The future was unveiled on the campus of
Carnegie Mellon University last week and it looks promising and strangely familiar.
Intel’s research laboratory held a science fair of world class researchers, showing off the best and brightest ideas in the fields of robotics, computer systems, medical technology, wireless and optical networking and parallel and distributed computing.
“What you will see is completely off the road map, really far out stuff,” says David O’Hallaron, director of Intel Research Pittsburgh. “The future is all about innovation, not about finding the next new Intel chip.”
There’s the Dynamic Physical Rendering project, or claytronics, lifted right from Willy Wonka. Claytronics takes images of people and objects from television and computer screens and converts them into a 3-D representation composed of millions of robotic modules that can move, talk and be touched. Think of the implications for teleconferencing, 3-D faxing and the medical world.
Another project, ISADS for breast and skin cancers, takes a mammogram or dermoscopy result and searches through a of terabyte-scale database of photographs and medical images to locate statistically similar results as a basis for comparison and diagnosis. The technology is maybe five years away.
And move over Jetson's, there’s robotics for the home, bartending and dishwasher loading robots with the potential to assist the elderly and handicapped.
As Jason Campbell, principal investigator on the Dynamic Physical Rendering project says, “it’s all research that may well change the world.” To see a YouTube video of the robotics exhibit, click here.
Writer: Deb Smit
Source: David O’Hallaron, Jason Campbell, Intel Research Pittsburgh
Image courtesy of CMU Intel