On CE - For Dealers, Distributors and OEMs of Consumer Electronics throughout EMEA

Researchers at North Carolina State University and ImagineOptix debut new means of polarising projector light sources-- potentially leading the way to 90% efficient liquid crystal (LC) projectors.

Current LC projectors generate light from unpolarised light sources (such as LEDs) before passing it through a filter. However filters "waste" around 50% of originally generated light, turning it into heat... the reason projectors need (generally noisy) cooling fans.

The NC State technology uses a "polarisation grating-polarisation conversion system" (PGPCS). It consists of a small single-unit assembly made out of x4 immobile parts. A lens array focuses light into a grid of spot, before passing the light through a polarisation grating (a thin layer of liquid crystal material on a glass plate) and a louvered wave plate (a collection of clear, patterned plates giving beams of light the same polarisation).

Finally a second lens array focuses spots of light back into a single, uniform light beam. Only around 10% of the unpolarised light turns into heat, meaning the system needs no fans.

The researchers promise "[battery powered] projectors able to run for almost twice as long... LC projectors of all kinds can be made twice as bright but use the same amount of power that they do now."

Being compact and fan-free, the technology also finds future application in pico projectors, as well as projectors for use in mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets.

Go Researchers Almost Double Light Efficiency in LC Projectors

In the future, mobile chargers will not only be part of our lives-- they will be part of our wardrobes, as Xiadong Li from the University of South Carolina proposes to turn a cotton T-shirt into a source of electric power.

Li and research partner Lihong Bao even provide the recipe: Get a cheap cotton T-shirt, soak it in a flouride solution, dry it, then bake it in an oxygen-free environment (in order to avoid charring or burning) at a high temperature.

The treatment transforms the cotton fibres making the T-shirt into an "activated carbon textile"-- a flexible material that acts as a double-layer capacitor (or supercapacitor) capable of storing electrical charges.

One can also enhance the electrode performance of the fabric further by coating individual carbonised fabric fibres with 1nm-thick manganese oxide "nanoflowers," creating a "stable, high-performing supercapacitor."

The final hybrid fabric not only stores electric charges, say the researchers, it is also resilient, as performance doesn't diminish by more than -5% even after thousands of charges.

"By stacking these supercapacitors up, we should be able to charge portable electronic devices such as cell phones," Li continues.

The process of activated carbon creation is both cheap and green, since other methods involve oil or other non-environmentally friendly chemicals as starting materials.

Maybe in the future we will not simply carry mobile chargers around-- we will be actually wearing them.

Go Clothing the Body Electric: Fabric in Modified T-Shirt Can Store Electrical Charge

Samsung takes on N. American retai for the first timel with a Samsung Store at Burnaby's Metropolis in Metrotown, Vancouver-- a retail outlet with a look you will surely find very, very familiar.

The store showcases all familiar Samsung offerings (Galaxy smartphones, tablets, TVs) on large tables, with working examples for customers to test and play with.

Meanwhile employees (in blue Samsung colours) either march around the clean, minimalist 140 square-metre interior or stand one-on-one customer care stations. Yes, it seems someone learnt a lesson (or three) from... well, you can guess from whom, right?

Why Vancouver, though? Apparently Samsung sees the store as a "legacy" of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games, where the mobile maker was an official partner.

Samsung is already involved in lawsuits over alleged iDevice imitation. Will Apple now sue Samsung being too "inspired" by its Stores' interior design?

Watch Samsung Store Opening, Metro Vancouver

Researchers at MIT propose a futuristic means of helping (not replacing) human drivers-- a semi-autonomous safety system combining an on-board camera with a laser rangefinder.

The system prevents crashes by taking over control once it detects potential hazards, automatically steering around obstacles before giving control back to the driver once the danger is cleared.

The researchers describe the system as an "intelligent co-pilot," saying "the real innovation is enabling the car to share [control] with you." Successful tests have been going on since September 2011, with a "few" collisions (from 1200 trials) happening mostly due to on-board camera glitches.

Ford and Google are already developing self-driving cars-- vehicles loaded with expensive sensors and sophisticated routing algorithms. The MIT proposal is much cheaper in terms of both sensors and computation ability required. So much so, the researchers hope to strip down the obstacle-identifying system to fit inside a mobile phone.

"You could stick your cellphone on the dashboard, and it would use the camera, accelerometers and gyro to provide the feedback needed by the system,” PhD student Sterling Anderson says.

Funnily enough, the MIT system requires one thing from human drivers-- trust. Drivers who trust the system perform better in tests than those who don't. Just like actual human co-pilots, then.

Go Mechanical Engineers Develop "Intelligent Co-Pilot" for Cars (MIT News)