University of Tokyo

Sniffing Out Your Identity with Breath Biometrics

Researchers have developed a new potential odorous option for the biometric security toolkit: your breath, an olfactory sensor capable of identifying individuals by analyzing the compounds in their breath.

Scientists Craft Living Human Skin for Robots

From action heroes to villainous assassins, biohybrid robots made of both living and artificial materials have been at the center of many sci-fi fantasies, inspiring today's robotic innovations. It's still a long way until human-like robots walk among us in our daily lives, but scientists from Japan are bringing us one step closer by crafting living human skin on robots. The method developed not only gave a robotic finger skin-like texture, but also water-repellent and self-healing functions.

Electronics Grow on Trees Thanks to Nanocellulose Paper Semiconductors

Semiconducting nanomaterials with 3D network structures have high surface areas and lots of pores that make them excellent for applications involving adsorbing, separating, and sensing. However, simultaneously controlling the electrical properties and creating useful micro- and macro-scale structures, while achieving excellent functionality and end-use versatility, remains challenging.

Teaching Machines to Think Like Us

Can intelligence be taught to robots? Advances in physical reservoir computing, a technology that makes sense of brain signals, could contribute to creating artificial intelligence machines that think like us.

Exploring Human-Body Communications with Binaural Hearing Aids

Wearable technology seems all poised to take over next-generation electronics, yet most wireless communication techniques are not up to the task. To tackle this issue, scientists delved deep into human-body communications, in which human tissue is used as the transmission medium for electromagnetic signals. Their findings pave the way to more efficient and safer head-worn devices, such as binaural hearing aids and earphones.

The Future of Semiconductors is Clear

Mobility is a key parameter for semiconductor performance and relates to how quickly and easily electrons can move inside a substance. Researchers have achieved the highest mobility among thin films of tin dioxide ever reported. This high mobility could allow engineers to create thin and even transparent tin dioxide semiconductors for use in next-generation LED lights, photovoltaic solar panels or touch-sensitive display technologies.

World's Fastest Supercomputer and AI for Real Time Tsunami Prediction

Researchers have announced the successful development of an AI model that will empower disaster management teams with the ability to predict tsunami flooding in coastal areas in near real-time, harnessing the computational power of the world's fastest supercomputer.

Imperceptible Thin Film Sensor to Record Movement and Touch

Researchers have developed an ultrathin pressure sensor that can be attached directly to the skin. It can measure how fingers interact with objects to produce useful data for medical and technological applications. The sensor has minimal effect on the users' sensitivity and ability to grip objects, and it is resistant to disruption from rubbing.

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.

Printing Organic Transistors

High-speed low-power printed transistors could lead to new display technologies. Researchers have successfully printed and demonstrated organic transistors, electronic switches, which can operate close to their theoretical speed limits.

Self-Healing Devices Gain or Regain Function After Being Cut

A "smart" polymer cast that automatically seals itself around a broken arm, a membrane that can sense where it has been cut, and pneumatic actuators that can be cut and reconfigured into different shapes are some possible applications for a new self-healing material.

Electrics and Electronics Becomes User-Dedicated Smart Material

An important new trend is buying electrics and electronics you customise to function not just shape. See the new IDTechEx report, "Complete Electronics as Smart Material, User-Customized 2020-2040". Builders, textile manufacturers, those doing home improvement and others are starting to buy electrically-smart materials direct from materials companies, bypassing the electronics industry.