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Microsoft Research Showcase Explored
prostoalex writes "Every year Microsoft Research scientists show their achievements and developments at Redmond campus. Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports from Techfest, a number of other news resources and blogs are covering it. Read about network-enabled bear that allows parents to communicate with the kids, a mobile phone applications that not only checks, but predicts traffic conditions, and surface computing for digital homes." From the article: "The project isn't fully developed, but the ultimate vision is to have the stuffed animal interact with a child, doing such things as playing games and reading stories. Because the bear is on a network, a parent could also use it to interact with a child remotely -- communicating or even taking snapshots through an embedded camera."
A friend of mine who works on the redmond campus we telling me about one of the neatest things that they were showing off which seemed to get less attention from the media and others then the rest of the products. These were more pure concept items, things that were not really going to be marketed any time soon but wanted to show off where microsoft was heading. These were networked enabled appliances. While other companies have showed these off before this was the most comphrensive I had heard of.
Among the products included a microwave, fridge, coffee maker, toaster, dishwater and washer drier. These all tied into a control panel which could be accessed from a household computer which showed the status of each item. So if you had a load of laundry going you could see how much longer it had till it was completed. Or you could set the intensity of your toaster, etc. The neatest was the implimentation of RFID with the fridge. Using RFID tags which they believe will be on all products in the next 5 - 10 years you can look up exactly what products are left and get a full inventory. You can also set up triggers which will text your phone, send you an email, or something of that nature which will tell when something is empty or near empty.
It appears that Redmond is looking at taking over not just your computer some day but your life as well.
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Nope, it was Asimov. The name of the story was "Robbie" and is the first in the anthology "I, Robot" which was stol^H^H^H^H used as inspiration for the movie of the same name.
iirc, it was also the first robot story Asimov wrote.
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Just so that people know, the bear idea is many years old, and was from Japan
here is a practical application of it, note the date on the article. Here is another take. Note this was out in the field in 2000.
There was also a great telepresence robot bear pair, whereby moving one robot bear would move the resultant other robot bear at the other end of the phone line, but I can't seem to find a link to it.
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