Technology Trends

A Japanese designer has developed a mannequin robot, Palette, which can adapt its movements to the shoppers passing in front of it, according to this article from Agence France-Presse (AFP), “Striking a robotic pose.” Using motion-capture technology, Palette will be able to act as a supermodel. And with its specialized sensors and software, it also will be able to identify the sex and age of shoppers before transmitting them to store owners for marketing purposes. The price has not been set yet, but Palette should go on sale in 2005 in two versions: a body without legs to showcase clothings, and a torso model for jewelry. Read more…

Here is a short description of Palette.

“Mannequins have been static but this will pose for the nearest person by sensing his or her position,” robot designer Tatsuya Matsui told a news conference.

“It makes the product the mannequin wears look more attractive, increasing consumers’ appetite to buy,” said Matsui, who heads Flower Robotics Inc.

The female robot, code-named Palette, can draw inspiration from the world’s most beautiful women, using motion-capture technology to replay the movements of supermodels.

Palette will not only be a mannequin, it will be a spying marketing tool.

Palette will double up as an industrial spy, with the maker planning to program it to judge the age and sex of shoppers and even identify the bags they are carrying and pass along the information to stores for marketing purposes.

Matsui developed Palette with software company SGI Japan Ltd. and aim to start selling it this year for the fashion and service industries.

The price has not been set yet but SGI wants to make it “as close as possible to that of conventional mannequins,” said Hiroshi Otsuka, who is in charge of new business promotion at SGI Japan.

[Disclaimer: I worked in the past for SGI, but right now, I don't have any ties with this company.]

From what you can see in the above image, Palette has no human face, but it’s intentional.

“Consumer attention would be diverted to the face if there were one,” said Matsui, the designer, noting he wanted customers to focus on the clothes or jewellery the mannequin wears.

And as noted above, Palette will initially come in two versions, but Matsui might introduce other models in the future, such as male or child versions.

Sources: Agence France-Presse, via Independent Online, South Africa, February 28, 2005; and various websites

Related stories can be found in the following categories.

• Ecommerce
  
  
• Fashion
  
  
• Innovation
  
  
• Networking
  
  
• Robotics
  
  
• Sensors
  

The Korea Times reports that “science fiction becomes reality with a new holograph machine.” In fact, the devices developed by IO₂Technology look impressive. The Heliodisplay, which is about the size of a PC, is fed with images, swallows air and ‘modifies’ it. When the ‘altered’ — but harmless — air is ejected, it is illuminated to produce a continuous flow of 2D images. A first version, which can project floated images of 22 inches (55 centimeters) in the air, costs $18,600 — including $9,000 payable in advance. Even if I agree with the writer of the story that this is an interesting new technology with many possible applications, it’s interesting that the company itself says that “although the Heliodisplay uses lasers, the images are not holographic.” Read more…

Here are two short paragraphs from the Korea Times story.

Developed by Chad Dyner at IO2, the surprisingly compact Heliodisplay, which is about the size of an average PC case laid on its side (and only a bit noisier), is said to intake air, ‘alter’ it, then expel it and use lasers to project the image onto the ’still invisible’ conditioned air.

For obvious reasons, IO2 isn’t revealing how it modifies the air, but say that its perfectly safe. The machine could run all day in a sealed room and the air would still be breathable. Some have speculated that the secret may lie in ionization.

IO₂Technology describes how the Heliodisplay works on this page.

Air comes into the device, is modified then ejected and illuminated to produce the image. Nothing is added to the air so there isn`t any harmful gas or liquid emitted from the device, and nothing needs to be refilled. Operating the device will not change a room`s environment, air quality or other conditions. If a Heliodisplay were left running for a week in a hermetically sealed room, the only change to the room`s environment would be from the electricity used to run the device.

Floating images can easily be viewed in an office environment, for a presentation for example. As you can see below, the Heliodisplay is pretty small.

Here is a link to a larger version of this prototype. And you can see other images and videos on this page.

IO2 says it has built devices able to project images ranging from from 12 to 105 centimeters. You can check all the specifications for a model able to project 55 centimeters — and even buy one — on this page.

For almost $20K, it’s probably too expensive right now, except for uses in trade shows or museums. But if prices go down rapidly, which is almost a rule with this kind of technology, you might soon see one displaying a sales presentation in your company.

Sources: Peter Stephenson, The Korea Times, January 31, 2005; IO₂Technology website

Related stories can be found in the following categories.

• Displays
  
  
• Hardware
  
  
• Innovation
  
  
• Vision and Visualization
  

A professor in computer science at the Utah State University (USU) is building robots to help people with disabilities, according to the Utah Statesman in this article. The story, which is more focused on the professor than robotics, carries several anecdotes, such as an embarrassing voice recognition system. After a blind man cleared his throat, the robot misinterpreted the sound as a sign that the man wanted to go to the bathroom. Later, every time a man cleared his throat before speaking, the robot changed directions and insisted to guide him to the restrooms. Even if the article is entertaining, this project at USU is far more ambitious. In fact, they want to design RFID-enabled robots mounted on mobile carts which will welcome blind persons at the entrance of a supermarket and guide them through the store. I bet you’ll never find those carts at a Wal-Mart store, but read more…

RFID has been around for almost 50 years and is still helping people. Harness the power of this technology and check out how you can get some RFID tags and RFID readers. The debate between RFID and barcodes continues on and it seems the technology for RFID may be beating out barcodes and the use of barcode scanners and barcode printers is waning. Get in on the RFID wave and see why this new technology appears to be better.

First, let’s look in detail at the failure of the voice recognition system.

Vladimir Kulyukin, assistant professor in the department of computer science, works jointly as a computer science researcher and for the Center for Persons with Disabilities. He said he had an especially embarrassing moment here at the Center for Persons with Disabilities involving a robot and a speech recognition system.

“We figured we could speak to the robot in English, and using the voice recognition system the robot would interpret the commands and obey them. I quickly realized that just wasn’t possible,” he said.

He said a blind man found the glitch in the system when he cleared his throat and the robot misunderstood the sound to mean the man wanted to go to the bathroom.

“Every time the man cleared his throat, the robot would immediately change directions and guide him into the bathroom,” he said. “It was an especially embarrassing moment in my research,” he added.

Of course, this is only a very small part of the project, which will deploy radio frequency identification (RFID) tags for use in robot-assisted indoor navigation for the visually impaired.

“Simply speaking, we are trying to develop a robot for use as a mobile grocery cart used for the blind in supermarkets,” he said. “The robot would meet the blind person at the door and, by the push of a button, would lead the person to different areas of the store.”

Kulyukin said the robot would ideally be mounted on mobile carts, but the level of funding for the technology here at USU is not sufficient for marketing the project.

But they already built prototypes. And below are two pictures showing this RFID-equipped robotic guide (RG) for visually impaired people (Credit: Vladimir Kulyukin)

For more information, here is a link to Vladimir Kulyukin home page — which is not always available. From there, you’ll have access to various pages covering his research interests and his publications.

You might also want to read a paper named “RFID in Robot-Assisted Indoor Navigation for the Visually Impaired,” available as a PDF document (6 pages, 124 KB). Here is the abstract.

We describe how Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) can be used in robot-assisted indoor navigation for the visually impaired. We present a robotic guide for the visually impaired that was deployed and tested both with and without visually impaired participants in two indoor environments. We describe how we modified the standard potential fields algorithms to achieve navigation at moderate walking speeds and to avoid oscillation in narrow spaces. The experiments illustrate that passive RFID tags deployed in the environment can act as reliable stimuli that trigger local navigation behaviors to achieve global navigation objectives.

This paper also exists as a PowerPoint presentation (42 pages, 2.58 MB). The images above come from this presentation.

Sources: Lexie Kite, The Utah Statesman, Utah State University, January 26, 2005; and various websites

Related stories can be found in the following categories.

• Innovation
  
  
• Medicine
  
  
• RFID
  
  
• Robotics
  

Researchers at Xerox PARC have developed a new way to imbed machine-readable information in printed documents. According to this article from Sci-Tech Today, “Digital Evolution Continues with Xerox Glyphs,” their dataglyphs are composed only of forward (/) or backward () slashes — similar to the zeros and ones used in binary code. These dataglyphs could replace bar codes or be used in faxes, easing the way of routing information in a large company. Xerox is already using these dataglyphs for several projects, including one in Latin America to reduce check fraud. The company also has started an experiment named ‘GlyphSeal’ for two-sided documents, one for human eyes, and the other for machines. Read more…

Here are some quotes from one of the Xerox PARC researchers, Jeff Breidenbach.

“Under a magnifying glass, you can see that a dataglyph is composed of hundreds or thousands of tiny diagonal lines, leaning either forwards or backwards,” said Xerox PARC research scientist Jeff Breidenbach. “Diagonal lines tend to unobtrusively blend — and by varying the color and thickness of these marks, we achieve a lot of aesthetic control.”

“Dataglyphs are essentially a barcode on steroids,” Breidenbach says. “In some ways they are simply more flexible — much more aesthetically flexible, more resistant to certain types of environmental damage, easier to read on curved surfaces, and more flexible in the quantity of data stored — from a handful of bytes to tens of kilobytes.”

You can create and decode your own dataglyphs by running this demonstration.

You’ll find much more information on this technology by reading this technical overview of dataglyphs.

But let’s return to Sci-Tech Today for a description of the ‘GlyphSeal’ experiment ,Breidenbach’s favorite application.

A Xerox experiment, GlyphSeal “is a technique for printing a hybrid analog/digital paper document,” Breidenbach explained. “The front sides of the paper are human readable, while the reverse sides contain a complete machine-readable digital representation. This allows a document to easily travel from computer system to printout and back again.”

The latest research work about GlyphSeal has been published by the Proceedings of SPIE (Volume: 5306, June 2004) under the title “Collocated Dataglyphs for large-message storage and retrieval.” Here is a link to the abstract — a full version in PDF format costs $15. Here is the beginning of the abstract.

In contrast to the security and integrity of electronic files, printed documents are vulnerable to damage and forgery due to their physical nature. Researchers at Palo Alto Research Center utilize DataGlyph technology to render digital characteristics to printed documents, which provides them with the facility of tamper-proof authentication and damage resistance. This DataGlyph document is known as GlyphSeal. Limited DataGlyph carrying capacity per printed page restricted the application of this technology to a domain of graphically simple and small-sized single-paged documents. In this paper the authors design a protocol motivated by techniques from the networking domain and back-up strategies, which extends the GlyphSeal technology to larger-sized, graphically complex, multi-page documents.

Xerox PARC has a long history of good ideas that never been commercially successful — at least for Xerox. Will these dataglyphs become a hit or a flop? Time will tell.

Sources: Mike Martin, Sci-Tech Today, January 21, 2005; and various websites

Related stories can be found in the following categories.

• Cryptography
  
  
• Forensics
  
  
• Innovation
  
  
• Optics
  
  
• WebSites
  

I was quite intrigued by a recent brief article (8 lines) from New Scientist, “Robotic baby rocker to relieve tired parents.” It said that soon parents will be able to use an electromechanical device to rock their babies when they cry. Basically, the Robopax BabySitter is a device that sits on the floor and which supports almost all varieties of baby carriages. When a buggy is on the top of the BabySitter, it starts to balance it at about 66 rocks per minute. The Scottish company behind the Robopax opened its website only a couple of days ago. It hopes to sell 20,000 units per month starting this summer for a price of about £80 (around $150 or €115). Would you be interested? Read more…

Below are some images showing the device (Credit: Robopax website)

Here is the very brief article from New Scientist — in its entirety.

As every new parent quickly learns, one of the best ways to stop a baby crying is to rock him or her to sleep. But from May this year, an electromechanical rocker could relieve parents of the task of keeping a restive infant rocking for many hours on end. The Robopax BabySitter from Dream Technology in the UK is essentially a motorised plastic platform that moves back and forth a few centimetres on hidden wheels.

The BabySitter stands on the floor and is broad enough for a pram, buggy (stroller) or baby’s car seat to be placed on top. The device then reciprocates at about 66 rocks per minute, roughly in time with a resting heartbeat and the speed at which people instinctively rock their child. The launch commercialises an idea that was well received by parents when it was aired at an innovation exhibition in the UK in 2000.

Here are some more details picked on various pages of the site.

First, you’re not limited to use it inside your home.

The product is a worldwide first consumer product for the industry, as all other known baby rockers require to be manually operated, whereas the Robopax BabySitter operates via a DC power supply, similar to that used for a laptop computer — which means that it can be used indoors absolutely anytime, anywhere!

Is it really compatible with most of current buggies?

The Robopax BabySitter’s bed-size at 855mm long by 677 mm wide, has been developed to fit the majority of prams in the marketplace. We believe it works with virtually all four wheeler prams and the majority of three wheelers.

And is it really safe to use this BabySitter?

It has been safety-tested to meet all appropriate EU Electrical and Mechanical Directives. Designed to support a continuous weight-load of 35 kilograms, the BabySitter has been life-cycle tested and subjected to FE analysis at various loads and distributions.

And if I want one, when will it be available?

It is anticipated that 20,000 units will be available per month from the Summer of 2005 from major Department Stores, and directly from the Dream Technology website.

You can already preorder the device for £79.90 (about $150 or €115) from the company’s online store.

So what do you think? Would you buy such a ‘robotic baby rocker?

Sources: New Scientist magazine, January 8, 2005, Issue 2481, Page 20; Robopax website

Related stories can be found in the following categories.

• Home
  
  
• Innovation
  
  
• Robotics
  
  
• Technology
  

The European Union has now 25 members — and 20 official languages, a nightmare for translators. Anticipating this, the EU started three years ago a 4-million euro project, TransType2, which is currently under test with results exceeding the original goals. In this article, the EU’s Information Society Technologies (IST) reports productivity gains in excess of 30% above traditional methods. The system mixes the advantages of both computer-assisted translation (CAT) and machine translation (MT). When you use the computer-assisted system, you start your translation, and several suggestions are offered to you while you’re typing, reducing your number of keystrokes and saving you time. Today, TransType2 allows bidirectional translations between English, French, German, and Spanish. Other European languages could easily been added. The EU is now thinking to bring this tool to us  either as a commercial product or a Web service. Read more…

Before going further, here are two screenshots illustrating the TransType2 concept (Credit: TransType2 project).

The first one comes from a page containing other screen captures while the second has been picked from this animated GIF image.

Now, let’s look at the introduction of the IST Results article.

Due to end in February, the 36-month IST programme project has drawn on two of the most commonly used translation technologies developed to date: Computer-Assisted Translation (CAT), in which human translators work in unison with a computer; and Machine Translation (MT), in which the computer handles the entire process. While both techniques have advantages and drawbacks, TransType2 has “used the best of both worlds” says project manager José Esteban at Atos Origin in Spain.

And here is how the system works.

The system works by providing translators with suggestions to complete sentences as they type which can be incorporated simply and rapidly, reducing the number of keystrokes needed to complete a translation. The suggestions are created based on statistical models of translated texts, used by the MT engines to predict the words and phrases that will come next.

The question is: does this system help to produce high quality translations faster than other methods?

Based on the work of two previous projects TransType (Canadian government-funded) and EuTrans (EU-funded), TransType2 offers significant benefits over existing techniques. Trials currently underway with two translation agencies in Canada and Spain are showing results that could be better than the project partners first expected.

“We originally thought the system would increase productivity by between 15 or 20 per cent, but in some cases we’re seeing gains in excess of 20 per cent and as high as 25 or 30 per cent,” Esteban says. “Once translators have familiarised themselves with the system the productivity increases start to become noticeable almost immediately.”

Not surprisingly, TransType2 works well with structured documents, such as technical, political or legal ones and is not very good with literary works. Still, it looks like a promising tool for the people in charge of translating the huge amounts of texts produced by the EU.

Sources: IST Results, January 12, 2005; and various other websites

Related stories can be found in the following categories.

• Computers
  
  
• Education
  
  
• Innovation
  
  
• Software
  

You might think that concrete is a boring material. Not at all. In a very well-documented article, “Concrete Nation,” Science News tells us how the limits of this humble material are being pushed. You can now find concrete that bends like metal and which is five times as strong as regular concrete without any reinforcing steel bars. Or you can use concrete which doesn’t need a vibration machine to remove the air bubbles inside, which can save lots of time during construction. There are also translucent concrete or concrete incorporating transparent elements, allowing to build floors lit from below. And by adding titanium dioxide to cement, you obtain a self-cleaning concrete that remains the same color for centuries and can even clean the air by breaking down dangerous pollutants. Fascinating, isn’t?

Before going further, let’s start by some illustrations. The pictures and the legends below come from the site of a current exhibit at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., Liquid Stone: New Architecture in Concrete (Macromedia Flash needed).

Below are computer-generated images of the hypothetical Mound Builder Museum designed by Building Studio from Memphis, Tennessee (Macromedia Flash needed).

And this one shows another museum, the MUCEM, in Marseille, France, which will be completed by 2009.

Now, let’s look at a concrete that bends like metal.

For instance, consider some of the new materials developed by concrete giant Lafarge, headquartered in Paris.

Vic Perry leads the company’s North American operation producing Ductal, one of Lafarge’s newest concrete products (Macromedia Flash needed). Unlike regular concrete, which is brittle and can rupture suddenly under a heavy load, Ductal can bend. “It will deflect and show signs of cracking before it fails,” says Perry. “You can see in advance that you’ve got a problem.”

What’s more, Ductal is five times as strong as regular concrete. That extra oomph comes from the addition of small fibers dispersed throughout the matrix. These fibers, made of either steel or polymer, reinforce the concrete and eliminate the need for reinforcing steel bars, or rebar. A bridge made out of Ductal can be lighter and thinner than a traditional bridge, Perry says.

Because of an aging workforce, there is also the need to reduce the amount of labor during construction.

In response to this concern, Lafarge has developed Agilia. According to the company, laying a 60-cubic-meter slab of regular concrete — enough for a floor in an office building — requires eight people and takes about 8 hours. Placing the same-size slab of Agilia could require as few as two people and take a couple of hours.

Normally, after concrete is poured, the mason passes a vibrating machine over the surface to squeeze out all the air bubbles. It’s a loud and time-consuming process. However, Agilia contains a mix of additives: superplasticizers that keep the concrete fluid and other chemicals that cut down on the water needed. These enable the concrete to consolidate under its own weight without mechanical vibration.

Other concerns, such as global warming, also lead to concrete innovations. Do you know that the cement industry produces 7% of the global human production of carbon dioxide? There are now efforts to replace cement by ‘greener’ materials. And new kinds of concrete are specifically designed to reduce pollution.

Scientists at the Italcementi Group in Bergamo, Italy, have developed a self-cleaning concrete that keeps buildings from turning black from pollutants in the atmosphere. Luigi Cassar and his colleagues at the research branch of Italcementi made the concrete by adding particles of the white pigment titanium dioxide to the cement component.

When titanium dioxide absorbs ultraviolet light, it becomes highly reactive and breaks down pollutants that come into contact with the concrete’s surface. The reactive material can kill bacteria and fungi and also break down pollutants such as nitric oxide, sulfur dioxide, and many volatile organic compounds that contribute to concrete’s darkening.

After reading about all these innovations, do you still think that the ubiquitous concrete is boring?

Sources: Alexandra Goho, Science News, Vol. 167, No. 1, Jan. 1, 2005, p. 7; and various websites

Related stories can be found in the following categories.

• Architecture
  


• Energy
  


• Innovation
  


• Materials
  


• Technology
  

When your newspapers write something about RFID tags, it’s almost always about Wal-Mart or how these tags are threatening our privacy. But they often miss the important innovations brought by this technology. For example, in Florida, RFID drives highway traffic reports on more than 200 miles of toll roads. Or take DHL, which is tracking fashion with RFID tags on more than 70 million garments in its French distribution center. Elsewhere, in Texas, 28,000 students test an e-tagging system which promises better security for them. And what about RFID tags which could prevent surgical errors and have just been approved in the U.S last week? So, what do you think? Are these innovations promising a better future for us or not? Read more…

Let’s start with a tag which promises to reduce the number of surgery errors — which apparently kills several thousands people every year.

Here is what the Associated Press writes about the device.

A radio frequency tag that patients can affix like a bandage to ensure doctors perform the right surgery on the right person won government approval Friday.

The tag, manufactured by SurgiChip Inc. of Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., aims to prevent wrongful surgeries that records show kill thousands of patients a year.

But don’t be afraid: even if the tags are scanned during several times before actual surgery, you always have to confirm if the information is correct — except if you’re unconscious.

Tracking garments is obviously less important for your life than avoiding a surgery error, but here is what DHL is doing in France.

DHL Solutions Fashion, a global logistics service provider for clothing manufacturers and retailers, is offering the French fashion industry a way to test item-level RFID tagging of garments in order to help speed the delivery of their products as well as enable shipments to be tracked through the supply chain.

During the summer, DHL worked alongside NBG-ID, RFID specialist based in Cavaillon, France, to deploy an RFID network in a 500-square-meter room at DHL’s Paris distribution center. In July, DHL ran a trial of its new RFID capabilities with one of its customers. Now, the company says it is looking to offer its RFID services to other customers looking to incorporate RFID into their operations.

And don’t think it’s a small experiment.

DHL Solutions Fashion’s Paris distribution center serves as a hub between a number of different fashion clothing suppliers, mostly in France, as well as boutique operators, also mostly in France. Each year, 70 million garments pass through the center on their way to wholesale suppliers.

And what about controlling car traffic — which has been already done elsewhere?

With an eye to improving traffic management and information access, the Orlando/Orange County Expressway Authority (OOCEA) is deploying an RFID-based traffic-monitoring system in central Florida. The system will use roadside RFID readers to collect signals from transponders already installed in about 1 million E-Pass and SunPass customer vehicles. E-Pass (used on roads operated by the expressway authority) and SunPass (used on the Florida’s Turnpike system) are both automatic toll payment methods used in central Florida.

Like the DHL deployment, it’s also a very significant one.

The trial phase of this system will last about two years, but after that time the system could be expanded to additional state roads in central Florida and other reader sites along roads used during the trial. The OOCEA is deploying 128 RFID readers for the initial phase of the testing. The first readers were installed mid-2004 by the FDOT, with project completion by May 1, 2005. Altogether, the system will cover about 228 miles of toll roads and nontoll state highways.

Finally, let’s look at how RFID technology could prevent kidnapping in Texas — and elsewhere.

Hoping to prevent the loss of a child through kidnapping or more innocent circumstances, a few schools have begun monitoring student arrivals and departures using technology similar to that used to track livestock and pallets of retail shipments.

Here in a growing middle- and working-class suburb just north of Houston, the effort is undergoing its most ambitious test. The Spring Independent School District is equipping 28,000 students with ID badges containing computer chips that are read when the students get on and off school buses. The information is fed automatically by wireless phone to the police and school administrators.

Now that I’ve described several examples of how RFID tags could improve our lives, what do you think? Are you convinced that this technology will be used for a better or a worst future? Please post your comments below.

Sources: Catherine Ilic, RFID Journal, November 15, 2004; Claire Swedberg, RFID Journal, November 17, 2004; Matt Richtel, The New York Times, via CNET News.com, November 17, 2004; Associated Press, via Mercury News, November 20, 2004

Related stories can be found in the following categories.

• Innovation
  


• Medicine
  


• Privacy
  


• RFID
  


• Transportation
  


• Wearable Technology