Tag Archives: Carmel Majidi

iSkin Stickers Provide Touch Control for Mobile Devices

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iSkin Silicone Sticker 01

What if there were a simpler way of interacting with our smartphones and tablets than reaching for the connected smartwatch? Silicone stickers that rely on touch input to control mobile devices could be a solution to the problem.

It’s usually Sci-Fi movie characters that sport a keyboard on their arm, and somehow that keyboard is easier to use than any other input method. Not to mention that it’s always at hand, if you know what I mean. Not to get into HUD land, having a method to control other devices remotely attached to your arm is nothing short of fantastic, especially when there are no implants involved, and the controller can be removed at any time. To expand the idea, it’s far more convenient to use a touch surface in such a scenario, than having buttons that need extra pressure and effort.

iSkin stickers came into existence as the result of an ambitious collaboration between Martin Weigel and Jurgen Steimle, from the Max Planck Institute for Informatics and Saarland University, Saarbrucken, Germany, Carmel Majidi and Tong Lu from the Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, U.S., Gilles Bailly from CNRS LTCI, Telecom-ParisTech, Paris, France, and Antti Oulasvirta from the Aalto University, Helsinki, Finland.

Being made from silicone, the product itself is flexible and stretchable (even though I’m pretty sure it has its limits in these aspects), and can be attached to about any area of the body with the help of some medical-grade adhesive. iSkin includes both resistive and capacitative sensors, and as you have probably imagined, can be tailored to suit specific areas and needs.

Some of the possible uses of these silicone skin stickers include answering and placing phone calls, texting and controlling music playback. Depending on their size and the area of the body they attach to, they could definitely serve more functions. The prototypes are hard-wired to a computer, but future versions of the skin stickers will be able to send and receive data wirelessly, and this is in fact the ultimate goal of the scientists who have developed iSkin.

The paper detailing the scientific basis of the iSkin silicone stickers is available in PDF format here. To get a better idea of how the stickers look and work in real life, check out the following video:

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Phase-Change Material Turns Solid Rock Robots into Squishy Things

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Soft Hard Robot

The MIT researchers who worked on this concept must have had octopi in mind, as there are a lot of similarities between the phase-change material and the way these creatures turn from forceful bodies into liquid-like forms.

While some geeks might like octopi, it’s a certainty that a greater number of them liked Terminator 2, where Robert Patrick’s T-1000 changed his appearance from a human form to a liquid-like thing that goes through jail bars. Being able to bend into shape just to regain the strength and tackle a particular situation in the shape couldn’t have been conceived until now, all that being nothing more than special FX. Yet, researchers at MIT mean to prove that creating such a material is possible, and that the resulting robots could have a lot of applications.

In the above image, you can see the material developed by the MIT researchers in both of its solid and soft states. MIT’s Prof. Anette Hosoi explained what would happen if robots maintained their soft state while trying to handle solid objects: “You can’t just create a bowl of Jell-O, because if the Jell-O has to manipulate an object, it would simply deform without applying significant pressure to the thing it was trying to move.”

Hosoi also emphasized the advantages that a malleable robot would have over its ever solid counterparts: “If you’re trying to squeeze under a door, for example, you should opt for a soft state, but if you want to pick up a hammer or open a window, you need at least part of the machine to be rigid.”

Besides Hosoi, others involved in the research included her former graduate student Nadia Cheng, Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, and Stony Brook University in New York. With so many bright minds at work, it’s obvious that things will progress rather quickly.

Carmel Majidi, assistant professor of mechanical engineering in the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, who wasn’t involved in the research for the phase-change material, pointed out that “But for a lot of robotics tasks, reversibly tuning the mechanical rigidity of a joint can be just as important. This work is a great demonstration of how thermally controlled rigidity-tuning could potentially be used in soft robotics.”

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