Robotics

Google appears to be building a robot army, and I’m not even kidding when I wrote that. Google first dabbled in robotics for their driverless cars. But later on, it acquired at least 8 robotics companies, including Boston Dynamics which is known to build Pentagon-funded advanced robots. Here’s a recently released video of Spot created by Boston Dynamics.

As of this writing Google has been successfully awarded the patent to “control robot armies“. They have also patented building robots with personalities. And they are doing a lot more behind the scenes. Should we be worried? Well…

Google is actually pushing for flawless autonomous machines which could interact with each other, download updates from their server, and many more things. Think of Google’s self-driving cars with the ability to communicate with each other while on the road, predicting routes, avoiding collisions, managing traffic on their own

And then there’s these robots with personalities, which is a bit on the creepy side because it could mimic the dead. Alright, to be fair, these robots will "carry" transferable personalities by people who have passed on. Perhaps this can be helpful in easing the grief of people who have suffered a sudden and heavy loss?

Project Jacquard

                      Finally, there’s Project Jacquard. According to Droid-Life, the ATAP team wants to add smart features to clothes in the future by adding special conductive strands of yarn to certain parts of jackets or pants, which would turn them into touch interfaces for nearby devices.

Google's New Project Is So Insanely Advanced It Will Blow You Away

If Google has its way, our future will be nothing less than a sci-fi movie. After creeping us out with a robotic cheetah and the Google ‘Glass’, Google is all set to bring forth something really amazing. Google’s Project Soli has invented a new interaction sensor using radar technology that can capture motions of your fingers at up to 10,000 frames per second. And that is something that has never ever been done before. Simply put, this technology is so bafflingly accurate that you could operate any device (fitted with this) without having to even touch it.

Approximately the size of a small computer chip, this technology can transform your hand into a virtual dial machine to control something as mundane as volume on a speaker, or into a virtual touchpad to a smartwatch or a smartphone screen. Check out the GIF below to get a better idea of how this works.

This chip is actually a miniature gesture radar that captures even the most complex hand movements at close range, at unbelievably hyper speeds and replicates hand gestures. Given the micro size of the chip, it can almost be fitted into literally anything. This technology, if the project is successful, can make the need to touch a device to operate it redundant.

New Wearable Keyboards Could Be Sewn into Clothing

The Apple Watch and Google Glass are some of the most widely known wearable devices, but the ways users can interact with these "smart" gadgets are limited. For instance, it would be pretty difficult to type a message out on the face of a watch. And forget even trying with a pair of smart glasses. But now, researchers have developed wearable keyboards made of electronics knitted together like fabric that could lead to a new kind of human-machine interface.

Right now, the key way that people interact with computers is by using the keyboard, researchers say. However, creating wearable keyboards for wearable electronics is a challenging task — such keyboards have to be large to fit enough keys to be useful, and must be flexible and stretchable to follow the movements of the human body.

In the past three years or so, researchers have tried to make electronics more wearable by making them like clothing — for instance, by knitting wires together into fabrics. These electronic textiles can get stretched up to the limit where the fibers are straightened. Such technology "provides a simple way to interact with machines," said Esma Ismailova,a polymer science engineer at the National School of Mines in Gardanne, France, andco-author of a new study describing the new keyboards. [Best Smartwatches 2015 – Buying Guide]

The researchers started with polyester fabric. They stenciled the outline for an electronic circuit onto the fabric using an electrically insulating silicon rubber called PDMS. Then, they brush-painted an electrically conductive plastic called PEDOT:PSS onto the outline to fill it out. Finally, they coated this electronic circuit with more PDMS.

The scientists used electrodes to connect this circuit to a computer. Square and rectangular patches of the circuit served as the keys of a keyboard. Pressing down onthese patches generated easily detectable electrical signals.

The prototype keyboard can be worn on a sleeve and has 11 keys, representing the numbers 0 to 9 as well as an asterisk. The researchers noted that this fabric could be stretched by up to 30 percent and that after 1,000 cycles of stretching and relaxation, the fabric stayed about 90 percent as electrically conducting as it did at the start.

"A wearable keyboard would provide a more intuitive interface for tactile input than the touch-sensitive face of a smartwatch or the hand gestures that control devices such as the Google Glass," Ismailova told Live Science.

The researchers suggested that textile keyboards could be woven not only into clothing, but also into furniture, wallpaper and other surfaces. Such technology "promises to enrich our daily lives with smart accessories and to change the way we interact with computers," Ismailova said.

The researchers belong to a French consortium working on biomedical applications of textiles, which also includes companies interested in commercializing aspects of this work.

"One could envision, for example, using such a keyboard to control their smartphone, activity-tracking device or, down the road, an implantable medical device," Ismailova said. "It is a rather straightforward technology, so I would expect some applications in less than five years. Applications in biomedical — for example, textile electrodes for monitoring the heart — might take a bit longer due to regulations."

Stop searching, Start finding, with Blutooth smart tags

            Proximity tags have emerged as a popular application of Bluetooth Smart’s low-power features, allowing users to attach a tag to anything valuable or that tends to lose frequently, and then use an app to track the tag.

While many companies have sprung up offering variations of the application, the underlying Bluetooth Smart implementation can greatly affect the user experience and determine which of these start-ups will last.

For anyone who’s ever spent time rushing around trying to find keys, a wallet, or even kids, the spate of tracking devices and related applications from companies such as Tile, Protag, TrackR, Hippih, Pally and Audiovox, just to name a few, are a welcome relief.

With a range of up to 30m, these tags can be attached to anything that is likely to move or get left behind, and will alert the user that they’re out of range with a beep, buzz, chime or choice of tune on their smartphone, depending on the design.

The designs also vary by loudness of the tags’ own buzzers (50 to 80dB, typical), price, accuracy, response time, radar capability, geo fencing, crowd-sourcing/finding features, size and form factor, platforms supported and of course, battery life. Battery life ranges from 6 to 12 months, or some may have rechargeable batteries.

The crowd-sourcing/finding feature is particularly interesting as the greater the number of users in the community, the greater the odds are that the device will be found if left at a park, restaurant or beach.

For devices that measure typically 1 x 1 inch, can combine all the wireless features mentioned above, and still be able to last 6 to 12 months, is a tribute to Bluetooth Smart, also called Bluetooth Low Energy (LE), the underlying wireless communications technology that all these devices have in common

Why Bluetooth Smart

Bluetooth has been with us since 1994 in various forms. Conceived by Ericsson, the intent was to enable low-power connectivity for everything, but it quickly became relegated to human interface devices (HIDs) like keyboards and mice, as well as audio. Later, hands-free mobile phones became a key application.

However, when power-consumption issues were addressed and Bluetooth LE emerged in 2010 as part of the Bluetooth 4.0 spec, Apple added it to the iPhone 4S in 2011. That’s when Bluetooth Smart really took off.

Bluetooth Smart differs from Classic Bluetooth (pre-Bluetooth 4.0) in a number of important ways that make it an attractive option for low-power proximity tags.

Classic Bluetooth radios typically draw around 40mA at 3V but best-in-class Bluetooth Radios producing 0dBm output and draw less than 5mA at 3V, while still offering a range of up to 50m in many environments.

Average power consumption in some applications may be only 100th of that of Classic Bluetooth, due to the relatively long periods during which a Bluetooth Smart device will be in sleep mode. Wake up time is just 6ms, versus around 100ms for Classic Bluetooth. It can send authenticated data in just 3ms, versus up to 1s for Classic Bluetooth. It offers 128-bit banking-level security to keep data safe.

Bluetooth Smart is actually split into two functions: Bluetooth Smart and Bluetooth Smart Ready, the only difference is that the “Ready” refers to the features required for the main controller device, whether it is a smartphone or TV.

Bluetooth Smart radios are now built into battery-powered, stand-alone devices that can be found in applications from broadcasting advertising messages to shoppers as they come within range, to robot trackers, and of course, fitness devices.

The modifications to Bluetooth also made it suited to proximity-tag applications, which need to operate for up to a year on a single coin-cell battery.

Not all Bluetooth Smart implementations are created equal

Despite the energy savings promised by Bluetooth Smart, how the technology is implemented can have a dramatic affect on system energy consumption and battery life. The primary criteria for choosing a Bluetooth Smart radio system-on-chip (SoC) to form the heart of a proximity tag are peak current consumption, energy consumption over time (taking into account the requirements of the application), receiver sensitivity (the tags need to receive a signal from a smartphone to know that it’s out of range), and the ability to work from a single small battery, usually a coin cell, to minimise size.

In real-world applications, battery life will also depend upon the signalling interval – how often the tag is required to transmit– so when comparing device data, it’s important to ensure that the operating conditions under which the figures are quoted are the same, or at least very similar.

To gain a more detailed understanding of how energy is consumed while a tag is operating, designers need to determine the charge consumed versus time for each transmit/receive operation. These parameters include:

•The transmit interval and charge per transmit
•The time taken and charge consumed from cold boot until the first transmit
•The time, peak current and charge consumed by each of the three transmit channels normally used

Also, you need to consider the processor resources that may be available for application code within the Bluetooth Smart SoC. If it’s possible to produce a completely hosted solution without resorting to an external microcontroller, this will again save design time, cost and space.

In selecting a Bluetooth Smart radio, other important considerations are sometimes overlooked. Functional integration will determine how many external components are needed to create the beacon. The fewer you need, the less design effort is required and the lower the cost of the end product. Fewer components also means you can make smaller products that will be more reliable. Design effort is also reduced if the Bluetooth Smart vendor offers a reference design and proven software.

A Bluetooth Smart proximity tag reference design

A good reference design is founded upon a solid SoC. Dialog Semiconductor’s DA14580 “SmartBond” SoC integrates a Bluetooth Smart radio with an ARM Cortex-M0 application processor and intelligent power management. The processor and on-chip digital and analogue peripherals are accessible via up to 32 GPIOs

To help get designers of proximity tags up and running quickly, the SoC is accompanied by the SmartTag reference design (Figure 3). This offers all the required functionality, including a LED and buzzer to provide visual and audible signal link-loss or find-me alerts, as well as a push button to silence the alarm. The design also supports software over the air updates (OTA) to provide an easy way to upgrade devices that are in the field with the latest improvements. The DA14580 runs both the application and the Bluetooth stack and is powered from a single CR2032 battery. To save on bill of materials, only five passive components are required for the tag’s core system: no 32kHz XTAL is required.

The reference design consumes 5mA peak current consumption in active mode and less than 600nA in stand-by and comes in a typical proximity tag form factor with schematics, layout information, user manual, a test report, source code and SmartTags app source code.

Conclusion:

The applications of Bluetooth Smart are many and varied thanks to the ultra-low power consumption and ecosystem support it has received. However, designers need to move quickly as the applications are emerging more quickly and so a good reference design is critical to meeting the window of opportunity. Proximity tags are a classic example, with many companies vying for attention, but many will fall by the wayside as power consumption and reliable connectivity emerge as key differentiators.