Techyla

A robot is in your car

Citroên recently launched a new demonstration car, called "C3 CITY PARK". City park introduces a new feature: assisted parking. As listed by Julian Marsh it can:
- Locate a space for reverse parking
- Aid for parking in a semi automatic way.

Similar system were introduced by asian manufacturers in past few years, such as Honda or Mitsubishi. These systems were based on cameras, sensors and intelligence allowing the car to park itself, without any human assistance. But these systems were expensive and scared the drivers because they fully took the control of te car. Citroên has developed a smart system as this uses an existing technology (most of their mid-range cars use sensors similar as the city park one's), with a simple interface and leaves final decision of moving to the driver.

Having a well respected European car manufacturer (VW also released such system) moving in this area is a good news and could initiate potential moves in the robotic area in the future. Let's look at the situation worldwide:

- Asian car manufacturers (particularly Japanese) invest since years in developing humanoids: Honda's ASIMO is the best example. Some say that they want to replace their workforce by humanoids and prevent the lack of young workers in the future. Why not.

- US car manufacturers do not invest as much, but tried to market Assistance proucts in the past in their cars. Think about GM's OnStar system.

- US Army (DARPA) is keen on developing autonomous systems for the battlefield - yearly DARPA's Grand Challenge is an occation to watch the fantastic progress in that field.

- There are myriads of initiatives in Intelligent Trasportation Systems, particularly in Europe and US to better control trafic and reduce pollution / accidents.

- At same time, electronics remplaces mechanical parts in our cars. As noted by Mercer Management Consulting, "electronics will represent 35 percent of the value of a car in 2010, compared with 27 percent now".

These facts drive me to the following point of view: car manufacturers would be undoublty well positioned to handle the production of robots in the future (particularly humanoids), where large scale integration will be a key capability for those who will dominate the market.

Indeed, car manufacturers have capabilities in:
- integrating new technologies in their cars
- managing myriads of suppliers, although consolidation happened shaply in past years
- producing big series
- guaranting safety

... but they will have to introduce more software intelligence in their products and for this reason acquire new talents to keep on differenciate themselves.

URL's of interests:
- http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/09/12/BUG3KEKQ1T1.DTL&type=printable
- www.darpa.mil/grandchallenge/

iRobot secures 12MUSD contract for its military service robots

As I mentioned in a previous post, iRobot is a promising player in the robotic industry as it already plans to IPO and places its munitions both on residential and governmental market.

They recently secured a 12MUSD contract with US Army to deliver a light weight robot (on field remote controlled) to remove and destroy explosive device. For 103 robots to be delivered, it's more or less 100KUSD per robot.

They also have an opportunity for up to 1,200 robots to be delivered before 2012, which could generate farely 120MUSD.

This type of contract is fundamental for a company like iRobot as it guaranties sustainable revenues during years. That will help them investing in new platforms and differenciate themselves on the residential area, where cheaper robots are currently on track.

Credits: www.irobot.com

Ajax implies changes in user interfaces

As noted by Jason, from Signal vs Noise, Ajax introduces new features reducing the number of clicks that you have to make to perform an action or have access to an information.

Accelerating user navigation and actions will change the way we use Internet - this has to be considered along with dramatic increase of bandwidth available - anytime, anywhere.

What we did in the past, leveraging the latency of Internet applications such as emailing, chatting, creating contents, making transactions is going to be accelerated.

Mistakes in navigation will increase. That's driving the need for undo / redo mechanisms. That's also an open door for new intelligent feature anticipating user's behaviour. Artificial intelligence might be helpful there, as current mechanisms are quite limited and remain static, not tailored to specific behaviours.

See my previous posts on Ajax:
http://mathieucolas.typepad.com/techyla/2005/08/more_on_ajax_go.html
http://mathieucolas.typepad.com/techyla/2005/08/ajax_is_so_clea.html

Excellent post on how Ajax changes the way to develop interfaces:
Ajax: The New Web Interface Design Development Approach Everyone Talks About

Citizens become producers of content

Recent events highlighted the rising importance of citizens in the production of contents made available to billions of people - these contents being in turn highly valued by traditional media. Examples:
- London blasts this summer (Flickr)

- Sexual offense in NY subway (still Flickr!)

- New Orleans Hurricane (so much at Flickr!)

Impact of this might be huge in next 3 years - and certainly not limited to pictures and movie broadcasts.

1. Traditional media will have to adapt themselves, rely more and more on citizens even if they should not encourage them, and enrich their own analysis and content to remain competitive
2. A parallel sector will emerge as players such as Flickr will become a reference for both producers of content and consumers. Successful players will either be niche players (focusing on specific type of events, media or matters) or global players whose value will be to structure and arrange information so that each of us can define its own program.
3. Overal revenue are likely to fall as content will become free of access - new business model should emerge, massively relying on content mediation and advertisement (good news for consumers!)

A list of good sites (some in French, sorry):
http://www.agoravox.fr - takes analysis from blogs and publishing a daily newspaper
http://www.lemonde.fr - recently made available web space for bloggers - publishes some parts on their website
http://www.flickr.com - the place to go whenever there is a breaking news
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Main_Page - A page similar to Wikipedia, where users post images and articles

My point is not to claim my worship for Flickr - but to state that the primary source of information for the average citizen might not be BBC or CNN in the future, but a self aggregation of contents that would be produced by citizens themselves. I would set three major drivers for this:

My point is not to claim my worship for Flickr - but to state that the primary source of information for the average citizen might not be BBC or CNN in the future, but a self aggregation of contents that would be produced by citizens themselves. I would set three major drivers for this:

- "Production reflex": devices that can help capture and store become available for the average people. You don't need much money and technological expertise anymore to produce it. Moreover, younger generation are educated sooner and sooner with these tools. Hence broader adoption of "production reflex" is still to be expected in next 10 years
- "Communication made easy": transmitting one's production is more and more easy, even from unusual places (exotic countries, subways, etc.) and access to this - in return - is facilitated by widely available Internet connections, RSS aggregators that help arranging and structuring the information, search engine (google, flickr) that attempt to rank the information
- "Lack of trust towards traditional media": conflict of interest errod the trust towards media. Examples are numerous: Jason Blair fake articles in NY Times, last US presidential campaign, in France no words on Nicolas Sarkozy' marital problems, etc. Citizens have doubt on analysis and coverage coming from traditional media and naturally trust equivalent of themselves.

More analysis on Wired: http://www.wired.com/news/wiredmag/1,2167,68622,00.html

From wired: Do we even need the Times anymore?
The pros still have one thing most amateurs don't: resources. Grassroots reporting fills the gaps in mainstream coverage, keeps members of the old guard on their toes, and shines when there's a premium on fast facts from the scene. But laypeople can't do much with a story like Watergate or Enron. "Big investigative projects require deep pockets," Gillmor says. "I'm not trying to tell anyone that we don't need paid journalists. I hope for an ecosystem where many forms of information can survive and thrive."

Update: blog lovers might know this name "Roland Piquepaille" who is famous for his posts on technology trends - he was recently by ZDNEt to integrate his columns. Here is an interview from the master, that will give you insights on how Publishers might integrate bloggers in their contents in the future.