Computers are getting smaller and smaller. And as hand-held devices, from mobile phones and cameras to music players and laptops, get more powerful, the race is on to develop memory formats that can satisfy the ever-growing demand for information storage on tiny formats.

Researchers at The University of Nottingham are now exploring ways of exploiting the unique properties of carbon nanotubes to create a cheap and compact memory cell that uses little power and writes information at high speeds.

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The C1XS instrument with RAL engineers

A sophisticated x-ray camera made by scientists and engineers from the UK’s Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) is set to launch into space on October 22 aboard the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft – India’s first mission to the moon.

The camera – C1XS – was designed and built at STFC Space Science and Technology Department in the Rutherfoerd Appleton Laboratory (RAL). It is an x-ray spectrometer that will measure x-rays to map the surface composition of the moon, providing scientist with information to help understand its origin and evolution.

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By adapting existing cochlear ear implant technology to perceive light rather than sound, two Sydney-based scientists have developed a ‘cheap and safe’ bionic eye to restore basic vision to people going blind.

Professor Minas Coroneo and Dr Vivek Chowdhury say the prosthesis should cost little more than the £10,000 of a cochlear hearing device.

Professor Coroneo explained: “We are using a bionic ear to make a bionic eye.”

While other researchers are working on implanting electrodes on the retina (intraocular), the cochlear device puts electrodes on the outer wall of the eye (extraocular).

Patients will wear glasses mounted with a tiny camera that sends images to electrodes in the eye.

Technology inspired by the human eye could be used to produce improved photographic images with a wider field of view.

Researchers from Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering and Mechanical Engineering, teamed up with the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, to create an array of silicon detectors and electronics that can be conformed to a curved surface. Like the human eye, the curved surface can then act as the focal plane array of the camera, which captures the image.

On a normal camera, such electronics must lie on a straight surface, and the camera’s complex system of lenses must reflect an image several times before it can reflect on the right spots on the focal plane.

Yonggang Huang, Northwestern University, explained: “The advantages of curved detector surface imaging have been understood by optics designers for a long time, and by biologists for an even longer time. That’s how the human eye works – using the curved surface at the back of the eye to capture the image.”

But exactly how to place those electronics on a curved surface to yield working cameras has stumped scientists, despite many different attempts over the last 20 years. The electronics lie on silicone wafers, which can only be compressed one per cent before they break and fail.

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Touch Sight is a digital camera developed for visually impaired people. It includes a unique feature which records sound for three seconds after pressing the shutter button, providing the user with a sound reference when reviewing and managing the photos.

Instead of an LCD, Touch Sight features a lightweight, flexible Braille display sheet which displays a 3D image by embossing the surface, allowing the user to touch the image.

The sound file and picture documents combine to become a touchable photo saved in the device, and can be uploaded to share with others, or downloaded to other Touch Sight cameras.

Engineers at the University of Kitakyushu, have developed ‘Tai-robot-kun’, a 7kg robotic sea bream covered with realistic-looking hand-painted scales.

The robotic fish features a propulsion system that allows it to move its tail and drift silently through the water like a real fish. It can swim for an hour on a full battery charge, and relies on a ballast system, similar to that used in a submarine, to adjust its depth and buoyancy.

According to University of Kitakyushu professor Ikuo Yamamoto, the robot can easily be mass produced, fitted with various cameras and sensors, and released into the sea to perform a range of oceanographic survey tasks, without alarming sea life.

Based on the ‘dragonfly’, the DelFly Micro Air Vehicle (MAV) from TU Delft, is an ultra-small remote-controlled, camera equipped aircraft, with the potential for use in observation flights in difficult to reach or dangerous areas.

The MAV barely weighs 3g – 1g of which is the weight of the battery. It can fly for approximately three minutes, and has a maximum speed of 5m/s.

The DelFly has a tiny on-board camera that transmits signals to a ground station. Using software developed by TU Delft, objects can be independently recognised.

In the next step of the project, TU Delft plans to develop the DelFly NaNo, which will measure 5cm and weigh 1g.

A semi-autonomous ground vehicle developed by BAE Systems is being used by the UK Border Agency to patrol Calais port in search of illegal immigrants.

Born out of the concept to help protect British troops on foot patrol in Iraq and Afghanistan, the robot, codenamed Hero, is roughly the size of a briefcase with a wheel at each corner. Equipped with lights and cameras, the vehicle has been successfully checking beneath the 10,000 heavy goods vehicles, coaches and trailers that pass through the port each week on the way to the UK.

Richard Williams, civil autonomous systems director, BAE Systems, explained: “Some people will use any means to get past immigration checks, and catching them can be extremely hazardous.

“It’s a backbreaking, dirty and often dangerous job to look under every truck, and with 10,000 of the vehicles each week boarding ferries, its physically impossible for UK Border Agency staff to personally check them all.”

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Robots that can understand grief or happiness or anger, could soon become a reality with technology currently being developed by Felix Growing.

According to the company, software will allow the robot to learn when a person is feeling a certain way. Using cameras and sensors, the robots will be able to detect several variables from the human including their facial expression, voice, and tone. It will then combine the factors to determine what mood the person is in.

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Researchers from the University of Tsukub have developed a ‘Copycat Arm’. The system uses a high speed camera to monitor a person’s movements, which are then instantly imitated by the robot arm.

According to the researchers, the system could eventually be used as a computer interface, whereby the screen contents can be changed by moving the user’s hand, eliminating the need for a mouse and a keyboard.

In collaboration with engineers from the manufacturer Given Imaging, the Israelite Hospital in Hamburg and the Royal Imperial College in London, researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Biomedical Engineering in Sankt Ingbert have developed the first-ever control system for the camera pill.

Currently images of the inside of the intestine can be obtained via a tiny camera swallowed by the patient. It makes its way through the intestine and transmits images of the intestinal villi to an external receiver which the patient carries on a belt. This device stores the data that can later be analysed by a doctor. The camera is not very suitable for examinations of the esophagus and the stomach because it only takes about three or four seconds to make its way through the esophagus – producing two to four images per second – and once it reaches the stomach, its roughly five-gram weight causes it to drop very quickly to the lower wall of the stomach. In other words, it is too fast to deliver usable images. For examinations of the esophagus and the stomach patients still have to swallow a thick endoscope.

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To help scientists collect the more detailed data they need in order to find out why the world’s ice shelves are melting, without risking scientists’ safety, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology, in conjunction with Pennsylvania State University, have created specially designed robots called SnoMotes to traverse these potentially dangerous ice environments.

The SnoMotes work as a team, autonomously collaborating among themselves to cover all the necessary ground to gather assigned scientific measurements. Data gathered by the Snomotes could give scientists a better understanding of the important dynamics that influence the stability of ice sheets.

Ayanna Howard, lead on the project and an associate professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech, explained: “In order to say with certainty how climate change affects the world’s ice, scientists need accurate data points to validate their climate models. Our goal was to create rovers that could gather more accurate data to help scientists create better climate models. It’s definitely science-driven robotics.”

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Buses could be used as mobile sensing platforms, sending out live information that can be used to control traffic and detect road hazards, according to European researchers.

In a test, researchers with the Moryne project equipped city buses with environmental sensors and cameras, allowing the vehicles to become transmitters of measurements, warnings and live or recorded videos to anyone allowed to access the data.

The researchers developed a range of technologies for mobile sensing, data acquisition, analyses and telecommunications that could be placed in public buses as a part of a larger effort to improve road safety and traffic management.

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