Smart Textile Market Poised to Grow Rapidly

by Alfred Poor | June 3, 2016 | Enabling Tech, General News

As wearables find more traction in the marketplace — especially for health and medical applications — they will continue to “disappear” into our daily lives. One key development that will make this possible is the advent of “smart...

Cheese and Seaweed in Edible Supercap [video]

by Alfred Poor | June 2, 2016 | Enabling Tech, General News, Medical

A lot of exciting “wearable” Health Tech projects involved “wearing” a device on the inside of your body. In other words, you swallow it. But if it requires electrical power to operate, you need to find a safe way to provide this energy. As...

Exoskeleton Harvests Energy While Walking

by Alfred Poor | May 31, 2016 | Enabling Tech, General News

We’ve written about exoskeletons many times in the past, but mostly in the context of assistive devices that can help people walk and move better than they could on their own. However, as our past story about Rice Students who modified a knee brace to harvest...

Contest for Wireless IoT Ideas

by Alfred Poor | May 25, 2016 | Enabling Tech, General News

One of the principle characteristics of many wearable Health Tech devices is that they not only gather important information, but they can then transmit that information wirelessly so that it can be stored, processed, and analyzed. Many users are familiar with...

Toyota and DEKA Join Forces For Next Generation iBOT Wheelchair [video]

by Bruce Brown | May 23, 2016 | Enabling Tech, General News

  You may not recognize the term “iBOT”, but odds are you’ve heard of the Segway. The balance-controlled, two-wheeled vehicle still isn’t a common sight even 14 years after its introduction in 2002, but you can sometimes see them used by...

Hairy 3D Printing Has Many Uses [video]

by Alfred Poor | May 20, 2016 | Enabling Tech, General News

Consider hair. It keeps our heads warm (though this is less effective for some of us who are follicly-challenged). It can reduce friction between surfaces. But hairs do much more than that. They keep us from falling over, due to the tiny cilia in the inner ear that...