This year's Game Developers' Conference was held last week in San Francisco.  One of the major themes that ran throughout was the use of computer game techniques and technologies used in real-world scientific applications.  Check out this gallery that shows some of the hot applications.  My particular favorite is the NeuroSky MindSet, a biosensor that lets you use your brainwaves to take action in a three-dimensional environment.  Sounds like the stuff of Science Fiction to me....

- Hap Aziz

Yes, that's my Second Life avatar: the Lost In Space robot* on the right.  I freely admit I'm a tech geek (aren't we all, to some extent?)... but that's not the point of this post.  Rather, I wanted to share a few interesting facts and recent stats about the SL environment.

• According to Gartner Research, 80% is the projected number of active Internet users that will have a Second Life by 2011.
• There are currenlty 12,260,372 residents of Second Life.
• One-day new account signups for January 30 was 21,180.
• There were 60,912 concurrent members during peak usage time on February 3.
• During the past two months, there were over 1.1 million active users.
• More than 300 colleges and universities (including Harvard and Duke) use Second Life as an educational tool.
• Toyota's Prius was introduced in Second Life before becoming available in the real world.
• IBM conducts job interviews in Second Life.
• The Linden is the currency used in Second Life.  The current rate of exchange is about 250 Lindens per $1 US.
• Dr. Nick Bostrom of Oxford University gives a 20% probability that civilization as we know it is actually based on a computer simulation.

* People often call the robot from Lost In Space Robbie, but that is incorrect.  Robbie the Robot was first seen in the classic Science Fiction movie Forbidden Planet and can be seen here.  The Lost In Space robot was known as the model B-9 Environmental Control Robot.  Both robots were designed by Robert Kinoshita.

- Hap Aziz

Technology I first heard about Pleo around the Spring of 2007.  The company, Ugobe, was founded by the inventor of Furby--he has had some measure of success in the consumer robotics market.  Pleo looked like it was positioned to be a significant leap in technology over Furby.  In fact, Pleo looked like it would give Sony's discontinued Aibo a run for it's artificially intelligent money.  The specs were certainly enticing: mulitple sensors for sight, sound, touch, and motion.  The ability to navigate its immediate environment and interact with its surroundings and the people nearby.  Distinct personality development over time, from "birth" as a hatchling to inquisitive adolescent.  Unfortunately, as the Summer of 2007 progressed, the original price point was adjusted upwards and the original shipping time frame was adjusted outwards.

Finally, in the late Fall, Ugobe notified all the people on their mailing list that Pleo would be shipping in time for the holidays.  Apparently Pleo's engineers put the additional time to good use, and with the increase in cost (approximately $350--still a mere fraction of Aibo's cost) came quite a few improvements in functionality.  Pleo would ship to the first 2000 people in Ugobe's mailing list if they opted to buy, and they would get Pleo's from the first batch.  I was one of the lucky early adopters.  The following is a list of Pleo's technical specifications:

• Infrared transmitters and receivers so Pleo can communicate with others of its kind
• Infrared interruptor so Pleo knows when something is in its mouth
• Touch sensors in multiple locations all over Pleo's body
• Motion sensors
• Speakers and Transmitters
• Color cameras
• The Pleo personality software

Pleo's rechargeable battery holds a charge for approxmately 45 minutes, which is plenty of time to play with him and watch him as he explores his surroundings.  Pleo was designed with the capability to react to a variety of studations, deterining how best to move or eat or play or even sleep.  As a member of my family, Pleo fits right in.  We enjoy watching how he reacts to the things we do (or don't do) when he is near.  For the most part, if we leave him alone, he will seek out other objects around his size, though he will occasionally cry out to be petted or when he wants to play Tug-of-War with his plastic leaf.  Pleo is defintely an extrovert!

It's amazing to me how far we have come in such a short time in terms of using hardware and software to imitate simple life functions.  It's done in the virtual world through game characters and avatars, for example, and we've just recently gotten sophisticated about creating hardware-based creatures.  Anyone care to predict where we'll be in just a decade down the road?

- Hap Aziz