Smart Chips Making Daily Life Easier
From: BBC News - August 13, 2003
 
European researchers with the Smart-Its Project continue to make progress on
"ubiquitous computing." During the recent computer graphics Siggraph
exhibition in the United States, Smart-Its Project researcher Martin
Strohbach explained that his colleagues at Lancaster University and other
institutions in Zurich, Germany, Sweden, and Finland envision embedding all
kinds of everyday household items with programmable microchip sensors, which
would give them smarts. "For example, we have used a table as a mouse
pointing interface so you can control the TV or computer," says Strohbach.
Bookshelves that warn people when they are overloaded and water bottles that
tell users when their contents need to be cooled are additional fun ideas for
such technology, but ubiquitous computing could have more serious
applications, and may even help save lives. Sensors placed in floors would be
able to determine that an elderly person has fallen and is unable to stand
up. And a medicine cabinet could be transformed into a unit that tracks its
contents and guides people through taking medicine. DIY flatpack chips have
been developed that sense movement and use a voice to warn people when they
are making a mistake in assembling products. 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/technology/3144405.stm