Computation is being added to homes, desks, clothing and other everyday items. Eventually, these items will also be communicating with each other through the Internet, but current research focuses on enhancing the physical object with computation. MIT's Media Laboratory has built smart rooms
(MIT:1996a) which use sensors to recognize people in the room. Offices can use the smart desk (MIT:1996b) to recognize workers and adapt to their preferences. A digital desk (Welher:1993) has been built which can read the user's interactions (via pen or finger-pointing) with a paper document and copy items to an electronic document. Nissan is working on smart cars which sense the driver's intentions before an action is taken in order to share control of the car with the driver (Pentland,Liu:1996). Someday an intelligent car will read traffic reports (CalTrans:199
The X-10 Corporation (X-10 Corp.:1996) markets 'smart home' devices which allow telephone or PC control of appliances. It will just be a matter of time before these devices are connected to the Internet as well.
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Ingrid E. Burbey, All Rights Reserved
Ingrid Burbey
<74001.1443@compuserve.com>
Last modified: Wed Dec 11 1996