Emergent Technology

redrumloa said:
Probably too small a sample size.
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The more I listen, the more terrible it is. It is an interesting concept, but it is fully a novelty. Is it a proof of concept? I doubt it, but we'll see.
 
redrumloa said:
You should link the actual Kickstarter.

Tilt Five: Holographic Tabletop Gaming

Jeri is an amazing talent and a nice person. I would say I hope this endeavor works out, but by the kickstarter amount it seems it already has :)
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I was on the mailing list for the kickstarter count-down. Was hoping for a smaller tier so I could toss in some coin - could probably spring for the full meal deal but I don't get much time to develop or play games these days - but she blew past her starter goal in hours. It would be nice to get one of those units. I still might have to unshackle the old credit card.
 
World’s tiniest gingerbread house created at McMaster



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Handy, bendy, RAMmy:

Our flexible processors can now use bendable RAM​

Flexible materials trap heat in the devices, making bit-flipping more efficient.​

Extreme close-up photograph of tweezers holding a flexible computer component.
 
Not sure of a decent use case for this but I like the technology nonetheless:

Nreal Air sunglasses let you watch TV in AR​

The 90 Hz AR glasses weigh just 2.72 ounces, but they won't let you interact with surroundings.​

The Nreal Air AR glasses will debut in December.
Ever wish you could watch YouTube videos through your sunglasses? That’s pretty much what augmented reality (AR) glasses company Nreal is going for with the Nreal Air announced today. With a light, 2.72 ounce (77 g) weight and micro-OLED display, the Nreal Air is just what you need to finally watch Parks and Recreation in an actual park.
Since Nreal released the Nreal Light in 2019, AR tech has evolved so hardware offerings can be smaller. The Nreal Air is 27 percent lighter than the Nreal Light (3.74 ounces/106 g), although it also comes with less functionality. There’s no handtracking or spatial awareness, so you can’t interact with what you see. Instead, you’ll have to rely on an app on your smartphone, which must be tethered to the Nreal Air for it to work (as is the case with the Nreal Light).
 

Liquid metal encased in hydrogel makes a promising energy-harvesting device​

Any mechanical motion deforms the device, such as squishing, stretching, twisting.​

Researchers at North Carolina State University have created a soft and stretchable device that converts movement into electricity. The device works in wet or dry environments and has a host of potential applications.

Scientists at North Carolina State University have developed a flexible, stretchy energy-harvesting device solely out of biocompatible soft materials: liquid metal and soft polymers known as hydrogels. It produces small amounts of electricity comparable to other energy-harvesting technologies, and it can also operate in water as well as air, according to the team's recent paper published in the journal Advanced Materials. The team thinks the new NCSU device holds promise for powering wearable devices, charging them spontaneously with no need for an external power source.
 

The plural of Lego is Lego but that aside, I liked this story. :p​

Focusing sound vibrations precisely can knock over one Lego minifig among many​

The key is a signal processing technique that is akin to ventriloquism.​

Brian Anderson's experiments with Lego minifigs led to the development of an interactive museum exhibit in Switzerland.

Brian Anderson's experiments with Lego minifigs led to the development of an interactive museum exhibit in Switzerland.

Legos are a beloved staple of educational science activities and have even proved useful in particle physics experiments at CERN to explore the properties of hadrons. For Brian Anderson, a physicist at Brigham Young University, Legos are an essential component of his acoustics research. At a meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in Seattle earlier this month, Anderson described how he figured out how to focus sound-wave energy precisely enough to knock over a single Lego minifig without disturbing other minifigs clustered around it.
The key is a signal-processing technique called "time reversal," originally used by submarines in the 1960s to help focus signal transmission in the ocean. The name is a bit misleading, since it's sound waves that are being reversed, not time. The technique involves playing a sound (impulse) from a sound source—Anderson uses speakers for playing music through a computer or laptop—and using a sensor (like a microphone or a laser) at a targeted location on a metal plate to record the response to the impulse there.
That recording essentially maps the acoustic wave as it bounces around. One can then use software to reverse that signal and play it back so the waves retrace their steps and constructively interfere with each other, enabling Anderson to precisely focus that acoustic energy on the targeted location. The spatial extent of the focusing depends on the frequencies being used. Higher frequencies typically have smaller wavelengths, enabling Anderson to focus the acoustic energy to a more narrow point in space.
 
This looks like it could have some great potential:

New spinal implant gets paralyzed people up and walking​

Software modeling and feedback key to a computer-controlled stride.​

Image of two men standing behind walkers.

Two formerly paralyzed individuals go for a stroll in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Spinal cord injuries are life-altering, as they prevent the transmission of nerve impulses past the point of injury. That means no sensory inputs make it to the brain, and no signals from the brain make it to the muscles normally controlled by the brain. But improvements in our understanding of neurobiology have raised the hope that we can eventually restore some control over paralyzed limbs.
Some of these efforts focus purely on nerve cells, attempting to get them to grow through the damage at the site of injury and restore a functional spinal cord. Others attempt to use electronics to bypass the injury entirely. Today, there was very good news for the electronics-focused effort: researchers have designed a spinal implant that can control the leg muscles of paralyzed individuals, allowing those individuals to walk with assistance within hours of the implant being activated.
 
Robert said:

New spinal implant gets paralyzed people up and walking​

Software modeling and feedback key to a computer-controlled stride.​

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Hopefully this takes off and gets perfected. They should work together with other methods to fully return walking to those paralyzed.

I don't know how they took so shltty video in 2021, but was still happy to see this story:

Possessed vocalist Jeff Becerra has walked for the first time in over 30 years​

Jeff Becerra, vocalist and bassist for US death metal outfit Possessed, has walked again for the first time in over 30 years.

In 1989, Becerra was held up at gunpoint and shot twice in an armed robbery, leaving him paralysed from the chest down. In the decades since, the frontman has been wheelchair-bound.

Now Becerra has shared a video of himself taking his first few steps since the accident, with help from robotic legs. The footage – posted to Possessed’s Instagram page on September 18 – was captioned “I walked again! I walked again for the first time in over 30 years with the help of robotic legs”.

Click for video here
 
Not quite as sci-fi as it first sounds but still pretty interesting.

Chinese propose to build a dam with robots as a sort of distributed 3D printer.​

The Chinese already have a number of dams in the generally arid Tibetan Plateau.


A study recently published by a team of researchers at Beijing’s Tsinghua University has revealed plans to construct a 594-foot-tall dam using robots, 3D printing, and artificial intelligence. The researchers claim that no human labor needs to be directly employed in building this massive structure—if the plan moves forward, the dam would produce 5 billion kWh of electricity annually. This much energy will be enough to meet the power demands of 50 million homes in China.
 
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