Four head mounted wearables are about to arrive in the market place all of them with lucid dreaming options. They are monitoring brainwaves and using companion apps for sleep data collection as well as lucid dream manipulation.
The devices are:
Neuroon Open – $99 – EEG/Light/Sound/BLE – December 2017
iBand+ – $160 – EEG/Light/Sound/BLE – December 2017
LucidCatcher – $350 – EEG/200uA brain stimulation/WiFi – January 2018
Aurora Dreamband – $299 – EEG/Light/Sound/BLE d- Now Shipping!
Quartz has a great piece on 3D printing, wearables and prosthetics
…Stories of lives devastated by conflict or disease are all too common across low-income countries. Lack of an arm or leg can be tough anywhere, but for people in poorer parts of the planet, with so much less support and more rickety infrastructure, it is especially challenging. Some are victims of conflict, others were born with congenital conditions. Many more are injured on roads, the casualty toll soaring in low-income nations even as it plummets in wealthier ones. Every minute, 20 people are seriously injured worldwide in road crashes. In Kenya, half the patients on surgical wards have road injuries.
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates there are about 30 million people like Nhial and Lam who require prosthetic limbs, braces or other mobility devices. These can be simple to make and inexpensive. As one veteran prosthetist told me, his specialism is among the most instantly gratifying areas of medicine. “A patient comes in on Monday on crutches that leave them unable to carry anything. By Wednesday they are walking on a new leg and on Friday they leave with their life transformed.”
Yet more than eight in ten of those people needing mobility devices do not have them. They take a lot of work and expertise to produce and fit, and the WHO says there is a shortage of 40,000 trained prosthetists in poorer countries. There is also the time and cost to patients, who may have to travel long distances for treatment that can take five days—to assess need, produce a prosthesis and fit it to the residual limb. The result is that unglamorous items such as braces and artificial limbs are among the most-needed devices to assist lives. Yet, as in so many other areas, technology may be hurtling to the rescue, this time in the shape of 3D printing.
Usually when we think of our neck, we think of sensing temperature like a chilly breeze or sweat. We might also think of sensing for health reasons like gulping during colds or the restricted feeling of asthma. This neck collar, brought to my attention by TheArchitectsNewspaper, acts as a haptic device and has the potential to extend that sensing ability. It’s called Sarotis and it’s a vision from researchers Maria Paneta and Ava Aghakouchak at the Interactive Architecture Lab at the Bartlett School of Architecture in London. Their research started with the knowledge that most people will be using 3D vision tech in the future. In their words:
The Sarotis Project looks beyond mobile phones and tablets, towards more intimate wearable technology futures. Where advanced vision systems and other sensor technologies are connected directly to the body through softer interfaces.
Using the Google Project Tango Dev Kit they conducted experiments, specifically targeting its 3D scanning capabilities for an Android device in combination with soft robotic wearable devices.
