5 New Technologies

#5
Self charging mobile phone battery
The only real source is the patent, available here
Not a new technology, more of an adaption of old technology but still really cool and could easily become a part of the everyday. Just a mobile phone, with slightly heavier components(Like an older phone, really) all the standard components are inside a frame and this frame can move along two sets of rails, one allows it travel up and down, the other side to side. Strips of piezoelectric crystals sit at the end of each rail and generate a current when compressed by the frame. So as the user walks, or otherwise moves the phone, the motion generates electricity. This charges a capacitor which in turn trickles charge into the battery, keeping it topped up.

In other words, badarse. Of course there will be issues with over charging the battery and things but I'm sure this will be overcome

#4
Mind controlled wheelchair?
In development by multiple universities, they use an electrode filled skullcap connected to a PC running brain-computer interface (BCI) software. The user thinks about their feet to move forwards, their tongue to stop, and their right or left hands to proceed in those directions. The researchers placed 12 phone vibrators, positioned like the numbers on a clock, on a belt worn around the wheelchair user's waist. These vibrate sequentially for 3 seconds each. If they wearer wants to go, say, in a 4 o'clock direction, they wait until the appropriate "tactor" vibrates and then think "that one".

Still in experimental stages, there is very little known about it. Source here

#3
Latex Soundproofing
Info from here
The reason low frequency sounds seep through walls is due to their long wavelength, and when traveling through solids the wave length can be increased. What Zhiyu Yang at the university of science and technology in Hong Kong has invented is a specific Latex based tile that cancels out sound, only being 15 millimetres thick!

These noise-cancelling panels consist of a latex rubber membrane stretched over a 3-millimetre-thick solid plastic grid of centimetre squares. In the middle of each square is a small, weighted, plastic button.

When sound waves hit the panel, the membrane and weighted buttons resonate at difference frequencies. "The inner part of the membrane vibrates in opposite phase to the outer region
" So essentially the the tile cancels the sound out by absorbing and reacting to the sound.

Yes, awesome.

#2
Interactive Paper
Well, the paper itself isn't really interactive. It's more to do with the ink used on the paper. The Ink itself is a conductor, and reacts to the current activated by moving the paper around ( I.e in greeting cards, pop up books)The conductive ink can also create touch-sensitive components and also link to other devices embedded in the paper, such as microphones and LEDs.

The best example is a birthday card in which the interactive card of a birthday cake in which the candles light up when somebody triggers a touch-sensitive switch by picking up the card. The lights go out again when a microphone senses the user blowing on the card.

#1

LCD screen that reacts to what happens infront of it

Not the best title, but it makes sense. The screen allows users to manipulate or interact with objects on the screen in three dimensions. It will also function as a 3D scanner. It reacts to the user waving their arms, fingers and general movements in relation to what is happening on screen.

The brightness of each of an LCD's pixels is controlled by a layer of liquid crystals, which can swivel to physically control how much light passes from the display's backlight. This screen uses the reverse of that and reacts the amount of light passing through from the outside source

Not too much more to say. Info here