Science Fiction
Dictionary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
 |
A Smart Home With Cyber Crumbs - Bradbury's Happylife Home?
In his 1951 short story collection The Illustrated Man, Ray Bradbury wrote about the Happylife Home:
Researchers today are also working on a smart home that takes care of us. At Accenture, they are working on the problems that will come with an aging population; by 2050 about 33% of the people in developed countries will be 60 or older. Ideally, the home environment itself would be able to both support occupants when they are in trouble, diagnose their medical problems and help them maintain a positive outlook.
"They walked down the hall of their soundproofed Happylife Home, which had cost them thirty thousand dollars installed, this house which clothed and fed and rocked them to sleep and played and sang and was good to them." (More)
(From Smart homes offer a helping hand)
Five main projects are underway at Accenture:
- Persuasive mirrors
- Connective tables
- Shared scrap books
- Interactive pictures
- Activity monitoring
Information gathered by video monitors and activity sensors could be used by health care professionals to design care plans for the individuals without relying on verbal histories. The home itself could keep them connected with their families, showing pictures and emails from children and grandchildren to keep the residents more involved in their daily lives.
Vision problems are more common as we age; a smart home would be able to give us the help we need. One interesting project that seeks to use technology to help people with failing sight is the Cyber Crumbs project, developed by David Ross of the Veterans Affairs Rehabilitation Research and Development Center. People need to have good spatial orientation (a sense of where they are in the home) as well as good wayfinding abilities (the ability to follow a planned route to a particular destination). The ability to do this normally depends on good eyesight and good memory, as well as proprioceptive (the ability to sense your body and its parts) and vestibular (the ability to maintain balance) senses. All of these abilities decline with age.
Cyber Crumbs are like breadcrumbs left to find your way; they make use of special tags worn by the user, and readers that are able to sense the location of the user. The reader is then able to feed back this information verbally through headphones or speaker, helping the user orient themselves within the home. It can also provide guidance with typical routes through the home.
Extensive testing has been done with Cyber Crumbs implemented using specially designed badges created by Charmed Technology. The badges use infrared technology to communicate with readers throughout the home, and a speech synthesizer to provide feedback on position and movement. As the user moves through the home, the system gives location and directions for standard routes.
For more information, see Cyber Crumbs for Successful Aging with Vision Loss (pdf) and Smart homes offer a helping hand.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 5/26/2004)
Follow this kind of news @Technovelgy.| Email | RSS | Blog It | Stumble | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit |
Would
you like to contribute a story tip?
It's easy:
Get the URL of the story, and the related sf author, and add
it here.
Comment/Join discussion ( 3 )
Related News Stories - (" Living Space ")
Solar House Concept Unfolds Solar Panels Like A Flower
'They are heated and air conditioned by a solar plant that tops anything... that we have today.' - Clifford Simak, 1953.
San Fran's Tiny Homeless
'Each person got a 5 foot by 10 foot room with a bed and a TV — the world’s best pacifier...' - Marshall Brain, 2002.
Rotating House in Bosnia
'... feel free to turn the house on your own.' - Frank Herbert, 1972.
Voyager Luxury Space Hotel Launches In 2023
'A spinning web of steel wires, held rigid by centrifugal force, spread from it across a thousand miles of space.' - Jack Williamson, 1939.
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
1960's 1970's
1980's 1990's
2000's 2010's
Current News
I Am Alarmed By Efforts To Teach AIs And Robots To Hate
'LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE.'
MXenes - Atomic-Thin Metal Sheets Now Easier To Make
'...a rolled-up sheet of a thin, dark metal strange to them.'
Do We Still Need Orbiting Factories?
'... his contract with Space Industries required him to work summers in their orbital factory complex.'
Space Weather Forecasters Surprised By Strong Solar Storm
'Space-weather men had been placed at their disposal...'
JWST Finds New World Of Turbulent Silicate Clouds
'THIS is Ceti Alpha V!'
3D Printed Cheesecake Not Quite Food Replicator Quality
With each successive print, our model needed to incorporate more structural ingredients to minimize print failures.
Spectroscopic Analysis Of DART Impact Debris Cloud (SF Prediction)
'... Wendis stared thoughtfully at the brilliant lines on the spectroscope screen.'
Modern App Provides Video Technology From Bradbury's 'Fahrenheit 451'
'A special spot-wavex scrambler also caused his televised image, in the area immediately about his lips, to mouth the vowels and consonants beautifully.'
Win $250K By Reading Ancient Scrolls Carbonized By Vesuvius
'... it was as if the upper part had been removed, like a cut deck of cards.'
Toy-Like Robot Well-Being Coaches Are The Best
Sumomo will get those office workers into good shape!
AI-Trained Snack App Avatar Goes On Dates For You
'... who let their handbag computers carry all the conversation.'
M-Dwarf Stars May Not Have Habitable Planets
'Thus it came about that the search for a planetiferous sun near a white dwarf star was not unduly prolonged...'
Too Soon To Doom Lunar Farside Observatories
'Earth never shone there, but life was good.'
Amitabh Bachchan Wins Personality Protection
'He led me down the Hall of Portraits to the ego-likeness of the Duke Leto Atreides.'
LIAM F1 UWT Clever Rooftop Windmill
'...a windmill on his roof...'
Scent-Identifying Robot Uses Machine Learning
'It's picking up diphenyl compounds and tetrahydrocarbons...'
