On-Skin Electronics

Two new kinds of on-skin electronics allow users to build and customize them directly on the body with potential applications in biometric sensing, medical monitoring, interactive prosthetic makeup and more. SkinLink, developed by the Hybrid Body Lab, is an on-skin electronic interface that can be fabricated right on the body, providing flexibility in design depending on the intended use.

ECSkin is an electrochromic display interface that also can be fabricated in situ and features modular design through tiles that can be arranged as desired. Some of the potential applications for SkinLink include vital-sign and posture monitoring, proximity sensing and body art. Both are modular prototyping toolkits, to enable much more intricate on-skin circuitry prototyping.

More information:

https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2024/10/body-electronics-can-monitor-health-support-creative-expression

Robotic Vision System based on Human Eye

Developed by a team led by University of Maryland (UMD) computer scientists, the camera system mimics the involuntary movements used by the human eye to maintain clear and stable vision. The team’s prototyping and testing of the camera is called the Artificial Microsaccade-Enhanced Event Camera (AMI-EV). Based on microsaccades, which are small and quick eye movements that involuntarily occur when a person tries to focus their view. Through these minute yet continuous movements, the human eye can keep focus on an object and its visual textures - such as colour, depth and shadowing - accurately over time.

In early testing, AMI-EV was able to capture and display movement accurately in a variety of contexts, including human pulse detection and rapidly moving shape identification. The researchers also found that AMI-EV could capture motion in tens of thousands of frames per second, outperforming most typically available commercial cameras, which capture 30 to 1000 frames per second on average. The team believes this smoother and more realistic depiction of motion could be pivotal in applications ranging from creating more immersive augmented reality experiences and better security monitoring to improving how astronomers capture images in space.

More information:

https://www.theengineer.co.uk/content/news/human-eye-inspires-vision-system-for-robotics

Powering Smart Textiles via Human Body

Researchers in China created fibre-based electronics that harness electromagnetic energy in the atmosphere, using the human body as part of the circuit. This makes a body-coupled fibre electronic technology that does not need electronic chips or batteries to work. When electromagnetic energy travels through the fibre, it is converted by fibres into other forms of energy, including visible light and radio waves. So, the fibre emits electric signals when touched by a human body. By controlling various aspects of the system, such as the area of fibre in contact with the body or the diameter of the fibres, these wireless signals can be programmed.

The team say the approach removes a key challenge faced when attempting to incorporate electronic systems into textiles: the need for rigid components. Among the prototypes developed by the team is a wearable fabric display coupled to a fabric keyboard – which the team say could be used by people who have a hearing impairment to help them communicate with others – and textile controllers for video games. They also created a wireless haptic carpet that glows underfoot which not only provides a form of emergency lighting at night but can also wirelessly transmit signals that can be used to control switches on appliances in the home, such as lights.

More information:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/apr/04/wearable-tech-how-the-human-body-can-help-power-the-future-of-smart-textiles