Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Mind games

What started with monkey experiments and was targeted to enable brain-damaged persons to interact with a computing system has now gained the interest of the toy and entertainment industry. Using your brain waves to DO things is not anymore just something you read in Science Fiction novels but commodity reality as this Mattel toy shows. Therefore, there is hope that this technology which could halp so many desperate differently-able people will now receive a major push - because it can also be commercialized in the mainstream market. If you remember, this is what already happened with the graphics and Virtual Reality industries, that struggled in finding their killer applications - until the PC commodity hardware and inexpensive gaming hardware and software made it accessibly to the consumer market - maybe less sophisticated, but therefore so much more fun, inexpensive and lucrative.

New games powered by brain waves

Robot with a tender touch

So far, most robot applications insisted to be 'hands-off' due to the overarching concern of people getting hurt from a robots clumsiness and rigidness. However, there are many applications - from hospital patient management to elderly care, where some hand-on robot-human interaction will be required. Here now one first attempt to tame the beast. We'll probably have to wait a long time before that makes it through FDA approval, though ...

Guide robot steers with a tender touch - tech - 12 January 2009 - New Scientist

AI-based virtual agent for call centers lowers costs, improves caller experience

It seems as if the work that DFKI in Germany with their Persona work almost 20 years ago and others (like Patti Maes) working on Autonomous Intelligent Software Bots finally made it into the mainstream. And it's a killer application! Call centers are at the forefront of any consumer experience with a service-oriented large business. And we probably have all our stories to share of waiting for hours on the line to talk to a human being in order just to get very uniformed and generalized answers. Here now might be solution to the problem. With these autonomous AI bots, theoretically no wait is necessary anymore and - due to the bots ability to instantly access, correlate and process much large amounts of personal and other information, it might actually be able to give better, more personalized and context-relevant advice.
So - if suddenly you you have a drastically improved consumer experience with a call center - there might be a bot talking to you ....

http://www.kurzweilai.net/news/frame.html?main=news_single.html?id%3D9980

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Live long, prosper: Joseph Coughlin on Longevity 3.0 | The Pop!Tech Blog | Accelerating the Positive Impact of Worldchanging People and Ideas

Joe Coughlin from the MIT AgeLab giving a great perspective on how Aging concerns all of us and what role technology could play to make it the next stage of life rather then the end terminal.

Live long, prosper: Joseph Coughlin on Longevity 3.0 The Pop!Tech Blog Accelerating the Positive Impact of Worldchanging People and Ideas

Saturday, January 3, 2009

She-3PO: Canadian Inventor builds 'perfect woman' robot

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article2023392.ece

I guess the motivation is questionable. However, it shows that robotic companions are not so far out in the future. And the more human those robotic companions can behave and communicate, the more intuitive the human-robot interaction will be, thus eliminating the need for extensive training or manual reading and giving a broader public access to such anthropomorphic computing interfaces.

Clothing with a brain: 'Smart fabrics' that monitor health

Miguel Encarnacao wants to recommend to you:

Clothing with a brain: 'Smart fabrics' that monitor health
http://www.physorg.com/news147928092.html

Location-based sensors (GPS and alike) and sensors to measure daily activity (such as from Nike) were a good first step to capture one's just-in-time context. But with those 'Smart Fabrics' we will finally be able to know what people really need in every situation, rather than having to infer it from a few data points and other contextual information. WIll be huge in the prevention of catastrophic medical events (such as stroke or heart attacks) but even more in giving just-in-time personalized advice on how to optimize ones wellness. Can't wait to get into those clothes ...