Navigating your way through an unfamiliar city can be challenging and stressful, especially when you’re visually impaired. This little handheld device from Yale postdoctorate engineer associate Adam Spiers shifts it shape to point you in the right direction so even if you can’t see, you can get accurate directions to your destination.

The current version of Animotus is connected wirelessly to the location sensors on your clothing that work with other sensors mounted on the walls of your surroundings. In the future, it will connect to your smartphone for real-world guidance. It’s a haptic device unlike any other – rather than relying on vibrations like most, you simply hold it in your hand and feel as the top part pivots to lead you.

Other sight-impaired assistive devices rely on sound to help navigate, which can be a problem since cities are generally noisy already and hearing their surroundings is a big part of getting around for visually impaired people. Spiers recently supplied the device for an interactive play based on an 1884 book by Edwin A. Abbott called Flatland. Audience members became participants by holding onto an Animotus which led them, in complete darkness, around the “stage,” which was actually the inside of a church.

Infrared cameras showed the audience members making their way through the set at speeds nearly as fast as walking in a brightly lit space. At the end of the performance, participants liked the navigation devices so much they wanted to keep them. Spiers says the Animotus is a long way from being produced commercially, but he’s encouraged by the positive response so far. He envisions the device as someday being a simple way for both sighted and visually impaired people to navigate without having to constantly pay attention to a smartphone’s directions.

The post Feeling Your Way: Device Changes its Shape to Navigate first appeared on Gajitz.

When you spend money on a nice new phone, one of the first things you do (if you’re smart) is get a case to protect it. Yale professor Jan Schroers, a specialist in materials science and mechanical engineering, is seeing to it that the next generation of smartphone cases is super tough and durable. Schroers works with Bulk Metallic Glasses, or BMGs. These ultra-strong but lightweight alloys are created by cooling molten metal incredibly quickly so that the typical crystalline structure of solid metal can’t form. BMGs, also known as amorphous metals, have an atomic structure that is closer to that of glass, but they are far sturdier.

BMGs have been around since at least 1960, but until now researchers have had trouble figuring out just how to shape them for consumer use. Professor Schroers has developed a technique for forming them that involves shaping the alloys while they are in their supercooled liquid state. He uses this method, called thermoplastic forming, to create sheets of BMGs. Once the alloys are in sheet form, they can be shaped by a blow-molding process similar to that used to mold plastics.

Schroers has his eye on the consumer electronics market for the technology, to which Yale owns the rights. He has licensed those rights to create a line of ultra-durable, lightweight phone cases. They will be scratch-resistant and roughly 50 times harder than plastic. One of the main benefits of using BMGs is that buttons can be built right into the cases, opening up the possibility to make the next generation of smartphone cases waterproof as well as almost indestructible.

The post Yale’s Supercool Metals Make for Super-Tough Phone Cases first appeared on Gajitz.