CuI/Nylon Membrane Hybrid Film with Large Seebeck Effect

Room-temperature thermoelectric materials are important for converting heat into electrical energy. As a wide-bandgap semiconductor material, CuI has the characteristics of non-toxicity, low cost, and environmental friendliness. In this work, CuI powder was synthesized by a wet chemical method, then CuI film was formed by vacuum assisted filtration of the CuI powder on a porous nylon membrane, followed by hot pressing. The film exhibits a large Seebeck coefficient of 600 μV · K−1 at room temperature. In addition, the film also shows good flexibility (∼95% retention of the electrical conductivity after being bent along a rod with a radius of 4 mm for 1000 times). A finger touch test on a single-leg TE module indicates that a voltage of 0.9 mV was immediately generated within 0.5 s from a temperature difference of 4 K between a finger and the environment, suggesting the potential application in wearable thermal sensors.

Preparation of Bamboo-Like Carbon Nanotube Loaded Piezoresistive Polyurethane-Silicone Rubber Composite

In this study, a novel technology is reported to prepare a piezoresistive polyurethane-silicone rubber nanocomposite. Polyurethane (PU) foam was loaded with a nitrogen-doped bamboo-shaped carbon nanotube (N-BCNT) by using dip-coating, and then, impregnated with silicone rubber. PU was used as a supporting substrate for N-BCNT, while silicone rubber was applied to fill the pores of the foam to improve recoverability, compressive strength, and durability. The composite displays good electrical conductivity, short response time, and excellent repeatability. The resistance was reduced when the amount of N-BCNT (0.43 wt %) was increased due to the expanded conductive path for electron transport. The piezoresistive composite has been successfully tested in many applications, such as human monitoring and finger touch detection.

Electroencephalographic Study on Sensory Integration in Visually Induced Postural Sway

A periodically reversing optic flow animation, experienced while standing, induces an involuntary sway termed visually induced postural sway (VIPS). Interestingly, VIPS is suppressed during light finger touch to a stationary object. Here, we explored whether VIPS is mediated by parietal field activity in the dorsal visual stream as well as by activity in early visual areas, as has been suggested. We performed a mobile brain/body imaging study using high-density electroencephalographic recording from human participants (11 men and three women) standing during exposure to periodically reversing optic flow with and without light finger touch to a stable surface. We also performed recording their visuo-postural tracking movements as a typical visually guided movement to explore differences of cortical process of VIPS from the voluntary visuomotor process involving the dorsal stream. In the visuo-postural tracking condition, the participants moved their center of pressure in time with a slowly oscillating (expanding, shrinking) target rectangle. Source-resolved results showed that alpha band (8–13 Hz) activity in the medial and right occipital cortex during VIPS was modulated by the direction and velocity of optic flow and increased significantly during light finger touch. However, source-resolved potentials from the parietal association cortex showed no such modulation. During voluntary postural sway with feedback (but no visual flow) in which the dorsal stream is involved, sensorimotor areas produced more theta band (4–7 Hz) and less beta band (14–35 Hz) activity than during involuntary VIPS. These results suggest that VIPS involves cortical field dynamic changes in the early visual cortex rather than in the posterior parietal cortex of the visual dorsal stream.

“Blurry Touch Finger”: Touch-Based Interaction for Mobile Virtual Reality with Clip-on Lenses

In this paper, we propose and explore a touch screen based interaction technique, called the “Blurry Touch Finger” for EasyVR, a mobile VR platform with non-isolating flip-on glasses that allows the fingers accessible to the screen. We demonstrate that, with the proposed technique, the user is able to accurately select virtual objects, seen under the lenses, directly with the fingers even though they are blurred and physically block the target object. This is possible owing to the binocular rivalry that renders the fingertips semi-transparent. We carried out a first stage basic evaluation assessing the object selection performance and general usability of Blurry Touch Finger. The study has revealed that, for objects with the screen space sizes greater than about 0.5 cm, the selection performance and usability of the Blurry Touch Finger, as applied in the EasyVR configuration, was comparable to or higher than those with both the conventional head-directed and hand/controller based ray-casting selection methods. However, for smaller sized objects, much below the size of the fingertip, the touch based selection was both less performing and usable due to the usual fat finger problem and difficulty in stereoscopic focus.

The Smart Pill Bottle: Introducing a Pill Management system based on Touchpoint Technology (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Older adults tend to suffer from multi-morbidity, requiring complex treatment methodologies demanding poly-pharmacy. The increasing medication usage can tend towards the mismanagement of prescriptions and irregular or faulty administration. Thus, there arises an urgent need for a proper pill management system for these prescribed medicines. The solutions offered by the current market seem to be sub-optimal; they either fail to be cost-effective or fail to provide much the required assistance. OBJECTIVE We propose a mobile, cost-effective, robust, and easy to use solution involving the extension to the human body-smartphones and pill bottles METHODS The technology utilizes a unique combination of touch-points on the smartphone screen to recognize the medication and give information regarding the proper usage and dosage. The building of the pill management system was conducted in two phases; first, the pill bottles were developed since these were to be detected and identified, followed by the mobile application, which did the whole pill management. RESULTS Our tool comprised of two components–(1) the conductive ink enabled pill bottle containing a unique combination of conductive inks and (2) the mobile application utilizing the touch-points generated by the conductive ink sticker to give information of the corresponding medicine. Whenever a pill bottle is placed on the mobile screen, the conductive ink imitates the finger touch effect creating a unique touch pattern which is detected on the mobile screen. It is analyzed by the mobile application, holding the database of the corresponding medicine assigned to that specific touch pattern, and the user is provided with the medicine and its dosage details. CONCLUSIONS Our smart pill bottle system presents a novel implementation of touchpoint technology. Further, being easy to use, affordable, and compatible with simple equipment, our system showed feasibility in implementation and usage.