TTT-Tech #4 – Space, Sound, Sunlight, Sleep

Innovative, Interesting, or Important

There’s plenty of technology news every day — too much.

The mission here is to highlight only the developments that have long-term implications, promise, or portent. Instead of fleeting news of updated software, slightly improved gadgets, or a start-up’s funding, I’ll spotlight innovations that are very interesting now, and some that should still be important in a year.

This weeks headlines:

1. NASA emails a wrench to the space station

2. Graphene to extract energy from air

3. Sunlight-to-electricity made much more efficient

4. Capture at 100 billion frames per second
5. App helps autistic kids make eye contact

6. 3D Sound tracks head movement

7. Rewritable paper fabricated

8. Look to Unlock

9. A safer touch in your car

10. Sense your sleep for sounder slumber

1. NASA emails a wrench to the space station

When an astronaut on the International Space Station needed a socket wrench that wasn’t aboard, he turned to something that made its way to space just two months earlier: a 3D printer which produces intricate solid objects from plastic and other malleable materials.

NASA emailed a CAD file for the tool’s 20 separate parts, which the astronaut ‘printed’ a layer at a time, and combined into the socket wrench.

The printer is the work of Made In Space, and founder Mike Chen details the event here at Medium. “Because it’s a lot faster to send digital data (which can travel at the speed of light) to space than it is to send physical objects (which involves waiting months to years for a rocket),” he concludes, “it makes more sense to 3D-print things in space, when we can, instead of launching them.”

2. Graphene to extract energy from air

UK scientists found that positive-charged hydrogen atoms could pass through graphene — which means graphene membranes could sieve hydrogen gas from the atmosphere, and “pave the way for electric generators powered by air,” CNN reports.

The researchers at ManchesterUniversity published their study in the journal Nature. They say the technique “looks extremely simple and equally promising.”

Graphene has a similar structure to the graphite used as pencil lead, but is one atom thick, 200 times stronger than steel, and has superconducting properties, CNN adds. Manchester University scientists won the 2010 Nobel Prize for Physics for their isolation of graphene in 2004.

Here is the full story.

3. Sunlight-to-electricity made much more efficient

Solar power sounds great, but in reality is often insufficient as inefficient conversion of light to electricity fails to utilize most of the potential energy.

However, researchers in Australia have “converted over 40 percent of the sunlight hitting a solar system into electricity, the highest efficiency ever reported,” reports Science Daily. The key difference: a custom optical bandpass filter added to commercial solar cells.
There’s more information here.

4. Capture at 100 billion frames per second

A new camera developed by biomedical engineers at Washington University can capture up to 100 billion frames per second.

That's orders of magnitude faster than current imaging techniques, reports Phys.org News, “which are limited by on-chip storage and electronic readout speed to operations of about 10 million frames per second.”

It’s not a regular camera of course: the receive-only 2-D camera uses “compressed ultrafast photography” to “see light pulses on the fly… for the first time” via computational imaging.

The research appears in the Dec. 4, 2014, issue of Nature.

5. App helps autistic kids make eye contact

People who have autism often have trouble making eye contact and reading facial expressions. Samsung wants to change that with a new camera app called “Look at Me” that’s designed to help autistic children improve their communication skills.

With Korean university researchers, Samsung created the Android app’s photo-based games, with which “children can learn to read a person’s mood, remember faces, and take photos of themselves exhibiting a range of emotions and different poses.”

They report 60 percent of the autistic children who tried out the app showed improvements in making eye contact with people.

There’s more information here.

And a video demo is here

6. 3D Sound tracks head movement

Enhanced stereo and even “3D sound” aren’t exactly new – but a headset that tracks your motion and adjusts the sounds in response, well, that is kinda innovative.

Paris-based 3D Sound Labs says it will soon debut the first “smart headphones” with 3D-sound and real-time head-tracking for an “unrivaled immersive sound experience.”

The company’s site is here.

7. Rewritable paper fabricated

While we now have plenty of portable screens, including “electronic ink” screens that can display text without electricity, nothing quite matches the portability of paper.. but it can only be marked on once, right? Maybe not:

“To reduce paper production and consumption, it is highly desirable to develop alternative rewritable media that can be used multiple times,” write researchers at UC California Riverside. “Herein we report the fabrication of a rewritable paper based on color switching of commercial redox dyes using ​titanium oxide-assisted photocatalytic reactions. The resulting paper does not require additional inks and can be efficiently printed using ultraviolet light and erased by heating over 20 cycles without significant loss in contrast and resolution.”

Nature has more here, and notes that “according to some surveys, 90 percent of all information in businesses today is retained on paper, even though the bulk of this printed paper is discarded after just one-time use.”
There’s a video here.

The university’s info is here.

8. Look to Unlock

A new system uses the unique pattern of your irises, eliminating the need to type and remember passwords — which could reduce the incidence of security breaches and online crime, reports Technology Review.

EyeLock’s $280 Myris device “lets you glance into a camera to log in to websites and desktop software or to unlock your computer.” Myris uses infrared LEDs and an infrared-sensitive camera.

Here’s the full article.

9. Your car will touch you for safety

Developer Senseg claims its spatial haptic solutions will let you find and operate controls by feel — that is, they touch you back — and so help keep your eyes on the road.

The Finland company says “adding tactile feedback to touchscreen controls can reduce driver distraction. With touchscreens, we’ve lost much of our ability to interact with devices by feel. Spatial haptics create touchscreens that touch you back, and help users reduce the visual focus normally required for successful interactions.”

The company is showing a prototype and “Senseg Feelscreen developer kit” to show the technology it offers manufacturers and distributors.

More information is here.

10. Sense your sleep for sounder slumber

More sensors, more data… what’s the result? Maybe more sleep. Or at least better sleep, which we all need.

A new monitor system promises to provide “accurate insights into your nightly sleep habits” as well as to “wake you up at just the right time so you can feel refreshed.”

The $99 Beddit Sleep Monitor “seamlessly measures sleep cycles and quality by measuring respiration, heart rate, movement, snoring, and ambient sound,” the Finland-based developer claims. “Data is transmitted automatically and wirelessly to a smartphone where you can view key statistics and sleep graphs on the Misfit app. There’s nothing to wear; simply place it on your mattress.”

CNet reports “it has given an eye-opening look at what goes on when my eyes are closed. I found it a useful view of my slumbering self. I have a pretty good idea of when I get enough sleep and when I don't, but the Beddit reveals subtleties about snoring and sleep quality, too.”

There’s more information here.

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