Researchers Lay the Groundwork for Touch-Sensitive Prosthetic Limbs

Researchers are working to create a modular, artificial upper limb that will restore natural motor control and sensation in amputees.

New research at the University of Chicago is laying the groundwork for touch-sensitive prosthetic limbs that one day could convey real-time sensory information to amputees via a direct interface with the brain.

The research, published early online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, marks an important step toward new technology that, if implemented successfully, would increase the dexterity and clinical viability of robotic prosthetic limbs.

“To restore sensory motor function of an arm, you not only have to replace the motor signals that the brain sends to the arm to move it around, but you also have to replace the sensory signals that the arm sends back to the brain,” said the study’s senior author, Sliman Bensmaia, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Organismal Biology and Anatomy at the University of Chicago. “We think the key is to invoke what we know about how the brain of the intact organism processes sensory information, and then try to reproduce these patterns of neural activity through stimulation of the brain.”

Tesco Hudl - The Budget Tablet With Great Aspirations

Many people are settling into the idea that a 7 inch screen is the ideal size for a tablet. The extra screen space provided by a 10 inch model sounds great in theory, but it does result in a device that is slightly more cumbersome to take from place to place. Looked at in terms of portability, 7 inches is perfect -- large enough to make most tasks easy, but small enough to easily slip into a bag, if not necessarily a pocket.

Print a working paper computer on an $80 inkjet

Ink laced with silver nanoparticles could make it a reality, to the joy of hobbyists

"IMAGINE printing out a paper computer and tearing off a corner so someone else can use part of it." So says Steve Hodges of Microsoft Research in Cambridge, UK. The idea sounds fantastical, but it could become an everyday event thanks in part to a technique he helped develop.

Hodges, along with Yoshihiro Kawahara and his team at the University of Tokyo, Japan, have found a way to print the fine, silvery lines of electronic circuit boards onto paper. What's more, they can do it using ordinary inkjet printers, loaded with ink containing silver nanoparticles. Last month Kawahara demonstrated a paper-based moisture sensor at the Ubicomp conference in Zurich, Switzerland.

Touchscreens get curves thanks to 3D printed optics

The future's curvy. Until now, if you wanted to build a gadget or toy with a screen then you had to design it so that a flat one could be attached afterwards. Now curved displays can be made while the device is being 3D printed – thanks to a way of printing optical fibres developed by Disney Research in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Called Papillon, the technique lets designers create surfaces that can display wraparound interactive imagery. It has already been used to create colourful, 3D-printed plastic characters with bulbous, animated eyeballs that can display messages and patterns.

Revealed at this week's User Interface Software and Technology conference in St Andrews, UK, Papillon was developed by Ivan Poupyrev and Eric Brockmeyer at Disney Research and Scott Hudson of Carnegie Mellon University, also in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Nokia Kinetic: Device With Flexible And Interface

Nokia has showcased the world’s first ever “Kinetic Device” having a flexible and twisted interface, which can be used to interact with the device and perform tasks such as scrolling through your playlist or photo albums by just twisting  the screen.

It was not a fake dummy of some futuristic model, rather it was a usable model (not complete though) through which you could do the simplest of tasks quite easily. The prototype showed at the Nokia World convention consisted of an OLED flexible display which could be used for various purposes through various twists. For example, bowing it in and out will zoom in and out of the picture whereas a twist to the top corner open up the photos.

The developers of the device decided not to comment on the technology used in the phone, but they did mention there doubts over widespread use of this technology when compared to touch screen phones.