RFID tags are making their way into toothbrushes, chairs, and even toilet
seats to monitor elderly people at
home, and a medicine container that will talk to the patient is under
development.

Another natural for the Guinness Book (besides the tiny Toshiba drive
mentioned in the Computing section) is a working elevator two and a half nanometers
tall, which may find a use in drug delivery.

Many medical devices featured in
Star Trek are also a reality today. They include a Star Trek-like
communicator badge that
has been on the market for a year. Two thirds of its customers are
hospitals.

Other interesting devices:

• A pocketable document scanner not much
  bigger than a pen scans and stores 100 pages and is available now.
• Latex gloves that gas germs to
  death will be available within a year. They could have a significant impact
  on disease prevention.
• A new fuel cell gets its juice from
  sewage, cleaning up the environment while producing electricity — throwing
  the current power generation paradigm into reverse.
• A nanomaterial has been developed that can repel or absorb liquid at the
  flick of a switch.

A wireless electronic prosthetic knee is enabling its recipient, who already
has had a total hip replacement and a total knee replacement on his other leg,
to contribute to prosthetics research with every step he takes. The e-knee
contains strain sensors, a transmitter, and an antenna that send data to a
computer for analysis.

Reference: Delio, Michelle (2004). “Hoping for a
Knee-Jerk Reaction.” Wired News, March 19.

Exoskeletons in the Closet

Robotics researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have built an
exoskeleton enabling a human wearer to walk, squat, bend, and swing from side to
side without noticeable reductions in agility yet with significant increase in
power and endurance. The Berkeley Lower Extremity Exoskeleton (BLEEX) consists
of mechanical metal leg braces, a power unit, and a backpack-like frame to carry
heavy loads. It could be used by workers to carry heavy loads in places where
vehicles cannot go, and could help the disabled to walk. There are no controls
— it just works by amplifying the power of its wearer’s movements. Wearing the
100-pound exoskeleton and a 70-pound backpack is said to feel like carrying a
mere five pounds.

In the current prototype, the wearer dons modified Army boots attached to a
pair of metal frames that fit around the legs. Next comes the exoskeleton’s
vest, with attached backpack frame holding a computer and an engine that
delivers hydraulic and electrical power. More than 40 sensors and hydraulic
actuators form a local area network (LAN) for the exoskeleton and function much
like a human nervous system. The sensors, including some embedded in the soles
of the boots, provide a constant stream of data to the computer, which then
adjusts the load on the exoskeleton based upon what the human is doing. In other
words, the exoskeleton is constantly calculating what it needs to do to
distribute the weight so little to no load is imposed on the wearer.

Work is ongoing to miniaturize the components, develop a quieter, more
powerful engine, and a faster, more intelligent controller. The six-month goal
is to enable a wearer to carry loads up to 120 pounds. Then, they hope to enable
a wearer to run and jump.

The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is spending US$50
million over the next five years on a related program called Exoskeletons for
Human Performance Augmentation, to “increase the capabilities of the
ground-based warfighter and radically alter the current military doctrine,”
reports Gabe Romain in BetterHumans. “This technology will extend the
mission payload and/or mission range of the soldier and increase the lethality
and survivability of ground troops for short-range missions and special
operations.”

Reference: UC Berkeley (2004). “Robotic
exoskeleton enhances human strength and endurance.” Science Blog, March 4.

Reference: Romain, Gabe (2004). “Robotic
Legs Closer for US Soldiers: Lower body exoskeleton could also help firefighters
and rescue workers.” Betterhumans, March 5.

Seeing-Eye System for the Blind

A wearable “seeing” assistant called iCare is designed to help blind
people read books, surf the Web, recognize faces, and move about. It consists of
a glasses-mounted camera, a backpack laptop, a headset, and a microphone.
Software in the laptop converts the camera images into spoken words. It can
“speak” continuously as its wearer moves, or only when spoken to (“What is
directly in front of me?” “Who just walked into the room?”).

A blind computer science student at Arizona State University, where the
device was developed, said that used as a reading assistant it was “as fast as a
sighted person.” On the Web, “It makes things much more accessible. It gives the
menus and helps navigate your search — it’s very interactive and works really
well.”

The system’s “HumanRecognizer” component is less developed and still on the
lab bench. Although it “has a high probability of recognizing people from its
database” from the color of their hair, eyes, and facial characteristics, the
lighting has to be “just right” and the person has to be directly facing the
camera. The “SceneAnalyzer” component, which requires a second camera or a
scanner to supply the third dimension, can tell the wearer about the location
and distance of doorways, objects, and people in a room.

Though currently very bulky, for the 90 percent of blind people who don’t
read Braille it could become popular, especially if its current $2,000 price tag
shrinks along with its bulk.

Reference: Knapp, Louise (23004). “Seeing-Eye Computer
Guides Blind.” Wired News, March 30.

Elder Care

Intel recently demonstrated radio-frequency ID (RFID) technology to US
government officials interested in averting disaster to the healthcare system as
boomers retire, putting an entire bale of straw on the camel’s already
overburdened back. RFID tags could be installed on toothbrushes, chairs, and
even toilet seats to monitor elderly people at home, reports Celeste Biever in
New Scientist, enabling family and professional caregivers to monitor
whether an elderly person was behaving normally and reducing the need for
hospital or nursing home stays.

Intel’s prototype is bulky, with the RFID reader (which senses and reads from
the tags in nearby objects) taking up the space of two AA batteries in a glove
the patient must wear. Intel plans to miniaturize the reader to something that
might be worn on a necklace, as an interim step to eliminating the need for a
wearable reader at all.

The reader wirelessly sends information about any tagged objects the person
touches to a computer, which then figures out what the person is doing —
brushing teeth, making a cup of tea, etc. The computer is on the Internet, so
caregivers can check in from time to time, and the computer could automatically
send email or SMS alerts to caregivers.

RFID tags are cheap and require no major new infrastructure to be deployed.
In fact, as Biever notes and as we have reported several times (most recently,
here),
“they will soon be present on most objects anyway.”

Reference: Biever, Celeste (2004). “RFID chips watch
Grandma brush teeth.” New Scientist, March 17.

For background on this topic, see Robots That
Sense and Taking the
Lead in In-home Care in previous issues of the Digest.

Talking Pillbox

A US company is developing a miniature computer-chip-and-loudspeaker label to
fit on a prescription bottle which, when pressed, will announce what medicine is
inside, how to take it, and whether there are side effects or interactions.

To make a label, the pharmacist would enter the dosage and other instructions
into a computer, which would then transmit the information wirelessly to the
chip in the label.

The device could be on the market in 18 months for less than US$1 in
quantity. At least three competing products are already on the market, but they
are said to have drawbacks.

Reference: Johnson, Linda A. (2004). “N.J.
firm hopes to license talking pill bottles.” Associated Press via
Philly.com, March 29.

Nano-elevator

The world’s tiniest elevator is a platform on three legs about two and a half
nanometers high. It moves less than a nanometer up and down. The platform moves
up the legs in the presence of an acid, and down in the presence of a base.

This astonishing machine is only an “extremely incremental” step toward
developing useful nanodevices for drug delivery and other functions, says its
developer, who adds that the science is about “where the Wright brothers were
100 years ago in relation to flight.”

Its real utility, when perfected and when other components are in place, may
be as a valve to open and close a tiny cavity to allow a few drug molecules to
reach a cell.

Reference: Fountain, Henry (2004). “Mr. Otis, Call Your
Office: A Nano-Elevator Is Built.” New York Times, March 23.

Star Trek Devices Here Now

“Many of the high-tech instruments simulated on the ‘Star Trek’ set are a
reality, used to treat patients in hospitals and clinics around the world,”
writes Bernadette Tansey in the San Francisco Chronicle. She mentions
imaging scanners, non-invasive surgical lances such as the CyberKnife,
and needle-free “hypospray” injections as examples. Yet when Star Trek
began in 1964, none of these technologies existed. Now, some are even shrinking
to the size of the handheld “tricorder,” and their functions are starting to be
combined in a single “diapeutic” (diagnostic-therapeutic) device.

Reference: Tansey, Bernadette (2004). “Trek
Tech: Medical technology is boldly going where ‘Star Trek’ has gone before.”
San Francisco Chronicle, March 15.

Star Trek Communicator

To communicate with one another at a distance, the crew of the space ship in
the Star Trek TV series tap badges on their chests, speak the name of the
person they want to talk to, and then talk. The device has come down to Earth in
the form of the Vocera, a two-ounce badge containing a digital signal
processor chip and a wi-fi radio-on-a-chip. When hit, the badge radios the name
spoken by the wearer to a computer running speech recognition software, the
computer looks up the name in its database and activates that person’s badge,
and the conversation takes place via wireless VoIP
(Voice-Over-Internet Protocol). The badge has been available for a year, and
more than two thirds of its 60 customers are hospitals or other health care
providers.

Paging a doctor the old way usually takes several minutes, and it is not even
certain the doctor is available to respond. With the Vocera badge, the
communication is almost instantaneous if the doctor is available, and if not,
the caller can immediately ask for another doctor, by name or by specialty.
Saying “I need an anesthesiologist” connects the caller with the nearest
available anesthesiologist.

A 300-bed hospital in Baltimore says it recovered some 3,400 hours of time
that would have been wasted without the badge system, which can also send and
receive messages to and from phones and pagers.

Reference: Hesseldahl, Arik (2004). “Your Trekkie
Communicator Is Ready.” Forbes, March 16.

Pen Scanner

Roll an 8.5 inches long by 0.5 inches diameter DocuPen document
scanner down a page for about four seconds, and you have it in memory. A red
light flashes if you go too fast, and the scanner turns off if you go too
slowly. It is powered by four button-sized batteries, has two megabytes of
memory, and can store up to 100 pages of text. It cannot store color, but it can
handle images as well as text. Viewing the digitized pages requires a simple USB
connection to a PC. The DocuPen costs $199.

Reference: Jacobs, Larry (2004). “Copier
Pen.” ABCNEWS Cybershake, March 5.

Germ-Killing Gloves

A new disposable glove for hospitals and the food industry emits chlorine
dioxide, a gas harmless to humans (in the tiny concentrations emitted by the
glove) but deadly to bacteria, viruses, fungi, and even parasites, reports
Louise Knapp in Wired. The glove “has passed the same tests that makeup
has to go through. There was no dermal reaction,” the company said.

The gloves are impregnated with microspheres holding the chemical precursors
of chlorine dioxide. The chemicals are activated and give off the gas when
exposed to light, even at low levels, for up to four hours. The gas cannot be
seen or smelled.

The manufacturer says the gloves destroyed 99.99 percent of E coli in tests.
They will cost about 30 percent more than regular gloves and will be available
within a year.

Assuming it works as advertised, the glove could have a significant impact on
healthcare by reducing illness and disease spread by hand.

Reference: Knapp, Louise (2004). “Gloves Put Death
Grip on Germs.” Wired News, March 16.

Fuel Cell Feeds on Sewage

A prototype microbial fuel cell developed at Pennsylvania State University
has generated electricity while cleaning wastewater. It has removed up to 78
percent of organic matter from wastewater while producing up to 200 milliwatts
per square meter — enough to power a small light bulb. Bacteria in the cell
metabolize the organic matter (food, to them) skimmed from the settling pond of
a sewage treatment plant, and in the process release a steady stream of
electrons — electrical current.

The United States spends $25 billion a year to treat 33 billion gallons of
wastewater, so this could clearly be a significant technology if they can get
the cost of the fuel cells down and scale them up to industrial production
levels.

Reference: Snow, David (2004). “Shocking Way to
Transform Waste.” Wired News, March 4.

Nanograss

A “chameleonic” nanomaterial developed at Bell Labs “sheds water droplets
like a newly waxed sports car, but, at the flick of a switch, turns absorbent
like a ‘quicker picker upper’ paper towel,” reports Kenneth Chang in the New
York Times. It was made by carving a bed of nanoscale spikes in silicon and
coating the spikes with a water-repellent polymer. Bell Labs calls it
“nanograss.” Droplets of liquid placed on the surface cannot penetrate the space
between the spikes, and simply roll off, but when voltage is applied to the
silicon, any liquid present is absorbed into the spaces, like a sponge.

The material could find uses in batteries, computer chips (for cooling), boat
and torpedo hulls (for reducing drag), filters and switches for optical
networks, and for chemical mixing. One can envisage applications in
pharmaceuticals and other areas of healthcare.

Reference: Chang, Kenneth (2004). “‘Nanograss’ Turns
Sticky to Slippery in an Instant.” New York Times, March 16.