Technology just keeps getting smarter.
Cars are getting smarter… After much speculation this summer about whether or not Apple was driving forward plans to join the energy-efficient race and develop an electric car, The Wall Street Journal reports that the tech giant has designated the project internally as a "committed project" with a target date to get the cars road-ready for 2019.
Devices are getting smarter… Smartphone users may be able to "cut the cord" when it comes to the necessary chore and inconvenience of recharging their device's battery thanks to new technology developed by engineering researchers at Ohio State University that makes cell phone batteries last up to 30 percent longer on a single charge.
But what if one of the keys to smarter technology literally lies within us?
Carnegie Mellon University and Disney Research are working on it. They are developing smartwatch technology that "takes advantage of the [human] body's natural electrical conductivity to detect whether a person is touching an electrical or electromechanical device and, based on the distinctive electromagnetic noise emitted by such devices, automatically identify the object," according to a CMU news release.
A video produced by Disney Research demonstrates the EM-Sense technology first hand.
"Many everyday electromechanical objects emit small amounts of electromagnetic noise during regular operation. Typically, these electromagnetic signals, or EM, are low power, and outside the regulated frequency spectrum. They are also distinctive and used to classify objects. When a user makes physical contact with such an object, the EM signal propagates through the user," the video explains.
This allows the EM-Sense smartwatch technology to classify EM signals in real time, which enables quick detection of the object and launches the appropriate contextual application for the task at hand.
For example, the video follows a user through various everyday tasks wearing the EM-Sense technology. When the user touches the door handle to his office at work, the smartwatch recognizes the object (office door handle) and launches an application on its screen that alerts the user to any work-related messages and upcoming meetings for the day.
It's like the ultimate personal assistant.
The researchers discussed EM-Sense at UIST 2015, the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology, Nov. 8-11, in Charlotte, N.C.