Robot Actor debuts in Japan

Driverless tech – the wide reaching effects

Google last week announced it has been test driving a group of 6 driverless cars in California, clocking up a whopping 140,000 miles in specially adapted vehicles with trained drivers and engineers monitoring to ensure no nasty accidents. The specially adapted vehicles of course made use of Google's mountain of data of the terrain, which has been captured and utilised in Google Earth and Google Maps.

It's an exciting development and something I've been watching for some time. The idea first came to my attention when BT published it's Futurology survey in 2005, predicting the use of such vehicles by the armed forces in 2015, with domestic use to follow 10-15 years later.


Turns out, though, that the idea of driverless cars are nothing new. Japanese automotive testers were working on such a vehicle as far back as 1977, and in 1995, a driverless car got up 110mph on a German autobahn. In addition, there have been the DARPA challenges to develop driverless tech, with a prize sponsored by the US government. Meanwhile, in England, London's Heathrow airport has seen the introduction of driverless "pods" already, this year. (check out the video)

Such predictions do appear to be on course, and the prospect of reducing the 1 million worldwide car deaths each year but a half is positive development.

Anyway, after giving the matter no considerable thought, I realised there would be several effects of this new tech when it does appear, so here is what I came up with....

1. It will mean more leisure / work time for average person. Being able to drink your tea, eat breakfast, or read the paper on way to work, or actually answer emails and begin working.

2. The car will be able to make journeys for family members and friends without you present. E.g. after you have been dropped off at work, the car could go home and collect your kids, and drop them off at school.

3.This will change the face of shopping. E.g. your car could go to Tescos and pick up your groceries, and take them home.

4. There will be much less need for car parking spaces - your car can just go home and wait.

5. There will be much less need for several cars per household. Many will only need one car per household in many cases.

6. The ability to have a driverless car will be invaluable, providing a new lease of life to the elderly & disabled who are unable to drive, and the young, who have difficulty getting insurance, or are just too young to get a licence.

7. There will be no more need for late night hours long queue for taxis.

8. Indeed, there may no more taxi services – or at least ones with drivers. Alternatively, taxis may become more prevalent, or carsharing, as the need to own a car, as opposed to sharing, becomes more popular.

9. There will be no more drivers jobs – van drivers, taxi, coach, lorry, bus etc. This will impact upon tens if not hundreds of thousands of jobs.

10. The number of accidents will drop dramatically, as will road deaths, something predicted by Google in their blog post upon the new tech. The most difficult aspect to crack will not be the danger of your car hitting other vehicles, but pedestrians, particularly children, etc., as they are less predictable.

11. For a member of the public, driving your car will become illegal on the open road eventually – too dangerous, insurance issues, etc.

12. Cars will beoperable via smartphone facility, for example, you can “call” car to fetch. Apps for controlling your car (e.g. Volvo app?)

13. Cars themselves will change. They are currently focussed on driving as an activity. They will be a place for relaxing, and entertainment. More like a room. With TV, internet, and the emphasis on eating and drinking, and sleeping.

14. The change will cause a Huge cut in traffic, esp. With the introduction of “convoys” of cars travelling in unison to streamline roads.

15. There will be a massive loss of business for personal injury / motor insurance firms, leading to a huge loss to the economy and employment in that sector as firms go out of business.

16. There will be an end to car culture – driving will no longer be a mass activity, but a niche interest, so less magazines, less TV shows like top gear, less enthusiasts.

17. There will be a massive change for garages – services cars will become even more technical, IT rich, expertise, etc. Reliability will become a key issue like never before. MOTs will have to reach a much higher standard. Cars will have to be able to self-diagnose.

18. Cars will contain black box technology & ability to notify emergency services in case of accidents. There will be a massive drop insurance fraud, and premiums will go down, as cars become safer.

Wireless Charging for Mobile Phones to hit market in 2012

As a journalist who is willing to bore anyone willing to listen to me with my future technology obsession, I talking about this particular innovation, which was rumour a few years back. Well, it looks like it's now nearly here. Fujitsu have revealed a mechanism for wireless electricity charging at a technology conference in Osaka Prefecture University.


Working at a distance of several metres, it's effectively like wifi hotspot, but for recharging your phone, laptop, or other electrical devices without the use of messy plugs and wires. The innovation could also be implemented in the race to popularise electric cars, by charging them while parked. Fujitsu suggested products using the new technology could be on the market as early as 2012, but did not clarify how much they might cost. 

The Waterless Washing Machine

So, I saw this and got me all excited. You've no doubt noticed the increasing number of waterless urinals in restaurants, bars and workplaces across the land if you're a bloke. Well, here is the "Waterless" Washing Machine, courtesy of a company from Leeds. British innovation leading the way! It uses 90% less water than a normal washing machine, using "beads" to get into all the nooks and crannies of your washing. The machine causes a 30% cost saving for the user (a lot of the energy usually used in a washing machine is for heating the water) and once the beads are done, they can be used to make other plastic stuff like dashboards. 


Sounds perfect. Now we just need people to get their heads round the idea.....

Google At War With Apple with New Tablet?

While Apple caused a huge stir in the world of tech and gadgets last week with the announcement of its' forthcoming ipad, major players google may have leaked details of their own multitouch tablet machine.

The picture opposite, which appeared on their Chrominum site, reveal how their Chrome OS would function on a touchscreen machine, and as you can see, a QWERTY keyboard can appear on screen, there are resizeable windows and zooming functionality.

If such rumours suggest no love lost between Apple and Google, they will be further fuelled by reports that at a meeting between Apple CEO / cult leader Steve Jobs and his employees, he said of Google that "they want to kill the iphone" (with their release of Nexus One), and even more controversially, of their "Don't Be Evil" mantra, "It's bullshit".

As they say in the playground, "fight fight fight fight!" Watch this space for developments.....

The All-New Apple Ipad : Emperor's New Clothes, Or The Re-Invention of Portable Computing?

Wow. So after much consternation, prediction and hype, the Apple Ipad has Finally landed. 

The Specs were widely predicted, but in the end, rumours of an OLED display were incorrect, while it comes in 16G, 32G, and 64G capacities, with support for 720 telly, but sadly NO flash. It's been described as essentially an oversized iphone, and so anyone familiar with the existing apple smartphone offering should find its' 9.7 inch touchscreen interface pretty familiar, and far more expansive, while the 160,000 apps available for the iphone will no doubt be adapted and added to for this gizmo.

Probably equally important, if not more so, was the announcement by Steve Jobs of an Apple ibooks store, which is envisioned to revolutionise the print publishing industry in the same way iTunes changed music consumption. The new tablet and store will utilise an "epub" form - a free and open e-book standard. While it the latter comes as a welcome relief for writers hoping for a future for the industry, personally, I'm doubtful whether this latest must-have accessory is going to be the "kindle-killer" that it clearly hopes to be. Since it doesn't use the "e-paper" technology of other e-readers, using it will become heavy on the eyes after several hours of reading.

Meanwhile, it's clearly also aimed at the Netbook market, as a cross between a lightweight laptop and smartphone. However, the rather difficulty of tapping away on-screen means that a keyboard doc has been produced for those who wish to type extensively, pictured thus:

The keyboard itself is similar to that of the sleek-looking kind already offered with full-sized Macs, but the problem for me is that A) It looks delicate, and ready to be snapped or damaged, as does the large touch-screen which cannot be protected from scratches by folding the gizmo shut, and B) It takes away the all-in-one nature of this object which purports to be the gadget to end all gadgets. 

On the plus side, I can see the ipad being a great outlet for games developers, who are already thriving on the Iphone Apps store, thus putting it alongside PSPs and Nintendo DSs.

It's clearly also intended to be a portable TV / video as well, far better for watching than the tiny screens offered by the nano, classic, and even the Iphone, which isn't quite big enough. 

What the ipad is for me, created out of an intention to revolutionise an area somewhere between the smartphone, e-reader portable media player, and laptop, but it remains to be seen whether it will manage it. It could applications that are revolutionary, particularly in education, which I think could be key, but it remains to be seen whether or not it will manage to do this - it's all about adoption of the technology, but given apples' track record on revolutionising useage (particularly re-inventing the smartphone with the advent of the iphone, and the many apps that have mushroomed in both creation and widespread adoption), I wouldn't put it past them to manage it.