Wearable Tech and the Internet of Things (Iot)

Rising Taiwan-China and U.S.-China tensions have brought "more serious" challenges for the semiconductor industry, the chairman of Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC said on Wednesday. TSMC is the world's largest contract chipmaker and Asia's most valuable listed firm. 

Speaking at the Taiwan Semiconductor Industry Association's annual convention, TSMC Chairman Mark Liu said: "The U.S.-China trade conflict and the escalation of cross-Strait tensions have brought more serious challenges to all industries, including the semiconductor industry."  Liu said he looked forward to Taiwan's industry, government and academia developing "more concrete, constructive measures" on industrial policies related to innovation, research, talent education and retention "to maintain Taiwan's most critical semiconductor industry advantages". He noted that 2022 the "industry value" of Taiwan's chip sector is expected to have risen 1/5 compared with 2021, even with the impact of Sino-U.S. trade friction and geopolitical problems. Liu did not make direct mention of  the sweeping set of export controls announced by the US, aimed at slowing China's progress in advanced IC manufacturing, is expected to also impact Taiwanese chipmakers.  The new rules required of U.S. companies to cease supplying Chinese chip makers with equipment to make advanced ICs. "The difficulty this time will be a very big challenge," Frank Huang, chairman of Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp , said "We do business on both sides of the Strait. So we can't listen to the U.S. and not do any business with mainland China. Then what would everyone eat?" Huang said. "Our industry's position is to maintain our competitiveness."

A new report in The Information revealed some new tidbits about Apple's upcoming augmented and virtual reality headset. Among other things, the report details features that differentiate Apple's headset from Meta's just-announced Quest Pro, which is likely to be the biggest competitor to Apple's device.  Matching prior reports, The Information's article says that the headset will look like a pair of ski goggles. It will be made of "mesh fabrics, aluminum, and glass," and it will be thinner and weigh less than the Quest Pro. The Information's sources didn't specify a weight, but the Quest Pro weighs 722 grams.
The new headset will scan a user's irises so they can be recognized and log into their individual accounts the instant they put on the headset. This feature would work for multiple users, making it straightforward to pass the headset from one person to another, for example. Additionally, the iris-scanning tech will be used to authenticate payments. Meta's headset won't feature Iris scanning.

So in other words, it will be the headset's equivalent of Face ID or Touch ID, the biometric authentication methods previously seen in the iPhone, iPad, and Mac. The headset will also offer accommodations for users who wear glasses. They'll be able to "magnetically clip on prescription lenses inside the headset." That will not be the only way Apple's headset scans its wearer. It has previously been reported that the device will have 14 cameras. Two, today's report claims, will scan the wearer's legs so the positions of said legs can be accurately portrayed by a virtual avatar.

By contrast, Meta's recently announced Quest Pro headset has four fewer cameras, at 10, and it lacks the leg cameras. It's common in 3D telepresence apps to see floating torsos and faces with no legs, but it seems Apple might be aiming to get away from that standard.

Apple and Meta are poised for a battle over the mixed-reality space. Meta has been in the VR business for seven years, but Apple has a stronger background in AR thanks to the sensors and developer support on its iPhones and iPads. And while Meta has a significant headstart on the software side for immersive VR, it isn't nearly as experienced as Apple in developing hardware products.

Meta's Quest Pro was first revealed on October 11, and it will be available for purchase for $1,499.99 starting October 25. Apple's headset has faced several delays, but it is now slated to release sometime in 2023 at a higher price.

Gatorade has designed a smart water bottle to help you determine and maintain your baseline hydration level and monitor your post-workout recovery. A ring of LEDs that runs around the Smart Gx Bottle's cap should allow you to monitor you daily hydration, and gently nudge you to drink more when necessary. You can recharge the bottle using a USB cable. A Gatorade spokesperson told Engadget the bottle is dishwasher safe, but the cap is not. Naturally, your hydration levels can be tracked through Gatorade's iOS-only Gx App, which features nutrition and training programs as well as recovery recommendations. Gatorade's Sweat Patch, debuted in 2021, is a single-use wearable that can help you create a "sweat profile" in the app and help track your perspiration. You'll need to use the Sweat Patch to get a hydration report for the Smart Gx Bottle. Alternatively, you can weigh yourself before and after your workout. To that end, Gatorade sells pods that can be mixed with water to help replenish electrolytes and carbohydrates. They're compatible with the Smart Gx Bottle and regular Gx Bottle, each of which has a piercing mechanism for the pods. In addition, the company offering gummies that it claims can help with recovery and boosting your immune system. 

The Smart Gx Bottle is available from Gatorade's website starting today. It costs $70. Gatorade will toss in a Sweat Patch and a pack of four pods of your choice at no extra cost. In case you're interested in the gummies, those will run you $26 for one batch or $46.80 for a bundle. 

Imagine your boss just dumped a load of work in your lap and instead of a “thank you,” you get an “I need this done immediately.”

You’d be forgiven for needing a moment to come to grips with everything. And, if you happened to be wearing one of Fitbit’s new Sense 2 smartwatches when you got the bad news, that wearable gadget will pick up on your stress and check in with you after that moment has passed. The Sense 2 doesn't go on sale until the fall, though, it’s not yet clear how well it can actually suss out our stress levels. “It is definitely possible to infer stress using electrodermal activity and heart rate,” according to Dr. Rose Faghih, an associate professor of biomedical engineering at NYU's Tandon School of Engineering. saying she couldn’t completely vouch for Fitbit’s approach. “It really depends on the quality of the sensor,”. While certain people may benefit from a wearable that suggests ways to deal with difficult moments, some experts say those who feel routinely beset by stress should look beyond gadgets. Like counting steps and tallying calories burned, tackling stress isn’t new territory for a smartwatch. Apple’s Watch can remind you to take a mindful moment and breathe during the day, and some of Samsung’s Galaxy Watches will try to guess your current stress level by looking at the characteristics of your heartbeat. Fitbit is trying to position high-end wearables like the $299 Sense 2 as tools to help us reflect on the stress we face everyday. You can get better sleep with wearables. Just focus on the right data. The Sense 2′s approach is the reactiveness of it all — it won’t prompt you to reflect on the nature your stress unless it thinks you’ve just experienced some. And to do that, it needs to take a pretty broad look at the ways your body acts in real-time, even if you’re not fully aware of them.

Researchers have developed a new kind of ultrasensitive optical sensing instrument. It combines the advantages of the two types of interferometers that are currently available, making it both compact and highly sensitive. Called a Mach Zehnder-Fabry Perot (MZ-FP) hybrid fiber interferometer, it lays out a feasible path toward reaching unprecedented levels of strain resolutions for passive fiber sensors. The UAH-developed interferometer achieves one femto-strain of resolution, meaning it can detect the change of one billionth of a micrometer (10-6 m) out of one meter. The interferometer embeds optical resonator-based interferometers into a double-path interferometer. The new hybrid interferometer is able to achieve far better signal resolutions than the regular MZIs. This allows our interferometer to possess the advantages of both types of interferometers.

Flexible implanted electronics are a step closer toward clinical applications. thanks to a recent breakthrough technology that uses in-house silicon carbide technology as a new platform for long-term electronic biotissue interfaces. The system consists of silicon carbide (SiC) nanomembranes as the contact surface and silicon dioxide as the protective encapsulation, showing unrivalled stability and maintaining its functionality in biofluids. The researchers demonstrated multiple modalities of impedance and temperature sensors, and neural stimulators together with effective peripheral nerve stimulation in animal models. The concept of the silicon carbide flexible electronics provides promising avenues for neuroscience and neural stimulation therapies, which could offer live-saving treatments for chronic neurological diseases and stimulate patient recovery.

Tactile perception is vital to the fundamental perceptual ability of human skin and is one of the primary ways in which most people obtain data from the environment. During the first several weeks after birth, a baby's eyes are not developed enough to clearly perceive the mother's face. The tactile sensing ability of an infant, on the other hand, is remarkably responsive to the mother's skin. Tactile sensing ability is incorporated into a variety of social relationships, such as handshakes and hugs. With the speedy advancement of flexible electronics, robotic technologies, and artificial intelligence (AI) in recent years, the demand for friendly and safe communication between humans and machines has grown. This new class of electronic component enables machines to interact with the environment with attendant benefits for healthcare monitoring, robotics and other applications. Tactile sensors are a new class of electronic components that enable machines to interact with their environment. Conformable flexible tactile sensors have enabled friendly interaction between machines and humans, or between machines. When designing a particular flexible tactile sensor, special attention should be paid to device construction, manufacturing costs and power consumption. 

Researchers at Nottingham Trent University have invented textiles embedded with more than a thousand miniature solar cells that can charge a smart watch or mobile phone, according to a press release by the institution published on Thursday. The Nottingham School of Art & Design and has led the development of a woven textile equipped with 1,200 photovoltaic cells with a capacity to harness 400 milliwatts (mWatts) of electrical energy from the sun and can be easily incorporated into a piece of clothing such as a jacket or used as part of an accessory such as a backpack. The textiles are engineered to handle the same forces as everyday clothing and can even be washed in a machine at 40°C with other laundry without being damaged. The tiny solar cells measure a mere 5 mm in length and 1.5 mm in width. They are further embedded in a waterproof polymer resin; and they cannot be felt by the wearer, which means they are comfortable and practical to wear. “Until now very few people would have considered that their clothing or textiles products could be used for generating electricity. And the material which we have developed, for all intents and purposes, appears and behaves the same as any ordinary textile, as it can be scrunched up and washed in a machine.”

“But hidden beneath the surface is a network of more than a thousand tiny photovoltaic cells which can harness the sun’s energy to charge personal devices.”  “Electronic textiles really have the potential to change people’s relationship with technology, as this prototype shows how we could do away with charging many devices at the wall.”

Manipulation and sensing have long been considered two key pillars for unlocking robotics’ potential. There’s a fair bit of overlap between the two, of course. As grippers have become a fundamental element of industrial robotics, these systems require the proper mechanisms for interacting with the world around them.  Vision has long been a key to all of this, but companies are increasingly looking to tacticity as a method for gathering data. Among other things, it gives the robot a better sense of how much pressure to apply to a given object, be it a piece of produce or a human being.  Scotland-based startup Touchlab won the pitch-off at TechCrunch Sessions: Robotics event, among some stiff competition. The judges agreed that the company’s approach to the creation of robotic skin is an important one that can help unlock fuller potential for sensing. The XPrize has thus far agreed, as well. The company is currently a finalist for the $10 million XPrize Avatar Competition. The firm is currently working with German robotics firm Schunk, which is providing the gripper for the XPrize finals.  “Our mission is to make this electronic skin for robots to give machines the power of human touch,” co-founder and CEO Zaki Hussein said, speaking to TechCrunch from the company’s new office space. “There are a lot of elements going into replicating human touch. We manufacture this sensing technology. It’s thinner than human skin and it can give you the position and pressure wherever you put it on the robot. And it will also give you 3D forces at the point of contact, which allows robots to be able to do dexterous and challenging activities.”

A team of researchers from Binghamton University, State University of New York are turning old CDs into new flexible biosensors. The inexpensive process for transforming old CDs into flexible biosensors involves separating a gold CD's thin metallic layer from the rigid plastic and transforming it into sensors for monitoring electrical activity in human hearts and muscles, in addition to glucose, lactate, pH and oxygen levels. According to the developers, the sensors can communicate that data with a smartphone using Bluetooth. The fabrication process takes 20 - 30 minutes, does not release toxic chemicals. Instead, the metal layer is essentially peeled off and an off-the-shelf Cricut Cutter — which is a machine for crafters that cuts designs from assorted materials — was used to fabricate the biosensors. Once cut, the biosensors are placed on the wearer for monitoring. In all, the Binghamton team estimates that the fabrication process costs around $1.50 per device. The researchers explained: “This sustainable approach for upcycling electronic waste provides an advantageous research-based waste stream that does not require cutting-edge microfabrication facilities, expensive materials or high-caliber engineering skills." The article, Upcycling Compact Discs for Flexible and Stretchable Bioelectronic Applications, appears in the journal Nature Communications.

An easy-to-use test, which uses the same type of lateral flow technology as most rapid antigen tests for COVID-19, measures the level of neutralizing antibodies that target the SARS-CoV-2 virus in a blood sample. This kind of test could help people determine what kind of precautions they should take against COVID infection, such as getting an additional booster shot. The test is designed so that different viral spike proteins can be swapped in, allowing it to be modified to detect immunity against any existing or future variant of SARS-CoV-2, the researchers say. The device can detect the presence of antibodies that block the SARS-CoV-2 receptor binding domain (RBD) from binding to ACE2, the human receptor that the virus uses to infect cells. The 1st step in the test is to mix human blood samples with viral RBD protein that has been labeled with tiny gold particles that can be visualized when bound to a paper strip. After allowing time for antibodies in the sample to interact with the viral protein, a few drops of the sample are placed on a test strip embedded with two test lines. The researchers have filed for a patent on the technology and are now hoping to partner with a diagnostic company that could manufacture the devices and seek FDA approval.

Smartwatches have come a long, long way, however, you need to understand that they are still not full replacements for other more robust health & medical monitoring tools. It has been some time since the smartwatches started offering sensors such as SpO2 but every time we see a smartwatch come with such as sensor, we are informed that the sensors on these watches are not actual replacements for medical-grade tools or sensors that are used in medical industry. Now, a latest report shows that the Galaxy Watch 4 could become a really useful tool for medical purposes. Based on the report, the Galaxy Watch 4 could become an important tool for accurate measurement of OSA (Obstructive Sleep Apnea) shows a study conducted by Samsung Medical Center and Samsung Electronics. The study was published by National Sleep Foundation medical journal "Sleep Health," monitored 97 adults with sleep disturbances and concluded that the Galaxy Watch 4 could potentially help overcome the high cost associated with the traditional tools that are used for measurement. The Galaxy Watch 4 is equipped with a reflectance pulse oximeter module that stays in touch with the skin of the wearer when they are wearing the watch. The SpO2 sensor also brings 8 photodiodes that manage to sense the reflected light and captures PPG signals at a sampling frequency of 25Hz.  For those who do not know, Obstructive Sleep Apnea is a common sleep disorder and an estimated of 38% adults actually suffer from this disorder. Up to 50% of men and 25% women in the middle-age populace actually face severe to moderate OSA. The researchers also discovered that the readings captured with the Samsung smartwatch and the traditional medical device simultaneously were aligned, and it proved that the Galaxy Watch 4 can actually take accurate measurements of oxygen saturation during sleep. This could help the Galaxy Watch 4 customer along with the future smartwatches cut down on medical bills as well as all the costs associated with in-hospital procedures.

Qualcomm's long-awaited update to its smartwatch SoC line is official, meet the "Qualcomm Snapdragon W5+ Gen1" and "Snapdragon W5 Gen1." QCOM promises that the chips provide the company's "most advanced leap yet," which is not saying much for a company that previously went six years between major smartwatch chip releases. The W5+ does seem like a major update, though QCOM is promising "2X performance across CPU, GPU, camera, memory, and video/audio," "50% longer battery life" providing "days of use," and a "30% smaller" chip for sleeker designs. The W5 is built on a state-of-the-art 4 nm manufacturing process, outfitting the IC with 4 ARM Cortex A53 CPUs running at ~1.7 GHz and an Adreno A702 GPU. The "plus" version includes a 2nd 22-nm SOC based on the Cortex M55 for screen-off background processes. QCOM promises low-power islands for Wi-Fi, GPS, and audio so that those features can be used without lighting up the whole chip. The SoC has support for an LTE modem, Wi-Fi 802.11n (aka Wi-Fi 4), and Bluetooth 5.3, bu only the "plus" version gets that co-processor.  Its competition, the Samsung Exynos W920, has two A55 cores built on a 5-nm process, so QCOM has the process node advantage, but Samsung is using newer cores, and Qualcomm is using 4 cores compared to Samsung's 2. It sounds like the two chips will split single-thread and multi-thread victories. At the very least, the QCOM chip is competitive, hopefully marking a new era of the company taking the smartwatch market more seriously. Due out this fall.