Category: Technology

Trung Bui, a research assistant at University Twente has developed a system that can deal with the user's emotions. To illustrate the effectiveness Bui applied it to a navigational system for relief workers which takes into account the stress experienced by a user. The navigational system receives input from a loose 'stressmodule' which measures the relief worker's stress levels. When communicating with the user, the system will take this into account. In a situation wherein the user's stress levels are heightened, for example, the system will take into account the fact that the user is more prone to make mistakes and will ask for confirmation more often.

The movie shows an airplame (the MC2) of 10 grams that avoids walls on its own. It's the research area of microflyers of the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems (LIS) of the Swiss EPFL.

A research team from the University of California, Berkeley is working on the development of such small (image) sensors that they can be 'printed' unto any surface. This way a 'sensing tape' could be created, for example: a camera as duck tape so to speak. You tear off a piece, tape it onto the ceiling, your car or your forehead and you've gained a camera.

The micro airplanes (roughly 30 centimeter long) in this movie can transport small packages extremely quickly, useful for, for example, emergency transports in health care.

Engineers of the George Washington University have succeeded in using nanoscale fabricating techniques to create a flexible contact lens with a biologically safe electronic circuit and light source. This means the lens can be worn, like a regular lens, on the eye. Furthermore, it's capable of relaying information to the human eye which the eye otherwise wouldn't pass onto the brain.

Chinese researchers have made a breakthrough in artificial photosynthesis. With the aid of carbon nanotubes (falls under nanotechnology) they can reproduce an important part of photosynthesis that was hitherto not possible.

A robot that can think using rat's brains has been developed at the University of Reading. The robot can avoid objects without the use of additional support from humans or technology. The brains aren't physically located in the robot, but are kept in a food-rich environment. They communicate with the robot using Bluetooth.

Emily is an artificial character that moves exactly like a human being. She is, after all, based on the video recording of a real person. And copied so precisely that you can't tell the difference. As such Emily displays all the emotions that a regular human being would also display.

The technology to copy humans with animations is going ever further. In this movie you can see that movements are built up from the bone and onwards. This makes animation far more realistic.

A Kenyan boy has developed a system with which he can prevent car theft. As soon as the car leaves unexpectedly a text message is sent. Then the owner can react and stop the car remotely.

The Technical University Eindhoven is working on a device that can trace protein in blood extremely fast and then determines a person's illness. After taking some blood a diagnosis can be made within ten minutes.

On devices that are equipped with Android, Google's operating system for cell phones, it's now possible to recognize someone by their iris. Developers have shown this.

Japan's National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) has developed a 3D LCD display box, the so-called gCubik, that with its 10cm diameter fits into your hand perfectly. The developers will commit themselves to creating sharper images in the coming years.

Scientists at Tel Aviv University in Israel have developed an electronic ear to measure a voice's vibrato. Vibrato means the regular changes of height in a tone (in an instrument or singing voice), the 'trembling' of tone height, as it were. Vibrato can make a tone sound warmer.

This prototype screen can be controlled from the back. With it, users can use ten fingers on a relatively small screen without seeing solely their fingers.