Night Vision Coming Soon To Cell Phones, Eyeglasses

The illuminating power of bulky night vision goggles could soon be widely available thanks to a new, paper thin device.

By Eric Bland 

From: http://news.discovery.com/

An image taken through night vision glasses shows soldiers in northern Afghanistan. New technology could make night vision more widely available.
AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus

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Adapting technology found in flat screen television sets, scientists have created a thin film that converts infrared light into visible light. The technology could give cell phones, eyeglasses and car windshields cheap, lightweight night vision.

"This device can convert any infrared image into a visible image and would weigh no more than a pair of eyeglasses," said Franky So, a scientist at the University of Florida who describes his new night vision technology in a recent article in the journal Advanced Materials that was funded in part by advanced technology powerhouse DARPA.

Most night vision devices today use massive amounts of electricity -- often several thousand volts, according to So -- and heavy, glass lenses that maintain a vacuum to make the night come alive. So's device takes a radically different turn, replacing glass with thin plastic, eliminating the vacuum and using energy-efficient, organic LEDs.

So does this by using technology borrowed from flat screen TVs. Infrared light enters the film and is detected by the first of seven separate layers, which generates a slight electrical charge. Additional electrical energy -- about three to five volts -- amplifies that signal, which is then converted back into visible light.

WATCH VIDEO: This clip from The Science Channel's, "Deconstructed" sheds some light on the mechanism of night vision goggles.

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Like most of today's night vision cameras, So's device emits an eerie green light. Unlike most night vision technology today, however, So's design would weigh less than 100 grams (less than a quarter of a pound). Part of that weight is the proof of concept small size -- about one square centimeter -- but So says that even a full scale device could weigh as little as 10 grams and be only a few microns thick.
In other words, heavy and bulky night vision goggles could be replaced with a thin, lightweight coating weighing less than half a deck of playing cards.

It will take about 18 months to scale up the device for practical applications, such as car windshields, lightweight night vision eyeglasses and cell phones cameras.

"Ten years ago when people talked about putting cameras in cell phones, people asked why would you want to do that," said So. "Now you cannot find a cell phone without a camera. In the future, you might not be able to find a cell phone without night vision."

Night vision cell phones could be just the start. So said his team also plans to create cell phones that can see, and more importantly, measure heat as well. A cell phone equipped with heat vision could instantly take a patient's body temperature to see if they had a fever. A car windshield could make pedestrians crossing the street much easier to see and avoid.

Other scientists are enthusiastic about the new research. "This has a high potential to revolutionize night vision," said Yongli Gao, a professor at the University of Rochester. "It could be very useful in detecting heat loss from homes to reduce energy consumption, and for military applications as well."

Device could create real-life Spiderman

A device inspired by a tiny purple beetle that feeds on palm leaves could one day allow humans to walk up walls like the comic book hero Spiderman.

By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

Engineers have used the adhesive power of water to create a device capable of sticking to glass, wood and even brick. Photo: AFP/GETTY

Engineers at Cornell University, in New York, have invented a palm-sized device that uses the adhesive power of water to create a reversible adhesive bond capable of sticking to glass, wood and even brick.

The researchers, whose work was funded by the US military, hope to use their invention to develop gloves and shoes that will allow the wearer to climb up even the blankest of walls.

The technology was inspired by the Palmetto tortoise beetle from Florida, which uses surface tension from tiny droplets of oil secreted by glands at the top of its legs to clamp its shell down onto a leaf when it is under attack from ants.

Once attached, the beetle is capable of holding loads 100 times its own weight.

Professor Paul Steen, a biomolecular engineer at Cornell University, found that by pumping tiny droplets of water through microscopic holes in a flat plate, he could exploit the surface tension of the water to "glue" the plate to another surface.

Using an electrical field to pump the water through the holes, he was also able to reverse the process, allowing the plate to become unstuck on demand simply by changing the electric field.

While each droplet is only able to hold a small force, together they are able to hold a far greater force. An early version of the device can hold weights of around one ounce using water droplets about a sixth the size of a pinhead.

Professor Steen has found that the more droplets there are between surfaces, the stronger the adhesion becomes.

He found that by making the holes, and so also the water droplets, smaller it was possible to get more droplets on the surface of the device and so increase the amount of weight it is possible to hold.

He believes that by using microscopic water drops, around 1,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair, it would be possible to create a 3 inch wide pad that could hold up weights up to 20 stone.

He said: "What we have is the ability to make strong but reversible bonds and this idea of creating clothing that can give a Spiderman type ability comes from that.

"At the moment the only way it is possible to climb up the side of buildings is to use suction cups which require ungainly and heavy vacuum pumps and a lot of power. We are exploiting the cohesion of water rather than having to create the suction ourselves.

"Epoxy-strength adhesive that is switchable doesn't exist, but we realised the beetle was showing us the way. Our inspiration comes from the beetle, but our control of the "bond" is quite different."

The device consists of a flat plate covered in holes with a small reservoir of water beneath. When an electrical field is applied from a common 9 volt battery, water is pumped through the holes to form droplets on the surface that then cling to any surface they touch.

The water molecules act like a bridge between the two surfaces binding them together at the edges of each droplet.

During testing Professor Steen and his colleague Michael Vogel found that it was possible to adhere to wood, plastic, glass, metal, brick and sandpaper.

Their research has been funded by Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which is the research and development wing for the US military.

Such a device could prove useful for special forces looking to scale buildings quickly as the ability to reverse the grip of the device makes it easy to release limbs independently.

With such small power demands, the device could easily be incorporated into clothing, according to Professor Steen.

"At the moment we don't know what DARPA envisages the end use of our research will be, but having the ability to stick and release a load easily could have a number of uses."

Universal ‘Rubik’s Cube’ Could Become Pentagon Shapeshifter

• By Noah Shachtman

Even by the standards of the Pentagon fringe science arm, this project sounds far-out: “programmable matter” that can be ordered to “self-assemble or alter their shape, perform a function and then disassemble themselves.” But researchers backed by Darpa are actually making progress on this incredible goal, Henry Kenyon at Signal magazine reports.

One day, that could lead to “morphing aircraft and ground vehicles, uniforms that can alter themselves to be comfortable in any climate, and ’soft’ robots that flow like mercury through small openings to enter caves and bunker complexes.” A soldier could even reach into a can of unformed goop, and order up a custom-made tool or a “universal spare part.”

One team from Harvard is working on a kind of “generalized Rubik’s Cube” that can fold into all kinds of shapes. Another is trying to order large strands of synthetic DNA to bind together in a “molecular Velcro.” An MIT group is building “self-folding origami” machines that “use specialized sheets of material with built-in actuators and data. These machines use cutting-edge mathematical theorems to fold themselves into virtually any three-dimensional object.”

The Programmable Matter project is five months into its second phase, which is supposed to wind up early next Spring. When they’re done, the researchers ought to “assemble four or five three-dimensional solids of a specific size and shape from a set of building blocks.”

Intel, which has done a bunch of programmable matter work on its own, is looking beyond those basic steps. Way, way beyond. The malleable stuff could one day “mimic the shape and appearance of a person or object being imaged in real time, and as the originals moved, so would their replicas,” according to their website. “These 3D models would be physical entities, not holograms. You could touch them and interact with them, just as if the originals were in the room with you. ”

[Illo: Darpa]