Thursday, August 23, 2018

INNOVATION SPECIAL... Innovations set to come out of the labs and change our lives


Innovations set to come out of the labs and change our lives

From sea robots to a wearable for pregnancy alerts, here is what the future of tech has in store for us

A wristband for pregnancy detection
Swiss scientists are developing a ‘smart’ wristband that can tell a woman if she’s pregnant. The team behind the device say they have found a range of minute bodily changes which occur after conception, like changes in skin temperature, breathing rate and pulse. They are now building an algorithm that learns the wearer’s normal characteristics and detects such changes, so that the Ava bracelet — which can already tell women when they are most fertile — can alert them that they are pregnant.

Cars to turn in drunk drivers
Drunk drivers will soon find themselves on the wrong side of the law when their cars start automatically alerting the police after they have crashed. Ford Fiesta cars in Europe have introduced a SOS post-crash alert system that sends out a distress call, giving location and the time of impact. The tech uses a built-in phone or links to the driver’s mobile in all new cars.

3D-printing to improve phone batteries
Scientists, including one of Indian origin, have developed a method to 3D print battery parts that can vastly improve the capacity and life of smartphone batteries. 3D printing, also known as additive manufacturing, can be used to manufacture porous electrodes for lithiumion batteries. However, due to the nature of the manufacturing process, the design of these 3D printed electrodes is limited to a few options now.

Robots to aid deep sea exploration
Scientists have developed a soft, flexible underwater robot that can gently grab different types of organisms from the sea and study them without inflicting any damage. The device can even add 3D-printed modifications to itself without the need to return to a land-based laboratory. The soft grippers can grab sea slugs, corals, sponges, and other marine life more effectively and with less damage than traditional sampling tools.

AI system can predict your personality
Researchers, including those from the University of Stuttgart in Germany and Flinders University in Australia, have developed a new artificial intelligence system that can track a person’s eye movements to identify their personality type. Their findings show that people’s eye movements reveal whether they are sociable, conscientious or curious, with the algorithm software reliably recognising four of the ‘big five’ personality traits: neuroticism, extroversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness.

— Agencies


No comments: