From life-enhancing innovations to planet-saving designs
The sky’s the limit
Nigel Gifford OBE is a former member of the British Army Catering Corps who knew all about inaccurate and wasteful drones delivering supplies. He designed an aerial vehicle (UAV) called Pouncer which navigates via GPS, making flight and landing extremely accurate. Its wings and body are made of empty food containers to be filled as needed. Pouncer can carry 200 pounds of food, helping increase daily humanitarian food rations from 2,200 calories per person to 3,500.
www.windhorse.aero
Good vibrations
How can deaf people ‘hear’ classical music? By wirelessly translating music into vibrations into a special shirt so people feel what the orchestra plays. Germany’s Junge Symphoniker Hamburg orchestra collaborated with wearable technology experts CuteCircuit to create the Sound Shirt, which interprets eight types of sound, including the double bass and large percussion, as data. The data is then sent wirelessly to the shirt, where 16 micro actuators vibrate.
www.junge-symphoniker.de
Smartphone attachment for STD testing
Chlamydia affects roughly 35 million people each year in the US alone, and puts women at risk of infertility. Boston-based firm Luminostics has developed a smartphone device which removes the stigma of going and getting tested by checking for Chlamydia in the privacy of a user’s home. Luminostics can test saliva, blood or urine samples and uses the smartphone’s flash camera to measure the light emitted by the particles on the samples. The product is planning to launch in the US and Europe in 2018.
www.luminostics.com
Blind mothers “see” ultrasound scans via 3D prints
Technology for expectant mothers often focuses on health. For those with sensory loss, however, additional considerations must be taken into account. In Poland, In Utero 3D allows blind parents to meet their unborn baby via a 3D bas-relief of the mother’s ultrasound scan. Polish parents are charged a nominal fee of PLN 1, and families outside the country pay EU 1 but must also pay to print the bas-relief in their own country.
www.inutero3d.pl
