The Kynix Blog - Robots

Warm hints: The word in this article is about 2000 and  reading time is about 10 minutes.SummaryIn ten years ago,the average selling price of industrial robots is about 500 thousand;however, the price is now four large family robot 15-20 million,Eft, and other domestic price slightly lower than the eston robot four family, economic type of pure domestic robot (terminal sales price of about 80 thousand. It is estimated that in the future, the average price of industrial robots will be reduced to less than 50 thousand with the localization of the spare parts and other parts.  CoreIndustrial RobotsCategoryRobotKeywordsindustrial robots;cloud service robotContentFuture market prediction about industrial robots in China Catalogs CatalogsI. The Statistics of Industrial robots Sales in recent yearsII.One of the development trends of industrial robots: more flexibleIII.The two development trend of industrial robots: low cost economy OntologyIV.Prediction about Industrial Robot IntroductionBefore we read the artcle,let's see a video about "MIT cheetah robot lands the running jump".In a leap for robotic development, the MIT researchers who built a robotic cheetah have now trained it to see and jump over hurdles as it runs — making this the first four-legged robot to run and jump over obstacles autonomously.  I. The Statistics of Industrial robots Sales in recent yearsWe know that science and technology are constantly growing after see the above video. According to IFE statistics,the global industrial robot sales exceeded $13 billion 200 million (plus integration part, system on the industrial robot market is about $50 billion) in 2016,with the major economies of the global industrial automation,robot using density increase. What’s more, IFR predicted that the world robot sales were 34.7, 37.8, 43.5 and 522 thousand respectively when in 2017-2020 years,and CAGR reached 15.4% in the next 4 years.Prediction of the sales of industrial robots in the global marketAccording to statistics, in 2016, domestic industrial robot sales hit a new high, reaching 87 thousand units, and by December 2017, China's industrial robot output reached 131 thousand units (set), an increase of 51% over the same period, and sales volume is expected to continue to grow this year. According to the prediction of IFR, 2018-2020 years of domestic robot sales were 16, 19.5, 238 thousand, 22% to 3 years in the future CAGR.Prediction of the sales of industrial robots in the global market In 2017, the domestic industrial robot market rapid growth for two reasons, one is the demand of the robot driven by 3C's apple, the other is the general manufacturing robots used in large-scale attempt, many general manufacturing enterprises, such as the winery, an order in more than 100. The difficulty of recruiting workers and the high cost of recruiting workers are becoming more and more common, which makes the demand for robots increase.At present, the domestic robots are mainly used in the general manufacturing industry other than cars and 3C. This year, not only foreign brands, but also domestic industrial robots.Domestic industrial robot sales structure in 2016 and over the yearsAccording to the National Bureau of statistics, China has 50 million manufacturing workers in each industrial robot instead of 2-3 workers, the potential stock market will reach 1800-2500 million units, taking into account a lot of jobs cannot substitute robots, may the actual market is not so big. We discussed with industry experts, five years can be seen in the domestic market sales reached 50-60 million units.Prediction of the sales of industrial robots in the global market AnalysisII.One of the development trends of industrial robots: more flexibleIn order to increase the use of industrial robots, the robot is more flexible. DFKI (German Research Center for artificial intelligence, is Germany's top intelligence research institutions, is currently the world's largest non-profit artificial intelligence research institutions, its shareholders include Google, Intel, Microsoft, BMW, SAP, Airbus, the global top ten enterprises of science and Technology) developed intelligent assembly robot, can through the abstract memory system for assembly, adaptive grasping and intelligent products specifically, is in the head mounted stereoscopic camera, camera mounted near the object in the arm; at the same time, using the left internal antenna reads from the inside of the product size, weight and hot.DFKI Grasping and assembling robotInter-generational evolution of industrial robots: robots are undergoing a shift from "machine" to human. We can divide the robot into three generations, the first generation of traditional industrial robots, which have not changed significantly for nearly 50 years. The second generation is a "feeling" robot. They have a certain sense of perception in the outside world, with visual, tactile and auditory functions. Such as a cooperative robot, a arc welding robot that automatically tracks the weld according to the laser feedback. The third generation planning based on artificial intelligence technology, robot control, according to their perception of information, independent thinking, recognition and reasoning, and make judgments and decisions, without human intervention automatically, become the main production system, can even replace machine and other machine tools, such as cloud service robot.The robot is undergoing a change from "machine" to "man"The second generation of robot representatives: UR cooperative robot. At present, cooperative robots occupy a part of the market with their safety, low cost, easy to use and low cost of transformation, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises which are mainly small batch and customized. However, in the long run, human-computer cooperation is the direction, and the potential of the cooperative robot market is great.UR5 apply in Volkswagen automobile production lineBecause of the great prospect of the cooperative robot, the robot enterprises both at home and abroad have the product development and sale, and have obtained the better market response. Although the domestic collaboration robot started late, but in the past two years, many products appeared in the development. In China, especially for the electronics industry, the domestic cooperative robot has a promising commercial prospect.Typical enterprise and product of cooperative robotThe third generation of robot - cloud service robot. Cloud service robots, integrating the latest information technology, will produce more dramatic changes in the impact of artificial intelligence and industrial robots.In 2015, the domestic industrial robot AIFUTE leading enterprises began the layout of the next generation of robot technology, and the Silicon Valley in the United States set up R & D center. A preliminary cloud robot platform product will be formed in 2018.The concept of cloud evert robotIII.The two development trend of industrial robots: low cost economy OntologyThe medium and small businesses can receive the longest payback period of two years, preferably one year, so the industrial robots should be popularized in China. In the long run, the price should be controlled at least 100 thousand. ConclusionIV.Prediction about Industrial RobotIndustrial robot in 10 years ago, the average selling price of about 500 thousand, the price is now four large family robot 15-20 million, Eft, and other domestic price slightly lower than the eston robot four family, economic type of pure domestic robot (terminal sales price of about 80 thousand. It is estimated that in the future, the average price of industrial robots will be reduced to less than 50 thousand with the localization of the spare parts and other parts.  Book Recommendation House of Robots: Robot Revolution Hardcover – January 16, 2017After a few early glitches in their relationship, Sammy and his "bro-bot" E are now fast friends. In fact, E is such a valued member of the family that the other electronic occupants of the House of Robots are feeling sorely unappreciated. And when Sammy's inventor mom becomes distracted by a top-secret project, the robots soon begin to fall into disrepair.Cue a robot revolt, with the droids wreaking harmless havoc in the house! Armed with pranks like glue in the shampoo bottles and flying toast missiles, the robots demand to be cared for. It's up to Sammy and his disabled sister Maddie to keep the peace until his mom reveals her secret project...and why it was worth the wait.--James Patterson  (Author),‎ Juliana Neufeld (Illustrator),‎ Chris Grabenstein (Contributor) Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future Paperback – July 12, 2016What are the jobs of the future? How many will there be? And who will have them? As technology continues to accelerate and machines begin taking care of themselves, fewer people will be necessary. Artificial intelligence is already well on its way to making "good jobs" obsolete: many paralegals, journalists, office workers, and even computer programmers are poised to be replaced by robots and smart software. As progress continues, blue and white collar jobs alike will evaporate, squeezing working- and middle-class families ever further. At the same time, households are under assault from exploding costs, especially from the two major industries-education and health care-that, so far, have not been transformed by information technology. The result could well be massive unemployment and inequality as well as the implosion of the consumer economy itself.The past solutions to technological disruption, especially more training and education, aren't going to work. We must decide, now, whether the future will see boad-based prosperity or catastrophic levels of inequality and economic insecurity. Rise of the Robots is essential reading to understand what accelerating technology means for our economic prospects-not to mention those of our children-as well as for society as a whole.--Martin Ford  (Author)Robot-Proof: Higher Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (MIT Press) Hardcover – August 25, 2017How to educate the next generation of college students to invent, to create, and to discover -- filling needs that even the most sophisticated robot cannot.Driverless cars are hitting the road, powered by artificial intelligence. Robots can climb stairs, open doors, win Jeopardy, analyze stocks, work in factories, find parking spaces, advise oncologists. In the past, automation was considered a threat to low-skilled labor. Now, many high-skilled functions, including interpreting medical images, doing legal research, and analyzing data, are within the skill sets of machines. How can higher education prepare students for their professional lives when professions themselves are disappearing? In Robot-Proof, Northeastern University president Joseph Aoun proposes a way to educate the next generation of college students to invent, to create, and to discover -- to fill needs in society that even the most sophisticated artificial intelligence agent cannot.A "robot-proof" education, Aoun argues, is not concerned solely with topping up students' minds with high-octane facts. Rather, it calibrates them with a creative mindset and the mental elasticity to invent, discover, or create something valuable to society -- a scientific proof, a hip-hop recording, a web comic, a cure for cancer. Aoun lays out the framework for a new discipline, humanics, which builds on our innate strengths and prepares students to compete in a labor market in which smart machines work alongside human professionals. The new literacies of Aoun's humanics are data literacy, technological literacy, and human literacy. Students will need data literacy to manage the flow of big data, and technological literacy to know how their machines work, but human literacy -- the humanities, communication, and design -- to function as a human being. Life-long learning opportunities will support their ability to adapt to change.The only certainty about the future is change. Higher education based on the new literacies of humanics can equip students for living and working through change.--Joseph E. Aoun (Author)  Relevant information about "The Future Market of Industrial Robots in China will Be Far Beyond Imagination"About the article "The Future Market of Industrial Robots in China will Be Far Beyond Imagination", If you have better ideas, don't hesitate to  write your thoughts in the following comment area. You also can find more articles about electronic semiconductor through Google search engine, or refer to the following related articles. Living Insect-Machine Hybrid Robot--Swarming Search and RescueMake Robots Walk NaturallyEngineers from MIT Developed A Tiny, Affordable Robotic Device That Can Detect Water LeakThree Fingers Robotic Hand with Specialized Sensors can Estimate Size and Shape of ObjectsA New, Electronic Skin Microsystem Enables People Tracks Their Heart Rate And Other Health Index

SummarySingaporean researchers,led by by professor Hirotaka Sato,describe their work about designing robots--It's possible to use a living insect as a platform to develop a living insect-machine hybrid robot.Such a hybrid retains the complex structure of the insect's rigid exokeleton,complaint joints,and soft actuators, as well as the insect’s locomotion capability, and it does so while enabling high controllability and low power consumption. Such an insect-machine hybrid robot is made of a living insect platform with a miniaturized electronic device attached on it to control it.   By using the insect itself as the robot, researchers bypass the complex processes of designing and fabricating the robot body, using the insect’s muscular system as the soft actuators and flexible joints and its nervous system as part of the control system. About BeetleThis kind of particular beetle is a a darkling beetle. It’s small (2 to 2.5 centimeters), lightweight (about 0.5 gram), and lives for three months or so, which is a long time for a little bug. A backpack of electronics interfaces with the beetle’s antennae, and when the antennae are stimulated with an electric pulse, it activates the beetle’s built-in escape mechanism, fooling it into thinking it’s running into something and causing it to turn. The picture is from Nanyang Technological University AdvantageThe advantage of doing things this way (as opposed to direct nerve or muscle stimulation, something that the researchers also experimented with) is that the beetle’s brain is still in charge of controlling its limbs such that it’ll respond to high-level controls with adaptive gaits and such, making locomotion a much simpler problem to solve. With just two coin cell batteries, the cybeetle can be controlled for 8 hours, which is long enough for it to travel over a kilometer at an average speed of 4 cm/s. The following picture is from  Cyborg Insect: Ultralightweight Living Legged Robot The key to effectively controlling an insect using these methods is that the response to the antenna stimulation can’t be binary, since you’d end up with a level of control that would often be too coarse to be useful. By changing the frequency of the stimulation, the researchers were able to modulate how sharp of a turn the insect took: Increasing the stimulation frequency also increased the insect’s turning rate, with a success rate of over 85 percent. Stimulating both antennae at once causes the insect to back up, and it moves forward by default, giving you just about as much control as you can hope for. Living Robots' DifferencesElectrical stimulation is commonly used for neuromuscular stimulation in cyborg insects such as cockroaches, giant beetles, and moths. There are other groups working on antenna stimulation but they were not able to grade the response of the insect, which is very important for developing a precise closed-loop control system to make the cyborg insect work autonomously. The giant cyborg beetle mainly relies on neuromuscular stimulation of direct flight muscles for flight control and leg muscles of the fore legs for walking control. Ideally, stimulating the muscle would be more precise as we can perfectly control the individual legs, but it costs more in implantation and computing to plan and stimulate all the individual muscles for walking. Antenna stimulation is simpler and easier than stimulating all the individual muscles thus it helps us to simplify the hardware and control system a lot. Hopefully, in the near future, we can control the cyborg beetle as precisely as any other artificial motor. The zophobas beetle were used to develop this cyborg insect because its small size (2-2.5 cm) would help it to access the small rubbles system easily at disaster sites, where the cockroach and giant beetle can not get in. Moreover, a swarming of flying and walking cyborg insects of various sizes would increase the coverage and reduce the searching time, thus enhancing the efficiency and accuracy of search and rescue operations. Control IssueFor walking cyborg insects, researchers are able to integrate external sensors into the backpack as the insect is able to carry loads up to double its weight. We are developing a new backpack with integrated sensors for human detection and navigation. It would help us to detect victims when using cyborg insects at disaster sites, and enable the cyborg insects to work autonomously. On the other hand,research could release hundreds of flying and crawling cyborg insects to the sites as the price for one cyborg insect would be negligible once mass produced for a disaster scenario.The insects can move freely themselves into the collapsed structures and send back maps of their positions and environmental conditions so that the rescue team can plan for their action efficiently on how and where they should access. Once an insect detects a victim, it will send an alarm to the rescue team and switch to autonomous control mode to move around the victim for confirmation and build a clearer map of surrounding environment. At the end of the rescue operation, all the insects will autonomously return to the control base. I know that it sounds like science fiction, but we are in fact working to realize it. Researcher's GoalNow,researchers are working on a feedback control system to precisely control the insect locomotion with high reliability. We are also developing a new backpack with a navigation system and environmental sensors designed to promote fully autonomous and practical cyborg insects. For real applications, we need to maintain the power supply for the cyborg insect (mainly for the electronics backpack), which is currently a huge challenge if we just rely on the battery. So we are developing a biofuel cell, which is able to convert biofuel inside the insect to electric current for running the control backpack. It will help to maintain the backpack power for long-term use. Article resources: journal Soft RoboticsAtticle edited by kynix 

SummaryThe robot comes perfectly if they can walk more naturally for humans.However,it's not an easy job for robots and their designers. Walking on two legs is actually a complicated task,requiring several muscles to perform delicate balancing acts.That's why in spite of years of major technological advancements in the field,humanoid robots are still far from being able to get around easily and reliably. Engineers at EPFL's Biorobotics Laboratory are testing new walking algoritms on a plateform called COMAN, short for COmpliant HuMANoid. This 95-cm-tall humanoid is designed specifically for studying walking – which is why it has no head. COMAN was developed under the EU AMARSi project and is being used by several research teams. The EPFL team is looking specifically at the "brains" of the machine. "We developed algorithms that can improve the robot's balance while it's walking," says Hamed Razavi, a researcher scientist at the Biorobotics Lab.  Body One:Climbing Stairs and Opening Doors The algorithms are geared towards three types of realworld applications. The first is carrying out rescue missions in disastrous scenarios. "In environments designed by humans - like a nuclear power plant where there are stairs to climb and doors to open – humanoid robots can get around more easily than robots with wheels," says Razavi. The second is helping with tasks like carrying heavy boxes or moving objects (see box). And the third is creating exoskeletons for the disabled. "Making the robots more stable is just the tip of the iceberg," says Razavi. The next step is refining the algorithms so that the humanoids have a wider range of movement and can overcome obstacles and walk on irregular or sloped surfaces. Two:In Harmony with Symmetries One of COMAN's distinguishing features is its joints,which are integrated with elastic elements that give it greater flexibility when performing different tasks.The EPFL team came up with a novel control algorithm for the robot, based on the existing symmetries in the structure and dynamics of the robot' as well as the mathematical equations representing the robot dynamics. "You could say we're working in harmony with these symmetries rather than against them. As a result, we obtain a more natural and robust walking gait," says Razavi. The control algorithm uses sophisticated computer programs to carefully analyze the date received from the robot – including its position, velocity, joint angles, etc. – and sends appropriate commands to the motors, telling them what to do in order to maintain the robot's balance. "For example, if someone pushes COMAN, for example, our algorithms will calculate exactly where its foot should land in order to counteract the perturbation," says Razavi. Three: Humanoids Helping Humans As part of this project,Jessica Lanini and Hamed Razavi studied how two people carrying an object together are able to walk,turn and speed up in a coordinated manner - without communicating with each other.Their findings,recently published in PLOS ONE,indicate that the two people automatically synchronize their steps, like a quadruped. Now the researchers plan to apply their results to humanoid robots. Lanini explained:"Whether for manufacturing or natural disasters, we need robots that can interact with humans and help us carry heavy objects,but such robots don't exist. That's because, in order to operate safely and effectively, the robots would need to be able to make decisions and respond to unexpected circumstances." But such robots don't exist. The reason is that in order to operate safely and effectively, the robots would need to be able to make decisions and respond to unexpected circumstances." Article provided by  Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne. 

Access to clean, safe water is one of the world’s pressing needs, yet today’s water distribution systems lose an average of 20 percent of their supply because of leaks. These leaks not only make shortages worse but also can cause serious structural damage to buildings and roads by undermining foundations, which is a great loss.Many property losses experienced by business owners involve water damage caused by leaky pipes. Water can be very destructive whether it seeps from a loose fitting or gushes from a ruptured main.Unfortunately, leak detection systems are expensive and slow to operate — and they don’t work well in systems that use wood, clay, or plastic pipes, which account for the majority of systems in the developing world. Now, a new system developed by researchers at MIT could provide a fast, inexpensive solution that can find even tiny leaks with pinpoint precision, no matter what the pipes are made of. The system, which has been under development and testing for nine years by professor of mechanical engineering Kamal Youcef-Toumi, graduate student You Wu, and two others, will be described in detail at the upcoming IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) in September. Meanwhile, the team is carrying out tests this summer on 12-inch concrete water-distribution pipes under the city of Monterrey, Mexico. The system uses a small, rubbery robotic device that looks something like an oversized badminton birdie. The device can be inserted into the water system through any fire hydrant. It then moves passively with the flow, logging its position as it goes. It detects even small variations in pressure by sensing the pull at the edges of its soft rubber skirt, which fills the diameter of of the pipe.(The fast, inexpensive robotic device that developed by engineers from MIT can find even tiny leaks in pipes with pinpoint precision, no matter what the pipes are made of.)This device contains two parts: "skirt" sensor and soft body drone. It is then retrieved using a net through another hydrant, and its data is uploaded. No digging is required, and there is no need for any interruption of the water service. In addition to the passive device that is pushed by the water flow, the team also produced an active version that can control its motion.Monterrey itself has a strong incentive to take part in this study, since it loses an estimated 40 percent of its water supply to leaks every year, costing the city about $80 million in lost revenue. Leaks can also lead to contamination of the water supply when polluted water backs up into the distribution pipes. The MIT team, called PipeGuard, intends to commercialize its robotic detection system to help alleviate such losses. In Saudi Arabia, where most drinking water is provided through expensive desalination plants, some 33 percent is lost through leakage. That’s why that desert nation’s King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals has sponsored and collaborated on much of the MIT team’s work, including successful field tests there earlier this year that resulted in some further design improvements to the system, Youcef-Toumi says. DKNY CEO Caroline Brown, said “PipeGuard has created a simple, pragmatic and elegant solution to a complex problem. … This robot is a great example of utilizing smart design to simplify complexity and maximize efficiency.”

Three fingers on a new soft robotic gripper each have specialized sensors that can estimate the size and shape of an object accurately enough to identify it from a set of multiple items.  Robots have many strong suits, but delicacy traditionally hasn't been one of them. Rigid limbs and digits make it difficult for them to grasp, hold, and manipulate a range of everyday objects without dropping or crushing them. Recently, researchers from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have discovered that the solution may be to turn to a substance more commonly associated with new buildings and Silly Putty: silicone. At a conference this month, researchers from CSAIL Director Daniela Rus' Distributed Robotics Lab demonstrated a 3-D-printed robotic hand made out of silicone rubber that can lift and handle objects as delicate as an egg and as thin as a compact disc. Just as impressively, its three fingers have special sensors that can estimate the size and shape of an object accurately enough to identify it from a set of multiple items. "Robots are often limited in what they can do because of how hard it is to interact with objects of different sizes and materials," Rus says. "Grasping is an important step in being able to do useful tasks; with this work we set out to develop both the soft hands and the supporting control and planning systems that make dynamic grasping possible." The paper, which was co-written by Rus and graduate student Bianca Homberg, PhD candidate Robert Katzschmann, and postdoc Mehmet Dogar, will be presented at this month's International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems. The hard science of soft robots The gripper, which can also pick up such items as a tennis ball, a Rubik's cube and a Beanie Baby, is part of a larger body of work out of Rus' lab at CSAIL aimed at showing the value of so-called "soft robots" made of unconventional materials such as silicone, paper, and fiber. Researchers say that soft robots have a number of advantages over "hard" robots, including the ability to handle irregularly-shaped objects, squeeze into tight spaces, and readily recover from collisions. "A robot with rigid hands will have much more trouble with tasks like picking up an object," Homberg says. "This is because it has to have a good model of the object and spend a lot of time thinking about precisely how it will perform the grasp." Soft robots represent an intriguing new alternative. However, one downside to their extra flexibility (or "compliance") is that they often have difficulty accurately measuring where an object is, or even if they have successfully picked it up at all. That's where the CSAIL team's "bend sensors" come in. When the gripper hones in an object, the fingers send back location data based on their curvature. Using this data, the robot can pick up an unknown object and compare it to the existing clusters of data points that represent past objects. With just three data points from a single grasp, the robot's algorithms can distinguish between objects as similar in size as a cup and a lemonade bottle. "As a human, if you're blindfolded and you pick something up, you can feel it and still understand what it is," says Katzschmann. "We want to develop a similar skill in robots—essentially, giving them 'sight' without them actually being able to see." The team is hopeful that, with further sensor advances, the system could eventually identify dozens of distinct objects, and be programmed to interact with them differently depending on their size, shape, and function. How it works（“We want to ... give robots‘sight’ without them actually being able to see,” says MIT grad student Robert Katzschmann. ） Researchers control the gripper via a series of pistons that push pressurized air through the silicone fingers. The pistons cause little bubbles to expand in the fingers, spurring them to stretch and bend. The hand can grip using two types of grasps: "enveloping grasps," where the object is entirely contained within the gripper, and "pinch grasps," where the object is held by the tips of the fingers. Outfitted for the popular Baxter manufacturing robot, the gripper significantly outperformed Baxter's default gripper, which was unable to pick up a CD or piece of paper and was prone to completely crushing items like a soda can. Like Rus' previous robotic arm, the fingers are made of silicone rubber, which was chosen because of its qualities of being both relatively stiff, but also flexible enough to expand with the pressure from the pistons. Meanwhile, the gripper's interface and exterior finger-molds are 3-D-printed, which means the system will work on virtually any robotic platform. In the future, Rus says the team plans to put more time into improving and adding more sensors that will allow the gripper to identify a wider variety of objects. "If we want robots in human-centered environments, they need to be more adaptive and able to interact with objects whose shape and placement are not precisely known," Rus says. "Our dream is to develop a robot that, like a human, can approach an unknown object, big or small, determine its approximate shape and size, and figure out how to interface with it in one seamless motion." Ref.KY45-TSL1401CLKY45-11242-11

A new, electronic skin microsystem tracks heart rate, respiration, muscle movement and other health data, and wirelessly transmits it to a smartphone. The electronic skin offers several improvements over existing trackers, including greater flexibility, smaller size, and the ability to stick the self-adhesive patch -- which is a very soft silicone about four centimeters (1.5 inches) in diameter -- just about anywhere on the body. （A research team led by Professor Kyung-In Jang of Robotics Engineering collects, analyzes, and diagnoses bio-signals wirelessly transmitted to mobile application from the soft electronic skin.）   The microsystem was developed by an international team led by Kyung-In Jang, a professor of robotics engineering at South Korea's Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology, and John A. Rogers, the director of Northwestern University's Center for Bio-Integrated Electronics. The team described the new device in the journal Nature Communications.   The electronic skin contains about 50 components connected by a network of 250 tiny wire coils embedded in protective silicone. The soft material enables it to conform to body, unlike other hard monitors. It wirelessly transmits data on movement and respiration, as well as electrical activity in the heart, muscles, eyes and brain to a smartphone application.   Unlike flat sensors, the tiny wires coils in this device are three-dimensional, which maximizes flexibility. The coils can stretch and contract like a spring without breaking. The coils and sensor components are also configured in an unusual spider web pattern that ensures "uniform and extreme levels of stretchability and bendability in any direction." It also enables tighter packing of components, minimizing size. The researchers liken the design to a winding, curling vine, connecting sensors, circuits and radios like individual leaves on the vine.   The key to creating this novel microsystem is stretching the elastic silicone base while the tiny wire arcs, made of gold, chromium and phosphate, are laid flat onto it. The arcs are firmly connected to the base only at one end of each arc. When the base is allowed to contract, the arcs pop up, forming three-dimensional coils.   The entire system is powered wirelessly rather than being charged by a battery. The researchers also considered key electrical and mechanical issues to optimize the system's physical layout, such as sensor placement or wire length, to minimize signal interference and noise.   The electronic skin could be used in a variety of applications, including continuous health monitoring and disease treatment. Professor Jang states "Combining big data and artificial intelligence technologies, the wireless biosensors can be developed into an entire medical system which allows portable access to collection, storage, and analysis of health signals and information." He added "We will continue further studies to develop electronic skins which can support interactive telemedicine and treatment systems for patients in blind areas for medical services such as rural houses in mountain village." The microsystem could also be used in other areas of emerging interest, such as soft robotics or autonomous navigation, which the team is now investigating.   Ref. KY32-AD22050RZ KY32-AD9945KCPZ