Smart Hotel Rooms in New York City

hc1379 writes "Back in the 90's, Mark Weiser a Xerox PARC scientist envisioned future computing will weave themselves into the background of our everyday life. People will use computing as natural as they use writing instruments. He called it ubiquitous computing (aka pervasive computing). UbiComp was a good research idea, but did not really find its way into the commercial market, at least not in the life time of Mark Weiser, who died in 1999. One of Harry's blog reports that the Mandarin Oriental in Manhattan has smart hotel rooms that can keep track of guests' preferences and change the room conditions automatically (e.g., adjusting room temperature and lighting conditions based on the guest's preference, and alerting maids when the minibar is running low on soda)."

Comments

Computers are great

[PunkOfLinux]

I try a lot to build computers into whatever I can. Making technology useful for anything and everything, thus simplifying life, is really what technology is all about.

Instead of just making a toaster, why not make a toaster that learns how different people like their toast?

Or, instead of making a set of speakers, why not make a set of speakers that can automatically adjust to prevent distortion, no matter the volume level?

Re:Computers are great

[aktzin]

Right on. Technology shouldn't be complicated just because it can be. To illustrate this point let's turn to the classic story recounted in a previous /. story:

http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=15874 7&cid=13299054

Re:Computers are great

[Frogbert]

This much simpler!

Re:Computers are great

[Jerk City Troll]

Source: http://philip.greenspun.com/humor/eecs-difference- explained

Once upon a time, in a kingdom not far from here, a king summoned two of his advisors for a test. He showed them both a shiny metal box with two slots in the top, a control knob, and a lever. &ldquolWhat do you think this is?”

One advisor, an engineer, answered first. “It is a toaster,” he said. The king asked, “How would you design an embedded computer for it?” The engineer replied, “Using a four-bit microcontroller, I would write a simple program that reads the darkness knob and quantizes its position to one of 16 shades of darkness, from snow white to coal black. The program would use that darkness level as the index to a 16-element table of initial timer values. Then it would turn on the heating elements and start the timer with the initial value selected from the table. At the end of the time delay, it would turn off the heat and pop up the toast. Come back next week, and I'll show you a working prototype.”

The second advisor, a computer scientist, immediately recognized the danger of such short-sighted thinking. He said, “Toasters don't just turn bread into toast, they are also used to warm frozen waffles. What you see before you is really a breakfast food cooker. As the subjects of your kingdom become more sophisticated, they will demand more capabilities. They will need a breakfast food cooker that can also cook sausage, fry bacon, and make scrambled eggs. A toaster that only makes toast will soon be obsolete. If we don't look to the future, we will have to completely redesign the toaster in just a few years.”

“With this in mind, we can formulate a more intelligent solution to the problem. First, create a class of breakfast foods. Specialize this class into subclasses: grains, pork, and poultry. The specialization process should be repeated with grains divided into toast, muffins, pancakes, and waffles; pork divided into sausage, links, and bacon; and poultry divided into scrambled eggs, hard- boiled eggs, poached eggs, fried eggs, and various omelet classes.”

“The ham and cheese omelet class is worth special attention because it must inherit characteristics from the pork, dairy, and poultry classes. Thus, we see that the problem cannot be properly solved without multiple inheritance. At run time, the program must create the proper object and send a message to the object that says, 'Cook yourself.' The semantics of this message depend, of course, on the kind of object, so they have a different meaning to a piece of toast than to scrambled eggs.”

“Reviewing the process so far, we see that the analysis phase has revealed that the primary requirement is to cook any kind of breakfast food. In the design phase, we have discovered some derived requirements. Specifically, we need an object-oriented language with multiple inheritance. Of course, users don't want the eggs to get cold while the bacon is frying, so concurrent processing is required, too.”

“We must not forget the user interface. The lever that lowers the food lacks versatility, and the darkness knob is confusing. Users won't buy the product unless it has a user-friendly, graphical interface. When the breakfast cooker is plugged in, users should see a cowboy boot on the screen. Users click on it, and the message ‘Booting UNIX v.8.3’ appears on the screen. (UNIX 8.3 should be out by the time the product gets to the market.) Users can pull down a menu and click on the foods they want to cook.”

“Having made the wise decision of specifying the software first in the design phase, all that remains is to pick an adequate hardware platform for the implementation phase. An Intel 80386 with 8MB of memory, a 30MB hard disk, and a VGA monitor should be sufficient. If you select a multitasking, object oriented language that

Sounds a lot like

[ScrewMaster]

living on the Enterprise-D.

Heh heh heh...

[lewp]

Oh, the minibar was never in danger of running low on soda...

My preferences, eh?

[imboboage0]

When they figure out that I would prefer not to pay and adjust accordingly, then we're talkin.

I can just hear it now

[AutopsyReport]

"This is Seth from the Mandarin front desk. The following DVDs have been automatically charged to your account: Drunken Hussies, Backdoor Patrol, and Mona Lisa Smile. Thank you."

Re:I can just hear it now

[gardyloo]

That's not pervasive computer. That's perversive computing.

Re:I can just hear it now

[multiplexo]

"This is Seth from the Mandarin front desk. The following DVDs have been automatically charged to your account: Drunken Hussies, Backdoor Patrol, and Mona Lisa Smile. Thank you."

Hey! I didn't rent Mona Lisa Smile. It was Mona Lisa's Pearl Necklace.

PervComp

[elinden]

...He called it ubiquitous computing (aka pervasive computing). UbiComp was a good research idea...

if ubiquitous computing = UbiComp, i guess it's best they didn't choose to primarily use the term Pervasive Computing instead... might have attracted a completely different audience.

Re:great

[Trip Ericson]

Plenty of OTHER systems open Windows for you, I don't think we need another. *ducks*

Tell you what...

[Patchw0rk F0g]

...up my expense account, make it concrete, and then I'll read the fucking article. Otherwise, we mouse-drivers over here ain't holding our breath.

Re:Anonymous movies

[zippthorne]

Well the obvious solution is to buy 6 films.

Editors Wanted

[stevens]

Let's get our /. submission ready:

• Lots of buzzwords. Check
• Tenuous tie-in to famous geek. Check
• Link to my own blog to try and make some AdSense money. Check
• Speaking of my own blog in the 3rd person to sound like a disinterested party. Check

Now you too can pass yourself off as Roland Piquepaille!

RFID for Prostitutes

[loserface]

It would be a lot cooler if it could match the room settings to which hooker you have with you that night.