Google is working on smart contact lenses, and two patents secured last week suggest the company is taking the idea seriously. The company is working on contacts with embedded cameras, as well as lenses aimed at diabetics who need to constantly monitor their blood sugar levels.
In the latter application, an embedded “ophthalmic electrochemical sensor” would test the wearer’s tear fluid and alert him or her to any drops in blood sugar levels. The lens would include a working electrode and a much larger reference electrode. An antenna would also be included—all on the convex and concave surfaces of the contact lens.
“We’re testing prototypes that can generate a reading once per second,” Google’s Brian Otis and Babak Parviz wrote, when announcing the project. “We’re also investigating the potential for this to serve as an early warning for the wearer, so we’re exploring integrating tiny L.E.D. lights that could light up to indicate that glucose levels have crossed above or below certain thresholds. It’s still early days for this technology, but we’ve completed multiple clinical research studies that helps to refine our prototype. We hope this could someday lead to a new way for people with diabetes to manage their disease.”
The company is in discussions with the F.D.A., which would obviously need to approve the lenses before they can more to market.
Google’s foray into medical devices offers an interesting backdrop against which we can examine the tech giant’s controversial Google Glass product line. Earlier this week, The Atlantic published another look at Glass, wherein blind writer Will Butler posited that “our fear of assistive technology” is to blame for the frosty reception Glass has received. (A number of Glass wearers have been mugged, and the product has not been polling well with consumers.)
“There remains a disheartening chasm between what we think of as assistive tech versus good design. Glass is struggling because it hovers between the two,” Butler wrote, arguing that Glass wearers are seen as weak.
Even Google’s vision of contact lenses with cameras have some assistive applications: the patent filing for that product notes that the lenses could be used to alert blind wearers to approaching cars, for example, by taking an image and transferring the information into sound. It’s hard to imagine the public taking issue with such medical uses (thankfully, no one is protesting outside of the Boston area hospital where Google Glass helped a physician save a man’s life), but in a world where anyone wearing Google Glass is liable to be called a “Glasshole,” it’s not at all difficult to imagine the uproar over proposed features like built-in zoom capability for those who don’t have issues seeing.
This is little different from all those other electric shoes that were making the rounds recently. Piezoelectrics are interesting, but simply don’t produce a lot of power for their size. Enough to make a low-power transmitter squirt a few bytes, or light an LED. They’re great for collecting ambient forces like sound and vibration, if you know the direction and type of force you want to harvest, there are better ways to go about it.
In the case of harvesting energy from footsteps, you have a pretty good idea of how the forces will work. And some researchers from the University of Wisconsin Madison are working on a system that might be able to pull as much as 20W from your strut. Why are you strutting, anyway? You think you’re so cool.
Yes, theoretically, you could charge your iPad or power a whole low-power computer of some kind just by walking around. Of course, you could never stop walking, which might end up being a good thing. The researchers, who have privatized to research and sell the technology under the name Instep Nanopower, say that somewhere around 300W of power dissipates as heat alone, and they think they can siphon off a bit without messing with your gait.
What they’ve done is introduce a fluid made up of tiny metal microdroplets into a special substrate. When your foot presses down on it, the droplets are forced through the substrate, which generates electricity by a means known as reverse electrowetting (that’s probably patent pending).
Once the energy has been grabbed, it can be held for drawing off later or used immediately to power a device. They suggest a sort of relay that would do a mobile phone’s high-power transmitting for it, while using a lower-power signal to send stuff to the phone, saving battery life. Kind of an over-specific application, but you get the idea. They address several potential issues in the FAQ (squishiness, leaks, cost, etc) but don’t mention weight. I’m concerned that the battery and liquid metal would increase the weight of the sure significantly. I like light shoes myself, and I’m not sure I’d want to add another four or five ounces to each foot for a questionably accessible power source.
Via: Techcrunch
In the case of harvesting energy from footsteps, you have a pretty good idea of how the forces will work. And some researchers from the University of Wisconsin Madison are working on a system that might be able to pull as much as 20W from your strut. Why are you strutting, anyway? You think you’re so cool.
Yes, theoretically, you could charge your iPad or power a whole low-power computer of some kind just by walking around. Of course, you could never stop walking, which might end up being a good thing. The researchers, who have privatized to research and sell the technology under the name Instep Nanopower, say that somewhere around 300W of power dissipates as heat alone, and they think they can siphon off a bit without messing with your gait.
What they’ve done is introduce a fluid made up of tiny metal microdroplets into a special substrate. When your foot presses down on it, the droplets are forced through the substrate, which generates electricity by a means known as reverse electrowetting (that’s probably patent pending).
Once the energy has been grabbed, it can be held for drawing off later or used immediately to power a device. They suggest a sort of relay that would do a mobile phone’s high-power transmitting for it, while using a lower-power signal to send stuff to the phone, saving battery life. Kind of an over-specific application, but you get the idea. They address several potential issues in the FAQ (squishiness, leaks, cost, etc) but don’t mention weight. I’m concerned that the battery and liquid metal would increase the weight of the sure significantly. I like light shoes myself, and I’m not sure I’d want to add another four or five ounces to each foot for a questionably accessible power source.
Via: Techcrunch
