Cloaking Device

A cloaking device is a hypothetical or fictional stealth technology that can cause objects, such as spaceships or individuals, to be partially or wholly invisible to parts of the electromagnetic (EM) spectrum. However, over the entire spectrum, a cloaked object scatters more than an uncloaked object. Fictional cloaking devices have been used as plot devices in various media for many years. Developments in scientific research show that real-world cloaking devices can obscure objects from at least one wavelength of EM emissions. Scientists already use artificial materials called metamaterials to bend light around an object.  An operational, non-fictional cloaking device might be an extension of the basic technologies used by stealth aircraft, such as radar-absorbing dark paint, optical camouflage, cooling the outer surface to minimize electromagnetic emissions (usually infrared), or other techniques to minimize other EM emissions, and to minimize particle emissions from the object.

 The use of certain devices to jam and confuse remote sensing devices would greatly aid in this process, but is more properly referred to as "active camouflage". Alternatively, metamaterials provide the theoretical possibility of making electromagnetic radiation pass freely around the 'cloaked' object. Optical metamaterials have featured in several recent proposals for invisibility schemes. "Metamaterials" refers to materials that owe their refractive properties to the way they are structured, rather than the substances that compose them. Using transformation optics it is possible to design the optical parameters of a "cloak" so that it guides light around some region, rendering it invisible over a certain band of wavelengths.

These spatially varying optical parameters do not correspond to any natural material, but may be implemented using metamaterials. There are several theories of cloaking, giving rise to different types of invisibility. In 2014, scientists demonstrated good cloaking performance in murky water, demonstrating that an object shrouded in fog can disappear completely when appropriately coated with metamaterial. This is due to the random scattering of light, such as that which occurs in clouds, fog, milk, frosted glass, etc., combined with the properties of the metamaterial coating. When light is diffused, a thin coat of metamaterial around an object can make it essentially invisible under a range of lighting condition.

Flexible Electronics

Flexible electronics, also known as flex circuits, is a technology for assembling electronic circuits by mounting electronic devices on flexible plastic substrates, such as polyimide, PEEK or transparent conductive polyester film. Additionally, flex circuits can be screen printed silver circuits on polyester. Flexible electronic assemblies may be manufactured using identical components used for rigid printed circuit boards, allowing the board to conform to a desired shape, or to flex during its use. Flexible printed circuits (FPC) are made with a photolithographic technology. An alternative way of making flexible foil circuits or flexible flat cables (FFCs) is laminating very thin (0.07 mm) copper strips in between two layers of PET. These PET layers, typically 0.05 mm thick, are coated with an adhesive which is thermosetting, and will be activated during the lamination process.

Flex circuits are often used as connectors in various applications where flexibility, space savings, or production constraints limit the serviceability of rigid circuit boards or hand wiring. A common application of flex circuits is in computer keyboards; most keyboards use flex circuits for the switch matrix. In LCD fabrication, glass is used as a substrate. If thin flexible plastic or metal foil is used as the substrate instead, the entire system can be flexible, as the film deposited on top of the substrate is usually very thin, on the order of a few micrometres. Organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) are normally used instead of a back-light for flexible displays, making a flexible organic light-emitting diode display.

Most flexible circuits are passive wiring structures that are used to interconnect electronic components. Consumer electronics devices make use of flexible circuits in cameras, personal entertainment devices, calculators, or exercise monitors. Flexible circuits are found in industrial and medical devices where many interconnections are required in a compact package. Cellular telephones are another widespread example of flexible circuits. Flexible solar cells have been developed for powering satellites.

Meeting the demand for smaller LED displays

The search for a breakthrough display technology that addresses the needs of next generation products could be over. A growing number of emerging applications, such as Head Up Displays (HUDs), AR/VR headsets and general wearables, are looking at new display technologies to enable the development of next generation products that will meet growing global demand. According to research consultancy Yole Développement, the market could reach as many as 330million units by 2025.

Although augmented and virtual reality are probably being seen consumer technologies, they are increasingly used in industrial and manufacturing applications, providing skilled and semi-skilled workers with access to information that can assist them in a range of tasks. Examples may include showing a worker the correct sequence for fixing and tightening bolts in an engine, or rivets in a larger structure such as a fuselage. When tools are also connected, the process becomes altogether more integrated, delivering quality assurance as each fixing is recorded or highlighting those that haven’t yet been secured.

Head-mounted displays not only add a level of realism to the scene, they can further increase productivity by allowing workers to move around unencumbered by large handheld displays or tablets.Display technology is evolving in order to meet demand for smaller, lighter headsets that can be worn for an entire shift without becoming a burden or potential health hazard. The drive for more efficient displays is pushing innovative manufacturers towards microLEDs; a technology that promises lighter, smaller and more efficient displays.

Devices that run intelligent assistants locally

The intelligent assistants we’re currently using — think Siri, Cortana, and Google Now — need an Internet connection and a lot of data to answer your questions and respond to your requests. But in the future, we’ll have smartphones, tablets, and wearables equipped with intelligent assistants that perform deep learning tasks locally. As Alex Brokaw reported recently for The Verge, MIT researchers have developed a computer chip that would enable your smartphone to complete complex AI tasks, like natural language processing and facial recognition, without being connected to the Internet.

In the latest attempt to fulfill sci-fi movie fantasies, tech firms have been lining up to provide you with a virtual assistant. From well-known voice-powered AIs such as Apple’s Siri to upstarts like Viv, the goal is to quicken the actions you already take on your phone and other devices, growing ever-more efficient at the job by learning from your behavior. But like any hired help, each of these AI assistants has different skills, blind spots, and quirks. Here’s a rundown of the contenders, including some intriguing newcomers.

That would not only save your battery, but also alleviate some of the privacy concerns inherent with assistants, which have so far sent data to remote servers to parse and respond to your requests. Improving speech recognition technology will make it easier to get things done with AI and chatbots, and enable our devices to better understand what we’re saying and what we want to do.

Measuring battery life

Poor battery life is affecting the take-up of too many devices. One of the technical reasons holding back the uptake of Internet of Things (IoT) products is poor battery life. While power has always been crucial, from a hardware perspective these devices require layers of software to operate. This can mean that choosing the wrong protocol or a failure to take into account the impact of software updates can help to ruin the overall user experience. It offers an integrated method for performing automated measurements and testing, explains Samuelsson.

In low-power embedded systems the choice of SoC or MCU is perhaps the most significant, and semiconductor vendors have taken many approaches to saving power. Sometimes peripherals, coupled with a direct memory access (DMA) controller, move data to and from SRAM without the processor needing to be active. But from the microcontroller’s datasheet alone that is hard to assess, says Samuelsson. By providing control over the supply voltage while measuring the current consumption, various power source strategies can be evaluated. If the impact of sub-circuitry needs to be understood, the differential analogue input on the expansion connector, together with a small resistance in the supply line, allows the power impact to be clearly separated out from the total power consumption.

The second key element, according to Samuelsson is the serial data RX input of the expansion port. Serial communication data can be captured via this interface at rates of 9600 bits per second (bps) up to 4Mbps. Any logging messages output by the application are then time-stamped and synchronised with the other time-domain measurements. A real-time operating system (RTOS)-based application could, together with instrumented trace logging via a UART, be tracked as it switched between tasks and into and out of its idle-task and low-power modes. The final element is the single-ended analogue input that is available when differential-mode power measurements are not being made.

Speaking to your virtual assistant

While we're slowly reimagining touch UI, a new and complementary form of UI is emerging that may feel even more intuitive to the average person: speech. Amazon made a cultural splash with the release of its artificially intelligent (AI) personal assistant system, Alexa, and the various voice-activated home assistant products it released alongside it. Google, the supposed leader in AI, rushed to follow suit with its own suite of home assistant products.

Whether you prefer Amazon's Alexa, Google's Assistant, iPhone's Siri, or Windows Cortana, these services are designed to let you interface with your phone or smart device and access the knowledge bank of the web with simple verbal commands, telling these ‘virtual assistants' what you want. It’s an amazing feat of engineering. And even while it’s not quite perfect, the technology is improving quickly. When you combine this falling error rate with the massive innovations happening with microchips and cloud computing (outlined in the upcoming series chapters), we can expect virtual assistants to become pleasantly accurate by 2020.

Even better, the virtual assistants currently being engineered will not only understand your speech perfectly, but they will also understand the context behind the questions you ask; they will recognize the indirect signals given off by your tone of voice; they will even engage in long-form conversations with you, Her-style. Overall, voice recognition based virtual assistants will become the primary way we access the web for our day-to-day informational needs.

Micro Electromechanical Systems

Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems, or MEMS, is a technology that in its most general form can be defined as miniaturized mechanical and electro-mechanical elements (i.e., devices and structures) that are made using the techniques of micro fabrication. The critical physical dimensions of MEMS devices can vary from well below one micron on the lower end of the dimensional spectrum, all the way to several millimeters. The MEMS pressure sensors in respiratory monitoring are used in ventilators to monitor the patient's breathing. 

The one main criterion of MEMS is that there are at least some elements having some sort of mechanical functionality whether or not these elements can move. The term used to define MEMS varies in different parts of the world. In the United States they are predominantly called MEMS, while in some other parts of the world they are called “Microsystems Technology” or “micro machined devices”.

The MEMS development stems from the microelectronics industry, and combines and extends the conventional techniques developed for integrated circuit (IC) processing with MEMS-specific processes, to produce micro-miniature mechanical structures with dimensional features on the order of microns.MEMS pressure sensors are used for eye surgery to measure and control the vacuum level used to remove fluid from the eye, which is cleaned of debris and replaced back into the eye during surgery.

Graphene enables clock rates in the terahertz range

                  Graphene is considered a promising candidate for the nanoelectronics of the future. In theory, it should allow clock rates up to a thousand times faster than today's silicon-based electronics. Scientists have now shown that graphene can actually convert electronic signals with frequencies in the gigahertz range extremely efficiently into signals with several times higher frequency.Today's silicon-based electronic components operate at clock rates of several hundred gigahertz (GHz), that is, they are switching several billion times per second. The electronics industry is currently trying to access the terahertz (THz) range, i.e., up to thousand times faster clock rates.

                A promising material and potential successor to silicon could be graphene, which has a high electrical conductivity and is compatible with all existing electronic technologies. In particular, theory has long predicted that graphene could be a very efficient "nonlinear" electronic material, i.e., a material that can very efficiently convert an applied oscillating electromagnetic field into fields with a much higher frequency. However, all experimental efforts to prove this effect in graphene over the past ten years have not been successful.

          The long-awaited experimental proof of extremely efficient terahertz high harmonics generation in graphene has succeeded with the help of a trick: The researchers used graphene that contains many free electrons, which come from the interaction of graphene with the substrate onto which it is deposited, as well as with the ambient air.