It's 2006: Where's All the Cool Stuff?

Where's My Robot Maid?

We've come a long way since the Hoover, but don't throw away the dish gloves just yetFrom the Jetson's Rosie to Richie Rich's Irona to Robby of Forbidden Planet, we've been promised digital domestics that look and act a lot like...a maid. But that isn't going to happen anytime soon, robot experts say. The problem? Today's machines are a long way from having the anthropomorphic qualities--above all, sight--found in human help.

The problem once seemed solvable enough: Connect a camera to a computer, and bingo!--robot eye. But true perception is much tougher than it looks. "We're making progress," says Sebastian Thrun, director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, "but getting machines to replicate our ability to perceive and manipulate the world remains incredibly hard."

For now, the field of at-home robots isn't even close. Although the market for personal and service robots has nearly doubled since 2002, your Roomba [the robotic vaccum] isn't going to bake you cupcakes or wash your dishes.

Most likely to yield an automated housekeeper is radio-frequency identification (RFID), which would allow the robot to converse with inanimate objects. Working off a wireless network, it might approach a cold drink and transmit this kind of information:

Robot: Who are you? Drink: I'm a bottle of milk. This is how you pick me up. Robot: Anything else I should know? Drink: I expire in three weeks. Please recycle me when I'm finished.

Kevin Ashton, vice president of Thing-Magic.com, a leading RFID com-pany, says that instead of your spending hours cleaning up after a dinner party, a machine will take in the information provided by the pots and pans and put them where they "say" they need to be. "Combine this type of perception with robotics," he says, "and in the next 10 to 20 years we'll have our robot maid."

Where's My Hypersonic Flight? Two Hours to Tokyo?

Scramjets can get us there--if we make a huge investment in the technologyNew York to Tokyo in less time than it takes to watch Kill Bill: Vol. 2? The question isn't if it will ever happen, but how soon.

The now-retired Concorde super-sonic jet cruised at Mach 2, or a little more than twice the speed of sound. At Mach 5 or better, you're flying in the realm of the "hypersonic." Scientists are optimistic that air-breathing engines called scramjets will make that leap and power the planes of the future. Scramjet planes boast rocketlike speed but are more efficient than rockets because they don't have to carry the oxidant needed to ignite their fuel. So where's the O2? Everywhere. Scramjets suck up oxygen from the atmosphere.In late 2004, the X-43A Hyper X, a 12-foot unmanned vehicle funded by NASA, ignited its scramjet engine and roared over the Pacific Ocean at Mach 9.6 (7,000 mph), the highest speed ever reached by an air-breathing vehicle. Although that flight lasted just 10 seconds and ended with a planned crash, there was no confusion: The tech works.

"Scramjet technology [is] in about the same stage as jet engines were just prior to World War II," says George Orton, a Boeing Phantom Works project manager who helped develop the X-43A. Orton predicts that in 20 to 30 years we could see affordable, reusable vehicles powered by scramjets. But, he says, "It's going to take a considerable amount of money, effort and commitment."

The biggest obstacles to increasing the time a scramjet can fly safely are drag (or friction) and heat. Pouring money into scramjet research could eventually yield an obvious boon for weary travelers, but the upsides of fast flight are everywhere. The organ-donor market would open up from the neighborhood to the whole world. Critical rescue gear could find its way from the U.S. to Asia during a natural disaster. A military aircraft could bomb targets anywhere on the planet within a couple hours of taking off.

"We went from the horse and buggy to the scramjets in 200 years," says Allan Paull of the University of Queensland Centre for Hypersonics in Australia. "We don't know the top speed--you want to go as fast and as high as you can get." In other words, the sky's the limit.

Where's My Cure for Baldness?

No sooner did man descend from the apes than he started losing his hair. Is help on the way?

Dermatologist Andrey Panteleyev, hair-growth expert at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons: We know nearly nothing about why male pattern hair loss occurs. We only began to understand the molecular side of hair growth 10 or 15 years ago.

How does it work?

Everything is regulated by a few hundred genes. Once we understand the molecular mechanisms at work, we will be able to modulate precisely the activity of selected genes in order to stimulate local hair growth.

So what's the holdup?

The major problem is delivery. The right gene delivered to the wrong place at the wrong time may have no effect at all--or may be harmful.

Ballpark for cracking this code? We need another 10 or 15 years of research. Is it really my mother's father's fault? All hair loss, except that caused by trauma, is genetic. But we don't know which genes.

Where Are My Powers of Invisibility?

In early 2005 scientists posited a method to make objects invisible at a particular wavelength of light. Are we on the verge of an invisibility breakthrough?

Electrical and computer engineer Vladimir Shalaev, Purdue University: It's an interesting theory, but it's not really invisibility. In a defense application, for example, it might be possible to make an object invisible in one particular wavelength, but you cannot force your enemy to use that wavelength.

How do the superheroes do it?

Physicist James Kakalios, University of Minnesota, author of The Physics of Superheroes: Well, all atoms have resonant energy absorptions, and depending on the electronic structure of that resonant energy absorption, something might appear red to you or it could be transparent like window glass. Presumably, Sue Storm is able to adjust her atoms' resonant absorption at will.

Could we adopt that strategy?

It seems unlikely that we humans would ever reach full transparency. There are cells that are transparent--our corneas. So it's not impossible for something like that to occur. But superpowers, in and of themselves, do tend to be impossible.reality meter

Where's My Videophone?

We have the power, but does anyone want to use it?

What do boy geniusTom Swift, spaceman George Jetson and the crew of the starship Enterprise have in common? Good hair. Or so it would seem, as experts concur that the biggest obstacle to the videophone isn't the technology, ease of use or even the price. The culprit is fear of a bad hair day.

"Videophone technology is indeed very real today," says Michael Gartenberg of tech-industry analyst Jupiter Research. "But do people want it? There's a certain privacy, even mystery, associated with voice communication that people have come to appreciate."

For now, bad hair hasn't stopped companies from creating high-quality videophones. At the top of the heap is Motorola's $600 Ojo. Packet8's DV326 is a third the price, and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) models are also scheduled to come out this year.Besides the vanity issue, other roadblocks remain. For one, we've become accustomed to being untethered from our phones. Then there's the so-called fax effect: Like a single fax machine, a videophone is useless without a phone on the other end. More likely to catch on, Gartenberg says, are mobile picture phones and online videoconferencing technology, now available for hourly rental at many Kinko's stores.

Andy Abramson, author of the blog VoIP Watch, says to also keep an eye on the ever-forward-looking pornography business. "The VCR, DVD and streaming content all became viable businesses after the adult-entertainment industry adopted their technology." If the X-rated videophone market takes off, Abramson predicts, then the non-porn videophone market will probably find traction.

Where's My Flying Car?,

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's Mom headed to the store to pick up a quart of milk!

The drream of the flying car has been an American mainstay since the first traffic jams tried the patience of frustrated motorists. But despite the hopes of hundreds of inventors, the dream has remained just that: a cottony notion set lightly atop a sprawling mound of mangled prototypes representing millions of dollars in investment up in smoke.

In fact, fixed-wing planes have simply never been well suited to the utopian vision of an aircraft in every garage. Better to envision a helicopter, which offers two key advantages: VTOL (vertical takeoff and landing) and autorotation. VTOL means you don't need a takeoff/landing strip; autorotation means you float (rather than fall) to the ground in the event of power failure. Bottom line: The near future in truly personal flight vehicles will be more spartan than once imagined, emphasizing simplicity and safety for a new class of novice pilots.

A big impediment to the widespread use of personal aircraft--in whatever form they take--may be the Federal Aviation Administration's concern about safety. Imagine the skies peppered with tiny vehicles zipping to and fro, converging suddenly at landing spots, and you begin to see how accidents could literally rain aluminum and composite on the parade.

NASA and the FAA hope that technology will simplify piloting. In June, NASA unveiled its "Highway in the Sky" navigation system: an integrated view of the craft status, terrain and other traffic that turns the complex act of piloting into a veritable videogame.

With a new generation of smaller, cheaper jets and the growth of inexpensive navigation technologies, the FAA is seeing community airports develop services that will move us closer to sky-based commuting. "We found that most of the traffic coming into this proposed system is from cars taking trips of between 150 and 400 miles," says acting project manager Guy Kemmerly.

So although the dream may emerge differently than imagined, more accessible personal flight is coming. Meanwhile, there are plenty of entrepreneurs who are still hoping you'll save their invention a spot in your garage.

Article courtesy of 'Popular Science' magazine, online at popsci.com.