IBM signposts 5 innovations touching 5 senses that we will see within 5 years.

23rd December 2012
IBM signposts 5 innovations touching 5  senses that we will see within 5 years.

Bangalore – December, 23, 2012 – The  era of  cognitive systems  is upon us, says global  infotech giant, IBM, and  the innovations that fuel it will impact all five human sensations – within the next five years.

 

In its 7th  annual  exercise in  high-tech crystal ball gazing, IBM’s R&D labs   listed  their take  -- 5 in 5 – of  how our lives will be impacted in the next half-decade: They say:

 

  Touch: You will be able to touch through your phone

   Sight: A pixel will be worth a thousands words

   Hearing: Computers will hear what matters

  Taste: Digital taste buds will help you to eat smarter

  Smell: Computers will have a sense of smell

 

A new generation of machines will learn, adapt, sense and begin to experience the world as it really is, says IBM. This year’s predictions focus on one element of the new era, the ability of computers to mimic the human senses—in their own way, to see, smell, touch, taste and hear.These sensing capabilities will help us become more aware, productive and help us think – but not think for us. Cognitive computing systems will help us see through complexity, keep up with the speed of information, make more informed decisions, improve our health and standard of living, enrich our lives and break down all kinds of barriers—including geographic distance, language, cost and inaccessibility.

 

Says Ramesh Gopinath, Director – India Research Lab and Chief Technology Officer, IBM India/South Asia: “We have already witnessed the benefits of cognitive systems for advancing numerous aspects of the human experience – from agriculture and healthcare to utility management and weather forecasting. We envision a day when computers make sense of the world around them just like human brain relies on interacting with the world using multiple senses.” said 

Here are five predictions that will define the future:

 

Touch: You will be able to touch through your phone.

 

Imagine using your smartphone to shop for your wedding dress and being able to feel the satin or silk of the gown, or the lace on the veil, all from the surface of the screen? Or to feel the beading and weave of a blanket made by a local artisan half way around the world? In five years, industries such as retail will be transformed by the ability to “touch” a product through your mobile device.IBM scientists are developing applications for the retail, healthcare and other sectors using haptic, infrared and pressure sensitive technologies to simulate touch, such as the texture and weave of a fabric -- as a shopper brushes her finger over the image of the item on a device screen.  Utilizing the vibration capabilities of the phone, every object will have a unique set of vibration patterns that represents the touch experience:  short fast patterns, or longer and stronger strings of vibrations. The vibration pattern will differentiate silk from linen or cotton, helping simulate the physical sensation of actually touching the material.

 

Sight: A pixel will be worth a thousand words

 

We take 500 billion photos a year.  72 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute. The global medical diagnostic imaging market is expected to grow to $26.6 billion by 2016.Computers today only understand pictures by the text we use to tag or title them; the majority of the information -- the actual content of the image -- is a mystery.In the next five years, systems will not only be able to look at and recognize the contents of images and visual data, they will turn the pixels into meaning, beginning to make sense out of it similar to the way a human views and interprets a photograph. In the future, “brain-like” capabilities will let computers analyze features such as color, texture patterns or edge information and extract insights from visual media. This will have a profound impact for industries such as healthcare, retail and agriculture.

Sound: Computers will hear what matters

 Ever wish you could make sense of the sounds all around you and be able to understand what’s not being said?Within five years, a distributed system of clever sensors will detect elements of sound such as sound pressure, vibrations and sound waves at different frequencies. It will interpret these inputs to predict when trees will fall in a forest or when a landslide is imminent. Such a system will “listen” to our surroundings and measure movements, or the stress in a material, to warn us if danger lies ahead.

 Raw sounds will be detected by sensors, much like the human brain. A system that receives this data will take into account other “modalities,” such as visual or tactile information, and classify and interpret the sounds based on what it has learned.  When new sounds are detected, the system will form conclusions based on previous knowledge and the ability to recognize patterns.

 For example, “baby talk” will be understood as a language, telling parents or doctors what infants are trying to communicate. Sounds can be a trigger for interpreting a baby’s behavior or needs. By being taught what baby sounds mean – whether fussing indicates a baby is hungry, hot, tired or in pain – a sophisticated speech recognition system would correlate sounds and babbles with other sensory or physiological information such as heart rate, pulse and temperature.

 Today, IBM scientists are beginning to capture underwater noise levels in Galway Bay, Ireland to understand the sounds and vibrations of wave energy conversion machines, and the impact on sea life, by using underwater sensors that capture sound waves and transmit them to a receiving system to be analyzed.

Taste: Digital taste buds will help you to eat smarter

 What if we could make healthy foods taste delicious using a different kind of computing system that is built for creativity?IBM researchers are developing a computing system that actually experiences flavor, to be used with chefs to create the most tasty and novel recipes. It will break down ingredients to their molecular level and blend the chemistry of food compounds with the psychology behind what flavors and smells humans prefer. By comparing this with millions of recipes, the system will be able to create new flavor combinations that pair, for example, roasted chestnuts with other foods such as cooked beetroot, fresh caviar, and dry-cured ham.

 

A system like this can also be used to help us eat healthier, creating novel flavor combinations that will make us crave a vegetable casserole instead of potato chips.The computer will be able to use algorithms to determine the precise chemical structure of food and why people like certain tastes. These algorithms will examine how chemicals interact with each other, the molecular complexity of flavor compounds and their bonding structure, and use that information, together with models of perception to predict the taste appeal of flavors.

Smell: Computers will have a sense of smell

During the next five years, tiny sensors embedded in your computer or cell phone will detect if you’re coming down with a cold or other illness. By analyzing odors, biomarkers and thousands of molecules in someone’s breath, doctors will have help diagnosing and monitoring the onset of ailments such as liver and kidney disorders, asthma, diabetes and epilepsy by detecting which odors are normal and which are not.

 Today IBM scientists are already sensing environmental conditions and gases to preserve works of art. This innovation is beginning to be applied to tackle clinical hygiene, one of the biggest challenges in healthcare today.  For example, antibiotic-resistant bacteria such as  Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), which in 2005 was associated with almost 19,000 hospital stay-related deaths in the United States, is commonly found on the skin and can be easily transmitted wherever people are in close contact. One way of fighting MRSA exposure in healthcare institutions is by ensuring medical staff follow clinical hygiene guidelines. In the next five years, IBM technology will “smell” surfaces for disinfectants to determine whether rooms have been sanitized. Using novel wireless “mesh” networks, data on various chemicals will be gathered and measured by sensors, and continuously learn and adapt to new smells over time.

 

For  more details

For brief videos on  each of the five innovation areas

For a few days we feature a video overview of FiveInFive in out Tech Video spot on the home page