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HP Labs in Bristol (UK) are developping a digital translating camera for travelers to read street signs and directions in a foreign language. They will have to point and click the camera at a road sign, and the optical character recognition software will process the images of the letters. A language translation software then turns it into the tourist's language and displays it on the screen. The prototype combines a digital camera, an handheld computer and a special optical character recognition software and is in demonstration this weekend at Nextfest, a high-tech exposition in San Francisco. "We're working towards a time when you'll be able to get out of a train station in Italy, use the camera to read direction signs, pan the camera across the Piazza, and graphic overlays will show you the route to the hotel you booked, the best sights to see, the best restaurants," declared HP researcher Maurizio Pilu. Found in SFGate. |
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Rapidly aging population has propelled The Netherlands to find innovative ways to provide medical attention to people without the cost of having an attendant visit them home. The CamCare pilot project connects, via a live audio and video link, the patient to a clinic. Whenever he feels poorly, he pushes just one button and automatically a video of him along with his medical records appear on the nurse's screen. After having discussed with him, the nurse decides whether to dispatch help or tell him what he needs to do. More in E-week. Related news: Robot doctors. |
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A CNET News article on how tiny wireless sensors will one day sense motion, light or pressure and be able to work in group in order to collectively process and transmit information. These systems would thus, say, detect a forest fire in its early stage, find leaks in pipelines, increase safety inside buildings or monitor battlefields. |
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With technology at hand now, and a vision for what Beijing could be in 2008, the Chinese city will host the most modern, high-tech Olympic Games ever in 2008. Beijing is already looking at “4G” that will allow users to perform wirelessly in a fully mobile environment what they can do at home or in the office while wired to the Internet. 4G could bring to Beijing Olympics: Furthermore, the 4G mobile broadband network will be deployed for the Games according to a strategy that should ensure that its inhabitants will also enjoy lasting benefits. |
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Net lets hand-helds view 3D data TRN 050504 via engadget Some researchers at the Torino Polytechnic in Italy have thought up a way for cellphones and PDAs, with their puny processors, to display complex 3D models: have another computer do all the heavy lifting. The scheme is to have a special server on the network do all the graphics intensive number crunching, and then feed an image back to the handheld (whether the handheld’s screen has the resolution to even make the 3D image intelligible is another matter). Make a change or need to see the image from another angle, and the request gets bounced back to the server, which then spits out what you need. Obviously there are the expected problems with lag time, but eventually the bandwidth will be there to make this a more or less seamless experience. Though given the glacial pace at which 3G is rolling out, we’re not just sure whether that’s gonna happen before cellphones have fast enough processors to simply do all this 3D stuff on their own. |
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NTT DoCoMo is developping Mime SPeech Recognition, a system that uses electromyography to measure the electrical activity in facial muscles used when a person speaks.
Found in Infoworld |
