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]
About the only time we use pen and paper around here is to take phone messages, and this Memo Pad Phone accommodates that situation with aplomb. At first we thought this design concept involved some kind of fancy electronic paper, but no, it has a special memo pad that’s cut out to fit around the telephone’s keypad.
Tall or short, the Ahrend 750 Office Furniture System will give you the fit you need thanks to a built-in electronic height adjustment feature. Users can raise or lower the desk with a simple push of a button. Plus, an LCD display makes re-adjusting the desk to your preferred height a snap. It’s kind of like the office version of the “sleep number bed.” Co-workers would exchange their numbers during casual conversation and the short and small-torsoed would undoubtedly be singled out and ridiculed. [Ahrend via Designboom via OhGizmo]
Sorry, dudes—I just had to write that headline. But it’s true: the 2009 OnStar systems in about 20 GM models will be able to access the brakes to stop a perp in his tracks. First, there would be a verbal warning, where the car, hopefully voiced by William Daniels, will tell the thief that it will slow to a stop. The thief has the option of pulling over to the side, or of course wheeling into oncoming traffic to go down in a blaze of glory. OnStar will also pop on the hazard lights and call the fuzz to report the car’s whereabouts. Owners can opt out of the feature, presumably in the fear that cops or an angry spouse could use it on them. [AP]UPDATE: I AM AN IDIOT. IN MY ZEAL TO WRITE A CORNY HEADLINE, I OVERLOOKED THE TECHNICAL EXPLANATION. IT’S NOT THE BRAKES, BUT THE ENGINE ITSELF, THAT SLOWS THE CAR DOWN.
