Lifeboat Foundation

Roam Robotics is making robotic exoskeletons that are lightweight and affordable so that they can become a new category of consumer electronics. Traditional robotic exoskeletons can weigh between 30 to 60 pounds because they rely on high precision mechanical systems. They are big and bulky and cost as much as a luxury car, which significantly limits their usefulness and availability. Roam’s new robotic exoskeletons are so portable and inexpensive that they could quickly become a commonplace part of modern life.

In an effort to create first-of-kind microelectronic devices that connect with biological systems, University of Maryland (UMD) researchers are utilizing CRISPR technology in a novel way to electronically turn “on” and “off” several genes simultaneously. Their technique, published in Nature Communications, has the potential to further bridge the gap between the electronic and biological worlds, paving the way for new wearable and “smart” devices.

“Faced with the COVID-19 pandemic, we now have an even deeper understanding of how ‘smart’ devices could benefit the general population,” said William E. Bentley, professor in UMD’s Fischell Department of Bioengineering and Institute for Bioscience and Biotechnology Research (IBBR), and director of the Robert E. Fischell Institute for Biomedical Devices. “Imagine what the world would be like if we could wear a device and access an app on our smartphone capable of detecting whether the wearer has the active virus, generated immunity, or has not been infected. We don’t have this yet, but it is increasingly clear that a suite of technologies enabling rapid transfer of information between biology and electronics is needed to make this a reality.”

With such a device, this information could be used, for example, to dynamically and autonomously conduct effective contact tracing, Bentley said.

Stroke is the leading cause of serious long-term disability in the US with approximately 17 million individuals experiencing it each year. About 8 out of 10 stroke survivors suffer from “hemiparesis”, a paralysis that typically impacts the limbs and facial muscles on one side of their bodies, and often causes severe difficulties walking, a loss of balance with an increased risk of falling, as well as muscle fatigue that quickly sets in during exertions. Oftentimes, these impairments also make it impossible for them to perform basic everyday activities.

To allow stroke patients to recover, many rehabilitation centers have looked to robotic exoskeletons. But although there are now a range of exciting devices that are enabling people to walk again who initially were utterly unable to do so, there remains significant active research trying to understand how to best apply wearable robotics for rehabilitation after stroke. Despite the promise, recent clinical practice guidelines now even recommend against the use of robotic therapies when the goal is to improve walking speed or distance.

In 2017, a multidisciplinary team of mechanical and electrical engineers, apparel designers, and neurorehabilitation experts at Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering and John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), and Boston University’s (BU) College of Health & Rehabilitation Sciences: Sargent College showed that an ankle-assisting soft robotic exosuit, tethered to an external battery and motor, was able to significantly improve biomechanical gait functions in stroke patients when worn while walking on a treadmill. The cross-institutional and cross-disciplinary team effort was led by Wyss faculty members Conor Walsh, Ph.D. and Lou Awad, P.T., D.P.T., Ph.D, together with Terry Ellis, Ph.D., P.T., N.C.S. from BU.

The team saw some early successes regarding movement — the initial goal of the BCI — allowing Burkhart to press buttons along the neck of a “Guitar Hero” controller.

But returning touch to his hand was a much more daunting task. By using a simple vibration device or “wearable haptic system,” Burkhart was able to tell if he was touching an object or not without seeing it.

“It’s definitely strange,” Burkhart told Wired. “It’s still not normal, but it’s definitely much better than not having any sensory information going back to my body.”

A Korean research team has developed a lithium-ion battery that is flexible enough to be stretched. Dr. Jeong Gon Son’s research team at the Photo-Electronic Hybrids Research Center at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) announced that they had constructed a high-capacity, stretchable lithium-ion battery. The battery was developed by fabricating a structurally stretchable electrode consisting solely of electrode materials and then assembling with a stretchable gel electrolyte and stretchable packaging.

Rapid technological advancements in the electronics industry have led to a fast-growing market for high-performance wearable devices, such as smart bands and body-implantable electronic devices, such as pacemakers. These advancements have considerably increased the need for energy storage devices to be designed in flexible and stretchable forms that mimic human skin and organs.

However, it is very difficult to impart stretchability to the battery because the solid inorganic electrode material occupies most of the volume, and other components such as current collectors and separators must also be made stretchable. In addition, the problem of liquid electrolyte leakage under deformation must also be solved, as well as the problem of leaking liquid electrolyte.

Albert Einstein famously postulated that “the only real valuable thing is intuition,” arguably one of the most important keys to understanding intention and communication.

But intuitiveness is hard to teach—especially to a machine. Looking to improve this, a team from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) came up with a method that dials us closer to more seamless human–robot collaboration. The system, called “Conduct-A-Bot,” uses human muscle signals from wearable sensors to pilot a robot’s movement.

Continue reading “Conduct-A-Bot system uses muscle signals to enable more natural human-robot communication” »

Existing electronic skin (e-skin) sensing platforms are equipped to monitor physical parameters using power from batteries or near-field communication. For e-skins to be applied in the next generation of robotics and medical devices, they must operate wirelessly and be self-powered. However, despite recent efforts to harvest energy from the human body, self-powered e-skin with the ability to perform biosensing with Bluetooth communication are limited because of the lack of a continuous energy source and limited power efficiency. Here, we report a flexible and fully perspiration-powered integrated electronic skin (PPES) for multiplexed metabolic sensing in situ. The battery-free e-skin contains multimodal sensors and highly efficient lactate biofuel cells that use a unique integration of zero- to three-dimensional nanomaterials to achieve high power intensity and long-term stability. The PPES delivered a record-breaking power density of 3.5 milliwatt·centimeter⁻² for biofuel cells in untreated human body fluids (human sweat) and displayed a very stable performance during a 60-hour continuous operation. It selectively monitored key metabolic analytes (e.g., urea, NH₄⁺, glucose, and pH) and the skin temperature during prolonged physical activities and wirelessly transmitted the data to the user interface using Bluetooth. The PPES was also able to monitor muscle contraction and work as a human-machine interface for human-prosthesis walking.

Recent advances in robotics have enabled soft electronic devices at different scales with excellent biocompatibility and mechanical properties; these advances have rendered novel robotic functionalities suitable for various medical applications, such as diagnosis and drug delivery, soft surgery tools, human-machine interaction (HMI), wearable computing, health monitoring, assistive robotics, and prosthesis (1–6). Electronic skin (e-skin) can have similar characteristics to human skin, such as mechanical durability and stretchability and the ability to measure various sensations such as temperature and pressure (7–11). Moreover, e-skin can be augmented with capabilities beyond those of the normal human skin by incorporating advanced bioelectronics materials and devices.

Officials of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in Arlington, Va., issued a small-business innovation research (SBIR) solicitation (HR001120S0019-05) for the Wearable Laser Detection and Alert System.

DARPA researchers want to understand the feasibility of a wearable laser sensor that can detect laser irradiation rapidly during the day and at night and alert the wearer in real-time of lasing.

DARPA wants a wearable laser-detection system with low size, weight, and power consumption (SWaP) that would act as a stand-alone sensor to detect laser illumination over the 450-to-1600-nanometer visible to shortwave infrared region.

For transhumanists, the possibilities of human interconnectivity via technology is only the beginning of how people may eventually transcend the limitations of their bodies. Photographer David Vintiner and art director Gem Fletcher set out to meet the innovators, artists, and dreamers within the transhumanism movement who are pushing the boundaries of their biology to become something more than human. Their project I Want to Believe consists of three chapters — the first touching on wearable technology, the second on individuals who have made permanent changes to their bodies, and the last on how some transhumanists plan to transcend the human condition.

“Science and human advancement has always been propelled forward by the people who do things differently and those who are not afraid to break the rules.”

By Gabriel H. Sanchez

Continue reading “15 Pictures From The Future Of Human Evolution” »