Connected bracelets

Article 1: New technology could turn your skin into a touch screen.

• By Luca Santarelli, The Conversation

Technology can be awkward. Our pockets are weighed down with ever-larger smartphones that are a pain to pull out when we’re in a rush. And attempts to make our devices more easily accessible with smart watches have so far fallen flat. But what if a part of your body could become your computer, with a screen on your arm and maybe even a direct link to your brain?

Artificial electronic skin (e-skin) could one day make this a possibility. Researchers are developing flexible, bendable and even stretchable electronic circuits that can be applied directly to the skin. As well as turning your skin into a touchscreen, this could also help replace feeling if you’ve suffered burns or problems with your nervous system.

The simplest version of this technology is essentially an electronic tattoo. In 2004, researchers in the US and Japan unveiled a pressure sensor circuit made from pre-stretched thinned silicon strips that could be applied to the forearm. But inorganic materials such as silicon are rigid and the skin is flexible and stretchy. So researchers are now looking to electronic circuits made from organic materials (usually special plastics or forms of carbon such as graphene that conduct electricity) as the basis of e-skin.

Typical e-skin consists of a matrix of different electronic components – flexible transistors, organic LEDs, sensors and organic photovoltaic (solar) cells – connected to each other by stretchable or flexibleconductive wires. These devices are often built up from very thin layers of material that are sprayed or evaporated onto a flexible base, producing a large (up to tens of cm2) electronic circuit in a skin-like form.

Much of the effort to create this technology in the last few years has been driven by robotics and a desire to give machines human-like sensing capabilities. We now have e-skin devices that can detect approaching objects and measure temperature and applied pressure. These can help robots work more safely by being more aware of their surroundings (and any humans that might get in the way). But if integrated with wearable technology, they could do the same for humans, detecting, for example, harmful movements during sport.

The technology has also led to the creation of bendable screens, while at least one company is hoping to turn the skin into a touchscreen using sensors and a pico-projector rather than a display.

But will we one day come to build this technology directly into our bodies, and how common will it be? The problem with organic electronics at the moment is that they aren’t very reliable and give relatively poor electronic performance.

Just like real skin, the e-skin developed so far eventually develops wrinkles. These cause its layers to come apart and the circuits to fail. Plus, atoms in organic materials are more chaotically organised than the inorganic materials used to make traditional electronics. This means electrons move 1,000 times slower in organic materials, so devices made from them will operate much more slowly and would’t deal as well with the heat the circuits generate.

Bio-compatibility

The other big issue is how to integrate e-skin with the human body so that it doesn’t cause medical problems and so that it can interface with the nervous system. Organic materials are carbon-based (like our bodies) so in some senses are more likely to be biocompatible and not rejected by the body. But carbon particles are good at passing through the cells that make up our body and this would likely to lead to inflammation, generating an immune response that could even, according to certain unverified theories, generate tumours.

However, scientists have already had some success linking electronic devices to the nervous system. Researchers at the University of Osaka are leading pioneering research to develop a brain implant from a flexible matrix of organic thin-film transistors that could be activated just by thinking. The difficulty is that such an invasive approach could lead to further problems, especially when we start testing the technology on humans.

In coming years we are are likely to see prototype e-skin devices gaining momentum in the form of wearable bodily sensors, and potentially as a way to harvest energy from the body’s movement. What will take much longer are the more complicated circuits such as those found in smartphones.

And the other big question we’ve yet to answer is how many people will accept permanent or semi-permanent electronic implants. Would you be willing to effectively become a cyborg?

Article 2: Sunu band: wearable bracelet for visually impaired people.

Wearable trackers/bracelets are becoming a way of life. They come in all shapes and forms (and costs) and are fairly affordable. However, how does a blind person use one? Also, can a wearable tracker be used by visually impaired people for doing something totally different – like maybe help them navigate by sensing obstructions and finding misplaced items for them?

Sunu Band is an innovative wearable that is designed specially for visually impaired people. Unlike other bracelets, Sunu has a proximity sensor that detects objects in the environment using ultrasonic technology. As a person is navigating around in their environment, Sunu emits ultrasonic waves that hit and bounce back from objects that are in the person’s path, and “echo” back to Sunu, which results in a vibration. The closer the object, the more frequent vibrations are. 

Sunu has two modes – indoor and outdoor. Indoor mode, which has a range of 8 feet, is more for detecting openings and exits in buildings, aisles in a supermarket, and spaces between people among other things. The outdoor mode, with a range of 13 feet, covers a wider area and enables the wearer to detect trash cans, hanging branches from trees, lamp posts, etc.

The band also comes with an attachment –  Sunu Tag which is a beacon like device and works with the Band as well as smartphone app. The tag can be attached to any other object, be it a keychain, backpack, or anything else. The Band (or phone) vibrates when the object is nearby and an alarm on the Tag emits a sound which makes finding objects easier. If the wearer is leaving something behind, Sunu can alert them about that too. Sunu also has a haptic clock that tells time through vibrations.

Sunu is a simple wearable but can make navigation and daily living much easier for visually impaired people. Just wearing it while being out and about can help the wearer understand their surrounding and improve awareness, avoid collisions with objects, and also find misplaced items without help from anyone else.

Sunu is not available to everyone yet. Currently they have an Indiegogo campaign going to raise money so this bracelet could become a reality and reach to many visually impaired people. The Sunu team is also doing something philanthropic – for every $99 raised, Sunu will donate a Sunu Blind to a child living in a developing country. 

Resume:

After the watches are connected, the idea of the connected bracelets arrives. To avoid a commercial failure as has been the case with Apple's Apple Watch, the bracelets have to better meet the needs of consumers. 

As article one says, researchers in the US and Japan are still looking for the right way to make this technology efficient. Unlike watches, these bracelets must really be able to complete the use of the laptop. The use must be easy and the design must be beautiful .. Which is not really the case of watches connected. The objective of these bracelets is to be able to use his laptop as well on our arm as on the portable by itself.

Article two speaks also about bracelets but they are specially designed for the visually impaired. The advantage of bracelets is that we always have them on us. For the evil seeing it is a chance because they can not lose it. This bracelet will normally allow them to be able to replace the white cane they have to orient themselves because it will warn them of all the obstacles that are on their way.

Connected bracelets can be very helpful for everyone and use seems much more convenient than it is for people with disabilities or not.