Category Archives: research and development

Researchers Seek to Create the Digital Smell Interface

Posted on by

We hear digital audio, we see digital video, and we feel digital haptic feedback. However, we don’t have an analog for the sense of smell. [Kasun] and his team of researchers from the Imagineering Institute in Malaysia are in the midst of changing that reality. Their project aims to transmit fragrances via electronic stimulation. Though it’s really more of a step toward creating a multi-sensory internet.

The team’s “electric smell machine” consists of a variable power supply connected to silver electrodes wrapped around an endoscopic camera. The camera is necessary to ensure contact with the user’s olfactory bulb as electric …read more

Continue reading Researchers Seek to Create the Digital Smell Interface→

3D Printed Nozzles Turbocharge Microsphere Production

Posted on by

Researchers at MIT have used 3D printing to open the door to low-cost, scalable, and consistent generation of microencapsulated particles, at a fraction of the time and cost usually required. Microencapsulation is the process of encasing particles of one material (a core) within another material (a shell) and has applications in pharmaceuticals, self-healing materials, and dye-based solar cells, among others. But the main problem with the process was that it was that it was slow and didn’t scale, and it was therefore expensive and limited to high-value applications only. With some smart design and stereolithography (SLA) 3D printing, that changed.  …read more

Continue reading 3D Printed Nozzles Turbocharge Microsphere Production→

Behold: Valve’s VR and AR Prototypes

Posted on by

Just in case anyone secretly had the idea that Valve Software’s VR and other hardware somehow sprang fully-formed from a lab, here are some great photos and video of early prototypes, and interviews with the people who made them. Some of the hardware is quite raw-looking, some of it is recognizable, and some are from directions that were explored but went nowhere, but it’s all fascinating.

The accompanying video (embedded below) has some great background and stories about the research process, which began with a mandate to explore the concepts of AR and VR and determine what could be done …read more

Continue reading Behold: Valve’s VR and AR Prototypes→