Graphene, Nanotechnology, and Programmable Interfaces; Samsung Galaxy Demo

I've been intrigued by graphene's multiple possibilities for the future. It is a flexible, programmable material that harness nano-technology to create flexible touch screens, "wearables", efficient energy storage systems, and more.  The following videos provide just two examples of graphene's potential.  

The details?  If you are curious, follow the links at the end of this post.  




Here is a short clip of a demo of a graphene touch screen on a Samsung Galaxy:


RELATED
Graphene nanoribbons could be the savior of Moore's Law
Ryan Whitwam, Extreme Tech, 2/17/14
High-Performance Multifunctional Graphene Yarns: Toward Wearable All-Carbon Engery Storage Textiles
ACS NANO, 2/11/14
Hydrogenation-Assisted Graphene Origami and Its Application in Programmable Molecular Mass Uptake, Storage, and Release
Shuze Zhu and Teng Li, University of Maryland, ACS Nano, 2/24/14
Teng Li Group, Harvard University
Chemically and structurally functionalized graphene for real-world applications
Marko Spasenovic, Graphenea, 3/06/14
Nanoscale graphene origami cages set world record for densest hydrogen storage
Kurzweil Newsletter, 3/14/14
Auto-switchable graphene bio-interface with a 'zipper' nanoarchitecture
Onur Parlak, Anthony P.F. Turner, Ashutosh Tiwari, Nano Werk 10/31/13
Samsung files patent for graphene-based touch screen
Marko Spasenovic, Graphene Tracker, 3/7/14
Graphene: Wikipedia
Grahpene:  Flexible touch screen, made from a sheet of carbon the thickness of one atom!   
Lynn Marentette, Interactive Multimedia Technology blog, 6/23/10

Looking forward to CHI 2012: Child Computer Interaction, Educational Interfaces, Health, Special Needs, and Much More!

I am looking forward to attending the ACM-CHI 2012 conference!


On Saturday and Sunday I'll be at the Educational Interfaces, Software, and Technology (EIST) workshop, which is part of the Child Computer Interaction/HCI and Kids community.  I've selected a few papers/presentations/panels that I hope to attend during the remainder of the conference below.


If you are curious about other topics that will be presented at CHI 2012, take a look at the short video previews on the CHIMadness2012 YouTube channel.  

VocSyl


VocSyl: Designing Visualizations to Facilitate Multisyllabic Speech with Children with Autism and Speech Delay (pdf)
Joshua Hailpern, Andrew Harris, Reed LaBotz, Brianna Birman, Karrie Karahalios, Laura DeThorne, Jim Halle (Social Spaces Research Group, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign)

Social Scripts
 
Fatima Bourjarwah: Facilitating the Authoring of Multimedia Social Skills Instructional Modules for Adolescents with High-Functioning Autism

Autism and Maths Tutor
Research Showcase - Autism & Maths tutor - CHI 2012 from George Chan on Vimeo.

ShoeSense


Giles Bailly, Joerg Mueller, Michael Rohs, Daniel Wigdor, Sven Kratz
ShoeSense: A New Perspective on Hand Gestures and Wearable Applications


Escobedo, L., Nguyen, D.H., Boyd, L., Hirano, S.H., Rangel, A., Garcia, D., Tentori, M., & Hayes, G.R. (2012). MOSOCO: A Mobile Assistive Tool to Support Children with Autism Practicing Social Skills in Real-Life Situations. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2012). Austin, Texas (May 5-10, 2012). New York: ACM Press. To appear

Design of an Exergaming Station for Children with Cerebral Palsy

(Research team from Queen's University, Canada, Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital)


Illumishare


Paper: IllumiShare: Sharing Any Surface

Sasa Junuzovic, Kori Inkpen, Tom Blank, Anoop Gupta, Microsoft Research

Panel: Tangible Interfaces for Children: Cognitive, Social & Physical Benefits and Challenges
Shuili Gilutz, Sandra Calvert, Kathleen Kremer, Barbara Chamberline, Geri Gay

Paper: Improving Literacy in Developing Countries Using Speech-Recognition-Supported Games on Mobile Devices 
Anuj Kumar, Pooja Reddy, Anuj Tewari, Rajat Agrawal, Matthew Kam


Tap & Play: And End-User Toolkit for Authoring Interactive Pen and Paper Language Activities (pdf) Ann Marie Piper, Nadir Weibel, James D. Hollan


RELATED
About the CHI Conference (from the CHI 2012 Conference Preview)
"Originally a small conference for psychologists interested in user interface design, the annual CHI conference has grown to include a very diverse participant group (such as interaction designers, computer scientists, engineering psychologists, developers, performing artists and more). It has also grown to deal with larger problems such as the organizational integration of technology and the use of technology in the home rather than only office settings. This year's conference marks 30 years of research, innovation and development in the field of Human-Computer Interaction and is expected to draw more than 2500 professionals from over 40 countries. The experience at CHI 2012 offers innovative opportunities for interacting with future technologies. The following areas represent a small portion of the total conference. For complete information about this year's conference, consult the Advance Program."


"Featuring over 900 works, the CHI conference is the premier worldwide forum for the exchange of information on all aspects of human-computer interaction. Typically the works presented address the concerns of design, engineering, management and user experience professionals. This year's conference also features works that focus on: Digital Arts, Games and Entertainment, Human-Computer Interaction for Kids, Health and Sustainability. Works are presented in several different venues. After two days of intimate pre-conference workshops, the main conference includes panel discussions, courses that provide leading-edge HCI knowledge, paper sessions, case studies, works-in-progress, student competitions (involving design, research and games), interactive demonstrations, special interest groups, and a Tuesday evening video night (popcorn included)." 



SIG-CHI is the Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction, and is part of ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery


Child Computer Interaction/HCI for Kids Chairs:
Janet C Read, University of Central Lancashire, UK
Panos Markopoulos, Eindhoven University of Technology
Allison Druin, University of Maryland


Educational Interfaces, Software, and Technology workshop organizers
CHI 2012 Facebook Page
EIST 2012 Facebook Page


SOMEWHAT RELATED 
The Autism Experience in Ubiquitous Computing (pdf)
Monica Tenority, Ph.D., UZBC, Ensenada, BC


Gillian Hayes:  Assistant Professor in Informatics, School of Information and Computer Sciences; Department of Education, University of California, Irvine.
Social and Technological Action Research (STAR), 

Interactive Technologies for Children with Special Needs IDC 2012 
(11th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children)

As special themes, IDC 2012 would like to discuss children's needs under the perspectives of "pedagogical aspects in theory and practise" as well as "children from diverse cultural backgrounds".


Grawemeyer, B., Johnson, H., Brosnan, M., Ashwin, E., Benton, L. (2012) Developing an Embodied Pedagogical Agent With and For Young People with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Accepted for presentation at the 11th International Conference on Intelligent Tutoring Systems, ITS 2012.

Morning Tech News: LED "Tatoos"; Sixth Sense Wearable Displays

Since I am usually crunched for time, I thought I'd try posting "morning tech news" on this blog in a brief format, and return to the topic later - hopefully later in the day or at the most, within the week.

If you are familiar with this blog, what I consider "news" is sometimes new to me.  It might be something that crossed my path a while ago and never posted.  It might be something that I missed.   It doesn't even have to be "news",  if it is something that is unique, catches my fancy, or is something that I think is an important innovation that should be followed and shared.

Today's news I caught from Wired, which linked to an article in MIT's Technology Review, "Implantable Silicon-Silk Electronics:  Biodegradable circuits could enable better neural interfaces and LED  tatoos", written by Katherine Bourzac.

"By building thin, flexible silicon electronics on silk substrates, researchers have made electronics that almost completely dissolve inside the body. So far the research group has demonstrated arrays of transistors made on thin films of silk. While electronics must usually be encased to protect them from the body, these electronics don't need protection, and the silk means the electronics conform to biological tissue. The silk melts away over time and the thin silicon circuits left behind don't cause irritation because they are just nanometers thick."


RELATED
WIRED's Gadget Lab:  The Illustrated Man:  How LED Tattos Could Make Your Skin a Screen Charlie Sorrel 11/20/09
"The silk substrate onto which the chips are mounted eventually dissolves away inside the body, leaving just the electronics behind. The silicon chips are around the length of a small grain of rice — about 1 millimeter, and just 250 nanometers thick. The sheet of silk will keep them in place, molding to the shape of the skin when saline solution is added.

These displays could be hooked up to any kind of electronic device, also inside the body. Medical uses are being explored, from blood-sugar sensors that show their readouts on the skin itself to neurodevices that tie into the body’s nervous system — hooking chips to particular nerves to control a prosthetic hand, for example."

Tatoo You:  Silicon LED's can act as photonic tattoos that can show blood sugar readings
-Surfdaddy Orca,  hplusmagaizine 11/17/09


"Brian Litt, associate professor of neurology and bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania, is working with researchers from Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois and Tufts University to develop medical applications for the new transistors. Their silk-silicon LEDs can act as photonic tattoos that can show blood-sugar readings, as well as arrays of conformable electrodes that might interface with the nervous system."


Litt Lab : Translational NeuroEngineering 
(Brian Litt's lab.)


SOMEWHAT RELATED
I've been thinking about flexible touch-screen applications, and it never occurred to me that the concept might be something that would transfer to human skin!  Here are a few of my posts related to this topic:

Last night I dreamt about haptic touch-screen overlays...
Rhizome 2009:  A Lovely Interactive Multi-touch App on a Flexible Lycra Screen
Impress:  A cool flexible interface project  by Silke Hilsing


More about this "somewhat related topic" to come: 
Latest SixthSense demo features paper "laptop" camera gestures
Nilay Patel, Engadget  11/18/09
Adding a "SixthSense" to your Cellphone
Vikas Bajaj, Bits, New York Times 11/6/09
Pattie Maes TED Talk:  Sixth Sense-  Mobile Wearable Interface and Gesture Interaction (for the price of a cell phone!) - my post from 3/2009

My Summer Emerging Technology "Wish to Play" List!

Yes, it is summer, and I need new sunglasses. But not the usual kind.

I just had to post this picture from the Optical Vision Site. Too bad "iShades" are just in the prototype level of development.



There are other fashionable options:



Maybe this prototype would look better:

Photo from the Wired Gadget Lab

Or perhaps this pair?

Human Media Lab at Queen's University

I guess the glasses will help me interact with the next in emerging technology: the organic user interface!

Twp guys and their flexible "gummi".

And here is the next-gen version of Readius, a flexible pocket e-book from Polymer Vision. (I posted a video clip of the earlier version of "Readius" on YouTube two years ago.)













(Photo from Engaget: "Polymer Vision has Readius ready to go, needs case to get it out of the door".)

You can learn more about organic and flexible user interfaces from a video on the Daily Planet Discovery Channel. Organic user interfaces allows computers to take any shape or form. The concept reminds me of the flexible haptic interfaces I've dreamt about.

So what what else is emerging?

Here are a couple of pictures of a Google Earth browser on a spherical screen:



And here is a smaller, collapsible multi-touch sphere from Moxia:









More to come!

Hug Shirt and Hug from a Distance: Wearables for people with autism spectrum disorders? (Cross post from Tech Psych)

"Hug from a Distance" is a vest that can be electronically controlled to give someone a hug over the Internet. The vest was created by Floyd Meuller, who has a rich background in interactive technologies, multimedia, and interdisciplinary research.

Children with autism spectrum disorders who calm with pressure might benefit from this type of vest.



Another wearable technology is the Hug Shirt.

"Wearers hug themselves, then using Bluetooth technology and their cell phone, they can send it to someone else wearing a Hug Shirt that simulates the feeling of the hug," says Francesca Rosella, creative director of London-based CuteCircuit, which developed the interactive top. "It copies the strength, length, temperature and heart rate of the hug."

It would be interesting to research the effectiveness of these wearable technologies with children and teens who have autism spectrum disorders.