Bionic eyes have been a mainstay of science fiction for decades, but now real-world research is beginning to catch up with far-sighted storytellers. A raft of technologies is coming to market that restores sight to people with different kinds of vision impairment.
In January 2021, Israeli surgeons implanted the world’s first artificial cornea into a bilaterally blind, 78-year-old man. When his bandages were removed, the patient could read and recognize family members immediately. The implant also fuses naturally to human tissue without the recipient’s body rejecting it.
Likewise in 2020, Belgian scientists developed an artificial iris fitted to smart contact lenses that correct a number of vision disorders. And scientists are even working on wireless brain implants that bypass the eyes altogether.
Researchers at Montash University in Australia are working on trials for a system whereby users wear a pair of glasses fitted with a camera. This sends data directly to the implant, which sits on the surface of the brain and gives the user a rudimentary sense of sight.
Human-powered wearable
Scientists have found a way to harvest some of the energy you spend when you exercise and turn it into electricity. No one will be plugging themselves into the grid any time soon, but researchers at the University of Colorado, Boulder, believe their technology could power a heart-rate monitor or fitness tracker.
The team was able to fit thermoelectric generators into stretchable film bands that can be worn around the wrist. They cost less than $10 to make, and because they’re made from a liquid metal and polymer, they are both self-healing and easy to recycle.
Airports for drones and flying taxis
Our congested cities are in desperate need of a breather and relief may come from the air as opposed to the roads. Plans for a different kind of transport hub – one for delivery drones and electric air-taxis – are becoming a reality, with the first Urban AirPort receiving funding from the UK government.
It’s being built in Coventry. The hub will be a pilot scheme and hopefully proof of concept for the company behind it. Powered completely off-grid by a hydrogen generator, the idea is to remove the need for as many delivery vans and personal cars on our roads, replacing them with a clean alternative in the form of a new type of small aircraft, with designs being developed by Hyundai and Airbus, amongst others.
Infrastructure is going to be important. Organizations like the Civil Aviation Authority are looking into the establishment of air corridors that might link a city centre with a local airport or distribution centre.
Smart sutures that detect infections
How does a doctor know when a patient’s wound is infected? Well, they could wait for the patient to start displaying signs of an infection, or they could talk to a high school student from Ohio who has developed an ingenious and lifesaving invention.
At the age of 17, Dasia Taylor invented sutures that change colour from bright red to dark purple when a wound becomes infected, detecting a change in the skin’s pH level. When a wound from an injury or surgery becomes infected, its pH rises from 5 to 9. Taylor found that beetroot juice naturally changes colour at a pH of 9, and used that as a dye for suture material.
While other solutions are available – smart sutures coated with a conductive material can sense the status of a wound by changes in electrical resistance and send a message to a smartphone – these are less helpful in developing countries where smartphone use is not widespread.
Energy storing bricks
Scientists have found a way to store energy in the red bricks that are used to build houses.
Researchers led by Washington University in St Louis, in Missouri, US, have developed a method that can turn the cheap and widely available building material into “smart bricks” that can store energy like a battery.
Although the research is still in the proof-of-concept stage, the scientists claim that walls made of these bricks “could store a substantial amount of energy” and can “be recharged hundreds of thousands of times within an hour”.
The redbrick device developed by chemists at Washington University in St. Louis lights up a green light-emitting diode © D’Arcy laboratory/ Washington University in St. Louis
The researchers developed a method to convert red bricks into a type of energy storage device called a supercapacitor.
This involved putting a conducting coating, known as PEDOT, onto brick samples, which then seeped through the fired bricks’ porous structure, converting them into “energy-storing electrodes”.
Iron oxide, which is the red pigment in the bricks, helped with the process, the researchers said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by The Technology Express staff and is published from a syndicated feed)
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