The Future Is Here Today...Robots, Genetics, AI, Longevity, Singularity

UCLA Team Creates New Kind of Mobile Phone Microscope

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by Aaron Saenz on November 11th, 2009
$10 of hardware and you could get medical lab results in just five minutes. Insane!

$10 of hardware and you could get medical lab results in just five minutes. Insane!

In the field of global medicine, laboratories are a precious commodity. Yet even if a remote village doesn’t have access to a local lab or even a doctor, they may be able to get reliable test results…through a mobile phone. Professor Aydogan Ozcan at UCLA has been developing a series of attachments for phones that will act as microscopes, but without lenses. Using hardware that costs less than $10, these mobile microscopes will be able to use the shadows of cells to detect illnesses. Ozcan, through his new company Microskia, is trying to bring these attachments to market and connect them, via the mobile phone, to a database which will then text the phone with results in just five minutes! Doctors, or maybe anyone with a phone in the field, could use the system to make quick, cheap, and accurate assessments of diseases. Check out the video from UCLA after the break.

Most of the emerging cases of HIV are in India and Africa, where access to central labs is infrequent. Checking blood samples in even the most routine cases can take days. Likewise with Malaria, still one of the biggest killers and most feared infectious diseases in the world. Different versions of Ozcan’s mobile phone attachments could help diagnose patients with these diseases in just minutes, providing better opportunities for care. As this technology develops, private use could expand as well. Imagine being able to take a daily blood sample at home and test it daily for pathogens. You could know you were sick before you ever had symptoms. There are other dangerous microscopic particles besides pathogens. Mobile phone microscopy could help researchers find asbestos, lead, or other environmental poisons quickly. With this level of quick analysis, healthcare and longevity would improve dramatically.

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3D Hologram: Best Video Conference Ever

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by Aaron Saenz on August 24th, 2009

Nothing inspires fear and obedience in your minions like appearing before them as a giant floating head. Just ask the Wizard of Oz. Now the middle managers of the world can pretend they are great and magnificent with the advent of a hologram system that allows you to teleconference in awe-inspiring 3D. ICT Graphics Lab displayed this new system at their booth at SIGGRAPH earlier this summer. Just like in Oz, a person was able to sit behind a curtain and appear before viewers via special cameras, a projector and a spinning mirror. The effect is wonderful, and sometimes hilarious. Check out the video below.

The Wizard of Oz? Emperor Palpatine? Jambi from Pee-wee's Playhouse? No, that's just Andrew in accounting.

The Wizard of Oz? Emperor Palpatine? Jambi from Pee-wee's Playhouse? No, that's just Andrew in accounting.

While holographic teleconferencing may be a wonderful application of this technology, the effects could be seen in a far wider arena. ICT can broadcast your face in real time, but they can also do the same with almost any image. Pre-recorded images can be rotated and manipulated and viewed in a full 360° arc. The possibilities for modeling and sharing 3D images are amazing. You can also scale large recorded images (like someone’s full body) down to fit in the head-sized viewing area. Hopefully we’ll see this scaling incorporated into the teleconferencing system. How cool would it be to have real Star Wars style communication in your home or office? Check out the pre-recorded image demonstration video further below.

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Holograms You Can Feel

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by Aaron Saenz on August 14th, 2009

Ladies and gentlemen, we are one step closer to having a fully functional holodeck. Thanks to the Shinoda Lab at theUniversity of Tokyo, you can now touch holograms. Concentrated blasts of ultrasound are used in conjunction with traditional holography to give you the impression of feeling the objects you see. It’s an amazing concept and will allow an entirely new way to interact in virtual reality. Marvel at the video from Shinoda Labs after the break (sorry, no sound).

Shinoda Lab uses ultrasound so you can feel holograms.

Shinoda Lab uses ultrasound so you can feel holograms.

Called the Airborne Ultrasound Tactile Display, the specially calibrated ultrasound emitter gives you the impression of physical pressure at the location of a holographic object. Because you aren’t actually touching the hologram, there’s no decrease in the quality of the image. Unlike a traditional speaker, the ultrasound can be focused at a particular location, so you only feel pressure at a certain point. This precision allows AUTD to let you feel individual drops of virtual rain, a bouncing ball, or even a tiny animal running across your palm.

I think it is hilarious and awesome that a key component of  the Shinoda Lab setup is a remote control from the Nintendo Wii. Two wiimotes serve as IR sensors that track the movement of your hand in the hologram space. In order to see your hand, you have to have a tiny marker place on your finger that is very reflective to IR light. As far as hand-tracking goes, it’s a remarkably simple setup. There are some obvious limitations you can see from the video. The size of the hand isn’t well preserved in the virtual space (probably because only one part of the hand is tracked in IR). Still, I’m sure Nintendo is overjoyed with the inventiveness of the Shinoda Lab. Especially since Shinoda just exhibited AUTD at the SIGGRAPH conference in New Orleans.

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