Robotic Mirrors

​Smart technology and robotics are finding their way into most things these days, as we push ourselves to bring unique and diverse products to market, fusing the old with the new in interesting and hopefully useful ways is how society progresses. This new HiMirror is using face recognition software alongside data about our own face to track our lines, wrinkles, and dark smudges around the eyes. Perhaps this is great for people who wear make-up, or who have regular collagen injections, but for me it feels a bit like clock watching. But, it will measure the health of the skin to the pores and also learn about what foundation you like to wear, and if it's actually right for you. Sounds like a clever way of marketing new items, but if the mirror remains honest (and I am sure it will do), then I don't see a problem with helpful advice.


If that doesn't really interest you, then I understand. Not all of us want to look at our reflection so much, or have our flaws repeated back to us each morning, so to show the other side of digital optical technology, Tamron are currently developing a sensor that will be able to capture images with a light accuracy of 0.003 lux. That's a very small amount of light. This means that scenes which are totally pitch black to human eye will be nearly as light as day to this device. Perhaps for wildlife watching, or CCTV, the usefulness of this new technology is incredibly inspiring.


At one point, it looked like chatbots were the new next thing in digital PR, but because of the number of scams and the cold, dry aspect of talking to a machine, customers just didn't feel they could trust their automated response programs to do a decent job. Care doesn't come from a computer, no matter how well spoken it is. Trends suggest that something else will have to take its place.


The area of robotics stretches several disciplines, and it is more likely that people will specialise in one or two areas of robotics rather than the whole thing. From speech and text, to moving arms and tools, moving into rational thinking, giving reason to the machine involves programming them with some kind of common sense and an objective. The psychology of computers is perhaps one of the newest areas of research, as programming a brain on the level of individual neuron firing rates is a good metaphor for teaching a machine how to do anything. Now we have machines capable of self learning, understanding how they go about this and gradually evolve into complex self governed routines will be a fascinating experience.