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Panasonic demoed their Smart Home concept at CEATEC this week. Smart Home seems to be an integrated system that controls the electronics in your house, from lighting to air conditioning to multimedia. Even the television will slide to follow you around, which actually looks sort of creepy and desperate.
This is Kage Roi, a room that listens to conversations using speech recognition. It identifies keywords and constantly searches the web for related material, displaying information and images to help brainstorming sessions. In theory, combined with lighting that simulates the changes in sunlight, boosts people's creativity. An amazing idea that, for obvious reasons, we would never be able to use here at Giz. [Pink Tentacle]
Here I was, credit card in hand, ready to fly across the Pacific and purchase my very first SMART Car from a vending machine, when I'm told it's just some advertisement. Sure, SMART Cars can't float (they can barely survive the SUV-congested streets of the U.S.), and the Japanese steer on the opposite side of their automobiles than us Yanks, but this was the promise of a car via a vending machine. I would have figured out a way to bring it home and make it work. To paraphrase the late, great comedian Mitch Hedberg, things are just better when they fall.
If you are looking for a self-driving car, now you can buy the ByWire XGV, the modified Ford Escape that got third place at the DARPA Urban Challenge for just US$89,000. Torc Technologies—who collaborated with Virginia Tech to develop this smartypants SUV hybrid—is going to sell the car as a research platform so other researchers can tune and add new contraptions to make it work better and look more menacing than the current version. The specs are loaded with ports, sensors, and even optional accessories, like vibration isolators. Whatever that is, we want it.
Currently showing at the 2nd Skin Exhibition at San Francisco's Exploratorium is this piece of smart clothing by designer Stephanie Sandstrom. Inside it hide a bunch of sensors that measure the nearby air quality, along with drivers that can adjust the fabric. The idea is that on bad air days the dress detects the problem, and adjusts itself to look all rumpled and messy, and raising environmental awareness. Does that wrinkling mean it raises the hemline? I'm not sure... but if it did, that might work to take your mind off the damage being done to your health by all those airborne pollutants. [Inhabitat]
At Microsoft's Techfest, a researcher was showing off a smart shuffle system that uses tags and meta data like tempo and genre to direct playlist creation in a portable music device. The demo was being done on a first generation Zune.
Are you so helpless that you can't even dress yourself without assistance? Is your mum making you move out, giving you no one to help you with the tough decisions that face you each morning as you stare at your closet? Well, never fear, you sad excuse for a person, because technology is here to bail you out. Sort of. Meet the "Smart Closet."
The closet senses what clothes you wear each day by tracking embedded RFID tags placed in the collars of your shirts. It knows that you just wore your silk button-up with a giant picture of a tiger on it on Monday, so you should probably not wear it again until next week. Or ever.
It can also help you make more difficult fashion choices. "It can also be connected to an autonomous fashion butler on the Internet, which can suggest clothing choices for casual or formal outings with accessories to match."
Which is all well and good, but unless you actually have some nice clothes to begin with, this thing isn't going to do anyone much good. But I guess if you're a rich guy in the business world who can afford nice clothes but are too lazy to pay attention when you're putting them on, it could be sort of beneficial. Those of you who just wear sweatpants every day, well, not fancy closet can solve that problem. [Business Edge via The Raw Feed]
The situation is confusing enough when havoc strikes, and when radios aren't working and firefighters don't know where their colleagues are, it gets a whole lot worse. Learning from the communications problems of 9/11, designers solved those problems with this Smart Suit whose embedded sensors transmit the exact location and vital signs of each firefighter or rescue worker to a central command center. Hey, there are lots of reasons why this tech could be helpful for disaster workers, including those California firefighters risking their lives as you read this.
Who knew a minor variation in the shape of the top of an ordinary trash can could be so useful? There's usually a trashcan next the toilet, so Snowtone Design figured it might be nice to put that receptacle to use during the times you're not throwing stuff in it. Just drag it around in front of you as you're doing your business and all of a sudden you have a hands-free reading assistant. [Snowtone]
This Smart Dog USB hub is a bit of a three-in-one marvel. As well as the four USB ports, the bow-wow acts as a shonky computer speaker. Then, if you rip the head off this iridescent puppy, you've got yourself a portable radio with autoscan capability. Cost is US$19.15. [