a pretty light touch, but a new material developed by researchers at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln may help future bots replace even more professionals by endowing them with greater tactile sensitivity. Unlike traditional touch sensors or the sensitive skin developed by NASA, the design created by Ravi Saraf and his colleagues uses alternating layers of gold and cadmium sulphide nanoparticles in a film just 100-nanometers thick, and indirectly detects pressure using a digital camera to capture emitted light when voltage is applied. Since the light output of the sensor is directly correlated to the amount of pressure being applied, subtle surface aberrations on a given object are easily identifiable, meaning that a bot equipped with this technology would be able to resolve details as small as the embossed lettering on a coin. Besides giving robots a better understanding of the stuff we make them hold, the sensors could also be applied to devices used in tele-medicine, so doctors performing remote surgeries could operate with more precision and less poking around.[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Virgin installing telemedicine systems in every plane
Air travel is about to get just a little bit safer -- though not in the anti-terrorist, heavy-handed security type of way -- thanks to Virgin Atlantic's impending fleet-wide rollout of a device that allows ground-based doctors to remotely diagnose passengers in medical distress. The airline has just announced a deal with Remote Diagnostic Technologies that will result in each of Virgin's planes being outfitted with the Tempus telemedicine system, which contains blood pressure and pulse monitors along with an integrated video cam, and transmits data down to medical personnel via the on-board telephone system. Flight crews will be trained to independently operate each of Tempus' individual instruments, but unlike the in-flight defibrillators that preceded this system, attendants will have the added benefit of live instructions from experts on the ground, if necessary. Virgin will employ the Tempus boxes until at least 2009, and claims that it would like to eventually see an industry-wide implementation, which RDT probably wouldn't mind too much either.[Via MedGadget]
North Dakota students show off Mars spacesuit prototype
We had assumed that with all the robots being developed for deployment to Mars, the human astronauts would mostly be lounging around inside the comfort of their robot-built habitats and ordering drinks from their robot bartenders, but yesterday's unveiling of a prototype spacesuit for navigating the Martian terrain proves that manned missions might not be as cushy as we anticipated. The 50-pound suit (which they somehow got The Office's Steve Carell to model) was designed by students from five North Dakota colleges in a collaborative project funded by a $100,000 NASA grant, and includes at least three innovative technologies for which patents have been filed. Among the slew of sensors and communications gear designed for the harsh, low-gravity environment are oxygen and carbon dioxide detectors, GPS system, full suite of health monitors, shoulder mounted CCD cam, Bluetooth server to coordinate all the data, and a high-power transmitter for beaming info back to the mothership -- though curiously, there's no mention of an onboard weapons system that would be crucial for encounters with the occasional hostile Martian. Also, as the AP helpfully notes, even with all the research and design that went into this project, the forty-odd students seemed to neglect a key feature of any good full-body suit, which is an "escape hatch" for when the astronauts need to "jettison their waste."[Via futurismic and abc]
Apple patent embeds thousands of cameras among LCD pixels
Oh Barry Fox, does a week ever go by when you don't find a great patent or two? Today the intrepid Mr. Fox manages to dig up an application by consumer-darling Apple for an LCD display embedded with thousands of microscopic image sensors that would allow users to video-conference while looking straight into the "camera." Data accumulated by the individual sensors would be stitched into actual images using special software, which will probably be bundled into future versions of iLife. Since the patent specifies almost as many sensors per screen as there are pixels, some of those sensors could have different focal lengths, with a defacto zoom lens created by switching between them. Apple goes on to suggest portable uses for the technology, such as employing the displays in cellphones and PDAs, so you can add another item to the list of features we'll be expecting from the iPhone and Newton 2.0 when they finally hit stores.[Via New Scientist]
