Massage devices built into car seats can help drivers avoid the numbness that leads to fatigue on long trips, but today’s massagers, based on motor-driven rotating weights or inflatable bladders, produce only annoying, repetitive, motion. Now engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology suggest burying wiggling arrays of shape memory alloys in the seat (). SMAs change shape when electrically heated and can apply more varied levels of body manipulation, says MIT.
BT’s research lab near Ipswich, UK, is developing a novel USB plug-in: an accelerometer. The gadget will allow people with dexterity problems to control certain aspects of their software. For example, they can…
