Wireless Charging of devices

Now a days, we heard of wireless charging of mobiles through power mats. The basic concept of wireless charging is in faraday's law, the law states that whenever a conductor is placed in time changing electric field an emf(Electro motive force) called as voltage is induced in that particular conductor. This concept is used and is applied to wireless charging of devices.

Whenever a mobile is placed in power mats, this power mats are capable of emitting alternating current which will create a magnetic field and mobile is equipped with conductor(wireless charging contacts), and now according to the law, this magnetic field will induce the voltage in the conductor and the mobile gets charged

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Only power mat need to be plugged in. With this concept, with one plug and one cord we can charge many devices by placing on power mat.

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SUPER CONDUCTORS-EXPLAINED

        Now we will learn about new concept called 'SuperConductors'.We will start from beginning,metals are classified into 3 types conductors,semiconductors and insulators.when voltage is applied to conductors or semiconductors,electron flow(current) occurs, and this flow is restricted by resistance which is the property of conductors.This resistance is resulted due to impurities,defects and vibrations of materials in the crystal lattice.This phenomena is called resistivity which depends upon length and area of the conductor.

        Inverse of resistivity is conductivity.conductivity of conductor lot depends on temperature.Normal conductors conduct below 30k.Scientists worked a lot to increase the conductivity of a conductor.They have varied the temperature but couldn't get much from conductors,because the conductors already have free electrons and increase in temperature will further add energy to this free electrons which makes them to move in less organised patterns making less conductivity at higher temperature.This is not the case with semiconductors,when temperature is increased,the energy is added and in turn helps to free a electron,so at high temperatures more electrons are freed which increases the conductivity.This kind of transition from normal conductivity to super conductivity which will occur when we go from room temperature to high temperature is called Superconducting state and the metals are called Super conductors.The phenomena of exactly zero electrical resistance occurring in certain metals when they are at high temperature is called Superconductivity.

What causes superconductivity?
        We had seen that certain metals suddenly become superconductors,when they are kept at critically high temperature.Reason is, at this temperature electrons inside them will join with each other which are called copper pairs.At this temperature electrons will move more freely without being scattered.High temperature will result more free electrons thus increasing the conductivity of semiconductors at high temperature.At present scientists are working hard to have this feature at room temperature.

        Another interesting thing that need to pay attention with superconductors is Meissner Effect.Normally materials allow magnetic fields to flow through them,but when semiconductors were at high temperature,they increasingly expel these fields.This effect is called Meissner effect and the principle is used in maglev trains.

        Technological applications of superconductors are adopted in Maglev trains,MRI(Magnetic Resonance Imaging) and NMR(Nuclear Magnetic Resonance) as they require strong electromagnetic fields. 

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New Technologies in the Market

1.Ocean currents: New source of renewable energy

                Ocean currents, a source of energy that is gonna add up to the list of renewable energy sources in the years to come. Turbines placed beneath the ocean are able  to rotate with the help of forces acting upon them, such as breaking waves, winds, tides caused by gravitational pull of sun and moon. These spirals developing beneath are able to generate mechanical energy that makes turbines to rotate, which cuts the magnetic flux. According to Faraday law, whenever a conductor is placed in the region of time changing magnetic field an EMF is induced into the conductor. This results in current in conductor which is valuable.

2. Erascan: New white board scanner and eraser

                Erascan is able to scan all the writings and drawings on the white board and is capable of storing the data in digital format. It lets you to transfer the data over mail, share it or delete it. It is able to identify, who is written on board and stores emails, urls, images etc in digital format. The idea is to keep the copy of drawings for future use.

3.Drones: New way of delivering products

                Biggest e-commerce website has recently announced that It may deliver products within 30 min or less to make customer delight. Drones are devices which can fly in air and carry the products. These are controlled by people. Since these involve in security of country we should wait for clearance of government.

                The idea had been extended by Facebook founder i.e with the help of drones it is easier to provide internet services to rural areas and to increase its users. No longer one can depend upon optical fiber to meet the increasing demands. Now these drones will be revolving at a certain height and will provide the internet services to every user.

4.Cybernetic Reading :New way of reading books for blind people

                Implanted devices are fixed at our forefinger and at ear as shown in figure. When one touches the printed words with this devices, the words are pronounced at ear, with which one can read without actually seeing. These implanted devises are able to recognize the characters and is able to relay the information at ear. It’s a good gift for blind people apart from Braille.

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Brain Computer Interface-The Next Generation User Interface

Brain-computer interface (BCI) is a fast-growing emergent technology, in which researchers aim to build a direct channel between the human brain and the computer.

These are linguistic independent and can be used anywhere across the world .

Types of BCI:

1.    Invasive 2. Non-Invasive 3. Semi Invasive

Invasive: Invasive BCIs are implanted directly into the grey matter of the brain during neurosurgery. As they rest in the grey matter, invasive devices produce the highest quality signals but are prone to scare tissues.

Non-Invasive: In this process the user wears a wearable cap which is studded with electrodes.It has no complication of surgery but signals are weak as they are placed above the thick skull.

Semi Invasive: Semi-Invasive BCI devices are implanted inside the skull but rest outside the brain rather than amidst the grey matter.

Applications:

• Provide disabled people with communication, movement restoration.

• Provide enhanced control of devices such as wheel chairs, vehicles, or assistance robots for people with disabilities.

• Provide additional channel of control in computer games.

• Monitor attention in long-distance drivers or aircraft pilots, send out alert and warning for aircraft pilots.

• Develop intelligent relaxation devices.

• Control robots that function in dangerous or inhospitable situations (e.g., underwater or in extreme heat or cold).

• Bionics/Cybernetics

• Dream Capture

• “Google Search” through brain

BCI research is an interdisciplinary endeavour involving neuroscience,engineering,signal processing,rehabilitation and lies at the intersection of emerging technologies such as Machine learning and artificial intelligence among others.

BCI is considered as a new frontier in science and technology.

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GIGABIT FIDELITY(Gi-Fi)

         Gi-Fi will helps to push wireless communications to faster drive. For many years cables ruled the world. Since the installation of these optical fibers need much cost,caused a greater difficulty  and thus led to wireless access. The first and foremost one is Bluetooth which is used to cover 9-10 meters. Later on WI-FI entered into field which can cover 91 meters. However the need for increase in data rates are growing, so to meet the requirements we need another way of transmission.

Gi-Fi is a wireless technology developed to work in a range of 10m with transmission rates of gigabits per second. Gi-Fi is evolved since in Bluetooth and WIFI transfer rates are 800kbps and 11mbps respectively, but for Gi-Fi as the name specifies it is gigabits per second.

How it works???

            In  this we use duplexer so that antenna  can be used for both transmission and reception purposes. During transmission, intended data files are converted from IF signals into RF signals using two mixers. To have  high signal strength  the converted RF signals are fed to power amplifier at the transmission side. During reception, RF files are converted to  a range of  normal data files. In receiver side, we use heterodyne  receiver construction  to avoid leakage from direct conversion.    

         With Gi-Fi we can even reduce the power consumption from 10Watts(in Bluetooth and Wi-Fi) to 2Watts which is mainly essential. With the GIFI we can access home appliances and internet radio modules.  Gi-Fi is even highly secured as it follows IEEE 802.15.3C By considering the success of Wi-Fi and Wimax. we can surely say that GIFI is able to play a key role in next years.

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latest land mine detection technology

Detecting land mines is the major problem in combing areas where terrorists place land mines to kill the public as well as soldiers in reaching them. There are many technologies developed so far, but here we talk about latest one to detect the land mines before stepping on it. This technology is under design by LEMUR STUDIO design organization located at Columbia. This technology needs two devices, one fitted on shoes for prior detection and another on hand to view the exact location of land mine through GPS. 

The key elements in the two devices are coil, microprocessor, radio transmitter, hand held device, GPS. Coil in the shoe is to emit the electromagnetic waves, microprocessor is used to detect the changes in the electromagnetic waves, radio transmitter is used to send the changes to the hand held device and the GPS is for locating the object in terms of longitude, latitude and elevation.

HOW IT WORKS???

The coil in the shoe is emitting electromagnetic waves(these are released when electrons pass through conductor) continuously, when these get disturbed by the land mine, the signals at that moment are captured by the microprocessor which are sent to hand held device through GPS. The alarm present in the hand held device gets on and position of the land mine can be detected before stepping on it.

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Neurocam that records automatically what interest us

 In 20^th century it takes so much of time to take photo with a normal camera as we have to open the shutter and then click on the button. In this span of time the incident may disappear. So to overcome this problem a latest technological device called Neurocam has been introduced.

Neurocam system includes a headband equipped to hold an iphone next to the wearer’s temple. The phone is fitted with a special prism so that the camera can record footage from the wearer’s point of view. The headset also includes EEG sensors that can scan your brain for correlative spikes in interest. The Neurocam iphone application assigns the EEG data a value from 0 to 100.                            

                                          

                                         Fig: Electroencephalography reading

Neurocam uses brain wave sensorslike as in the moving cat ears and TV navigation, but this time hooks up with your smart phone camera. This prototype, demoned at last week at Japan’s Human sensing 2013 conference gauges your interest on a scale of 0 to 100 and if your brain wave redout tops 60, it will start to record video, eventually transforming the footage into five second GIFs. In order to get the iphone camera to eye-view, the smartphone connects to a headband which houses the brainwave sensor. Sideways on the camera sensor then faces through a prism so its looking at what you are looking at…and not just inside of your ear.

                                                      

                                                       Fig: Neurocam system

                                                    

                                                     Fig: wearing of Neurocam system

The experimental wearable, barring the smartphone hanging off, looks pretty similar to other brain wave reading wearables, although the addition of an I phone will certainly make it weighter in comparision. The neurocam is the latest product to come from the neurowear project, which already gave us the aforementioned Nekomimi cat ears. We are not sure how comfortable we’d feel having all those radio waves near to our need for an extended period, although according to Digi info news, this device, including its current design and shape are still in the throes of development for now. The world always needs more GIFs.

                                                            It may look like poor man’s Google glass, but don’t let the iphone strapped to the side of your head thing fool you, neurocam and its accompanying app may foretell the future of advertising.

                                                         

                                                                 Fig: Necomimi cat ears

                                   

                           

                                      

      

                                                          Fig: screen of iphone while recording

                                                            Before the introduction of this Neurocam the status of a person is recognized based on the different types of waves produced by the brain. For every type of wave produced by the brain the mood of a person is stated. But now based on the frequency range of the brain waves the meter reading of the neurocam varies.       

                                                       

                                                  

                                                                 Fig: Different types of brain waves

                                                            Because this system is hands free, we think it could capture a life log, which would be different from deliberately pressing a shutter to capture things you like. As an application in a B2B environment Neurocam could determine what goods in stores interest people. And because the information includes position data, you can do mapping, so it could also show what places people are interested in as an aid for urban development planning. We think it could be used in lots of ways like that.

                                                            The algorithm for quantifying brain waves was co-developed by Associate professor Yasue Mitsukura at Keio University.

                                                            It is probably not a good idea to wear the camera during speed dating or shopping though you’d probably end up with way to many unnecessary GIFs. Not to mention you will look ridiculous.

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