sensor

Researchers at Stanford are developing new sensors so flexible and pressure-sensitive that they could be used to make touch-sensitive prosthetic limbs, pressure-sensitive badges, and more.

By incorporating a transparent film of carbon nano-springs, the sensor "can register pressure ranging from a firm pinch between your thumb and forefinger to twice the pressure exerted by an elephant standing on one foot," says postdoctoral researcher Darren Lipomi, co-author of a paper published October 23 in the journal Nature Nanotechnology. "None of it causes any permanent deformation."

The team built those nano-springs by airbrushing nanotubes (which are in liquid … Read more

You may not have been happy when Apple released the iPhone 4S instead of an iPhone 5, but a lot of case makers were. That's because at first glance their existing iPhone 4 cases seemed to work just fine with the new model, which meant that they didn't have to scramble to create new designs and had a ready supply of cases available for the 4S.

But that was before someone noticed that Apple had made a small but somewhat crucial design change: it moved the ambient-light sensor a few millimeters to the left. That created a problem … Read more

What do you get when you combine an Android smartphone, cell phone image sensor, Lego building blocks, and a handful of Caltech engineers and biologists? The ePetri, which isn't Petri Dish 2.0, but a full reworking of a technology that dates back to the late 1800s.

Traditionally, the Petri dish (named after German bacteriologist Julius Richard Petri) has been used in the medical field to identify bacterial infections by studying samples via microscope as the cultured cells grow in an incubator.

The Caltech researchers have a few choice words for such an approach in 2011, including "expensive," "labor-intensive," and "suboptimal." So they set out to improve not just the dish, but the entire process.… Read more

A huge image sensor that Canon showed off last year turns out to have more of a purpose in life than touting the company's manufacturing prowess. It's being used to help a Japanese observatory hunt for meteors.

Canon's 202x205mm sensor dwarfs the 24x36mm "full-frame" sensors that are used commercially in the company's high-end SLR cameras. When Canon touted the giant sensor last year, it said, "Potential applications for the new high-sensitivity CMOS sensor include the video recording of stars in the night sky and nocturnal animal behavior."

Well, it looks like those … Read more

Engineers at the University of Illinois today unveiled novel, skin-mounted electronics this week whose circuitry bends, wrinkles, and even stretches with skin.

The device platform includes electronic components, medical diagnostics, communications, and human-machine interfacing on a patch so thin and durable it can be mounted to skin much like a temporary tattoo.

What's more, the team was able to demonstrate its invention across a wide range of components, including LEDs, transistors, wireless antennas, sensors, and conductive coils and solar cells for power.

"We threw everything in our bag of tricks onto that platform, and then added a few … Read more

Researchers at the University of Cincinnati have created a disposable lab-on-a-chip sensor that can test levels of potentially harmful heavy metals in humans in as few as 10 minutes.

Their work, published in the August issue of the journal Biomedical Microdevices, is co-authored by assistant professor of environmental engineering Erin Haynes, who has also been studying air pollution and the effects of lead and manganese on residents in Marietta, Ohio--home to the only manganese refinery in the U.S. and Canada. (Manganese compounds are used to make steel and other products.)

Manganese is naturally ubiquitous and considered essential both nutritionally … Read more

Wearable body sensors are in. We've got the Fitbit pedometer, the BodyMedia armband, and the Lark sleep sensor on the market, and Jawbone's Up arriving soon. Joining the fray is what may be the heavy hitter in this fight: the Basis Band.

This wrist-wearable sensor offers the most sensors. In addition to measuring motion (which the other products do), Basis also tracks skin temperature, ambient temperature, galvanic skin response (sweat level), heart rate, and blood oxygen level, which it gets by measuring the spectrum of light reflected back from a green laser that illuminates the skin where the device straps on to the wrist.

The Basis runs its Tricorder functions continuously and stores its telemetry for later upload (over USB or Bluetooth). The device itself doesn't have enough smarts to tell the user if they're exercising enough or how healthy they are; the Basis service has to process the information first and gives the user usable information about their health and activity on their own private Web page.

One of the big tricks in the Basis algorithms is its capability to determine your activity--walking, running, typing, etc.--even though the device is strapped to your wrist, where a lot of the motion is obviously unrelated to what the rest of your body is doing. CEO Jef Holove thinks that the company's data processing chops are its secret weapon and the competitive barrier to entry. The sensor technology in the Basis is not exactly rocket science; the cool oxygen sensor is standard medical tech, for example. … Read more

Apple applied for a patent today for technology to use a mobile device's orientation sensors to help correct common photo problems.

One claim in the patent application involves using gyroscopes, compasses, or accelerometers to determine a device's orientation, then using that data to fix problems such as a tilt that would keep a horizontal line from being level.

A related claim involves a correction to distortion that can be caused when a camera isn't held vertically--for example when a view looking up makes the parallel vertical lines of a building converge. Here, a distance measurement to the subject could be factored in, too.

A photo could be corrected either after it was taken or on the fly as it's being taken.

The application is a new twist on hardware fixes for common photography problems. Modern digital cameras can move sensors or lens elements to counteract camera shake, and cameras or comptuer software can correct optical shortcomings of lenses. Start-up Lytro even hopes focusing errors can be avoided with light-field technology that lets people focus shots after they're taken. Smile detection technology can snap a photo only when you see the whites of their teeth, and face detection helps set exposure and focus.

The iPhone 4, with a backside-illumination sensor that's more sensitive than conventional models, is highly regarded as phone cameras go, and it's highly used, too, topping Flickr's camera usage charts. No doubt Apple would like to help its customers avoid those embarrassingly tilted oceans.

Now all we need is technology to ensure camera subjects look as healthy, vivacious, and beautiful as all the people in Apple's promotional illustrations. … Read more

The Green Lantern's Power Ring it ain't, but a ring containing MicroPointing's touchpad is something Q might give 007. With a sensor control area of one square millimeter, the touchpad can easily be embedded in a ring.

Israeli start-up MicroPointing plans to offer the touchpad for embedding in all manner of devices large and small, including smartphones, Netbooks, remote controls, game controls, cameras, steering wheels--anywhere you might want to let your finger do some scrolling.

The touchpad could be on handsets starting in the fourth quarter of next year, according to Avi Rosenzweig, MicroPointing's vice president of business development.

The MicroPointing touchpad works by detecting the force your fingertip produces as it drags across the tiny device's three sensors, according to the company's patent application. The sensors are mounted on tiny posts spaced a few tenths of a millimeter apart--less than the size of a ridge on your fingertip.

The sensors pick up sideways force as your fingertip moves parallel to the touchpad's surface. The company's secret sauce is an algorithm that can pull detailed data from just three sensors, Rosenzweig said.… Read more