HULC, or Human Universal Load Carrier, is an exoskeleton designed by Lockheed Martin to assist soldiers carrying heavy loads in the field. According to its manufacturer, HULC allows soldiers to carry up to 200 pounds for extended periods of time while preserving the user’s range of movement – including “deep squats, crawls and upper body lifting.”

As you can see in Lockheed’s promotional video above, HULC isn’t a bulky exoskeleton that provides strength in exchange for mobility. Users appear to be able to move quickly and easily even over rough terrain.

The U.S. Army is apparently intrigued by the concept, and this week announced a $1.1 million contract to actually field a few HULC units among active troops. While $1.1 million is a relative drop in the bucket as far as military spending goes, it may foretell a future in which assistive exoskeletons become common in the military for logistics staff and even soldiers engaged in combat.

New Zealand firm Rex Bionics took a different approach with their “robotic legs,” which are designed to allow the disabled to walk. The company notes the Rex is not intended to be a wheelchair replacement, but is instead a way to augment a chair – for instance, when needing to travel up and down stairs or access items stored at a standing height.

Having been in development for the last seven years. the Rex is expected to go on sale “soon” in its home country and is expected to cost $150,000.

While humans have been known to experience synesthesia by using hallucinogenic drugs or after brain injury, German scientists have been able to re-wire fruit fly larvae to perceive blue light as smelling like bananas. Although normal larvae would retreat from light, these larvae were thus attracted to it:

The work involves activating single receptor neurons out of 28 olfactory neurons. All the olfactory neurons were capable of producing a protein that is activated by light. The researchers had to choose which one to make light-sensitive.

They found they could either activate cells which would normally register repulsive odors and make the flies go away, or they could activate cells that respond to attractive odors like banana, marzipan or glue. Those odors are all present in rotting fruit, which attracts fruit flies.

The neurons send an electrical signal if they are stimulated with blue light, giving the fly larvae the impression that it has smelled something. As shown in the photo, the larvae went toward the light. The point is to study how the neural network operates, the researchers say.

There are certain instances where synesthesia could potentially be beneficial – this list of famous synesthetes seems to indicate it’s especially common (relatively speaking) among musicians.

This video has gone viral, but it’s worth linking here. The expression on eight-month old Jonathan’s face when he hears for the first time, due to a Cochlear implant, is priceless. A reminder of how technology enhances our lives – and a promise of what’s to come.

(Via Neatorama)

He also provides his opinion on who is helping bring about this potential future:

Ok, so who is working towards this eventuality? Well, if it happens this way, pretty much everybody in the NBIC fields – everybody working on nanotech and biotech and AI and brain science, whether as citizen scientists in a collaborationist project or working for a corporation, or those wacky surrealists at DARPA – they’re all pushing this potentiality forward. Of course, we may have to “hijack the singularity” from them eventually – or even now (think gene patent v. open source bio). But mainly, I think all the people who are engaging in open source collaborationist tinkering and culture, the citizen scientists – particularly the more sophisticated and educated young people that are choosing to invest themselves in “garage” projects – I think they all may be taking us there.

I also think the best, smartest critics and skeptics and SF writers and creators are helping – by problematizing these scenarios in advance, by giving us arguments and narratives that remind us about human behaviors and emotions and political and economic and scientific realities. Brilliant fiction adds to our foresight… our pattern recognition… by playing out dramatic, difficult, dark, challenging, ambiguous or dystopian scenarios based on similar technological possibilities.

Like all of R.U. Sirius’ writings, it’s well worth reading.

My grandfather suffered from age-related macular degeneration (ARMD), which causes loss of vision over time. By the time he passed away in his late 70s, he was almost blind. ARMD progresses from the “inside” of your visual field to the outside, so those affected are unable to see that which they are looking at directly. In some ways, the effects are the opposite of an eye disease called retinitis pigmentosa (RP), which causes sufferers to lose peripheral vision first, creating a “tunnel vision” effect once the disease is sufficiently advanced.

Because I have a relative that suffered from ARMD, I’m at a 50 percent risk of developing the condition sometime in my life – as do my father, brother, aunts and uncles.

Based on my grandfather’s experience, macular degeneration can be especially frustrating because, although otherwise in good shape both mentally and physically, it becomes difficult or impossible to read, drive, easily watch television or recognize faces. I’m sure other progressive diseases that lead to vision loss are similarly frustrating.

In part because I have a personal stake in seeing treatments and workarounds developed for diseases like ARMD, I was glad to hear that Australian researchers have developed a retinal implant for people with ARMD and RP that will enable them to at least recognize faces and read large-type print:

The device, which is currently undergoing testing, consists of a miniature camera mounted on glasses that captures visual input, transforming it into electrical signals that directly stimulate surviving neurons in the retina. The implant will enable recipients to perceive points of light in the visual field that the brain can then reconstruct into an image.

The research team will next focus on development of a commercial implant that can be placed in the back of the eye and “respond to wireless transmission of vision.”

(Source: ScienceBlog / Image: Bionic Vision Australia)

Lance-Corporal Craig Lundberg was blinded while serving in Iraq when he sustained injuries from a rocket propelled grenade (RPG). Although he said he felt lucky make it home, he returned without his sight.

Because Lundberg had been normal sighted before losing his vision, the British Ministry of Defense recognized him as an ideal candidate for an experimental device, called a BrainPort, that gives him the ability to navigate and recognize high contrast shapes and images using his tongue.

The BrainPort system consists of a pair of sunglasses equipped with a camera, which sends images to a hand-held device. The device, in turn, converts the images to “stimulation patterns” and sends them to the mouthpiece, which contains “hundreds of electrodes.” The mouthpiece is held against the tongue, where the patterns are produced as electric pulses that Lundberg has learned to interpret:

“You get lines and shapes of things, it sees in black and white so you get a two dimensional image on your tongue, it’s a bit like a pins and needles sensation,” he said.

“It’s only a prototype, but the potential to change my life is massive, it’s got a lot of potential to advance things for blind people.

“One of the things it has enabled me to do is pick up objects straight away, I can reach out and pick them up when before I would be fumbling around to feel for them.”

Since the BrainPort is in the prototype stage, it prevents users from speaking normally while the mouthpiece, or “lollipop,” is in use. Designers say future versions will be smaller and could potentially be permanently implanted in the mouth for “more natural use.”

(Via Neatorama)

(Image via BBC)

Researchers in South Korea have successfully transmitted data at broadband speeds between two points on a person’s arm using the body itself as a conduit. The technology is very energy efficient when compared to alternatives like wireless data transfer, and therefore may lend itself to health applications:

It is difficult to monitor vital signs, such as blood sugar and electrical activity of the heart, in a person going about their everyday lives because it means either covering them in snaking wires connected to a recording device, or using wireless transmission.

“If we use wireless for each of these vital signs we would need many batteries,” says study co-author Sang-Hoon Lee of Korea University in Seoul. A network transmitting through the skin would cut energy needs by roughly 90 per cent, he says.

Future versions of the technology could be implanted beneath the skin for long-term monitoring purposes.

While Memento was a stellar work of fiction, it reminded me that millions around the world cope with memory loss due to diseases such as Alzheimer’s. For these individuals and their families, not being able to recall memories greatly impedes their lives. Microsoft has developed a new device called a “Sensecam,” that may lead to technology that helps people with Alzheimer’s and other forms of memory disorders record their day-to-day experiences, even if they can’t physically remember.

The Sensecam takes hundreds of pictures in a short period. When researchers began exploring it as a memory aid a few years ago, they had patients and caregivers look at all the pictures together.

[…]Once the system selects some photos from the hundreds taken, the caregiver winnows down the candidates, adding cues like audio from the voice recorder, verbal narration and brief text captions. The final product is a multimedia slide show on a tablet computer that allows the patient to dig deeper into highlighted parts of some images by tapping on the screen. The first tap plays audio, the second shows captions.

“The design is intended to give the patient the ability to engage actively with the experience instead of simply flipping through some pictures,” said Mr. Lee, the graduate student. Testing the system with the Reznicks and two other couples, he and Dr. Dey found that it helped patients recall events more vividly and with greater confidence than when they simply went through all of the images.

While researchers have experimented with the Sensecam as a memory aid, there are no plans to market it as such. Instead, the manufacturer plans to market the Sensecam as a device that enables wearers to upload photos and video to their favorite social media portals of choice – a “lifeblogging” aid, if you will. This research illustrates, however, that technology in the form of an external memory capture device can play a valuable role in helping to preserve one’s ability to remember events when the built-in, biological standby begins to fail.

Rats given Ritalin were able to more quickly learn that a combination of signals–a flash of light and sound–meant they could get a sugar water reward. But if the rats were also given a drug to block one type of dopamine receptor, the effect was lost. Treated animals also focused more intently on the task at hand, engaging in less unrelated behavior. Another drug, designed to block a second type of dopamine receptor, blocked Ritalin’s ability to enhance focus.

Researchers say this study will help them to develop more targeted drugs with fewer side effects. It also provides additional evidence for what many college students already know – taking a cognitive enhancement drug can help them perform much better than they would unaided.

This video of someone controlling Second Life through a brain-computer interface looks like fun, but surely it’s no brain controlled pinball.

(Via Edge of Tomorrow)