New Technologies Looking for a Home

UF Office of Technolgy Licensing

The University of Florida Office of Technology Licensing has dozens of newly developed technologies waiting for entrepreneurs to turn them into viable commercial products. Here are a few:

Improved Bed Bug Sticky Trap with Textured Surface

This bed bug sticky trap is surrounded by a mildly textured surface that doesn’t discourage bugs and other crawling pests from crossing it but aids their capture, and prevents escape from the sticky trap. Bed bug infestations are an escalating problem in homes and hotels across the United States, with major cities such as Chicago, Los Angeles, and Cincinnati consistently ranking as having high levels of infestation. Bed bugs need to be detected/monitored so uncontrolled populations do not develop. Standard sticky traps used for insect control don’t work very well to capture them. University of Florida researchers have identified a means to make sticky traps more effective in capturing bed bugs and other crawling pests. If a sticky trap is surrounded by too smooth a surface a, bed bugs will avoid crossing it. Alternatively, if the sticky trap is surrounded by a surface with too much texture, bugs get enough traction to pull free of the trap. The improved sticky trap is designed to achieve a balance between a surface textured enough to entice bed bugs to walk across it to the sticky glue in the trap but smooth enough to ensure bugs cannot get a foothold to freedom. The trap can be used around households to capture bed bugs and other crawling pests, as well as for discrete use in hotels to monitor for bed bug presence.

Image Recognition Algorithm that Extracts Features for Computer Vision

In image processing, it is extremely diffi cult for computers to process 2D image features called “singularities,” sharp edges or distinct lines in images. By combining radon and wavelet transforms, this ripplet-II transform is capable of representing these singularities and using them to fi nd similar or related images. The algorithm is also extremely effi cient at classifying textures, and compensating for rotational or transformational variance.

Ambulatory, Patient-Specific Brain State Advisory System

EEGs are used by physicians to test electrical activity in the brain of a patient for medical evaluation. Researchers at the University of Florida have created a system for monitoring brainwave activity that automatically calibrates to the patient, thus acting as a patient-specific brain state advisor. First, the system uses time-series decomposition that corresponds to a model of the patient’s brain activity, describing the collected brainwaves in terms of phasic events. These phasic events are then used within a framework to project points to separate abnormal and normal brain states, or brain states that correspond to different stimuli. Finally, the projection is used to create a probabilistic model for each clinical diagnostic condition of interest. This works by using landmark points, in which the distance to a landmark point for a certain condition would predict the likelihood of that condition. The past and current brain states are displayed alongside the landmark points, providing a patient-specific brain state advisory.

This ambulatory brain state advisory system determines and displays current brain states of a patient for more effective treatment. Electroencephalograms (EEGs) are a valuable tool for research and diagnosis and are used to diagnose and monitor epilepsy, sleep disorders, comas, and the depth of amnesia in patients. In the United States, more than 40 million adults suffer from sleep disorders while 3 million suffer from epilepsy. University of Florida researchers have created an ambulatory system to monitor brainwave activity, classifying existing conditions for the patient, allowing for more effective treatment than what is available. The EEG brain state advisor is patient-specifi c, adjusting the basis of the EEG decomposition to each patient’s brain activity, which improves performance, and allows for the estimation of a given condition. The advisory system output can be displayed on a portable, handheld device or a watch-form device,

 

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