iDoctor

I originally thought this device would be called PC Doctor but these days it would be more likely called iDoctor.  This will be a device that monitors peoples health at home.  It will be linked to their primary care provider.  The device will monitor a person's health by taking samples of either blood, hair, urine, sweat, etc. on a regular basis as well as checking blood pressure, weight, blood sugar etc.  Most routine doctor visit measurements should be able to be done at home at a greater frequency.  The measurements would then be shared with the physician via the internet, in most cases this could be monitored remotely and the physician would only be alerted when necessary.  This would be coupled with DNA sequencing to identify patient risks and prescribe preventive treatments.

Some aspects of this device is already available but it will be a major advance in preventive medicine when this is fully implemented.

Giant Robot

I had this idea to build a giant robot, so I thought I would look on the internet to see how many other people have built a giant robot.  I came across the following vlog:

In which a builder appears to gradually get more and more off kilter as he attempts to complete his giant robot.  So far he has not succeeded.

That gave me the idea that I should avoid building a giant robot...however, if I did build one I would want it to be modular with each sub component self powered with either a small solar panel and a rechargeable battery or a local connection and a rechargeable battery.  The modules would all plug into each other to make the completed robot.

Then I thought maybe I could just make the robot head.  I thought the ears should be sort of like donkey ears that can rotate around to find the direction of the sound.  The sound could be taken in and processed so that basically the giant robot head would act like a giant parrot.  It would listen to the sound and then try to mimic the sound.  Instead of using a digital recording to mimic the sound I thought it would be cool to have the robot have vibrating metal rods in place of vocal chords and metallic chambers that open and close to form vocal formants for the rattling rods.  So although the robot would listen to sounds, analyze them for frequency, amplitude etc, and reply to the sound in a similar fashion, the resulting response would only vaguely resemble the original sound.

Microfluidic Artificial Neural Networks

I had this idea to use MEMS microfluidic technology to create artificial neural networks that would be based on ionic and non-ionic solutions.  When one neuron becomes saturated with ionic solution it will open a valve to flow ionic solution to the next neuron.  At the same time the valve will close and the neuron will fill with a non-ionic solution.  After a certain time interval the valve will close again stopping the flow of non-ionic solution.