Impact Lab – Page 258 – A Laboratory of the Future Human Experience

How VR & AR will transform the medical world

October 13, 2022

A transformation is about to, and arguably already is, taking place in the medical world. The world we think we know is shifting at an astronomical speed, as VR and AR make their way into health care and health tech.

By Kirsty Rigg

Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality have power and appeal for one simple reason – they create a world where the impossible becomes possible. Just imagine what that could mean for healthcare…

Eugene Canavan, medical design director at Design Partners (part of PA Consulting), shares his expert insights with Health Tech World, indicating how these breakthrough technologies will “revolutionise” medicine and surgical procedures.

Here’s what he had to say:

new technology

Isro develops artificial smart limb to aid amputees

October 12, 2022

Isro has developed a smart limb using microprocessors that are used in space exploration.

By India Today Web Desk: The India Space Research Organisation (Isro) has developed an artificial smart limb that could help amputees in walking with a comfortable gait. The artificial limb is a spin-off from space technology that could be manufactured for commercial use soon. The smart is expected to be cheaper by about ten times.

The newly announced smart tech is called Microprocessor-Controlled Knees (MPKs), which offers extended capabilities for the amputee more than those offered by the passive limbs that do not use the microprocessors. Nearly 1.6 kilograms in weight, Isro says the smart limb under development, at the moment, enabled an amputee to walk about 100 meters in the corridor with minimum support.

These smart MPKs are being developed by Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC), Isro under an MoU with the National Institute for Locomotor Disabilities (NILD), Pt. Deendayal Upadhyaya National Institute for Persons with Physical Disabilities, and the Artificial Limb Manufacturing Corporation of India (ALIMCO).

Robotics

This electric autonomous delivery robot can bring pizza to your door

October 12, 2022

Global mobility technology company Magna has developed an electric autonomous pizza delivery robot, aiming to reduce last mile delivery costs and carbon emissions in cities.

By Roselyne Min

A small, white, three-wheeled vehicle threads its way through parked cars and traffic to the doors of hungry pizza eaters in the US city of Detroit.

The autonomous delivery robot detects and avoids pedestrians and obstacles thanks to its cameras, radar and LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) remote sensing technology.

The company that developed the bot, Magna, says it’s exclusively powered by electricity and can travel at speeds of up to 32 km/h.

Robots

Cornell Scientists Create Microscopic Robots With Electronic ‘Brains’

October 12, 2022

By Ryan Whitwam

We’ve seen tiny robots before, but never like this. Researchers from Cornell have created the first microscopic robots that operate without any form of external control. These nanomachines have all the hardware they need on board, including a basic electronic brain. They just need a little solar energy, and off they go. They’re currently very limited devices, but the designers envision almost unlimited applications.

The research, which was led by postdoctoral researcher Michael Reynolds, built on research that was already happening at Cornell. Previously, Cornell set the world record for the smallest walking robot, but the new version is infinitely smarter. Reynolds developed robots between 100 and 250 micrometers across with an electronic circuit that controls the robot. That eliminates the need for an external control mechanism like heat or magnetism, which is required for other tiny robots. Reynolds says those robots are more like marionettes than true robots.

The brain inside these robots is a simple complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) clock circuit. It contains just a thousand transistors, which is nothing compared with the billions that exist in today’s full-scale computer processors. The purpose of the circuit is to generate phase-shifted square waves that control the walking gait of the robot, which it does automatically when the integrated photovoltaic cells are exposed to light. The team tested three different designs with two, four, and six legs. The fastest among them can walk at a blistering 10 micrometers per second — that’s pretty fast given the microscopic scale.

drones

Drone startup claims it flew its zero-emissions ion propulsion drone on 4.5-minute test flight

October 11, 2022

The company believes its design will lead to far fewer noise complaints for urban cargo drones in the future.

By Chris Young

Florida-based tech startup Undefined Technologies announced its unique ionic propulsion drone has passed an outdoor flight test, meaning it’s on track for commercial release in 2024, according to a report from New Atlas.

The drone, called Silent Ventus, uses proprietary technology to ionize the oxygen and nitrogen molecules in the surrounding air to create an “ionic wind” that propels the machine in the direction it wants to go. According to Undefined, the drone could be used for cargo.

Energy

New wireless charging works from nearly 100 feet away

October 11, 2022

In the future, a room could start charging your phone as soon as you enter it.

By Kristin Houser

A new wireless charging system uses harmless infrared light to power devices from nearly 100 feet away — putting us one step closer to truly wireless technology.

The challenge: Wireless charging isn’t new — you might already own a coaster-shaped wireless charging pad for your smartphone or watch.

However, those wireless chargers typically require your device to remain very close to the charger and stationary — pick it up, and the charging stops. Plus, the chargers still require power cords themselves, meaning they don’t exactly help declutter your living or working spaces.

The system is already powerful enough for sensors and could charge mobile devices with further development.

Researchers have started developing technologies that charge devices over the air — these could be used to turn entire rooms into wireless chargers, meaning your device would start powering up as soon as you entered.

However, many wireless charging prototypes require that the entire room be modified, which isn’t terribly practical.

Others only work over distances of a few meters — that prevents their use in larger spaces, such as factories, where wireless power could eliminate cords that pose a safety hazard.

drones

Drone Swarms Use 3D Printing to Build Concrete Structures

October 11, 2022

These drones could work autonomously and in tandem to construct and repair buildings.

By Rainer Klose

Future vision: Swarms of drones could also be used in space, for example on a future Mars mission.

3D printing is gaining momentum in the construction industry. Both on-site and in the factory, static and mobile robots print materials for use in construction projects, such as steel and concrete structures.

A new approach to 3D printing – led in its development by Imperial College London and Empa, the Swiss Federal Laboratories of Materials Science and Technology – uses flying robots, known as drones, that use collective building methods inspired by natural builders like bees and wasps.

The system, called Aerial Additive Manufacturing (Aerial-AM), involves a fleet of drones working together from a single blueprint.

It consists of BuilDrones, which deposit materials during flight, and quality-controlling ScanDrones, which continually measure the BuilDrones’ output and inform their next manufacturing steps.

The researchers say that in contrast to alternative methods, in-flight 3D printing unlocks doors that will lead to on-site manufacturing and building in difficult-to-access or dangerous locations such as post-disaster relief construction and tall buildings or infrastructure.

The research was Led by Professor Mirko Kovac of Imperial’s Department of Aeronautics and Empa’s Materials and Technology Center of Robotics.

Robotics

Meet Erica, the laughing robot designed to make AI more empathic humans to give better answers

October 10, 2022

The humanoid robot can detect when you’re laughing, decide whether to laugh in return, and choose to reciprocate with either a chuckle or a giggle. Creepy or ingenious?

It’s the weekend, and you decide to pay a visit to your grandma, who lives alone. When you arrive, however, you realize she has another visitor, and you hear through the door the two of them laughing. You don’t make anything of it until you walk in and find that the visitor, sitting across the dining table from grandma, is a humanoid robot—and it’s laughing at your grandma’s joke.

This isn’t going to become a reality this year, or in the next 10 years, but it’s exactly the kind of scenario that a team of scientists is working toward. Researchers at Kyoto University in Japan are teaching a humanoid robot how to laugh in response to a human laughing. The robot, named Erica, can detect when a person is laughing, decide whether it’s appropriate to laugh in return or not, and choose to respond with two different kinds of laughs: a small chuckle and a more boisterous giggle.

AI

Intelligent microscope uses AI to capture rare biological events

October 10, 2022

Intelligent control: The fluorescence microscope at EPFL’s Laboratory of Experimental Biophysics.

By Tami Freeman

Fluorescence microscopy of live cells provides an indispensable tool for studying the dynamics of biological systems. But many biological processes – such as bacterial cell division and mitochondrial division, for example – occur sporadically, making them challenging to capture.

Continually imaging a sample at a high frame rate would ensure that when such divisions do occur, they will definitely be recorded. But excessive fluorescence imaging causes photobleaching and can prematurely destroy living samples. A slower frame rate, meanwhile, risks missing events-of-interest. What’s needed is a way to predict when an event is about to happen and then instruct the microscope to begin high-speed imaging.

Researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) have created just such a system. The team developed an event-driven acquisition (EDA) framework that automates microscope control to image biological events in detail while limiting stress on the sample. Using neural networks to detect subtle precursors of events-of-interest, EDA adapts the acquisition parameters – such as imaging speed or measurement duration – in response.

Robots

Robo-Farmers: Solinftec’s Solar-Powered Robots Will be Offered to US Farmers Soon

October 10, 2022

A weeding robot is pictured during a demonstration of new technologies “Digifermes” (Digital farms) at the Arvalis farm, an applied agricultural research organisation dedicated to arable crops, on June 15, 2016 in Saint-Hilaire-en-Woevre, eastern France

By Joaquin Victor Tacla

Solar-powered robots will now be offered to US farmers.

With the help of the e-commerce platform Farmers Business Network, a business with the financial support of a wealthy Brazilian family will provide US farmers with robots that spray pesticides and fertilizer, according to a report by Bloomberg.

However, these are not your regular robots. They are autonomous, solar-powered, and AI-driven!

Solar Energy

A pilot project in the North Sea will develop floating solar panels that glide over waves ‘like a carpet’

October 9, 2022

This illustration shows how SolarDuck’s technology could be deployed at sea.

Anmar Frangoul

German energy firm RWE is to invest in a pilot project centered around the deployment of floating solar technology in the North Sea.
RWE describes “integration of offshore floating solar into an offshore wind farm” as “a more efficient use of ocean space for energy generation.”
Earlier this month, energy firm EDP inaugurated a 5 MW floating solar park in Portugal.

German energy firm RWE is to invest in a pilot project centered around the deployment of floating solar technology in the North Sea, as part of a wider collaboration focused on the development of “floating solar parks.”

Set to be installed in waters off Ostend, Belgium, the pilot, called Merganser, will have a capacity of 0.5 megawatt peak, or MWp. In a statement earlier this week, RWE said Merganser would be Dutch-Norwegian firm SolarDuck’s first offshore pilot.

RWE said Merganser would provide both itself and SolarDuck with “important first-hand experience in one of the most challenging offshore environments in the world.”

Learnings gleaned from the project would allow for a quicker commercialization of the technology from 2023, it added.

RWE described SolarDuck’s system as being based around a design enabling the solar panels to “float” meters above water and ride waves “like a carpet.”

AI

OpenAI’s image generator DALL-E can now edit human faces

October 9, 2022

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The feature was previously off-limits for fears of misuse

By JAMES VINCENT

OpenAI is letting users of its AI art generator program DALL-E edit images with human faces. This feature was previously off-limits due to fears of misuse, but, in a letter sent to DALL-E’s million-plus users, OpenAI says it’s opening up access after improving its filters to remove images that contain “sexual, political, and violent content.”

The feature will let users edit images in a number of different ways. They can upload a photograph of someone and generate variations of the picture, for example, or they can edit specific features, like changing someone’s clothing or hairstyle. The feature will no doubt be useful to many users in creative industries, from photographers to filmmakers.

“With improvements in our safety system, DALL·E is now ready to support these delightful and important use cases — while minimizing the potential of harm from deepfakes,” said OpenAI in its letter to customers announcing the news.