LATEST TECHNOLOGIES

High-Speed Camera Captures Signals

Traveling Through Nerve Cells
Scientists at Caltech have developed a new ultrafast
camera that can record footage of impulses as they travel
through nerve cells. The camera can also capture video of
other ultrafast phenomena, like the propagation of
electromagnetic pulses in electronics.

Lihong Wang (Image: Caltech)

Reach out right now and touch anything around you. Whether it was a key on your keyboard, the
wood of your desk, or the fur of your dog, you felt it the instant your finger contacted it.

In actuality, it takes a bit of time for your brain to register the sensation from your fingertip, but
it is quite fast, with the touch signal traveling through your nerves at over 100 miles per hour.
Some nerve signals are even faster, approaching speeds of 300 miles per hour.

Now, scientists at Caltech have developed a new ultrafast camera that can record footage of these
impulses as they travel through nerve cells. The camera can also capture video of other ultrafast
phenomena, like the propagation of electromagnetic pulses in electronics.

The camera technology, known as differentially enhanced compressed ultrafast photography

(Diff-CUP), was developed in the lab of Lihong Wang, Professor of Medical Engineering and
Electrical Engineering.

Diff-CUP operates similarly to Wang's other CUP systems, which have been shown capable of
recording video at 70 trillion frames per second and capturing images of laser pulses as they
travel at the speed of light.

Diff-CUP takes the same high-speed camera technology found in the

other CUP systems and combines it with a device called a Mach–
Zehnder interferometer. The interferometer images objects and
materials by first splitting a beam of laser light in two, passing only
one of the split beams through an object, and then recombining the
beams. Because light waves are affected by the objects they pass
through, with different materials affecting them in varying ways, the
beam passing through the material being imaged will have its waves
set out of sync with the waves of the other beam. When the beams are
recombined, the out-of-sync waves interfere with each other (hence
"interferometer") in patterns that reveal information about the object
being imaged.

This type of interferometry can detect an electrical pulse traveling

through a nerve cell. (This same basic technique is used by the Laser Interferometer
Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) to detect gravitational waves.) The Mach–Zehnder
interferometer allows the imaging of these pulses, and the CUP camera captures the images at
incredibly high frame rates.

The research team also captured photos of the propagation of electromagnetic pulses (EMP),
which, in some materials, can travel at nearly the speed of light. In this case they passed the
electromagnetic pulses through a crystal of lithium niobate, a salt that has unique optical and
electrical properties.

"Imaging propagating signals in peripheral nerves is the first step," Wang says. "It will be
important to image live traffic in a central nervous system, which would shed light on how the
brain works."
 ALL ABOUT EDGE AI

What is edge AI?

The concept of edge AI implies the application of AI to edge
computing. Edge computing is a computing paradigm that allows
data to be generated and processed at the network edge rather than
at a central data center. Therefore, edge AI is integrating AI into
edge computing devices for quicker and improved data processing
and smart automation.

Benefits of edge AI
Data security and privacy
With the growing number of data reaches recorded in recent years, many businesses are looking
for more ways to improve data privacy. Edge AI provides an enabling ground for data privacy
because data processing activities are performed at the edge of the device or closer to the device.
As a result, the number of data sent to the cloud for computation has drastically reduced. In
addition, when data is created and processed at the same location, it increases data security and
privacy, making it more difficult for hackers to get onto your data.

Real-time analytics Processing

data in real-time has become vital due to the explosive growth of data generated by mobile and
IoT devices at the network edge. Hence, one of the main benefits of edge AI is that it facilitates
real-time data processing by ensuring high-performance data computation on IoT devices.

This is possible because, with edge AI, the data needed to apply AI in edge devices are stored in
the device or a nearby server rather than in the cloud. This form of computing reduces latency in
computation and returns processed information quickly.
Lower internet bandwidth
The growing amount of data generated from billions of devices across the globe results in an
explosive need for internet bandwidth to process data from cloud storage centers. This practice
forces businesses to commit a huge amount of money to bandwidth purchases and subscriptions.

However, with edge AI, there is a significant reduction in the volume of bandwidth required to
process information at the edge. In addition, since edge AI computes and processes data locally,
fewer data are sent to the cloud through the internet, thereby saving a huge amount of bandwidth.

Lesser power consumption

Maintaining a back-and-forth connection with cloud
data centers consumes a lot of energy. As a result,
many businesses are looking for ways to cut down on
energy bills, and edge computing is one of the ways to
achieve this.

Furthermore, because AI computation requires

processing a high amount of data, transporting this data
from cloud storage centers to edge devices will add to
the energy cost of any business.

In contrast, the operational model of edge AI

eliminates this high cost in the energy used to maintain
the AI processes in smart devices.

Better responsiveness
Responsiveness is one of the things that makes smart devices reliable and edge AI guarantees
that. An edge AI solution increases the response rate of smart devices as there is no need to send
data to the cloud for computation and then wait for the processed data to be sent back for
decision making.

Although the process of sending data to cloud-based data centers can be done within a few
seconds, the edge AI solution further reduces the amount of time it takes smart devices to
respond to requests by generating and processing the data within the device.

With a high response rate, technologies like autonomous

vehicles, robots and other intelligent devices can provide instant
feedback to automatic and manual requests.

Edge AI use cases

Due to the increase in the use of AI to make IoT devices,
software and hardware applications, more intelligent, edge AI
use cases have witnessed tremendous growth. According to Allied Market Research, the Global
Edge AI hardware Market was valued at $6.88 billion in 2020 but is projected to hit $38.87
billion in 2030. From this number, more edge AI use cases are expected to emerge.

Meanwhile, some edge AI use cases include facial recognition software, real-time traffic updates
on autonomous vehicles, industrial IOT devices, health care, smart cameras, robots and drones.
Additionally, video games, robots, smart speakers, drones and health monitoring devices are
examples of where edge AI is currently used.