Metasensor’s Sensor-1 is a personal security system for your portable goods.
Home security systems are great for protecting valuables inside your home and stopping attempted burglaries, but those systems aren’t very practical when you travel with your precious, portable property.
Metasensor has developed its new Sensor-1, which acts as a portable security system – changing the way we protect our belongings and track objects in general.
This from Popular Science:
Sensor-1 is a small, octagonal disk that contains an accelerometer, a gyroscopic stabilizer, and a magnetometer, which work together to track the orientation of the device it’s attached to in three dimensions. They alert Sensor-1 if the object has been moved, and how. It also has three LED lights, a small siren, and Bluetooth connectivity.
Now, a smart sweatband could tell you when you exercise is bordering on dangerous. By measuring the chemicals in your sweat, this sensor can alert you of dangerous situations by linking to your smartphone in the first fully integrated electronic system that can provide continuous, noninvasive monitoring of multiple biochemical in perspiration.
The device has the potential to measure more than perspiration, with goals of preforming population-level studies for medical applications.
Is your Uber driver going too fast? Soon, you’ll be able to prove it. Image: Noel Tock under Creative Commons license
Since 2009, Uber has taken off all around the world as the premier ride-sharing company. Now, your Uber experience may improve thanks to the company’s application of sensor technology via each driver’s smartphone.
A typical Uber experience asks the driver and passenger to rate each other after each drive. If the mark comes in unusually low, Uber can now investigate your claims by examining the driver’s journey with data pertaining to speed and erratic driving. The company aims to collect this data from the gyrometer in the driver’s phone and data from GPS and accelerometers.
This from Uber:
Gyrometers in phones can measure small movements, while GPS and accelerometers show how often a vehicle starts and stops, as well as its overall speed. If a rider complains that a driver accelerated too fast and broke too hard, we can review that trip using data. If the feedback is accurate, then we can get in touch with the driver.
An array of different sensory devices are used in your smartphone, allowing our phones to follow our commands and functions seamlessly. From the sensors in your screen that recognize touch to the voltage and current measurement sensors for battery utilization optimization, sensors are constantly responding to the ever-increasing demand for faster, cheaper, smaller, and more sensitive means to monitor the world around us.
Now these sensor technologies could help produce safer conditions on the road. If gyrometer results show that drivers are moving their phones while driving, Uber may offer mounts. If the accelerators pick up constant speeding conditions, Uber is ready to tell their drivers to curb their enthusiasm.
With smart technology on the rise, researchers are looking for ways to develop smaller sensors that can help building the landscape of the internet of things. However, this could potentially demand huge sums of power in an era where people are working hard to conserve energy. A research team from Eindhoven University of Technology may have found a solution to this problem with the development of their new extra-small, wireless sensors that are powered by radio waves that make up its wireless network.
With a router nearby, the tiny sensors can pull the necessary energy to give them functionality. The sensor is just 2 millimeters and can communicate temperatures.
This from Gizmodo:
Aboard the chip, a small antenna captures energy from the signals transmitted by the router. Once it’s charged, the sensor quickly switches on, measures the temperature, and then transmits a small signal for the router to detect. The frequency of the transmitted signal relates to the measured temperature.
The researchers predict that the primary use for this sensor will be embedding the device within buildings to monitor conditions. Currently priced at 20 cents per sensor, researchers hope that with continued research, its potential could increase to detecting movement, light, and humidity.
The major issue right now lies in the fact that the sensor can only transmit its signal 2.5 centimeters. While the device is currently not practical, the team believes that its reach can grow to 16 feet with more research.
What does Doublemint gum have to do with biomedical research? Apparently, a lot more than would be expected.
A combined research effort from the University of Manitoba and the Manitoba Children’s Hospital has recently created a stretchy, highly sensitive biosensor using chewed gum and carbon nanotubes.
After the gum in chewed for about 30 minutes, it is then cleaned with ethanol and laced with carbon nanotubes. The biosensor has the potential to monitor berating patterns and blood flow.
Even more impressive, the cost for the sensor come in under $3. Researchers believe the cheap, highly flexible biosensor could aid in a multitude of health care applications.
Researchers from MIT have unveiled new opportunities in diagnostics through the development of an ingestible sensor with the ability to continuously monitor vital signs. The device, which measures heart rate and breathing from within the gastrointestinal track, has the potential to offer beneficial assessment of trauma patients, soldiers in battle, and those with chronic illness.
“Through characterization of the acoustic wave, recorded from different parts of the GI tract, we found that we could measure both heart rate and respiratory rate with good accuracy,” says Giovanni Traverso, one of the lead authors of the study.
The development of pulse sensors such as this are beginning to outpace the traditional stethoscope. However, the pulse sensors that currently exist wrest on the patient’s skin, which is problematic for those with skin sensitivity such as burn victims.
Printing technologies in an atmospheric environment offer the potential for low-cost and materials-efficient alternatives for manufacturing electronics and energy devices such as luminescent displays, thin-film transistors, sensors, thin-film photovoltaics, fuel cells, capacitors, and batteries. Significant progress has been made in the area of printable functional organic and inorganic materials including conductors, semiconductors, and dielectric and luminescent materials.
These new printable functional materials have and will continue to enable exciting advances in printed electronics and energy devices. Some examples are printed amorphous oxide semiconductors, organic conductors and semiconductors, inorganic semiconductor nanomaterials, silicon, chalcogenide semiconductors, ceramics, metals, intercalation compounds, and carbon-based materials.
A special focus issue of the ECS Journal of Solid State Science and Technology was created about the publication of state-of-the-art efforts that address a variety of approaches to printable functional materials and device. This focus issue, consisting of a total of 15 papers, includes both invited and contributed papers reflecting recent achievements in printable functional materials and devices.
The topics of these papers span several key ECS technical areas, including batteries, sensors, fuel cells, carbon nanostructures and devices, electronic and photonic devices, and display materials, devices, and processing. The overall collection of this focus issue covers an impressive scope from fundamental science and engineering of printing process, ink chemistry and ink conversion processes, printed devices, and characterizations to the future outlook for printable functional materials and devices.
The video below demonstrates Printed Metal Oxide Thin-Film Transistors by J. Gorecki, K. Eyerly, C.-H. Choi, and C.-H. Chang, School of Chemical, Biological and Environmental Engineering, Oregon State University.
While pollution detectors do exist, their network is currently limited due to the high cost of the devices. Jones and his team have set out to develop a small, low-cost pollution detector that is sensitive enough to track air changes and quality on a street-by-street basis.
The team based their work on an electrochemical sensor that is industrially safe and can detect toxins at the parts-per-billion level.
Logan Streu, ECS Content Associate & Assistant to the CCO, recently spotted an article out of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory detailing a new type of graphene aerogel that could improve energy storage, sensors, nanoelectronics, catalysis, and separations.
The researchers are creating graphene aerogel microlattics through a 3D printing process known as direct ink wetting.
This from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory:
The 3D printed graphene aerogels have high surface area, excellent electrical conductivity, are lightweight, have mechanical stiffness and exhibit supercompressibility (up to 90 percent compressive strain). In addition, the 3D printed graphene aerogel microlattices show an order of magnitude improvement over bulk graphene materials and much better mass transport.
A novel vibrating vest that will allow deaf people to feel sound is under development at Rice University. The low-cost, non-invasive VEST—Versatile Extra-Sensory Transducer—features dozens of embedded sensors to vibrate varying patterns based on the words spoken.
The VEST works in tandem with a phone or tablet app to isolate speech from ambient sound and allow for easier translation of the vibration patterns.
“We see other applications for what we’re calling tactile sensory substitution,” says Rice University junior Abhipray Sahoo. “Information can be sent through the human body. It’s not just an augmentative device for the deaf. The VEST could be a general neural input device. You could receive any form of information.”
Interested in how sensor technology could change the world? Make sure to join us at the 227th ECS Meeting in Chicago this May, where we’ll hold symposia dedicated to sensors and their applications in healthcare, the environment, and beyond.
