Hasta La Gadget!

Researchers at MIT have demonstrated the first laser that uses the element germanium.

The laser, which operates at room temperature, could prove to be an important step toward computer chips that move data using light instead of electricity, say the researchers.

“This is a very important breakthrough, one I would say that has the highest possible significance in the field,” says Eli Yablonovitch, a professor in the electrical engineering and computer science department of the University of California, Berkeley who was not involved in the research told Wired.com. “It will greatly reduce the cost of  communications and make for faster chips.”

Even as processors become more powerful, they’re running into a communications barrier: Just moving data between different parts of the chip takes too long. Also, higher bandwidth connections are needed to send data to memory. Traditional copper connections are becoming impractical because they consume too much power to transport data at the increasingly higher rates needed by next-generation chips. Copper also generates excessive heat, and that imposes other design limits because engineers need to find ways of dissipating the heat.

Transmitting data with lasers, which can concentrate light into a narrow, powerful beam, could be a cheaper and more power efficient alternative. The idea, known as photonic computing, has become one of the hottest areas of computer research.

“The laser is just totally new physics,” says Lionel Kimerling, an MIT professor whose Electronic Materials Research Group developed the germanium laser.

While lasers are attractive, the materials that are used in lasers currently — such as gallium arsenide — can be difficult to integrate into fabs.

That’s given birth to “external lasers,” says Yablonovitch. Lasers have to be constructed separately and grafted on to the chips, instead of directly building them on the same silicon that holds the chips’ circuits. This reduces the efficiency and increases the cost.

A germanium laser solves that problem, because it could in principle be built alongside the rest of the chip, using similar processes and in the same factory.

“It’s going to take a few years to learn how to integrate this type of laser into a standard silicon process,” says Yablonovitch. “But once we know that, we can have silicon communication chips that have internal lasers.”

Eventually, MIT researchers believe germanium lasers could be used not just for communications, but for the logic elements of the chips too — helping to build computers that perform calculations using light instead of electricity.

But University of California, Berkeley’s Yablonovitch says it is unlikely that light will replace electricity entirely. “I think we will be using light in conjunction with electronic logic circuits,” he says. “Light allows internal communications much more efficiently, but the logic elements themselves are likely to remain driven by electricity.”

Graphic:Christine Daniloff/MIT

Take a deep breath and exhale. Feeling a little tight around the middle? Your corset could be sending you a message about air pollution.

Designer Kristin O’Friel has created a garment that reacts to the carbon dioxide levels in the environment and offers physical feedback by tightening the bodice in relation to air quality.

“I wanted to create an experience that changed our perception of environmental data,” says O’Friel, “by making a wearable device that engaged with this information in a direct and tangible way.”

The CO2RSET has a carbon dioxide sensor sewn into the garment. It responds to CO2 readings by tightening or loosening itself when the levels of the gas in the atmosphere increase or decrease, respectively. O’Friel designed it as a student in the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University’s Tisch School of Arts.

O’Friel says she chose a corset because it cinches the waist and forces wearers to breathe shallowly. “It’s contextually appropriate as the wearable interface to air quality,” she says.

The corset uses a TGS4161 sensor from a company called Figaro and mini gear motors from Solarbotics for the actuation.

The garment may not be very practical, but its a fun way to introduce the idea of wearable computing and open it up to possibilities.

Take a closer look at the corset:

More at Kristin O’Friel’s Flickr stream

See Also:

• A Mona Lisa Created from Motherboard Bits
• Dance Dance Revolution Game Pad Morphs Into a Purse

[via UberGizmo]

Photos: Kristin O’Friel

Before Toyota made cars, it made robots. It’s making them again, and wants to use them in a most unusual place.

When it was founded in 1926, Toyoda Automatic Loom Works (as it was then known) manufactured automatic fabric looms that could detect problems and shut down automatically. It marketed these revolutionary devices as having “autonomation” — automation with human intelligence.

Now Toyota, looking ahead at the second half of this century, sees a mounting health care crisis and aging population coming to Japan. It sees a future where manufacturing robotic workers is the hot new industry and “autonomation” takes on a whole new meaning.

And the first place we might see these robots is in hospitals.

Japan’s aging population and low birthrate point to a looming shortage of workers, and Japan’s elder care facilities and hospitals are already competing for nurses. This fact has not escaped Toyota, which runs Toyota Memorial Hospital in Toyota City, Japan. Taking a lead from Honda, Toyota in 2004 announced plans to build “Toyota Partner Robots” and begin selling them in 2010 after extensive field trials at Toyota Memorial.

Toyota doesn’t see these machines serving only as nurses. They’re also being designed to provide help around the house and do work at the factory. But it’s the idea of robotic nurses that drew support when Japan’s Machine Industry Memorial Foundation estimated Japan could save 2.1 trillion yen (about $21 billion) in health care costs each year using robots to monitor the nation’s elderly.

This is more than some futuristic fantasy. The government is drafting safety regulations for service robots, which would include nursing droids. A new agency, the Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization, has launched a five-year project to improve safety standards for the machines. The South Korean Government has even drawn up a code of ethics for how robots should treat humans and, perhaps ironically, how humans should treat robots.

Toyota's 'partner robot' makes a little music.

“As aging of the population is a common problem for developed countries, Japan wants to become an advanced country in the area of addressing the aging society with the use of robots,” Motoki Korenaga, a ministry of trade and industry official, told Agence France-Presse.

It isn’t so far-fetched. Japan leads the world in building robots, and the bots show remarkable skill. Honda’s famous android, Asimo, has served tea, conducted the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and freaked-out James May of the BBC program Top Gear. Toyota’s robots have even played the violin and the trumpet.

Of course, there’s a huge difference between waving a conductor’s baton and providing aid and comfort to grandma. But Japan’s biggest automakers are determined to make this work. Honda has spent hundreds of millions of dollars developing its human-like robots, and Toyota has 200 people working on the project full-time. To put that in perspective, it might assign 500 engineers to developing a new car platform. Toyota also is working with at least 10 corporate suppliers and 11 universities.

Toyota’s experience building cars, particularly hybrids, will be invaluable. It makes all of its own motors, batteries and power electronics, and it has worked with electronics giant NEC to develop specialized computer vision processors. All are critical components for robots. And like Honda, Toyota’s robot and autonomous vehicle programs are sharing sensing, mapping and navigation technologies. And the automotive giant has the added advantage of running a hospital where it can test its robo-nurses. Toyota says the first of them could be in service next year, and their descendants could be working on the moon by 2020. Seriously.

Toyota and Honda aren’t going to stop building cars, but both see a big market for robots. Toyota is so bullish on bots, it sees them becoming a core business by 2020 (.pdf). Some may see these machines as a threat to our jobs, if not our safety — particularly if they’re serving as nurses. The last thing people want is T-100 checking their IV drip. But the Japanese seem to be thinking of bots like Astroboy — loyal creations willing to sacrifice themselves to save their humans friends.

Either way, Japan’s biggest automakers are doing what they can to make robots a reality.

Photos: Toyota

See Also:

• Robots Perform Shakespeare
• Surgical Robots Operate With Precision
• Robo-Ethicists Want to Revamp Asimov’s 3 Laws
• Humanoid Robots Share Their First Kiss

Cannondale has pulled out the old-fashioned mechanical suspension inside its famous Lefty front-fork and stuffed in some electronics. The internal skunkworks project, called Simon, uses accelerometers and electromagnets to give a fast-responding, almost infinitely adjustable suspension.

Still a prototype, Simon essentially computerizes the ride of your bike. You can dial in various stiffnesses using a joystick and small computer up top on the handlebars — a softer ride for downhills and a rock-hard, stiff ride when on the smooth asphalt. This can, of course, be done with mechanical suspension, but introducing electronics makes things faster and smarter.

The electromagnets that control where and how much the fork can move act almost instantly, in around six milliseconds, and allow the fork to collapse from its maximum length right down to zero. These are informed by the accelerometers – from Analog Devices – and this is where the magic comes in. For instance, you could have the suspension dialed-up to act like a solid road fork. If you were to hit a bump in the road, though, the accelerometer would detect this before you even feel it and soften things up, allowing the bike to completely cushion the impact and return you to a good hard ride before you realize there was a pothole.

More, the response curves can be tuned to push back just how you like it, and you can switch configurations at the flick of a thumb. The Simon does add some weight, but as you are also tossing out a tube full of mechanical components the net gain is just a couple pounds (and this is a prototype, so that should improve). The other problem is battery life. Riding on the road you should be good for all day, but if you’re riding hard down a mountainside you could be out of juice in as little as two hours. Still, an extra battery pack could nestle next to the energy bar and the “emergency” hip-flask in your jersey pocket.

No pricing yet, nor even a launch date, but Cannondale seems pretty stoked about this tech, so we expect to see something soon. To see a somewhat in-depth and nerdy demo of the tech (the kind of demo we like), watch this video from bike blog Cycling Dirt: