Top TechTop Tech #34: • Injectable computer, Laser Li-Fi, virtual feelings
Promising products and interesting innovations
Today’s Top Tech:
• Injectable computer smaller than rice
• Better than WiFi: Laser Li-Fi
• Feeling virtual reality
Injectable computer smaller than rice
The University of Michigan’s “Micro Mote” is so small it’s programmed and charged via light — and may be the world’s smallest autonomous computer, its developers claim.
“It didn’t take a truck to transport the computers from their home in Ann Arbor, MI,” the school reports. “In fact, nearly 150 of these computers fit inside a single thimble.” The M3 is a fully autonomous computing system that acts as a smart sensing system, UM adds.
CBS News reports that “despite its tiny size, the M3 has the ability to take pictures, read temperatures, and record pressure readings. Researchers hope to implement the microcomputer into a variety of applications ranging from medical to industrial.
“Due to its micro-size, the M3 can actually be injected into the body, where it can then perform ECGs and also take pressure and temperature readings. The oil industry is also interested in inserting the Micro Mote into oil wells to help detect pockets of oil that can still be extracted before moving on to new sources.”
Better than WiFi: Laser Li-Fi
Li-Fi uses the LED lights in your room to transmit data,
rather than radio waves like Wifi — and upgrading from LED to laser “could
bring a tenfold increase in data rates,” says a scientist at the University of
Edinburgh.
Li-Fi encodes data on the light coming from LEDs by modulating their output, IEEE Spectrum reports. “The rapid flickering is unnoticeable to the human eye, but a receiver on a desktop computer or mobile device can read the signal, and even send one back to a transceiver on the ceiling of a room, providing two-way communication… Off-the-shelf laser diodes vastly improved the situation. Lasers, with their high energy and optical efficiency, can be modulated at 10 times the rate of LEDs.”
Feeling virtual reality
We have the technology to fool our eyes and ears into sensing unreal objects and environments — but can we fool our sense of touch?
Yes. Ultrahaptics “creates tactile sensations in mid-air,” Reuters reports. “No gloves or attachments, the feeling is projected onto your bare hands.”
The company says it provides a “magical experience” with which you can “feel tactile cues for gestures, invisible interfaces, textures, virtual objects and more.”
The technology uses ultrasound to create feeling directly on your hands, and was developed at the University of Bristol.
“By focusing complex patterns of ultrasound emanating from a specially designed pad, the air disturbances can be manipulated into floating 3D shapes that can be felt,” Reuters adds.
