November 2019 show notes
For more about me, see: https://ralphbond.wixsite.com/aboutme
Story 1: Control a Wheelchair with This Wearable Brain Machine
Source: Geek.com Story by Stephanie Mlot
Link: https://www.geek.com/tech/control-a-wheelchair-with-this-wearable-brain-machine-1804877/?source
- An international team of researchers has developed a fully portable wireless wheelchair control platform.
- The wearable brain-machine interface offers an improvement over conventional electroencephalography (EEG) tools for measuring signals in the human brain.
- How it works: Scientists combined nanomembrane electrodes, flexible electronics, and a deep learning algorithm to help disabled people wirelessly control an electric wheelchair, computer, or small robotic vehicle.
- Rather than donning a bulky hair-electrode cap with a mess of tangled wires trailing behind, users can simply slip a headband with three elastomeric scalp electrodes, an ultrathin wireless electronics patch, and a printed electrode
- Brain-machine interfaces are an essential part of rehabilitation, allowing those with ALS, chronic stroke, or other severe motor disabilities to control prosthetic accessories.
Story 2: Foldable phones deserve foldable batteries, say scientists working on the tech
Source: C/Net Story by Shelby Brown
- With foldable display phones coming to market, such as the Galaxy foldable phones, ideally batteries will need to be more flexible too.
- A research team at ETH Zurich, have developed a prototype for a “flexible thin film battery” that can be stretched, bent and twisted without halting the power supply.
- The battery is built like a sandwich, following the design of commercial batteries
- Between two stretchable current collectors is a cathode, a hydrogel electrolyte, a PDMS [silicon-based organic polymer] frame and sealing, and an anode.
- The possibilities for the foldable battery go beyond phones.
- The batteries could be useful to rollable displays for computers, smartwatches and tablets, or functional textiles that contain bendable electronics.
- The battery could even be sewn into clothing
Story 3: Oregon State University Studies Self Driving Car Safety, Uses Miniature Cars
Source: The Corvallis Advocate newspaper
Link: https://www.corvallisadvocate.com/2019/osu-studies-self-driving-car-safety-uses-miniature-cars/
- The College of Engineering at Oregon State is helping to lead an effort to explore the safety, performance, and security of driverless cars
- The creative twist: They are using small [toy-like], remote controlled cars
- The research is being supported by a $1.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation.
- The project, a collaborative effort with the University of Pennsylvania and Clemson University, will put one-tenth-scale autonomous cars into the hands of researchers nationwide.
- Why this matters: Testing autonomous systems on full-scale vehicles can be prohibitively expensive – a base model can cost more than $300,000
- In contrast, the one-tenth-sized cars will be so affordable that they can be offered free to the more than 30 labs collaborating on the grant.
- A key benefit: The smaller cars are also safer to use when testing out new systems.
Story 4: A mind-controlled exoskeleton helped a paralyzed man walk again
Source: Popular Mechanics Story by David Grossman
- Using only his brain signals, a quadriplegic man in France was able to operate, maneuver, and walk in a whole-body robotic exoskeleton.
- While the four-limb system isn’t ready for clinical applications yet, researchers at the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission laboratory call the early results “promising”
- This is still in the proof of concept state as the paralyzed man was able to walk with the exoskeleton only after two years of training.
- The man trained using both video games and a virtual avatar, training his thoughts to work with an algorithm.
- His thoughts in the sensorimotor cortex of his brain were monitored by two recording devices implanted, one on either side of his head between the brain and skin.
- The next step is getting a patient to walk unassisted.
Story 5: New gel lets us spread flame retardant before wildfires start
Source: arsTechnica Story by Cathleen O’Grady
- Scientists at Standford University have developed a new fire retardant-carrying gel that coats vegetation with a thin film
- Once applied, the thin gel film helps keep vegetation safe from fire long enough to see it through a fire season.
- The goal: to spray high-risk areas at the start of fire season and keep protection active until heavy rains start.
- How it’s made: The Stanford team used nontoxic substances that are used in food and agricultural products—silica and cellulose—to make a carrier for a fire retardant that’s already used in current formulations – such as ammonium polyphosphate.
Story 6: A new way to turn heat into useful energy – Capturing heat that otherwise would have been lost
Source: Science Daily Announcement from Ohio State University
Link: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/09/190923111235.htm
- An international team of scientists [from Ohio State, North Carolina State University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences] has figured out how to capture heat and turn it into electricity
- The discovery could create more efficient energy generation from heat in things like car exhaust and industrial processes.
- What they found is a new way of designing thermoelectric semiconductors — materials that convert heat to electricity.
- Conventional thermoelectrics that we’ve had for more than 20 years are too inefficient and generate too little energy.
- But the team has found a way to significantly boost the output and make it practical for real-world use.
- How it works: Magnets are a crucial part of collecting energy from heat: When one side of a magnet is heated, the other side — the cold side — gets more magnetic, producing spin, which pushes the electrons in the magnet and creates electricity.
Story 7: Amazon is Trying Out a Hand-Scanning Payment System
Source: TechNewsWorld Story by Richard Adhikari
Link: https://www.technewsworld.com/story/86225.html
- Amazon reportedly is testing scanners that can identify a human hand to use as a payment method for in-store purchases.
- The company plans to introduce the system to some Whole Foods stores by the beginning of 2020.
- The high-tech sensors used in the pilot scanner apparently do not require consumers to physically touch the scanning surface.
- The system uses computer vision and depth geometry to process and identify the shape and size of each hand scanned before charging a credit card already on file.
- The whole hand scanning system reportedly can process charges in less than 300 milliseconds, compared to the three to four seconds required for a regular credit card transaction.
Story 8: Amazon’s ‘Show and Tell’ feature for Echo Show devices enables Alexa to use its camera vision to help sight impaired customers
Source: GeekWire Story by Kurt Schlosser
See video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDYSXvsnl4Y
- Echo Shows are table-top, large screen versions of the popular Echo Dot – which is sound-based only
- The new “Show and Tell” feature is aimed at helping to identify common pantry items.
- Show and Tell identifies items and other things using the Echo Show’s camera and sound prompts to guide positioning the product in front of the camera.
- Here’s how it works:
- Just hold up a product in front of your Echo Show’s camera and ask Alexa “what am I holding”
- Alexa tells you what you’re holding and provides a brief description.
- It tried it with several items, such as a can of soup, and a box of Minute Rice. And it works!
- In a few seconds Alexa displayed a photo of the item, with a description.
Story 9: Oregon State University celebrates grand opening of A.A. ‘Red’ Emmerson Advanced Wood Products Laboratory
Source: Oregon State University press release
- A hot topic in the world of construction technology today is the use of advanced wood structural products in the construction of high-rise commercial buildings.
- A big step forward is the grand opening of the new Advanced Wood Products Lab which took place October 10
- The new lab is named in honor of Red Emmerson and his father, R.H. “Curly” Emmerson, who were the founders of Sierra Pacific Industries, one of the largest lumber producers in the United States
- The 17,500 square foot facility is dedicated to furthering research and collaboration in the timber design, engineering, fabrication and construction sectors.
- The facility is the new home of the TallWood Design Institute, an interdisciplinary partnership between OSU’s colleges of Forestry and Engineering and the University of Oregon’s College of Design.
- Via email I got some details from Evan Schmidt with the TallWood Design Institute about the research areas they will pursue, including:
- Cross-Laminate technology
- Mass plywood, Laminated veneer lumber, Glued laminated timber, and more
- The lab will also explore building assemblies and building systems comprised of these materials and various standard or innovative connection systems
- Evan also noted: The lab can test up to three stories, so the goal is to test materials/products from the small scale all the way up to larger construction systems, allowing us to verify models and assumptions about performance thoroughly.
Story 10: Microsoft announces Secured-core PCs to counter firmware attacks
Source: Venture Beat Story by Emil Protalinski
Link: https://tinyurl.com/y62fo8ty
- Microsoft recently announced a new initiative to combat threats specifically targeted at the firmware level and data stored in memory of personal computers
- The initiative is called Secured-core PCs.
- First, what is “firmware”
- Firmware is programming that’s written to a PC’s nonvolatile memory chips.
- And these firmware chips are on the main circuit board [motherboard] of your PC – desktop, laptop
- What does the firmware do: Firmware has code used to start up the hardware and other software on a PC.
- The contents of firmware chips are “Nonvolatile” – that means the code/data is does not go away when a PC is turned off or loses its external power source
- What’s the security risk: Firmware is emerging as a top target for attackers since malicious code implanted in a PC’s firmware can be hard to detect and difficult to remove.
- For example, if infected, reinstalling your operating system and/or reformatting your hard drive would not solve the problem.
- The Goal of the Secured-core PCs initiative: Microsoft partnered with chip and computer makers to apply “security best practices of isolation and minimal trust to the firmware layer, or the device core, that underpins the Windows operating system.”
- Who will benefit the most: Secured-core PCs are designed for industries like financial services, government, and healthcare.
- Secured-core PCs are available now available from Dell, Dynabook, HP, Lenovo, Panasonic, and Microsoft Surface.
Story 11: UPS and CVS team up to develop drone deliveries right to your house
Source: C/Net Story by Ben Fox Rubin
Link: https://www.cnet.com/news/ups-and-cvs-team-up-to-develop-drone-deliveries-right-to-your-house/
- Drone delivery stories just keep coming these days!
- Recently FedEx launched a drone delivery service to homes in Christiansburg, Virginia
- And UPS recently created its Flight Forward drone delivery service.
- The latest news from the Flight Forward team is an announcement that UPS and pharmacy giant CVS plan to team up to develop drone deliveries of prescriptions and retail products from CVS stores to US homes.
- To date, Flight Forward focused on deliveries in and around hospital campuses.
Story 12: Waymo will test its self-driving cars in Los Angeles
Source: The Verge Story by Andrew Hawkins
Link: https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/7/20903034/waymo-self-driving-test-la-mds-data
- Los Angeles is about to get its first self-driving cars.
- Waymo, the self-driving division of Google parent company Alphabet, recently announced that it would begin testing its autonomous vehicles in the second most populous city in the US.
- To start out, Waymo will be bringing three vehicles (all Chrysler Pacifica minivans) to map LA, specifically downtown and the Miracle Mile.
- Initially the cars will be driven manually by human safety drivers.
- Once Waymo has a detailed 3D map of the area, the company will begin to operate its vehicles in autonomous mode, though Waymo has no plans to launch a passenger service in the city.
- My guess – initially a delivery service
Story 13: Toyota, GM, Nvidia, Bosch and others form new autonomous driving tech consortium
Source: TechCrunch Story by Darrell Etherington
- Recently a new industry effort called “Autonomous Vehicle Computing Consortium” was announced.
- This industry group includes Arm, Bosch, Continental, GM, Toyota, Nvidia, NXP and Denso, collecting top automakers along with some of the leading chipmakers and tier 1 suppliers in the automotive industry today.
- The group’s goal is to work together in order to “solve some of the most significant challenges to deploy self-driving vehicles….”
- The first step for the new group will be creating a set of recommended specifications
- These specs will outline what size, temperature, power consumption and safety standards an autonomous vehicle system architecture and computers should adhere to.
- The idea is that by arriving at some baseline standards, the group will be better able to move from prototyping to manufacturing and deploying AVs at the scale where they’ll truly become a viable commercial enterprise.
Story 14: Gita is a new cargo robot that can follow you, carry your stuff for about 4 hours
Source: USA Today Story by Dalvin Brown
Link: https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2019/10/18/gita-personal-robot-valet/3998545002/
- Be sure to check out the video included in the posting https://www.usatoday.com/videos/tech/2019/10/18/gita-robot-can-carry-your-stuff-so-you-dont-have/4002608002/
- There’s a new personal robot assistant that will follow you around like a faithful puppy, and carry up to 40 pounds of cargo.
- Launched by the Piaggio Group, which introduced the world to Vespa motor scooter, the nifty gadget uses five cameras to see you, follow you around and carry your belongings for four hours.
- It’s similar to the robotic smart suitcases that trail behind you at the airport, but with an entirely different exterior design.
- Gita looks like a big, orange pumpkin with an open top, and two large side wheels.
- Operating Gita is simple. You just press one button to turn it on, one button for the cameras to scan your legs [that’s how it tracks your movements], and you’re off.
- According to the article – It does a pretty good job of following you and recognizing when you change direction.
- Reality check: only intended for flat firm surfaces.
- Available November 18 via Mygita.com. Price: $3,250