Tag: liquid
This OLED screen can fill with liquid to form tactile buttons
Swiping and tapping on flat screens is something we’ve learned to deal with in smartphones, tablets and other touchscreen gizmos, but it doesn’t come close to the ease of typing on a hardware keyboard or playing a game with a physical controller. To that end, researchers Craig Shultz and Chris Harrison with the Future Interfaces Group (FIG) at Carnegie Mellon University have created a display that can protrude screen areas in different configurations. It’s a concept we’ve seen before, but this version is thinner, lighter and more versatile.
FIG’s “Flat Panel Haptics” tech can be stacked under an OLED panel to create the protrusions: imagine screen sections that can be inflated and deflated with fluid on demand. This could add a new tactile dimension for things like pop-up media controls, keyboards and virtual gamepads you can find without fumbling around on the screen. As Gizmodonotes, haptic feedback like Apple’s Taptic Engine produces natural-feeling vibrations but doesn’t help you find onscreen elements by touch alone. For activities like typing and playing games that require rapid-fire response time, a screen with pop-up elements could make things much less frustrating.
The Embedded Electroosmotic Pumps (EEOPs) are arrays of fluid pumps on a thin actuation layer built into a touchscreen device, like a smartphone or car display. When an onscreen element requires a pop-up button, fluid fills a section of the EEOP layer, and the OLED panel on top bends to take that shape. The result is a “button” that sticks out from the flat surface by as much as 1.5 mm, enough to feel the difference. When the software dismisses it, it recedes back into the flat display. The research team says filling each area takes about one second, and they feel solid to touch.
If the concept sounds familiar (and you’ve been following consumer tech long enough), this tech may remind you of Tactus’ rising touchscreen keyboard, which ultimately shipped as a bulky iPad mini case. FIG’s prototype can take on more dynamic shapes and sizes, and the research team says their version’s thinness sets it apart from similar attempts. “The main advantage of this approach is that the entire mechanical system exists in a compact and thin form factor,” FIG said in its narration for a demo video. “Our device stack-ups are under 5mm in thickness while still offering 5mm of displacement. Additionally, they are self-contained, powered only by a pair of electrical cables and control electronics. They’re also lightweight (under 40 grams for this device), and they are capable of enough force to withstand user interaction.”
The researchers see this as a tactile equivalent to the way pixels work on displays. “Much like LCD pixels, which modulate light from a common backlight, EEOPs draw from a common fluid reservoir and selectively modulate hydraulic pressure in and out of haptic cells.”
The pop-up buttons in their current form have a limited scope of shapes and sizes, reducing their versatility. But if they can eventually apply the same principle to a layer with more / smaller pop-up buttons (essentially “higher resolution” if we’re extending the “pixels” metaphor), it could open new doors for user interaction, including easier onscreen typing, gaming, in-car controls and even accessibility features like onscreen braille.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/this-oled-screen-can-fill-with-liquid-to-form-tactile-buttons-204829553.html?src=rss
Drones may better navigate unfamiliar surroundings with the help of liquid neural networks
Drones have a wide range of applications, but sending them into unfamiliar environments can be a challenge. Whether delivering a package, monitoring wildlife or conducting search and rescue missions, knowing how to navigate previously unseen surroundings (or ones that have changed significantly) is critical for a drone to effectively complete tasks. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) believe they’ve found a more effective way of helping drones fly through unknown spaces, thanks to liquid neural networks.
MIT created its liquid neural networks — which are inspired by the adaptability of organic brains — in 2021. The artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms are able to learn and adapt to new data in the real world, not only while they’re being trained. They can think on the fly, in other words.
They’re able to understand information that’s critical to a drone’s task while dismissing irrelevant features of an environment, the researchers note. The liquid neural nets can also “dynamically capture the true cause-and-effect of their given task,” according to a paper published in Science Robotics. This is “the key to liquid networks’ robust performance under distribution shifts.”
The liquid neural nets outperformed other approaches to navigation tasks, the researchers noted in the paper. The algorithms “showed prowess in making reliable decisions in unknown domains like forests, urban landscapes and environments with added noise, rotation and occlusion,” the university said in a press release.
MIT points out that deep learning systems can flounder when it comes to understanding causality and can’t always adapt to different environments or conditions. That poses a problem for drones, which have to be able to react quickly to obstacles.
“Our experiments demonstrate that we can effectively teach a drone to locate an object in a forest during summer, and then deploy the model in winter, with vastly different surroundings, or even in urban settings with varied tasks such as seeking and following,” Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) director, MIT professor and paper co-author Daniela Rus said in a statement. “This adaptability is made possible by the causal underpinnings of our solutions. These flexible algorithms could one day aid in decision-making based on data streams that change over time, such as medical diagnosis and autonomous driving applications.”
The researchers trained their system on data captured by a human pilot. This enabled them to account for the pilot’s ability to use their navigation skills in new environments that have undergone significant changes in conditions and scenery. In testing the liquid neural nets, the researchers found that drones were able to track moving targets, for instance. They suggest that marrying limited data from expert sources with an improved ability to understand new environments could make drone operations more reliable and efficient.
“Robust learning and performance in out-of-distribution tasks and scenarios are some of the key problems that machine learning and autonomous robotic systems have to conquer to make further inroads in society critical applications,” says Alessio Lomuscio, PhD, professor of AI Safety (in the Department of Computing) at Imperial College London. “In this context the performance of liquid neural networks, a novel brain-inspired paradigm developed by the authors at MIT, reported in this study is remarkable.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/drones-may-better-navigate-unfamiliar-surroundings-with-the-help-of-liquid-neural-networks-180015474.html?src=rss
Liquid Cooling and Phones That Charge in 5 Minutes: What You Missed From MWC 2023
There was no shortage of weird and exciting stuff at Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona this week, from Motorola’s rolling smartphone display to OnePlus’s pulsating liquid cooling technology.
This New Gaming Laptop Has Detachable Liquid Cooling
CyberPowerPC has been selling gaming desktops and laptops for years, and earlier this year at CES, the company showed off a high-end laptop with detachable liquid cooling. It’s now a real PC that you can buy.
Read This Article on How-To Geek ›
From metal to liquid, this shapeshifting robot can escape a cage
Scientists at Chinese, Hong Kong, and American universities have created a metal microbot that can melt, slide through bars, and then turn back into a solid state and resume tasks.
Kinsta and Liquid Web branded the most reliable hosts as WordPress turns 20
Mounting your PS5 vertically might lead to catastrophic failure from liquid metal leakage
I made a breast milk face mask – it’s liquid gold for anti-aging but trolls say I’m ‘selfish & vain’
THIS mom has raved about an anti-aging breast milk face mask she uses, but trolls slammed her saying that she’s “selfish and vain.”
Si-Si Hoffman is a skincare enthusiast who shares lifestyle tips on her Instagram, along with photos of her children.
In one of her videos, the creator shared a beauty secret that she called “liquid gold.”
“You may think…SHE IS CRAZY…for applying that to her face…” she wrote, as she rubbed colostrum onto her skin.
She explained how she used colostrum to rejuvenate her dull skin.
According to Cleveland Clinic, this is the milk that is released by the mammary glands after giving birth.
It’s nutrient-dense to support a newborn’s immune system and changes to breast milk within 2 to 4 days after a baby is born.
“Attention all mamas and mamas to be…it’s called liquid gold for a reason,” Hoffman wrote in the post.
Hoffman listed all the perks from the face mask, including how “it’s magically anti-inflammatory.”
“It stimulates the production of normal healthy skin bacteria, which will fight any problematic bacteria,” she wrote.
“It can topically help any hormonal imbalances when applied on the skin,” she added.
“It naturally contains growth factors which essentially make the skin regenerate,” Hoffman said.
However, viewers were quick to shame the mother.
One person commented: “Selfish for not giving your baby the colostrum…very vain.”
“It is way more important for your baby to have it than for selfish beauty needs,” another said.
Hoffman pushed back in the comments, clarifying: “I’ve harvested my colostrum if you look on my grid.”
According to Coveteur, colostrum sourced from cows is a popular skincare ingredient.
Celebrities and skincare experts have used this natural hack to stay radiant.
Fitness influencer and entrepreneur Tammy Hembrow used colostrum on her skin shortly after giving birth to her daughter, Posy, in June.
According to Perth Now, Hembrow raved about the mask. “Oh my god, my skin after I washed it off was so smooth, like, I swear I’m gong to be using my breast milk, like, everyday on my skin,” she said.