by DavyRocket

Gadgets for the Home

Gone are the days when men did not buy home gadgets – they married them! There is, of course, an added advantage today. Gadgets for the home come in all forms to suit various kinds of needs and pockets.

Just think. There is a small baby at home. That new bundle of joy needs to sleep soundly for 2 reasons. One is obviously to enable baby to grow properly.The second is not so well advertised, but none the less valid for that. The parents need to catch up on their work and rest. So if you are left (literally) holding the baby for the better part of the day, when do you do either? Particularly when baby loves to wake up just when s/he is being transferred to the cradle or baby cot?

There is a simple solution by way of a new home gadget. It is a hammock which keeps baby sleeping even when being transferred to it. There are many such home gadgets which have gone a long way to make life easier for those who prefer to live in a home rather than a hostel or mess or boarding house. Think of the ubiquitous mixer which is needed for your juices, shakes, pastes and purees. Gadgets for home have gained in sophistication with advances in technology. Be it an energy hub system to monitor your domestic energy consumption or a hygienic door handle or a voice control travel alarm clock, there is a plethora of home gadgets in the market today.

Using a vacuum cleaner is old hat. For many using a robot to push around a vacuum cleaner is also something that’s been around for quite a while. Neato Robotics has a state-of-the-art robotic vacuum cleaner. Using lasers and SLAM technology (simultaneous localization and mapping), this amazing gadget maps the layout of the room even before it starts cleaning. This ensures that it does not bump into objects in the room (though humans often do) while cleaning! It returns to base only when the job is done or when it needs recharging. It also has features like a top loading dust bin, edge detection to keep it from tumbling down stairs and also a programmable schedule to set how often you want the robot to clean. All in all, this must be one of the neatest gadgets for the home in recent years.

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This is utterly insane. A research team from several universities has put together a system whereby you can draw a terrible stick picture sketch, label your blobby objects what they’re supposed to be, and it will essentially photoshop something together for you that meets your criteria. I kid you not. It’s early, experimental, and questionably useful, but it’s just too cool to not share with you guys.

Photosketch uses a sophisticated image filtering system (as well as humans) to pick objects that are what you’ve written and more or less in the position you want them to be. It then takes just the object and pastes it in over the background — whatever you’ve decided that is. It’ll come up with a few composite images, based on different parts, and then you get to choose the one you like. Are you kidding me?

I don’t want to be premature here, but I’d say tentatively that this does appear to be the greatest thing of all time.

They showed it at SIGGRAPH. If this works the way they say it does (and I doubt it does at this point, really), it’d be a party game all to itself. And can you imagine playing with this thing on a tablet? God damn! The future, people!

[via Metafilter]