Clinical laboratory IT solutions could receive gift of sight

The potential for clinical laboratory IT solutions to have senses akin to those of humans has expanded once again with the announcement of compact, energy-efficient supercomputers capable of giving artificial sight to electronic systems.

Developed by Eugenio Culurciello of the school of engineering and applied science at Yale University, the wallet-sized supercomputer on a chip consumes less power than the typical mobile phone.

However, it can perform over 100 billion operations every second, taking in tens of images of a megapixel each to literally see its surroundings.

The real-time processing is sufficient to drive a car and respond to changing road conditions and pedestrians, the researchers hope.

More human-like clinical laboratory IT solutions could also arise from the development of artificial skin capable of synthesising the sense of touch.

Scientists at the University of California's Berkeley campus created the skin to allow gripping systems to determine for themselves how much force to exert to hold an object without breaking it.