National Science Foundation

Detecting COVID-19 With a Sticker on Your Skin

One day, a wearable, bioelectronic device could wirelessly transmit a person's vital signs — potentially providing critical information for early detection of health issues such as COVID-19 or heart disease — to a healthcare provider, eliminating the need for an in-person visit while also saving lives.

Wearable Sensor Monitors Health, Administers Drugs Using Saliva, Tears

A new kind of wearable health device would deliver real-time medical data to those with eye or mouth diseases.

New Vibration Energy Harvesting Generators From Xidas

Xidas releases the energy harvesting for Industrial IoT industry's first high-power-output, vibration-based energy harvester (the VEG series) in a small footprint with prices similar to industrial batteries.

Xidas

Xidas has developed a proprietary micro-engineering method that relies on bonding patterned sheets of different materials to make micro-mechanical and micro-electronic devices. These include sensors, energy harvesters and miniaturized medical devices. The company primarily targets industrial IoT as an application space.

Breakthrough Optical Sensor Mimics Human Eye, a Key Step to Better AI

Previous attempts to build a human-eye type of device, called a retinomorphic sensor, have relied on software or complex hardware, but the new sensor's operation is part of its fundamental design, using ultrathin layers of perovskite semiconductors - widely studied in recent years for their solar energy potential - that change from strong electrical insulators to strong conductors when placed in light.

A Defect-resistant Superalloy for 3D Printing

In recent years, it has become possible to use laser beams and electron beams to "print" engineering objects that have complex shapes that could not be achieved by conventional manufacturing routes. The additive manufacturing process, known widely as 3D printing, for metallic materials involves melting and fusing fine-scale powder particles — each about ten times finer than a grain of local beach sand — in sub-millimeter-scale "pools" created by focusing a laser or electron beam on the material.

3D Printer Enables Variable Gloss

New system enables realistic variations in glossiness across a 3D-printed surface. The advance could aid fine art reproduction and the design of prosthetics.

Lumiode, Inc.

Lumiode is a semiconductor technology spin-out company from Columbia University. It is based in NYC. The company mainly works on next generation micro-displays for AR application.

Stretchable Sensor Gives Robots and VR a Human Touch

Researchers have created a fiber-optic sensor that combines low-cost LEDs and dyes, resulting in a stretchable "skin" that detects deformations such as pressure, bending and strain. This sensor could give soft robotic systems - and anyone using augmented reality technology - the ability to feel the same rich, tactile sensations that mammals depend on to navigate the natural world.

In-Shoe Sensors and Mobile Robots Help Seniors Stay Active

Researchers are leveraging some of the newest mechanical and robotic technologies to help some of our oldest populations stay healthy, active, and independent.

Autonomous Multi-Drone Aerial Surveys of Antarctic Penguin Colonies

Aerial surveys of penguin colonies have been conducted before, usually with helicopters or a single drone. The helicopter method produces great image quality but is expensive, fuel-inefficient and risks disturbing the birds. The single drone survey is time-consuming and - because the drones must be launched from a safe distance, about five kilometers from the colony - difficult to navigate.

Wearable Sensor to Help ALS Patients Communicate

People with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis suffer from a gradual decline in their ability to control their muscles. As a result, they often lose the ability to speak, making it difficult to communicate with others.

Xidas Introduces 'The Battery That Never Dies'

Xidas IoT becomes the first to create a cost-effective solution for the IoT market's major issue: battery life. The increasing benefit of wireless sensors in the industrial and automation world is being restricted by the pain of replacing their batteries.

Treeswift's Autonomous Robots Take Flight to Save Forests

Forests cover 30% of the Earth's landmass, but that number is on the decline. Despite forests' crucial role in conserving wildlife and processing carbon dioxide, many are threatened by deforestation and wildfires. Complicating these threats is the lack of quantitative information that foresters and environmental researchers need for making important decisions to preserve forests.

Dimensional Energy

Dimensional Energy is a green technology company developing a catalytic process for creating aviation fuel from carbon dioxide and sunlight. In October 2020, IDTechEx Technology Analyst Dr Michael Dent spoke with Jason Salfi, co-founder and CEO of Dimensional Energy about the company and its technologies.