Techyla

Cheap robots: a rabbit called Nabaztag

Nabaztag is a tiny rabbit that announces new messages, gives you the weather and control how your stocks are behaving.

The cool thing for us is that:

- it's a nice object
- it's not expensive (92€)
- it can be customized

Nabaztag has been released by the people who also created the emotional lamp (more expensive, 790€) - whose color might change according to information received from the Internet. The big change is that it becomes cheap.

Apart from the object, what's also smart is the service. These guys also provide customization features, billed as a subscription. Their value is not only to provide a gadget - it's also to reformat information stored on the Internet or on mail servers and transmit it via Internet / Wifi to the rabbit. Remind you a business model ? Yes, tone rings are exactly the same for mobile operators. Except that operators have to pay for the access unlike Violet.

Sustainability of these is not guarantied. There are already big players on the area - think about Google. But for a market like France (language and cultural specificity), this might be enough to run a boutique and be bought by France Telecom.

Want to buy this ? Click here

The end of eternity - Asimov

The end of eternity ("the end of Eternity") is one of Asimov major novels. Although Asimov is well known for his books on robots, the emphasis is on time travel.

I a nutshell, the Eternity is an organization whose goal is to define and implement changes in the past and in the future to make sure that humans will live at best, avoiding major disasters, etc. Each member of the Eternity is carefully chosen and has to participate either in the definition or in the implementation of those changes.

Andrew Harlan is one of them (he's called a Technician because he has to travel through times and make the changes happen), wel known because of his lack of humanity and his lack of interest for women. At one point, he falls in love with a woman who is not part of the Eternity and try to get them out of her time. From this, Andrew's view over the Eternity changes and he progressively discover what stand behind this. I stop the summary to avoid disclosing everything...

The point of this book is that it provides another view of what we could define as angels, religion and sets question on what we should do if we could realize such travels.

English edition might be purchased there

Click here for the French edition ("La fin de l'Eternité")

Cheap pet robots: new comers in the Aibo universe ?

Many of you might know the famous Aibo from Sony. It's an artificial (and lovely) dog that our japanese fellows worship and that's also been used by many scientists to develop new kind of artificial intelligence and emulate animal behaviour. It's able to get your emails, play your songs and interact with other Sony's devices.

But getting this lovely pet costs roughly 1200 USD: still wishing to get this for your kids ?

I participated couple of weeks ago in a web based symposium (see my post)

Advanced Pet Products recently released this new toy that will allow you to play with your (how much worse vs. Aibo?) cat. It's only 20USD worth and use lasted AI technologies, embodied in a cheap electronic device that looks like a mouse. Here is the scientific trick behind this gadget:

"The Cat Attack uses the latest research in chaos theory and complex systems to emulate the movements and personality of a cat's favorite prey. This "virtual mouse" technology utilizes algorithms based on a six-dimensional coupled nzmap system modeled on the neural network of a real mouse. "

Whatever Sony is looking for with Aibo, I am convinced that if Aibo is targeting trend setters, early adopters, there is a huge market for toy makers - and that if robotic will explose in next 5 years, it won't be through products that cost more than 50USD.

In any case, Aibo is a wonderful platform for product developers and will help Sony gaining knowledge on customer needs and desires.

More on Ajax - Google's path to the OS

Following what I mentioned couple of weeks ago on AJAX, this new technology that allows high level of interaction for the end user on the Internet, here is a comprehensive description of it by Jesse James Garrett, one of the guy of Adaptative path. OK, he is the one who should be a defender of Ajax.

But let's make a move forard and look at Google's move on our desktop: each day, it adds new features and new web based applications that completely turn ridiculous Windows environment. Ajax is a clear driver for this trend - I bet that if Google is really achieving a counter OS strategy, Ajax will become a major standard in next 2 years.

More on Google's moves here: http://www.kottke.org/05/08/googleos-webos

Michael Crichton: Prey ("La proie in French")

A book written in 2002 by Michael Crichton / this talks about the possible convergence between Artificial Intelligence and Nano particles.

Story is a bit "movie oriented" but fans of new technology will be delighted by the level of details given by Crichton. I a nutshell, a programmer specialized on algorithm inspired by nature and animals (hunts, etc.) is fired from is company, which works for a start up specialized in Nano particles. Incidently, his wife is one of the executive of this start up. The start up is putting in place a new technology of medical monitoring devices (nano cameras). Unfortunately, these nano devices are more powerful than expected and threaten humans...

This story is part of larger debates on singularity and threats of nano technologies and AI for human. Would advise you to read Wikipadia on the matter of "Singularity" e.g. what will happen after humans will invent devices that are autonomous and more intelligent than humans ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity

AJAX is so clean...

I heard about a new language / architecture today - it's called AJAX. It's not brand new as many detractors might said, as it uses already existing technologies. But it's getting more and more adopted. Google uses it for Gmail, Google maps and Google suggests / Yahoo uses it for Flickr (picture archiving). This opens wide opportunities / think about mobile applications: today you have to click, click anc reclick to access the information. AJAX would allow instant interactions between the remote application and the end user and could reinforce data service adoption in the near term.

Still some roadblocks ahead, as highlighted here but let's keep an eye over this tech and how the big ones will adopt it (vodafone ? google ?)...

Robotics leaves labs for stock markets

IRobot has being valued at up to 115MUSD - many might say that this might be huge compared to the expected benefits. They might be right:

• iRobot is small compared to its Asian competitors: Toyota, Honda, Sony, Mitsubishi are working on robotics since many years and aquired sinigificant know how in this field
• Market opportunity has not been validated / checked up to now - iRobot is positioned mainly in the US and Americans are said to be psychologically reluctant to robots (Terminator syndroma)
• Management is to my knowledge not famous for past achievements neither in the consumer electronics industry (they start with hoovers) not military equipments
• Moreover, they were negative up to now

However, it's worth watching what will follow in next weeks - indeed, iRobot is the first medium sized player to get IPOd in the Robotics industry. This could have significant effects:

• They will now have a sharp focus on profit generation and will have to give the change to their shareholders
• Capitals from IPO will be invested in R&D and will maybe allow for initiatives leading to enhanced customer knowledge
• Following numerous articles on their products worldwide (even in France), they will gain in credibility and will maybe be able to build partnerships with installed players

And from risk perspective (if you decide to be one of the shareholders), iRobot approach to attack 2 markets at same time is quite smart - hoovers are potentially a killer application for robots in the short term for US (see UN study), as elderly assistance is often raised for Asia + military applications should show their efficiency on the ground, even if UAV (drones) have been more successfull up to now.

As in the software industry, iRobot is positioned on a business model where huge fixed costs are generated. However, if it succeeds in making the market grow and competing with the big Ones, it could generate comfortable results (gross margin was already 24% in 2004) in the long term.

Conclusion: many incertainties but one event that could start the booming of the robotics industry

http://www.ipohome.com/marketwatch/iponews2.asp?article=4600

eSymposium on robotics

Couple of weeks, ago, I had my first symposium on line ever. This was organized by eSymposium and gathered mainly Academics but also some people from VCs and financial community.

Industrial robots

Robots have long been used to manufacture cars - for the moment, one robot might be dedicated to specific tasks and much is expected on modularity e.g. the ability to reprogram and reconfigure a robot for new tasks. This would allow companies to better leverage their investments and adapt quickly their workforce.

Much has been said on future "service robots" that will capitalize on human intervention, helping learning how to behave, manufature, etc. Today, more than 80%of all robots are used for cars, but many of them might be used for other sectors in the future.

Honda, Toyota, etc. all spend much on robots R&D - emphasis is given on humanoids. One ambition is to replace workforce for all tasks. Today, robots are used only for painting cars and handling non precise tasks.

Residential robots

Much emphasis on vacuum cleaner robots. But many researchers invest time and energy on location and navigation. This require huge efforts and some might ask "is this worth ?"...

A guy from Sony / AIbo was also there - he emphasized much on the ludic side of their pet. Sony does not target a more limited robot (navigation is a big chunk of the pet's cost) and thinks that economies of scale should help marketing Aibo to a broader audience in the short term.

Artificial intelligence

Many question remain on how to integrate all information in one box - it seems that NASA has launched a program on that (human robot interaction), but participants emphasized the need for "ambiant intelligence" in the short term. Current models do not have the necessary processing power to compute all information and should rely on the environment in the short term to appear as intelligent as possible.

However, everything is still at the prototype stage and one might be amazed by the limitation of current robots. Worth mentioning that most of the robots shown today are controlled by external servers and are rarely completely independant from human...

Some think that studying human / animal interactions should help build up a language for programming human / robots interfaces. Interesting...

Worth / to keep in mind: Philips Research releases a platform called iCat that intends helping researchers understand and enhance human / robots interfaces. Nothing new, except that this is cheaper, nice, simple - but all the big guys make their platform "free" to researchers. Nothing is free in our brave new world: they all would like to have their platform adopted as a standard !