Philips Developing Talking Furniture
Posted on July 8, 2005
T3 reports that Philips is developing talking furniture that you can communicate to and talk with. The Dimi, a prototype of Philips' Smart Companion, (pictured on right) looks like a piece of modern furniture but it can recognize you and look up information like weather reports on the Internet and read them back to you. T3 says it will be a few years before Dimi-like technology is available for home use.
Philips poses the following scenario: "Imagine a networked home, in which the Smart Companion is connected to the home PC and the Internet. A user says "Dimi, what will the weather be like tomorrow?" The Smart Companion initiates a search on the Internet for the latest information, retrieves it, processes it, and communicates it by voice to the user, all within seconds" A smidge more advanced than the average Robosapien then. Plus, the Smart Companion also recognises faces, and can nod smugly.
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