Hidden Fingerprint Sensor Under Smartphone Displays and Other Future Tech

Its #FantasticFriday! A lot of future technology research is under way, and we’re here to report it. Let’s get started.

Hidden Fingerprint Sensor Under Smartphone Displays

Why not have a smartphone with a fingerprint sensor embedded in the entire screen, allowing specific users to unlock and use the phone? LG Innotek, LG’s electronic component subsidiary, has come up with a new fingerprint sensor module that can be embedded under the screen.

The fingerprint sensor is embedded under a space of 0.3mm under the screen, and can withstand an impact of 130gm dropped from 8 inches.

With an error rate of only 0.002%, the company feels very optimistic about the technology in future times. “LG Innotek expects that demand for fingerprint recognition technology will dramatically increase due to the expansion of the mobile payment market, has a plan to secure the new customer. Market research firm, IHS, reports approximately 499 million fingerprint sensors have been sold globally in 2015 and expects that number will increase to 1600 million units in 2020,” reads LG Innotek’s press release.

Robot Surgeons of the Future Outperform Humans

Researchers from the US have developed the Smart Tissue Autonomous Robot (STAR) system, a completely autonomous robot that can stitch (suture) tissues better than human surgeons. Testing on pig specimens for about 35 minutes, the robots demonstrated consistent stitching with lower mistakes. Human surgeons, on the contrary, took around 10 minutes to complete the procedure.

“The current paradigm of robot-assisted surgeries depends entirely on an individual surgeon’s manual capability. Autonomous robotic surgery, [or] removing the surgeon’s hands, promises enhanced efficacy, safety, and improved access to optimized surgical techniques” Researchers stated.

Would you trust your future surgery to be performed by a completely autonomous robot? Researchers claim it would never be completely autonomous. “In a situation in which something critical is going on, the surgeon would be closely monitoring the robot. I’m sure that they wouldn’t feel comfortable having it run and go take a coffee break. If something goes wrong, it’s just a finger press away from stopping the robot and taking it out of the surgery and proceeding as you would normally, in a normal surgery.”

Testing Lung Function with a Phone Call

Researchers at the University of Washington have devised a new tool to test lung function over a simple phone call. Called SpiroCall, the device senses sound and pressure from exhaled air and sends the data to a remote server to analyze the results.

“We wanted to be able to measure lung function on any type of phone you might encounter around the world — smartphones, dumb phones, landlines, pay phones. With SpiroCall, you can call a 1-800 number, blow into the phone and use the telephone network to test your lung function,” said Shwetak Patel, Professor of Computer Science & Engineering and Electrical Engineering at the University.

Read more at www.bit.ly/q3newsblog. Q3 Technologies is a large diversified technology company which develops custom software products for the healthcare industry including cloud applications, enterprise applications across all platforms and Rich Internet Applications (RIA).