sensors

Intel Capital has invested in a company that provides motion-sensing technology, hinting at possible future user interfaces for personal computing devices.

Grenoble, France-based Movea said this week that it has secured 6.5 million euros (about $7.9 million) in funding from Intel Capital.

"We look forward to...increasing our involvement in the MEMS and motion sensing space in general," said Erik Jorgensen, investment director for Intel Capital, in a statement. "We believe the role MEMS plays in technology, particularly on the mobile side, is going to continue to increase at a rapid pace."

MEMS, or … Read more

If you're not afraid to swallow your technology, you may want to check out new tech cleared by the Food and Drug Administration this week that lets you ingest a digital sensor powered by stomach acid that alerts your doctors about your health and your treatment habits.

The technology consists of a tiny, silicon-based sensor that, at 1mm wide (roughly the size of a grain of sand), can be consumed via pills and pharmaceuticals and pass through the body much like high-fiber food.

According to the developer, Proteus Digital Health, once the sensor is swallowed, stomach fluids that come into contact with it provide enough power to relay a signal that documents exactly when it was taken. This data is transmitted to a battery-powered patch worn on the skin that detects the signal and records the exact time the sensor was swallowed.… Read more

When I started reading about Lumoback's Kickstarter campaign this morning, my left foot was curled under my right thigh and my back was slouched so far forward it was almost cartoonish. A few sentences in and I was sitting tall, but by the end of the page a few minutes later I was back to my old ways, an offense I'll surely pay for in ibuprofen costs in the years to come.

Enter Lumoback, the sensor and app that hopes to rise above its competition. (Yes, there are several sensors and apps aimed at improving posture.) And having hit its $100,000 goal in a matter of days, with 26 left on the calendar, it looks like it will at the very least see a round of production.

The brainchild of three Stanford grads -- an engineer, physician, and entrepreneur -- Lumoback is essentially a sleek little waistband that tracks movement data and syncs wirelessly to an iPhone 4S or new iPad. The team says it's prioritizing support for Android as well.… Read more

The debate about "unboxing" rages on, so in this week's Always On episode, I actually get down to using a pocket knife to open up the new Google Nexus 7 and Nexus Q. And I try to bring back some of that old Molly snark so many of you have been asking for. Sometimes it's hard to put together a whole show and then remember to write in the personality! I'm working on it, though.

I had a pretty great time running around Google I/O, mainly because of the food, and of course, the … Read more

Sony sees an opportunity in CMOS image sensors and is investing serious cash into them to prove it.

The company today announced that it plans to invest about 80 billion yen ($996 million) into the Sony Semiconductor Corp.'s Nagasaki Technology Center. The funds will start flowing in the first half of the fiscal year that ends March 31, 2013 and will be cut off in the first half of its next fiscal year.

Sony's investment is designed to increase total production capacity for CCD and CMOS image sensors to approximately 60,000 wafers per month by the end … Read more

In the Fox TV show "Lie to Me," Dr. Cal Lightman was able to tell whether someone was lying by observing what he called "micro expressions" on their faces. The twitch of an eye, the quickening of a pulse, the beads of sweat on a brow -- he looked for clues too subtle for most of us to catch.

Now, researchers out of MIT are developing a video technology they call Eulerian Video Magnification that could do that and more -- by amplifying the motion in a standard video sequence to detect information not visible to … Read more

Some tech just sounds too good to be true. A removable, wireless sensor that adheres to dental enamel and can detect trace amounts of harmful bacteria just might fall into the too-much-information category for the squeamish among us.

But the silk, gold, and graphene-based sensor that looks a bit like a temporary tattoo could play a key role in detecting and treating various diseases and conditions, the developers at Princeton University say.

"This is a real-time, wireless response from a sensor that can be directly interfaced with a variety of biomaterials," principal investigator Michael McAlpine, an assistant professor … Read more

Researchers are tapping into the brain's signals to ease the downsides of multitasking and information overload, a worsening problem in digital lifestyles.

A group of researchers at MIT, Indiana University, and Tufts University last week presented the Brainput computer interface device at last week's Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2012) which explores new human-machine interface designs.

Brainput seeks to address the problem of people getting overloaded when working on machines and to improve people's ability to multitask. It's geared primarily at complex control systems, but its makers say the technique could eventually spill … Read more

In yet another example of the amazing things possible with the Kinect gaming console, filmmakers have combined the depth camera of Kinect with a digital SLR to create a haunting new look in video.

Fellows at Carnegie Mellon University's Studio for Creative Inquiry this week posted video, spotted by The Verge, from a filmmaking workshop which shows some of the potential of this type of 3D imagery.

The sensor in the Kinect console controller scans objects in front of it and determines their distance, allowing it to recognize gestures for playing video games. Fellows James George and Jonathan Minard … Read more