Tag: research and development

Hair cuttings from these barbershops can end up as a material for OLED displays in many devices
(Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash)

Article

Future Flexible OLED Displays Could Be Made From Human Hair | Gizmodo Australia

My Comments

There is an increased interest in the use of OLED displays for all display applications, what with doing away with a backlight layer which means increased application flexibility and power efficiency; as well as yielding high contrast. But this technology comes at a price which may be out of the range of most commodity applications, especially equipment user-interface displays.

But researchers at the Queensland University of Technology have used hair clippings from a local barber shop to experiment with the use of hair strands into self-illuminating carbon nanodots fit for a light-emitting device. Here, it’s about breaking down the hair strands then heating it to 240 degrees Celsius, equivalent to a very hot oven to create these displays. The carbon nanodots are a form of quantum dot that can yield the bright vivid colours due to their expertise at illuminating a single primary colour.

… like displays on printers such as this Brother unit

This application may not be bright enough for a TV screen intended to be viewed at a distance but could be bright enough for an application that is intended to be viewed up close. The core applications would be smartphones, tablets and wearables. But I would also see this extend to equipment or automotive displays that give a really distinct level of brightness and contrast like the vacuum-fluorescent displays used an a lot of consumer-electronics equipment made through the 1980s and 1990s.

The advantage here is that hair is a natural source of nitrogen and carbon and can be easily harvested from local barbers and hairdressers as part of a recycling program. The applications then end up as being part of a circular economy and there is further research in to using animal hair for this same application, which may allow the use of pet hair salvaged from veterinarians, animal breeders or dog groomers for this purpose.

As well, the idea of a component of this display being cheaply sourced through recycling programs may lead to the cost of these displays going downhill and allow them to displace LCD technology as the display technology of choice for small colour displays.

Article – From the horse’s mouth

Microsoft Research

Abstract

Detailed article – PDF

My Comments

Microsoft is working on a way to create better recordings from many smartphones and audio recorders recording the same event

Microsoft has completed some research on how to amalgamate audio recordings of a meeting that were captured by different recording devices to turn out a higher-grade recording that captures the whole of a meeting. It is seen as being the audio equivalent of experiments and projects that aggregate multiple camera views of the same object, or could be seen as a way to create a “Claytons microphone array” using multiple recording devices with their own microphones.

The technique involves the creation of audio fingerprints of each of the recordings in a similar vein to what Shazam and its allies do to “name that song”. But these fingerprints are used to match the timing of each of the recordings to identify what was commonly recorded, allowing for the fact that one could start or stop a recording device earlier or later than another person.

This can lead to TV-grade multi-camera video recordings from a combination of DSLRs, high-end cameras like this one…

The technology that is assumed to be used in this context are standalone file-based digital notetaker recorders or the audio-recording function incorporated in many a smartphone or tablet typically by virtue of an app. Typically these recorders are recording the same event with integrated microphones and implementing automatic gain control and, in some cases, picking up their “own” background noise.

But you could extend this concept to integrating audio recordings made on legacy media like audio tape using standalone devices, or the soundtracks of video recordings recorded during the same event but are subsequently “dubbed” to audio files to be used in the recording. A good example could be someone who uses a “shoebox” or handheld cassette recorder to make a reliable recording of the meeting using something they are familiar with; or someone videoing the meeting using that trusty old camcorder.

… and camcorders like this one of special events.

There are plans to create further research in to this topic to cater for recording music such as when the same concert performance or religious service is recorded by two or more people with equipment of different capabilities.

A good question to raise from the research is how to “time-align” or synchronise a combination of audio and video recordings of the same event that were recorded at the same time with equipment that has different recording capabilities. This is without the need to record synchronisation data on each recording device during production, and allowing for the use of equipment commonly used by consumers, hobbyists / prosumers and small organisations.

The reality that can surface is someone records the event using top-shelf gear yielding excellent audio while others film from different angles using camcorders, digital cameras and smartphones that record not-so-good sound thanks to automatic gain control and average integrated mics, while the good digital cameras and camcorders still implement their excellent optics and sensors to capture good-quality vision.

Once this is worked out, it could then allow a small-time video producer or a business’s or church’s inhouse video team to move towards “big-time” quality by using top-shelf audio gear to catch sound and the use of one or two camcorders operated by different operators to create “TV-studio-grade” multi-camera video.

Who knows whether the idea of post-production audio-level synchronising and “blending” for both conference recordings and small-time video producers.