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
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
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
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.
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.
4. Capture at 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.
6. 3D Sound tracks head movement
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.”
7. Rewritable paper fabricated
“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.”
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.
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.
10. Sense your sleep for sounder slumber
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.”
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