The life of the future.

Nuvo

Imagine a world where your house knows where you are and acts according to what room you're in and what you tell it.
Imagine cars that let you concentrate on things other than the road and which drive themselves.
Imagine if you neverhad to get the vacuum out again because it did it automatically.
Sounds like the sci-fi promise of the future we've been thrown since electricity was first used in a practical appliance doesn't it, but now, we are actually in that future.


Robots galore:
We all hate doing them, right... Cleaning the floor, cutting the grass and general cleaning.
If we didn't, why would we invent things such as dish washersand the like?
Well, what if you had a vacuum which worked without your help and which charged itself up too, well these exist and are already available to buy.
There's even one which empties itself, but the bags are fairly small.
The technology behind such robots is getting better and a decent quality bot can avoid spilling a glass of water that's placed in the center of the room it's cleaning.
Similarly, there's robot mowers, but since your garden is usually outside, these require a perimiter wire which they won't cross.

Media centers:
Ok, so cleaning isn't overly entertaining, but getting something else to do it for you leaves you with spare time.
DVD players, TV enhancements and the like are all fine, but having 2 or 3 devices lumped under your TV as well as a PC is a bit much for that minimalist look.
Enter what could be one of the most important bits of kit in future homes, the media center.
'But we've had those for years' I hear you say, but what if you had one which not only combined the Internet, DVD playback and othe media funtions, but which would let you control your entire house.
This isn't just on the way, you can already implement computer controlled lights, and power for other devices such as coffee machines.
Wouldn't it rquire a lot of wiring to link your lights and power outlets to a PC?
Honestly, yes... But you don't actually need to do any wiring.
Enter X10, a networking system which uses the existing electrical wiring in your house to send data.
Buy a couple of X10 compatible light switches and set up a small network and not only do you have lights with dimmer features, but you don't even need to get up to change the lighting.
Ok, so you've got that, but what else?
Five TV's The Gadget Show co-host Jason Bradbury has been tinkering with X10 and such while renovating his new home, and as well as the lights, he's linked up his coffee machine and he also added some pretty standard security motion sensors so that when he walks into the kitchen, his house actually greets him, starts some music, turns on the lights (fading in) and starts a brew going... pretty sweet if you ask me.
This is possible using X10 managment software such as Harmony, which lets you set up events which activate when events such as a sensor being tripped are triggered.

Computer, where is Spock... And how does he have his coffee?:
We've all seen AIM bots, IRC bots and so on, but in a few years we could have computer technology which lets us talk to a computer and get decent results which it can work from.
Current systems like Dragon Naturally Speaking are good Speach To Text programs, but they aren't 100% accurate and only really serve to translate your gibberings to text.
Once this kind of technology makes it into home managment systems, you could just tell your home to make your coffee as you like it or to connect a phone call.
Also in development is RFID, a system which has it's users carry small cards which the house can detect and react to.
Amonst many others, Motorola is working on getting this technology to market.
With this kind of kit, your home will know where you are and it can keep music and movies playing in whatever room you're in without disrupting the other area's.
Lights will onle activate in the area's of the house you're in and you can set up different devices to act to your presence.
Because your data is stored on the media center or home server, the cards only have to transmit your location, not how you like your stuff.
Combined, you could ask your house to find your sister and it'd be able to tell you what room she's in, who's with her and you wouldn't need to press any buttons at all... scary.

Taxi drivers beware:
If you've seen Minority Report or somilar movies, you've probably looked at the self driving cars and thought they were kinda cool.
Mitsubishi motors has, in the past, created a concept car capable of following the lines down the middle of the road (it didn't drive down the middle, obviously), meaning it could follow the road without human help.
Combine this with GPS SATNAV technology and a few distance sensors and it would be possible to create a system that could get you to work while avoiding traffic jams and which would try not to have meetings with other large objects at 40MPH.
'BUT WHAT ABOUT THOSE COUNTRY LANES WITH NO MARKINGS??' Oh, they haven't got around that yet, but at least you won't be too tired from city driving

DISCUSS!!

tony

i think to get robots as taxi drivers would be a really stupid thing, theres never enough jobs to meet the demand so why create robots to take over from us

Python

I agree with Tony about having robots as taxi drivers - thats just crazy.

But things like a media center controlling pretty much everything electrobical in your house - that would be cool as long as it had a really got backup system if it ever went down :P