BAE Systems may have a cool wrist watch display for their planned spider robot surveillance devices (see MAST Spider Robots Like Minority Report for more information).
This picture is excerpted from this cool video of the BAE spider robots, recently released by BAE Systems. In their video, the spider robots deploy from a Packbot.
Anyway, I kind of liked the idea of a kind of wrist band or wrist bracelet that would give you a small screen monitor for surveillance footage provided by remote robots. I especially liked the idea when I read it in 1980, in Roger Zelazny's excellent novel Changeling.
The giant mechanical bird deposited Mark Marakson on the hilltop. Mark brushed back the soft green sleeve of his upper garment and pressed several buttons on the wide bracelet he wore upon his left wrist. The bird took flight again, climbing steadily. He controlled its passage with the wristband and saw through its eyes upon the tiny screen in the bracelet's center.
The oldest reference to the general idea of a small screen that showed live surveillance video, as far as I know, is the raytron apparatus from Ray Cummings' 1928 novel Beyond the Stars.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 5/5/2008)
Smart TVs Are Listening!
'You had to live -- did live, from habit that became instinct -- in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard...' - George Orwell, 1948.
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Smart TVs Are Listening!
'You had to live -- did live, from habit that became instinct -- in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard...'
RoboShiko! Sumo Exercises Still Good For Robots
'... the expressionless face before me was therefore that of the golem-wrestler, Rolem, a creature that could be set for five times the strength of a human being.'