Foldable Smart Gadgets

This patent by Sony came to my attention the other day. The engineers are attempting to design components of handheld devices which can be folded when they're not used. As of now, this is done via rather crude mechanical principles and the smaller you are supposed to fold a device, the more joints and angles you need. The idea below could sort this problem out:

"The boffins at Sony’s Tokyo labs are working on a clever way to get bulky electronic devices into small pockets. Their plan is to create handheld computers, phones and portable games consoles that fold up for carrying and then become rigid for use.

The body and screen of folding gadgets would be made from a flexible polymer containing conductive rubber bracing struts filled with a gel of aluminosilicate particles suspended in silicone oil.

When a current is passed through the struts, the particles clump together and harden the gel, making the gadget solid enough to use. Sony has found that it would take very little power to make such a folding device harden, so the drain on its battery should be low. The company's patent adds that the transition from soft to hard takes just milliseconds. It suggests that the same technique could even be used in a video game controller to make it jolt or change shape in response to on-screen action.

Read the full patent here."