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A Bright Idea
A Bright Idea
One such solution for crowded desktops goes by the slightly corny designation of
PC Lamp. It combines a traditional fight bulb with a projection device. Activated
by voice, touch, or automatically should urgent messages arrive, the lamp projects
a virtual screen onto a desk surface, which otherwise stays free for “important
things, such as magazines and beer glasses,” according to Kämmerer.
PCLamp can act as a PC, gaming, or Internet-access device, and it doubles as a
telephone, calculator, TV/audio remote, and smart-home control. The shape of its
virtual display changes according to the current function, it accepts voice input for
commands, dialogues, and dictation, and it acknowledges gestures: Using a video
camera, it interprets a user’s finger movements and facial expressions, as both
point-and-click or other predefined command signs and emotions. Optionally, it
adjusts the display to a user’s head movements and line of sight.
This is by no means science fiction; a simplified version of PCLamp won BYTE’s
Best of Show award at CeBIT ’98. In essence, the technology creates a virtual
touchscreen. It’s useful for many scenarios where a monitor is inappropriate or
inconvenient. In a sterile hospital operating room, for example, a doctor could con-
suit computerized diagnostics directly over the patient.
Peter Klemschmidt, who founded the research group, showed me a prototype of
PCLamp three years ago, but only now is an aggressive marketing strategy emerg-
ing. If proof-of-concept studies win over outside pilot users, that will heighten the
enticement for inside departments or spin-off companies (which Siemens calls
Ventures) to adopt the project and turn it into products.
The Center for Human-Machine Cooperation is located at the Siemens head-
quarters in Perlach, a suburb of Munich. It employs about 50 researchers and has
an annual budget of around US $ 10 million, 50 percent of which the team has to
earn by selling projects to other departments, It’s pan of Siemens’s central
technology division (Zentrale Technik), which employs 1650 sciemists.
Worldwide, the German giant has 44,600 R&D employees, out of a total work
force of 380,000.