Top Tech#6: Holograms, eye implants, bionics, haptics, rockets, teleportation.. and doodling

There’s a lot of technology news — but this digest aims to highlight only the most interesting or important innovations.

This edition’s Headlines

Leia’s only hope: Holograms

Lenses as thin as paper

3D-printed wearable temperature sensor

Second Sight implants aid eyes

Brain-bossed Bionic Hand

Gadgets that touch you

Smartphone scans for HIV

Take-off for brain-driven drone

‘Butt Boop’ Boeing Launcher

Beam me up — Quantum teleportation achieved

3Doodler draws solid lines 

Leia’s only hope: Holograms

A startup claims its multiview backlight system will display full-color holographic images and video from a mobile phone.

Leia Inc. was founded in December 2013, building on core technology developed at HP Labs. The tech “relies on new physics enabled only by the latest nano-fabrication methods,” the company says. “We developed a mass-production process that makes it hardly different to fabricate from a standard mobile LCD display. We also ensured that holographic content creation would be a breeze, with a webGL-based API that lets web developers easily create interactive holographic content in the browser or re-use existing 3D graphics to turn them into mind blowing holograms.”

Technology Review reports a two-by-two-inch “holomodule” will be Leia’s first product, and will be capable of producing full-color 3-D images and videos that are visible—with no special glasses—from 64 different viewpoints.

The full story is here.

Lenses as thin as paper

Paper-thin lenses could shrink cameras and holographic displays, Technology Review reports.

The “nanostructured sheets of silicon can bend light in unusual ways, eliminating the need for bulky lenses.” The result could be holographic displays that “offer new ways to interact with computers and new opportunities for the entertainment industry.”

Professional-quality camera lenses could be no more thick than a credit card.

Developed by a Harvard applied physics professor “challenged” by Google to make RGB nanostructured films that it could use in the Glass headsets.

Here is the full story.

3D-printed wearable temperature sensor

Overheating? An armband’s thermal sensor sounds an alarm in case of high body temperature.

University of Tokyo researchers say the device will continuously monitor vital signs including temperature and heart rate for applications in healthcare settings, Kurzweil AI reports.

The self-powered wearable device is made of flexible organic components that can be printed by an inkjet printer on a polymer film.

Here is the full story.

Smartphone scans for HIV

A new smartphone accessory detects HIV with a finger prick, Wired reports. It costs $34 to make, delivers results in 15 minutes, and according to researchers at Columbia University, is on par with the most accurate HIV tests.

Early detection can reduce the risk of transmitting the virus to their offspring to less than 1 percent.

The dongle plugs into an iPhones or Android phones through the audio jack, which it uses to draw power and transfer data.

“A wide range of startups and researchers are building portable devices that can screen for particular diseases,” Wired adds, “and in many cases, can screen for multiple diseases simultaneously.” (This particular device can also identify syphilis.) “…Researchers realized they could significantly reduce the cost by piggy-backing on smartphones. If they handled power and data collection on the phone, they could whittle their device down to the basic equipment needed to perform the blood tests.”

Here is the full article.

Gadgets that touch you

Today your tablet might buzz a bit under your fingers, but upcoming haptic feedback methods might better fool your sense of touch.

Technology Review reports on the work of Immersion in San Jose, California — which “may be the touchy-feeliest place I’ve ever been.”

The tech could be “crucial to new gadgets such as virtual reality headsets and smart watches.”

Immersion currently offers software that “can wring more nuanced sensation from the buzzers in existing devices… to let you feel things like explosions or the whirring of helicopter blades when you hold a smartphone.”

Immersion can now also “fool fingers sliding over a touch screen into feeling textures that aren’t really there … I felt the roughness of gravel, the nubbiness of carpet, and the bumpiness of a metal grating.”

The full story is here, and also looks at Tactical Haptics in Palo Alto.

Second Sight implants aid eyes

Artificial optical systems have been implanted in three patients in France under a new government program that covers their costs.

The patients have Retinitis Pigmentosa, a rare hereditary disease that causes a progressive degeneration of the light-sensitive cells of the retina. An estimated 1.2 million people worldwide have RP.

California-based Second Sight Medical Products says its implantable visual prosthetics employs electrical stimulation to bypass the defunct cells and stimulate remaining viable retinal cells inducing visual perception in blind individuals.

The Argus II retinal prosthesis is the first artificial retina to receive approval in the United States and worldwide, the company says. It converts images captured by a miniature video camera mounted on the patient’s glasses into a series of small electrical pulses, which are transmitted wirelessly to an array of electrodes implanted on the surface of the retina. These pulses are intended to stimulate the retina’s remaining cells, resulting in the perception of patterns of light in the brain. The patient learns to interpret these visual patterns, thereby regaining some visual function. “The Argus II implant can positively impact a blind person’s ability to conduct routine daily activities, such as recognizing shapes or large objects, locating people, identifying the location of doorways, and following lines or edges. Ultimately, this is meant to allow Argus II users to live their daily lives with more confidence,” the company adds.

The Argus II has now been implanted in more than 100 individuals worldwide.

Brain-bossed Bionic Hand

A new bionic hand can be controlled by the patient’s brain — and its grip restores many basic functions.

“European surgeons and engineers have devised a mind-controlled bionic hand that restores function almost as well as a flesh-and-blood transplant,” Discovery News reports, “but without the risk of rejection, a research paper said Wednesday.”

Here is Feb 24 video interview with the surgeon.

Here is the original report on The Lancet

Take-off for brain-driven drone

A pilot on the ground can pilot a flying drone — using his brainwaves, not a standard joystick or other control system.

“Imagine using a brain-to-computer interface that enables people to control drones with their minds,” developer Tekever says. “It’s not science fiction anymore, and Project Brainflight is making it possible! …Aircraft can be directly controlled by the human brain.”

The system uses “high-performance electroencephalogram (EEG) systems to measure brain waves noninvasively, and then use specially conceived algorithms to convert brain signals into drone commands. The drone operator, wearing a cap that measures brain activity, influences the drone’s path using nothing but simple thoughts. Essentially, the electricity flowing through the pilot's brain acts as an input to the drone’s control system.”

The BBC reports on the demonstration here.

‘Butt Boop’ Boeing Launcher

A new reusable launch vehicle design patented by Boeing will deliver satellites into lower Earth orbit using three consecutive vehicles: a first-stage supersonic aircraft, a second-stage hypersonic aircraft, and a satellite-toting rocket, Popular Science reports.

“The first stage vehicle actually shoves its nose up into the butt of the second stage vehicle,” PopSci adds. “The combined aircraft are then mounted onto a carrier aircraft.”

Every part involved in the launch process is recovered afterward.

Here is the full article.

Beam me up — Quantum teleportation achieved

The quantum phenomenon  of entanglement — in which two particles, separated by any amount of distance, can instantaneously affect one another — has been used to “teleport” data. (Not matter, let alone humans, Scotty).

CNet reports physicists in the Netherlands sent quantum data concerning the spin state of an electron to another electron about 10 feet away — “seemingly faster than the speed of light.”

The researchers say “quantum teleportation has been recorded in the past, but the results in this study have an unprecedented replication rate of 100 percent at the current distance.”

The researchers made their own lounge-in-cheek video here.

Here is the full story.

3Doodler draws solid lines

Top Tech in general won’t cover too many “version 2” updates — plenty of sites serve that purpose. Nor do I want to cover every cool Kickstarter project… they often never pan out. Buy hey, let’s break both those guidelines!

WobbleWorks LLC launched “the world’s first 3D printing pen” printing pen in March 2013. The 3Doodler 3D spews out hot plastic that rapidly solidifies, letting you “draw” in three dimensions, and “create real three-dimensional objects,” the company says. The gadget “put the power of a 3D printer in the palm of your hand… no computers or software needed.” WobbleWorks sold more 130,000 of the first 3Doodlers.

Now, the upcoming new pen is slimmer, lighter, quieter and easier to use. The company says it’s re-engineered the drive system to better feed the plastic through the pen, and improved the nozzle design to deliver a smoother ‘drawing’ experience. The pen should ship by April.

Intel flies 3D camera

Intel says its RealSense is “the world’s first and smallest integrated 3D camera” that delivers real-time depth sensing.

The RealSense module weighs 8 grams and is less than 4mm thick. Intel says it “senses the surrounding world to scan, interact, play games, augment reality, and enhance photo and real-time video in three dimensions.”

With RealSense, Intel’s Snapshot system “takes photography to another dimension with multi-camera, depth-enabled tablets” the company says. “Capturing a high-definition depth map optimized for photography along with your full-resolution image, you can change focus and take measurements with a touch of a finger, add dynamic effects and motion, and discover things in your photos you never thought were there.”

In January, a remote copter Intel showcased had six RealSense cameras on board with which it navigated around obstacles autonomously.

And Intel demonstrated a research project for vision-impaired people, with wearable RealSense cameras that “sense the vicinity and trigger vibrations as a feedback mechanism, helping people to navigate their environment,” the company says.

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