Science Fiction Devices That Are (Nearly) Real

Like many people, I beloved science fiction and often become to shows like CES hoping to encounter the kind of applied science nosotros read most in books or see in movies. But while CES this yr had some great engineering, it as well served as a good reminder that we're even so a long way from the technology that we imagine in books and in film; we don't really have self-driving cars nevertheless, much less usable robots or the holodeck.

Withal, I did encounter a lot of progress, even if these technologies have a long mode to become before they're really available in the real earth. Then again, information technology'due south probably also a skillful thing that Skynet isn't up and running, nonetheless.

CES Cars are Not All About Cocky-Driving

Every year it seem CES becomes more of a car show, and this year the vast majority of the North Hall was total of automotive manufacturers and their suppliers.

I expected to see—and saw—many people talking nearly autonomous vehicles. Nvidia spent the bulk of its pre-prove keynote discussing its new system for such vehicles, with a focus on Xavier, "the world's well-nigh powerful SoC." Xavier has ix billion transistors in a 350 mm2 dice, with a custom 8-core CPU, a new 512-core Volta GPU, a new deep learning accelerator, new calculator vision accelerators, and new 8K HDR video processors. The visitor says information technology delivers xxx trillion operations per 2nd while consuming just 30 watts.

This forms the centre of the visitor'southward Pegasus driving system, which is congenital on two Xavier SoCs (systems on a bit) and two next-generation Nvidia GPUs. Nvidia said its customers will go the commencement samples of Pegasus, which is capable of 320 trillion operations per second of processing performance, in mid-2018. It is intended to enable completely autonomous vehicles (Level 5).

Meanwhile, Intel pushed its Mobileye acquisition, and talked most how its fries are in many cars already in production, noting that this number is growing. The visitor talked nigh new partnerships to build high-definition maps for use in smart cities, and its focus on safe and avant-garde driver-help systems (ADAS) over completely autonomous vehicles.

Similarly, ARM spent significant time talking almost the various auto industry vendors that use its processors in everything from ADAS to smart lights.

Indeed, while much of the discussion at CES involved democratic vehicles—from machine makers and chip makers to makers of all kinds components from LIDAR to displays to software—there were also lots of discussions that focused on other automotive technologies at the testify.

There were a few demos of fuel cell vehicles and even some pretty great concept vehicles. I didn't really focus on these, but they were very interesting.

The weirdest machine technology I saw was Nissan'southward experiment to control cars past idea, based on the idea that you lot know when you want to press downward on the interruption faster than your leg can react. Though it is an interesting theory, I'm not certain how practical it is.

Robots Everywhere, Just Not the Droids You're Looking For

We hear a lot about robots, but with the exception of some "robotic" devices that perform a specific part (such as a robot vacuum cleaner) there but aren't as many robots in the existent world as you'd expect, given all the hype.

At CES, there were all sorts of robots on display—from household robots that do little more follow yous around, behaving like an Amazon Repeat on wheels, to toys designed to interact with children, to more specific machines that did things like play chess or even ping pong, the latter of these seemingly designed more to attract crowds than sell in large numbers.

In its keynote, LG showed of its CLOi home robot (which didn't really work, just information technology's a demo), likewise as new commercial versions, including 1 that serves food and beverages, another that acts equally a porter to deliver luggage, and a third that functions as a shopping cart with an integrated barcode reader. These are interesting ideas, but seem to be a long manner from going mainstream.

To me, the best looking of these was the new version of Sony'southward Aibo robotic dog, which is now capable of new tricks, and can respond differently to different people, using facial recognition. Aibo can also do things like play with a brawl, lay downwardly, and react to your impact, which are seemingly very dog-similar behaviors. The Japanese version now available isn't inexpensive; a United states version has yet to be announced. Information technology looks like a lot of fun.

However, my general impression was that none of these are at all shut to the robots that people imagine in books and movies. They are all very limited, and are often little more than than conversation pieces. But things do seem to be progressing.

Real-Time Translation Y'all Can Take With You

Perhaps the science fiction technology closest to being ready for consumer use is the universal translator. Fifty-fifty if the "universal" part still isn't set, I've been very impressed by the many improvements in translation technology, particularly betwixt two languages, which is what nosotros really need anyway.

If you desire something y'all can translate from i particular language to another (and back once more), there are at present a number of commercial devices that offer such features. There are a few phone apps that attempt to do the same (such as Google Translate and Pixel Buds), but I was impressed past demos of a few modest devices that claim to do the job with microphones, software, and speakers tuned to the job, and which tin piece of work with any smartphone, or even without one.

Chinese AI company iFlytek had ii unlike versions for translating between Mandarin Chinese and English—ane that works offline and will sell for about $150, and another that does a somewhat better chore and is connected to the cloud via cell networks. This device sells for well-nigh $350. The visitor is likewise working on converting from Chinese to other languages. I don't speak Standard mandarin, but information technology did look pretty impressive.

Sourcenext, a Japanese visitor, was demonstrating Pocketalk, a handheld two-way voice translator that it says will be able to work in 63 unlike languages. The demos I saw featured Japanese and English, and though information technology looked very good, as I don't speak Japanese, I couldn't really be certain. This is expected to be released in May.

From a design perspective, though, the device that seemed nearly interesting to me was the Mars translator from Naver, which uses the company'south Papago translation technology, and an assistant called Clova, developed by Naver and Asian messaging service Line. With this design, y'all bear a pair of earbuds, and put one in your ear, and give the other to the person who is speaking the other language. The demonstration, which used Korean to English, also looked impressive (only once more, I can't really tell). The visitor likewise says it will support Chinese and Castilian.

As I've said, I don't speak any of the demonstrated languages, and so I can't vouch for how expert the products are. Only these seem to exist moving very rapidly in the correct management.

VR Improves, But the Holodeck Is a Long Manner Off

VR headsets are now, of course, commonplace, merely near of the people I know who utilise them find them entertaining only for a short menstruation of time. Meanwhile, augmented reality headsets, such as Google Glass oasis't caught on however, except for a few highly-specialized applications. To me, that's because the technology doesn't appear to be quite set for primetime—VR headsets are ofttimes heavy and clunky, the devices either need to be tethered or they aren't quite powerful enough, and the display often has a limited field of view. Moreover, the resolution is generally poor enough so that y'all tin meet the pixels, which gives the display a "screen door outcome."

At CES this year, I saw some signs that this is starting to improve.

Royale's Moon 3D Mobile Theater offers a more immersive feel of watching movies using dual 1080p AMOLED displays in a headset, and a noise-cancelling headphone that covers your ears, so you can pretty much but hear and run into the movie.

ThirdEye's X1 has 2 720p meet-through displays for augmented reality, and is aimed primarily at the health care and education markets.

Rokid, a new Chinese player, showed off AR glasses that look more like a consumer product, with glasses that are not too much bigger than normal sunglasses. Rokid'due south device includes a front-facing camera for face detection, and voice recognition. This was just a prototype model, and it'due south unclear when it will come to market.

Possibly the most interesting was the Vusix Blade. (See the picture at the top of this post.) Vusix has been shipping AR and VR glasses to the corporate market for some time, but the Blade seems both lighter and closer to the vision almost people have of AR glasses. These look like sunglasses, but with a small-scale color brandish on the side of the frame, which includes batteries, an eight-megapixel photographic camera, and uses Amazon Alexa every bit a vocalism assistant.

In some ways, this is pretty much an updated version of the Google Glass concept, in that it's nearly at the indicate where I can run across consumers using information technology. (Google Drinking glass yet exists for the corporate market, where it competes with products from Vusix, Epson, and others.) The glasses I tried felt pretty good: relatively low-cal, and while they didn't have everything I'd like to see in these blazon of spectacles—the display is still not quite as good as I'd like—information technology'south close to being a real product, with Vusix promising developer kits soon, and a consumer version to follow. Information technology'southward pretty cool.

Behind these new features—and those we will need looking frontward—were vastly improved displays, and work is progressing on new LCDs and Micro OLEDs (organic light emitting diodes), besides as on light field displays.

In the Micro OLED realm, I saw a number of headsets that used Kopin'due south Lightning 720p OLED microdisplay, which has a 0.49-inch diagonal size, and a brightness of over g ni. Some of today's most interesting headsets seem to be using it.

One I constitute particularly interesting uses a microdisplay and integrates Flir's thermal imaging systems to create a headset that functions every bit a mask for firefighters that can alarm them to hot spots in a called-for edifice.

Looking further ahead, Kopin showed off its Lightning 2K AMOLED, a .99-inch display (eighteen mm on each side) with 2048-past-2048 pixels, due out later on this year. The company has been creating displays for headsets for many years, and is now making micro OLEDs as part of a joint venture with display manufacturer BOE, with the aim to create better "assistive reality."

In the future, I'll be very interested in AR applications in particular, only for this twelvemonth, I think it is withal largely a niche awarding, best suited for vertical markets with specific needs.

Still, in some other nod towards science fiction movies, holograms seems to be making a lot of progress. I was particularly impressed by Hypervsn from Kino-mo, a British visitor that uses LEDs to projection 3D holograms that look like they are floating in the air. This technology is primarily used in marketing, for creating eye-catching displays. Information technology certainly caught mine.

Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/google-pixel-buds/19354/science-fiction-devices-that-are-nearly-real

Posted by: lanelosin1968.blogspot.com

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