Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: wearables

For now, wearable tech clothing seems to be effective for only outdoor/sports wear and occupational wear; I believe that more needs to be done in working with design houses such as Marc Jacobs, Versace, Dior, etc. What I have learned is the major design houses are not totally bought into wearable tech cloth; and tech will need to understand how to make the fabric technology more attractive to the name brand design houses especially if wearable tech clothing wishes to obtain a larger adoption of wearable tech clothing.

“If anyone could pull it off, it would be you” is not the most affirmative compliment.

Read more

Seeking to “push the limits of what humans can do,” researchers at Georgia Tech have developed a wearable robotic limb that transforms drummers into three-armed cyborgs.

The remarkable thing about this wearable arm, developed at GT’s Center for Music Technology, is that it’s doing a lot more than just mirroring the movements of the drummer. It’s a “smart arm” that’s actually responding to the music, and performing in a way that compliments what the human player is doing.

The two-foot long arm monitors the music in the room, so it can improvise based on the beat and rhythm. If the drummer is playing slowly, for example, the arm will mirror the tempo.

Read more

Fujitsu Laboratories today announced that it has developed deep learning technology that can analyze time-series data with a high degree of accuracy. Demonstrating promise for Internet-of-Things applications, time-series data can also be subject to severe volatility, making it difficult for people to discern patterns in the data. Deep learning technology, which is attracting attention as a breakthrough in the advance of artificial intelligence, has achieved extremely high recognition accuracy with images and speech, but the types of data to which it can be applied is still limited. In particular, it has been difficult to accurately and automatically classify volatile time-series data–such as that taken from IoT devices–of which people have difficulty discerning patterns.

Now Fujitsu Laboratories has developed an approach to that uses advanced to extract geometric features from time-series data, enabling highly accurate classification of volatile time-series. In benchmark tests held at UC Irvine Machine Learning Repository that classified time-series data captured from gyroscopes in wearable devices, the new technology was found to achieve roughly 85% accuracy, about a 25% improvement over existing technology. This technology will be used in Fujitsu’s Human Centric AI Zinrai artificial intelligence technology. Details of this technology will be presented at the Fujitsu North America Technology Forum (NAFT 2016), which will be held on Tuesday, February 16, in Santa Clara, California.

Background

In recent years, in the field of , which is a central technology in artificial intelligence, deep learning technology has been attracting attention as a way to automatically extract feature values needed to interpret and assess phenomena without rules being taught manually. Especially in the IoT era, massive volumes of time-series data are being accumulated from devices. By applying deep learning to this data and classifying it with a high degree of accuracy, further analyses can be performed, holding the prospect that it will lead to the creation of new value and the opening of new business areas.

Read more

Better ditch the watch and shirt.

Wearables invite Cyber Security Risks in the office.

Smart wearable technology has a future-is-now feel to it. Unfortunately, it also has a your-data-is-vulnerable feel as well. Here’s how smart wearables are putting your company’s cyber security at risk.

Read more

How robotics is making live music a more enriching experience.

Scientists have developed a ‘smart’ wearable robotic limb that responds to human gestures and the music it hears, allowing drummers to play with three arms.

The two-foot long robotic arm can be attached to a musician’s shoulder, and knows what to play by listening to the music in the room. It improvises based on the beat and rhythm. For instance, if the musician plays slowly, the arm slows the tempo. If the drummer speeds up, it plays faster.

Another aspect of its intelligence is knowing where it is located at all times, where the drums are, and the direction and proximity of the human arms.

Read more

Q-Dots improving wearables.

Spreading out iron dots on nanotubes could help create better wearable tech that is both reliable and more flexible. The technology looks beyond semiconductors, says lead researcher Yoke Khin Yap, and could change how we construct transistors.

Read more

One key question can it help control Glioblastoma.

A new “wearable” device being tested to suppress brain-cancer cell growth in patients ended its clinical trials early with positive results. Optune is a battery powered device researchers claim will extend the life of a patient with “newly diagnosed glioblastoma” when it is paired with traditional temozolomide chemotherapy. Researches were confident enough in its effectiveness to end the clinical trials (which ran from July 2009 to November 2014) of the device early. The device is likely not “the cure for cancer,” but it is a step forward in extending the life expectancy of brain-cancer patients and more research will be needed to see if it may be effective on other forms of cancer.

“With this new data, it appears the tumor-treating fields should be used upfront and become a standard of care. We should add this modality to what we’re currently doing for our patients,” said Dr. Maciej Mrugala, a brain-cancer specialist who led UW Medicine’s participation in the clinical trial.

“You get almost five months’ survival benefit. It may not sound like a lot, but if you’re living with this diagnosis, this is a meaningful improvement,” said Mrugala. UW Medicine was one of the first 15 U.S. providers to employ the novel tumor-treating therapy; now there are more than 200.

Glioblastoma multiforme is the most common primary brain tumor and a highly aggressive cancer. The Optune device, manufactured by Novocure, disrupts cancer-cell reproduction by sending alternating positive and negative charges between small ceramic discs embedded in on four sides of the mesh cap.

Read more