Sensors

For its fourth Kickstarter, Miops has created a hot-shoe attachment called the Flex that's designed to help photographers "capture stunning timelapse videos, HDR photos, high-speed actions, extraordinary lightning strikes and more."

In order to monitor their wearers' movements, smart fabrics typically incorporate strain-measuring sensors. And while such sensors are often impractically fragile, Harvard University scientists have created a new one that can really take a beating.

While we have been hearing about the development of health-monitoring implantable sensors, most such devices would have to be surgically removed once no longer needed. An experimental new one, however, would just harmlessly dissolve.

When conducting environmental studies in hard-to-access locations, scientists will often set up networks of small data-logging sensors. Deploying those sensors can be hard, though, which is why a dart-shooting drone is being developed to do the job.

Scientists at Penn State University have developed a flexible sensor they say can be safely printed directly onto the skin, where it can track things like body temperature and blood oxygen levels, before being washed off once the job is done.

Researchers at the University of Washington have developed a tiny new sensor that can be carried around on a small drone or even the back of an insect – and then dropped on demand to track the environment for years at a time.

Graphene, the electrically-conductive "wonder material" made up of a one-atom-thick sheet of linked carbon atoms, already has many uses. It now has another, however, as the active ingredient in a sensor that detects food spoilage.

Sony has shown off what it's calling "the world's first image sensors to be equipped with AI processing functionality." These new sensors handle AI image analysis on board, so only the necessary data can be sent for further cloud processing.

Engineers from North Carolina State University have developed a thin, stretchable electronic wearable sleeve that allows the user's skin to breathe, making for more comfortable long-term use as a biomedical sensor or human-machine interface.

Many of us now keep tabs on how we're doing by wearing health and fitness trackers, which run on batteries. Researchers from Caltech have developed an electronic skin that can be packed with sensors, and that's powered by the sweat of its wearer.

Imagine touching the armrest of your sofa to change the channel on your television, or pressing against a lightbulb stencil on the wall to turn on your smart light – these functions and many more like them are now possible thanks to new research.

Computers can already boast superhuman sensory abilities in sight and hearing, but smell has been much tougher. Even harder is learning to categorize and differentiate smells, but a new Intel chip that mimics the human brain is well on the way.