Futurismic

A few years ago I seem to recall a spate of SF stories in Asimov’s and elsewhere that dealt with the concept of telepresence: humans controlling robots at a distance, immersed in a virtual-reality world that made what happened to the robot feel much more real than merely sitting at a control panel manipulating a joystick.

Well, human-sized telepresence robots are beginning to make their appearance. California company Anybots debuted its Anybots QA telepresence robot at the Consumer Electronics Show in January (Via Gizmag):

The robot’s 802.11g wireless connectivity allows 20 FPS video at 640×480 resolution captured by the QA’s two 5MP color cameras and full duplex, high fidelity sound to be sent back to the user’s Mac or PC running the client software. A 7-inch color LCD screen in the QA’s chest can display the remote user to give long distance interactions that human touch while navigation comes courtesy of QA’s onboard 5.5 yard range LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging), which functions like RADAR but uses light instead of radio waves.

Standing at 5 foot tall the QA can also bend to 2 foot high to interact more easily with people sitting. The robot’s rechargeable Li-ion battery gives 4-6 hours of operation and allows QA to reach speeds of up to 6 MPH on his two 12-inch diameter wheels.

The company is developing other robots that walk, jump and run on two legs. One of them reportedly has a fully articulated hand that will permit the operator to perform a wide range of tasks. The QA is expected to be available for purchase later this year at around $30,000 U.S.

Maybe someday we’ll all sit at home at a computer and send out robots to do our jobs and errands, and never leave the house.

Someone should make a movie about it…

Order your surrogate robot today!

(Image: Anybots.)

[tags]robots,telepresence,movies,gadgets[/tags]

The era of ubiquitous computing progresses apace (Via PhysOrg):

US university researchers have created a portable “sixth sense” device powered by commercial products that can seamlessly channel Internet information into daily routines.

The device created by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) scientists can turn any surface into a touch-screen for computing, controlled by simple hand gestures.

The gadget can even take photographs if a user frames a scene with his or her hands, or project a watch face with the proper time on a wrist if the user makes a circle there with a finger.

The MIT wizards cobbled a Web camera, a battery-powered projector and a mobile telephone into a gizmo that can be worn like jewelry. Signals from the camera and projector are relayed to smart phones with Internet connections.

According to the researchers, the gadget (unveiled by MIT researcher Pattie Maes at the Technology, Entertainment, Design [TED] conference currently underway in Long Beach, California) uses about $300 U.S. worth of store-bought components, and can do things like recognize items on store shelves, retrieve and project information about products, look at an airplane ticket and let the user know whether the flight is on time, or recognize books in a book store, project reviews or author information from the Internet onto blank pages, and recognize articles in newspapers and retrieve the latest related stories or video from the Internet. You can interact with the data using any surface–even your hand if nothing else is available. “Maybe in ten years we will be here with the ultimate sixth-sense brain implant,” Maes said.

Forgot about trekking to the Wizard. Dorothy should have got the Strawman one of these.

(Image: Leonard Low, Concept for augmented reality mobile phone, via Wikimedia Commons.)

[tags]computers,augmented reality,technology,gadgets[/tags]

Either it’s a slow week over at New Scientist, or they decided to throw us science fictional types a bone… either way, we’ll point out their top ten list of science fiction gadgets and devices that are nearing reality*.

As such lists do, it includes the gloriously impractical (e.g. the long-fabled jetpack) alongside a couple of genuinely useful items (like a universal audio translator and an artificial gill for breathing under water).

It’s a shame there aren’t more things like reliable sources of drinkable water, effective renewable energy generators and cures for diseases… but that’s us science fiction geeks for you, always with our head in the clouds. If you could pick any sf-nal technology to make a reality, what would it be?

* It would appear, possibly unsurprisingly, that the New Scientist definition of ‘reality’ is one that includes you having a lot of money.

Reading about this courier device puts me in mind of an event in Heavy Weather by Bruce Sterling:

To avoid the bad guys, high-flying planes can release Stara’s Mosquito. Its customizable cylinder, which can handle up to 150 pounds, contains a GPS unit and servomotor for steering the parachute to a drop site up to 2 miles away.

Actuators cut loose the payload at a preset altitude (from 50 to 1,500 feet). This way, anyone tracking the chute will end up as much as a half mile from the goods, which may be camouflaged as, say, a fist-sized rock.

The company is promoting the $10,000 Mosquito for special forces deliveries — money, passports, blood packets.

In Heavy Weather a character orders certain products which are couriered across the countryside by a monopedal robot – but the principle of ordering stuff via your satphone and having it delivered to any GPS coordinates in the world strikes me as very cool.

[on Wired][image from STARA Technologies inc]

There’s nothing worse than being halfway through a long walk around the city only to have your MP3 player run out of juice^[1]. Wouldn’t it be great if you could keep it charged up just by walking?

Japanese electronics company NTT Docomo evidently thinks so, as they’ve been showing off a prototype shoe that can generate 1.2 Watts of power through the motion of their wearer.

Spiraltwist at grinding.be neatly sums up my feelings: “Concept is excellent, design needs to be refined.” That said, Docomo reckons the finished version will be on the market by 2010, by which time there’ll be plenty more pocket-sized gimcracks to plug it into… provided they have compatible plugs and sockets, natch. [image from linked DVICE article]

While we’re on the subject of wearable tech, Gizmodo has a round-up of geeksome gadgetry that means you can have your cyberpunk future rightfreakingnow… provided you don’t mind looking like a fool. I mean, trousers with a keyboard and speakers built in? Come on… [via Hack-a-Day]

[ ¹ - OK, there are plainly plenty of things worse than this, but I thought I'd go for upbeat today; it's a Tuesday, after all. ]