Hasta La Gadget!

People lie to their doctors all the time, even though it’s for their own good. There’s a new invention in the works that makes it impossible to deny you had that extra slab of steak or that you smoked a couple of cigarettes: tooth sensors.

They were developed by a team from the National Taiwan University. Aside from being able to detect if the person is overeating or sneaking in a couple of smokes when he or she shouldn’t be, the system also informs the doctor about it.

The sensors were tested by sticking them onto eight dentures. The researchers discovered that the sensor had the capacity to distinguish between chewing, speaking, and smoking about 94% of the time.

It’s definitely an interesting gadget, although it might be a while before it’s deployed. But the question is: would you be willing to wear it, knowing your teeth will tell on you?

[via New Scientist and Motherboard via Engadget via Geeky Gadgets]

Robots are everywhere. From making noodles in the background to serving diners and waiting tables, they’re no strangers to the restaurant scene. And now they might be making their way into hospitals.

This isn’t the first time a robot was built for the healthcare industry, but Veebot has built one that will draw blood from your arm. They’ve combined robotics with image-analysis software so that nurses and medical technologists can be on call elsewhere.

First of all, the machine inflates the cuff and tightens it around your arm. It shines an infrared on your arm to locate a vein and uses an ultrasound to check if blood’s ripe for the taking.

Before it goes to clinical trials, Veebot wants the robot to be right 90% of the time when it decides to plunge the needle into the vein. As of now, that value is at 83%.

[via iEEE Spectrum via DVice]

Would you drink your sweat? Obviously, we’d all choose to drink water if we had a choice. But if there’s no clean water, would you drink sweat instead?

The Sweat Machine was created by engineer Andreas Hammar upon the request of Unicef.

It essentially purifies human sweat to turn it into drinking water. It’s not being used as a tool to tackle water shortages, but as a means to raise awareness on the issue.

Unicef recently brought out the machine to offer a glass of fresh sweat to visitors and footballers at last week’s Gothia Cup soccer tournament.

The Sweat Machine uses water filtration technology called Membrane Distillation that was developed by HVR and The Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. It uses a plastic cassette where the sweat to be filtered is heated into vapor and made to circulate between two membranes. This separates non-volatile substances effectively.

Hammar explained that a sweaty t-shirt can provide about 10ml of water, or just about a mouthful. Just think of how many sweaty shirts you’d need for a full glass of water.

[via Gizmag]

Move over, NFC. Uniqul is getting ready to unveil a new payment system that utilizes facial recognition to process payments. You can set aside your credit cards, debit cards, and checkbooks, too, because all you’ll need to pay for stuff when you shop is your face…and that’s already attached to your body.

Uniqul’s payment system links a person’s face with their bank account so that they’ll only have to gaze into a camera when they want to pay for something. No muss, no fuss, and no worries that come with lost or stolen cards.

Here’s how it works: stores are provided with a Uniqul tablet for their check-out counters. These tablets will take the customer’s photo and analyze the biometric data to locate the person in the database. After pressing an “OK” button, the payment is processed and the customer can go on his or her merry way.

Uniqul’s system is protected by military-grade algorithms, so nothing to worry about on that end. The system will be launching soon in Helsinki, Sweden.

[via Dvice]

The technical magicians at Disney Research are at it once more. This time, they’re working on a technology which allows users to feel sensations without actually having to touch a surface.

AIREAL is a combination of hardware and software which can create tiny air vortexes in 3D space. It was developed by researchers Rajinder Sodhi, Ivan Poupyrev, Matthew Glisson, and Ali Israr. A set of these small haptic-feedback devices can be used in combination with gesture-based control devices to let users feel sensations and virtual textures while interacting with their computers and video game systems. This is truly some science fiction stuff made real.

Check out some examples of AIREAL in action in the clip below:

Pretty amazing concept, no? Wouldn’t it be cool to combine this with a head-mounted display like the Oculus Rift? The wind could blow in your hair as you run through a virtual world, or you could feel bullets whizzing by when you’re being shot at. Crazy stuff. Or it might just turn up in a next generation of Disney’s Haunted Mansion – where you can actually feel the ghosts surrounding you. Hopefully the Disney Research guys talk to the Imagineers.

You can read the entire research paper on AIREAL here. [PDF]