Week 26 – 24 June 2022
#01 🧗 🏋️♂️🦾 | wearable arm muscles.
The Myoshirt has been engineered at ETH Zürich to increase arm strength for humans with muscular distrophy. In initial tests, endurance increased by 60 percent for humans with muscular dystrophy. A 3x improvement from the baseline was experienced by people with a spinal cord injury.
[The wearable] arm exomuscle to compensate[s] for injuries or conditions restricting the normal movement of the arm. The additional layer of muscles is made out of wearable textile that can be worn over the upper body like an armor jacket. Smart sensors embedded in the vest and cuffs detect the wearer’s intended movement and provide able muscular assistance. More simply put, it is like an artificial tendon as the motor shortens or loosens the cable along the length of the muscles for added power and assistance. This could be anything from lifting a big bottle full of water from a precarious position, to providing thrust for pushing someone upwards.
In creating these exoskeletons and exomuscles, organizations are also reimagining industries with multifold benefits ranging from Health & Safety scenarios (first responders, mining shaft safety, etc) to entertainment…the field is called stuntronics:
The future of computing is embedded, adaptive and accessible.
Edge scenarios provide moral and ethical uses of A.I. that can impact the daily routines and wellness of individuals.
A.I. Training algorithms that are created to understand how muscle groups relate to each other and what a baseline of healthy muscles are, based on anatomy, can also provide multiple dividends in applications from remote physiotherapy, landmine detection and removal, entertainment (such as virtual characters) to remote control of a humanoid droid in emergency response situations (say a heavy duty robot that can move debris to rescue humans trapped from a building colapse from an earthquake or fire).
#02 🧓🚶♂️🧠 | Parkinson’s management with IoT wearables.
Imperial College London’s Charco Neurotech startup has announced the CUE1, an IoT health wearable that sends controlled vibrations into the wearer’s chest. The device is held to human skin with adhesive.
Pilot tests have seen participants with Parkinson’s improve their MDS-UPDRS scores by an average of 9.3 points, 3 times the level considered clinically significant.
Motor control from Parkinson’s has been associated with increased beta-frequency activity. CUE1’s real time monitoring is tracked with a companion app which shares the data with caregivers, nurses and doctors.
From drug discovery that can be done with A.I. to timed pulses into the body and brain with embeddables and wearables, therapies to manage Parkinson’s are evolving. Wellness and quality of life are important forces to tackle diseases that affect humans.
#03 🔦🗣🪟 | recreating sounds from vibrations.
(📸: Andrii Zastrozhnov via Getty Images)
If you thought that machine learning code that could create a transcript of a conversation with a video input (and no audio) was jaw opening, wait for it…Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science's Robotics Institute’s Illumination and Imaging Laboratory have been able to recreate audio without a microphone and without a visual inference. All they need is two off-the-shelf cameras and a laser.
An algorithm compares speckle patterns captured by a rolling shutter and a global shutter. It uses the differences between the patterns to calculate the vibrations and recreate the audio.
[These are high-speed, low-amplitude surface vibrations that the human eye can't see].
A speckle pattern (which is created by the laser in this case) refers to the behavior of coherent light in space after it's reflected off of a rough surface. That behavior changes as the surface vibrates. The rolling shutter rapidly scans an image from one end to the other, while a global shutter captures an entire image at the same time.
Breakthrough research into optical vibration sensing can also become a privacy nightmare. An optical microphone creates an ability to do contactless surveillance by just pointing two cameras and a laser to any window in a building (where generally board meetings happen or executives have their permanent offices.
#04 👨🏾💻📷🚙 | rapid vehicle inspections with AI.
General Motors has made a ‘strategic investment’ in Israel-based A.I. startup UVeye with the goal of creating comprehensive and speedy diagnostics of maintenance issues and damaged parts. This service is based at GM’s dealership network with pilots already running at select dealerships in the United States.
UVeye’s technology looks like an airport body scanner for your car. The car drives through the scanner with illuminated lights on the inside and, within minutes, service providers have a detailed report about everything that’s wrong with your car down to the tire pressure.
UVeye’s system uses artificial intelligence, machine learning, and high-definition cameras to “quickly and accurately” check tires and the vehicle’s underbody and exterior for defects, missing parts, and other safety-related issues.
A fully electric car has, on average, 20 moving parts. In contrast, an Internal Combustion Engine Vehicle (ICEV) has two thousand moving parts on average. These parts wear and tear overtime and can also have intrinsic design failures, material or composite failures and some are designed to wear and to be replaced (i.e. brakes, fluids) for ongoing maintenance (and profits) by the dealership networks service schemes.
Ridesharing and rental services stand to benefit from a proactive approach to fleet management of legacy ICEVs. When companies apply rapid imaging and accurately compare and contrast manufacturer-provided data sets from factory scans and specific cars, the rental agencies benefit from the knowledge of upcoming service/ repair and maintenance needs. By the time that the majority of vehicles are electric, they’d have amassed good profit margins and new applications can also open up such as imaging vehicles for clandestine retrofits (such as hidden compartments to smuggle drugs).
With the global chip shortage and the turmoil of the supply chain, solutions that can create foresight can also provide better planning for part purchases, replacement of such parts and scheduling maintenance cycles.
#05 🍺🪵🍶 | wood fiber bottles.
Carlsberg has joined the no-glass, no-plastic trend of creating compostable fibre bottles for their product lines.
"[The Fibre Bottle is lined with a] plant-based PEF polymer lining, which has been developed by Carlsberg's partner Avantium, a leading expert in renewable chemistry. PEF is made entirely from natural raw materials, is compatible with plastic recycling systems, and can degrade into nature should it end up outside national recycling systems.
"Beyond its sustainable packaging benefits, PEF functions as a highly effective barrier between the beer and the fibre outer shell, protecting the taste and fizziness of the beer better than conventional fossil-fuel-based PET plastic."
#06 👨🌾🍝🥬 | pasta from all the things.
US-based (West Coxsackie, NY) food manufacturer SFOGLINI has introduced Kale-based Penne to its range of products that can be bought online and also enjoyed in subscription-based purchases (they call it “Pasta of the Month Club”).
Kale joins Turmeric, Beet, Einkorn, Emmer, Cuttlefish Ink, Hemp, Rye, Saffron, Sriracha (!) and Zucca. Each ingredient follows a trend of single sourcing and sustainably grown grains.
Food producers are adapting to an expanding market that wants healthy food and new varieties of grains. Monoculture crops might not have peaked yet but the trend of small producers selling their goods to boutique processing companies is expanding as has the pressure for transparency in supply chain and food security from recalls. AgTech’s next leap has to include electrification of the fleet of vehicles used from seed to harvest and the transport supply chain.
#07 🧑⚕️🩺😷 | at-home diagnostics for telehealth.
Health tech company Ro has continued to integrate at-home diagnostics startup, Kit, for the past year. Ro & Kit now provide a consolidated platform for patients to request saliva test kits, medical devices and overview the results of previous tests. Telehealth services are handled by Ro with the integrated infrastructure.
"Combining Kit with Workpath, our existing in-home care API will enable Ro and other healthcare companies to send either a healthcare professional or test kit to a patient's home with the click of a button. Ultimately, this delivers unrivaled convenience for patients and turns the home into the exam room of the future"
—Zachariah Reitano, co-founder and CEO of Ro.
The Covid-19 pandemic accelerated hybrid work settings and it expanded services that could be delivered remotely. As we move past pandemic response to endemic management, other lines of services have sprung and created demand for new subscription service offerings and R&D into chemical compounds and the active materials that give you results in minutes from the comfort of home.
At-home health diagnostic kits are a ‘solution’ that also creates a new medical waste problem that didn’t exist before as clinics and hospitals have protocols to handle and mitigate such waste. We need to create circular solutions for services and build onto them behavioral nudges to incentivize the right behavior through play, delight and engagement.
Home has become an office for remote work and it has also become an exam room and a patient waiting room. Multi-use furniture gives us ephemeral spaces for specific tasks. Appliances and devices provide experiences ranging from productivity to leisure and health.
#08 ♻️🚲🌆 | recycled plastic waste city bikes.
MTRL, a Dutch bicycle startup, has teamed up with igus, a German-based plastic specialist to design, prototype and produce the igus:bike, a rust-free bike comprised of 90% recycled plastic amounting to 16kg (35 lb) per bike. The molded frame, forks, wheel rims, cranks, bearings, pedals and planetary gears are sourced from recycled materials.
What if city councils & tourism development budgets created incentives for recycling plastics and provided iconic mobility solutions at the same time?
#09 🗣🎙🎁 | pay with words.
Here is a clever application of A.I. voice recognition + speech therapy: a vending machine that gives you products based on accurate spelling. It can be a fantastic tool to learn a new language…or bring public awareness to an indigenous one where you happen to be local (or traveling at).
This vending machine was part of the US-based Scripps National Spelling Bee competition in Maryland at the end of May 2022. One of the event sponsors, Hillshire Farm, provided the snack packs.
Within New Zealand, this is something that could be done as we acknowledge Pacific Languages throughout the year and in the case of Te Reo Māori, it can be done as a pronounce & spell initiative in partnership across the Department of Conservation (great walks, trails, parks, etc), Tourism New Zealand (at information Sites), Reo Māori and beyond.
#10 🌞🔋🔌 | mobile solar generators.
US-based (Jackson, MI) Sesame Solar sells the ‘Nanogrid’ as a global turnkey solution for remote power. Clients include: the US Military, telecommunications companies, municipalities, TV & film crews, music festivals, emergency response agencies, etc.
The origami-like foldable design accommodates 18 solar panels with a capacity to capture up to 20kW of solar power and store up to 150kWh in batteries. A small office at the core of the container can also be setup.
As improvements to solar panel materials continue, we will be able to reimagine location-independent living and disrupt point of care services (be it medicine, internet connectivity, education and emergency response. In a warming planet, systems and integrated solutions that can provide emergency response services will become paramount for point of care response.