Talking Surveillance Cameras
Here is a system that allows surveillance cameras to ‘talk’ to the public through their Smartphones. Researchers have created a technology that allows public cameras to send personalised messages to people without compromising their privacy. The team developed a real-time end-to-end system called PHADE to allow this process – known as private human addressing. While traditional data transmission protocols need to first learn the destination’s IP or MAC address, this system uses motion patterns as the address code for communication. The PHADE system works using a server to receive video streams from cameras to track people. The camera builds a packet by linking a message to the address code and broadcasts the packet. Upon receiving the packet, a mobile device of each of the targets uses sensors to extract its owner’s behavior and follow the same transformation to derive a second address code. If the second address code matches with the address code in the message, the mobile device automatically delivers the message to its owner.
Exoskeleton to Help Paraplegics Walk
This is an exoskeleton that can restore mobility for people confined to wheelchairs without the use of crutches. Atalante is an autonomous exoskeleton walking with paraplegics (people with lower limb paralysis). Atalante has been designed by the French start-up company Wandercraft. The Wandercraft team said the exoskeleton is planned for use in rehab centers, first in Europe, aiming to enable new treatments and longer, more frequent sessions. It will let mobility-impaired persons walk again. The objective is to help wheelchair users recover autonomy. Atalante has two movable legs and a back rest which are attached to the user via straps that help distribute pressure uniformly.
Magnetic 3-D-Printed Structures That Crawl and Jump
MIT engineers have created soft, 3-D-printed structures whose movements can be controlled with a wave of a magnet, much like marionettes without the strings. The menagerie of structures that can be magnetically manipulated includes a smooth ring that wrinkles up, a long tube that squeezes shut, a sheet that folds itself, and a spider-like ‘grabber’ that can crawl, roll, jump, and snap together fast enough to catch a passing ball. It can even be directed to wrap itself around a small pill and carry it across a table. By controlling the magnetic orientation of individual sections in the structure, the researchers can produce structures and devices that can almost instantaneously shift into intricate formations, and even move about, as the various sections respond to an external magnetic field.