Everybody knows that digital technology has revolutionized our economy and our lifestyles. But how many of us really understand the drivers behind the technology – the significance of going digital; the miniaturization of electronic devices; the role of venture capital in financing the revolution; the importance of research and development? How many of us understand what it takes to make money from innovative technologies? Should we worry about manufacturing going offshore? What is the role of India and China in the digital economy? Drawing on a lifetime’s experience in the industry, as an engineer, a senior manager, and as a partner in a global venture capital firm, Henry Kressel offers an expert personalized answer to all these questions. He explains how the technology works, why it matters, how it is financed, and what the key lessons are for public policy.

Competing for the Future

Abstract Modern computation based on von Neumann architecture is now a mature cutting-edge science. In the von Neumann architecture, processing and memory units are implemented as separate blocks interchanging data intensively and continuously. This data transfer is responsible for a large part of the power consumption. The next generation computer technology is expected to solve problems at the exascale with 10 18 calculations each second. Even though these future computers will be incredibly powerful, if they are based on von Neumann type architectures, they will consume between 20 and 30 megawatts of power and will not have intrinsic physically built-in capabilities to learn or deal with complex data as our brain does. These needs can be addressed by neuromorphic computing systems which are inspired by the biological concepts of the human brain. This new generation of computers has the potential to be used for the storage and processing of large amounts of digital information with much lower power consumption than conventional processors. Among their potential future applications, an important niche is moving the control from data centers to edge devices. The aim of this roadmap is to present a snapshot of the present state of neuromorphic technology and provide an opinion on the challenges and opportunities that the future holds in the major areas of neuromorphic technology, namely materials, devices, neuromorphic circuits, neuromorphic algorithms, applications, and ethics. The roadmap is a collection of perspectives where leading researchers in the neuromorphic community provide their own view about the current state and the future challenges for each research area. We hope that this roadmap will be a useful resource by providing a concise yet comprehensive introduction to readers outside this field, for those who are just entering the field, as well as providing future perspectives for those who are well established in the neuromorphic computing community. 

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2022 roadmap on neuromorphic computing and engineering

This review summarises the status of silent speech interface (SSI) research. SSIs rely on non-acoustic biosignals generated by the human body during speech production to enable communication whenever normal verbal communication is not possible or not desirable. In this review, we focus on the first case and present latest SSI research aimed at providing new alternative and augmentative communication methods for persons with severe speech disorders. SSIs can employ a variety of biosignals to enable silent communication, such as electrophysiological recordings of neural activity, electromyographic (EMG) recordings of vocal tract movements or the direct tracking of articulator movements using imaging techniques. Depending on the disorder, some sensing techniques may be better suited than others to capture speech-related information. For instance, EMG and imaging techniques are well suited for laryngectomised patients, whose vocal tract remains almost intact but are unable to speak after the removal of the vocal folds, but fail for severely paralysed individuals. From the biosignals, SSIs decode the intended message, using automatic speech recognition or speech synthesis algorithms. Despite considerable advances in recent years, most present-day SSIs have only been validated in laboratory settings for healthy users. Thus, as discussed in this paper, a number of challenges remain to be addressed in future research before SSIs can be promoted to real-world applications. If these issues can be addressed successfully, future SSIs will improve the lives of persons with severe speech impairments by restoring their communication capabilities.

Silent Speech Interfaces for Speech Restoration: A Review

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Hacia las sociedades del conocimiento

Gesture recognition technology is widely used in the flexible and precise control of manipulators in the assisted medical field. Our MResLSTM algorithm can effectively perform dynamic gesture recognition. The result of surface EMG signal decoding is applied to the controller, which can improve the fluency of artificial hand control. Much current gesture recognition research using sEMG has focused on static gestures. In addition, the accuracy of recognition depends on the extraction and selection of features. However, Static gesture research cannot meet the requirements of natural human-computer interaction and dexterous control of manipulators. Therefore, a multi-stream residual network (MResLSTM) is proposed for dynamic hand movement recognition. This study aims to improve the accuracy and stability of dynamic gesture recognition. Simultaneously, it can also advance the research on the smooth control of the Manipulator. We combine the residual model and the convolutional short-term memory model into a unified framework. The architecture extracts spatiotemporal features from two aspects: global and deep, and combines feature fusion to retain essential information. The strategy of pointwise group convolution and channel shuffle is used to reduce the number of network calculations. A dataset is constructed containing six dynamic gestures for model training. The experimental results show that on the same recognition model, the gesture recognition effect of fusion of sEMG signal and acceleration signal is better than that of only using sEMG signal. The proposed approach obtains competitive performance on our dataset with the recognition accuracies of 93.52%, achieving state-of-the-art performance with 89.65% precision on the Ninapro DB1 dataset. Our bionic calculation method is applied to the controller, which can realize the continuity of human-computer interaction and the flexibility of manipulator control.

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Dynamic Gesture Recognition Using Surface EMG Signals Based on Multi-Stream Residual Network.

The myoelectric interfaces are being used in rehabilitation technology, assistance and as an input device. This review focuses on an insightful analysis of the data acquisition system of EMG signals from these interfaces. According to applications reported in research articles of the last five years, the properties of the sensors, the number of channels, the pre-processing of the EMG signal, as well as the software and hardware used were identified. This analysis was performed for the following applications: monitoring of muscular activation for rehabilitation, muscle activation plans, and identification of possible pathologies, exoskeletons, electric of wheelchairs, prosthetics control, myoelectric bracelets, handwriting recognition and silent speech recognition. The results presented in this review become a guide of recommendations for the myoelectric signal processing according to the application of the interface. The main developments, degrees of research and open challenges are also presented in this direction.

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Myoelectric Interfaces and Related Applications: Current State of EMG Signal Processing–A Systematic Review

In this Systematic Review of the Literature (SRL) the term “technological competence” is analyzed. The analysis is conducted within the areas of knowledge in which the term has been studied, considering the definitions that have been associated to the term, the approaches proposed by the authors that make use of the term, the transformation of the concept throughout the time, and the boundaries of application with other similar terms, such as technological capability and technological skill. A total of 140 publications focused on technological competences are analyzed. The publications correspond to a time span ranging from 1994 to 2016, and include research articles from recognized databases and, to a lesser extent, gray literature articles. Finally, the term technological competence applied in the productive sector is redefined such as it allows focusing on projects for technological absorption or training in industry.

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Technological Competences: A Systematic Review of the Literature in 22 Years of Study

In this work performance results of Bluetooth v2.0+ EDR are presented. Measurement of file transfer delay (FTD) is done with variable file size and variable distance between sender and receiver, in an indoor environment. In this scenario the presence of obstacles between nodes are almost inevitable, hence a comparison of FTD with and without a physical obstacle is presented. FTD is a very useful metric as it gives the overall performance evaluation. The knowledge of this metric is fundamental for the development of multimedia applications, as real time communication is an important constraint, so minimum delays should be guaranteed . The results show that the delay average in the transfer of files is a lineal function with file size and the distance between sender and receiver. The importance to study and analyze Bluetooth Technology is that it is already installed in hundreds of millions of devices, such as cell phones, PDA's, etc. Therefore BT is very attractive for ubiquitous computing with multimedia capabilities.

Bluetooth Performance Analysis in Wireless Personal Area Networks

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Leading Change in Educational Institutions for Technology Adoption in Latin America

The use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in educational contexts has focused its greatest efforts on the acquisition and use of technology. This makes necessary a conceptual and methodological redesign of its use, one that integrates all the members of the organization and generate permanent changes in the culture of the organization (Salinas, 2005). The management of educational institutions is crucial to normalize experiences and provide references that can be integrated into environmental conditions. Despite this, educational management has been relegated to the studies of innovation in education supported by technology, with little systematized information in this regard (Sunkel, Trucco, & Espejo, 2013). The present work uses bibliographic techniques to analyze the trends that have been followed in Latin America in terms of educational management for the adoption of ICT. The influence of public policy on the promotion of these programs is observed, as well as the need for a theoretical methodological support for the development of an integral management model, in which the technology component does not constitute a parallel item..

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Norma Candolfi Arballo

Papers

Myoelectric Interfaces and Related Applications: Current State of EMG Signal Processing–A Systematic Review

Technological Competences: A Systematic Review of the Literature in 22 Years of Study

Bluetooth Performance Analysis in Wireless Personal Area Networks

Leading Change in Educational Institutions for Technology Adoption in Latin America

ICT management in Latin America educational institutions. Between policies and innovation.