Dr. Dobb's Journal March, 2005
When it comes to marketing, the smart thing to do seems to be to prefix "smart" to whatever is being pitched. Let's see, there are smart cards, smart phones, smart cars, smart growth, smart dust, smart architectures, and smart yada yada yada. In our neck of the woods, you can get smart compilers, smart debuggers, and smart linkers. The only thing you can't get, at least according to what my boss recently told me, is smart editors. But ha, ha—the joke was on him, as I quickly pointed to Smart Editor Professional 3.0 at http://tucows.tr.net/preview/362587.html. Then there's Gene Smarte, my old boss at BYTE magazine, and of course, Maxwell Smart, who moved from TV reruns to CIA archives (http://www.cia.gov/spy_fi/item15.html).
Smart houses seem to be the coming thing. A lab/house created by Eneo Labs (http://www.eneo.com/eng/), for instance, can clean itself via baseboard automatic vacuum cleaners, adjust to weather changes thanks to a roof-top weather station, and cut energy consumption as needed. And, as you might expect, security and entertainment are central to the home. Electronic keys let you open doors and security cameras help you keep an eye on the kids. Large-screen TV displays throughout the house allow you to watch TV or interact with the central server, which stores movies, TV shows, MP3 files, and the like.
At the heart of the "Connected House" is Eneo's IPbox, an embedded computer that serves as the residential gateway with broadband access and eight Ethernet ports, Wi-Fi access, audiovisual interface, and universal remote control. The OSGi-based network software is called "eNeo NET" and, among other things, it takes care of incompatibilities between devices. The browser-based interface makes it possible for inhabitants to access and manage services from a TV set, PDA, cell phone, or PC.
But if projects like Eneo's Connected House were nothing more than toy-houses for the rich and famous, they wouldn't be worth wasting the space. However, smart houses do have practical purposes, especially when enabling assistive care for disabled and/or elderly inhabitants. Domotic systems that use PDAs, cell phones, sensors, and Internet access are being used for everything from alerting emergency services to unlocking the front door, making it possible for all of us to live fuller lives. In this context, a smart house is a smart idea.
To my mind, another smart idea is that of smart guns. Of course, there are few public health issues that are more controversial than the hint of firearm regulation. Shoot, my e-mail box is already overflowing from just that sentence alone. But every year, according to the Centers for Disease Control, more than 30,000 people in the U.S. die from firearms-related deaths. Of that number, about two people a day are killed by accidental gun discharges. Smart guns, which involve an electronic means of authenticating the user, are one approach to addressing this problem.
The latest in smart-gun technology was recently demonstrated at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (http://www.njit.edu/). In this case, "dynamic grip recognition," a technology invented by NJIT professor Michael Recce, was implemented by NJIT professor Timothy Chang who embedded 20 small electronic sensors in the handle of a gun. The gun is then "trained" as to who is authorized to use the firearm—and there can be dozens of user profiles stored in the gun—by "learning" the physical markers and behavior of authorized users. The biometric technique measures not only the size, strength, and structure of a person's hand, but also the reflexive way in which the person acts. For smart guns, the observed actions are how the person squeezes something, such as a trigger, to produce a unique and measurable pattern. Sensors in the experimental gun then can read and record the size and force of the users' hand during the first second when the trigger is squeezed. The sensors currently being used are off-the-shelf 4.5mm-diameter discrete piezoelectric ceramic-disk sensors. NJIT is working with a sensor company to put custom conformal capacitive sensor arrays into the grips. Profile patterns that execute recognition algorithms are stored in SRAM. For the time being, a standard serial port interfaces to the PC because the DSP system is a standalone unit. However, the next version will be untethered and use a Bluetooth interface.
It's worth noting that Recce's dynamic grip-recognition technology is not limited just to guns, but might also be applied to, say, a car's steering wheel to prevent theft or other misuse. NJIT will now turn over the prototype to Metal Storm (http://www.metalstorm.com/), which will incorporate NJIT technology into its patented electronic handgun.
Of course, you can go too far with the "smart" moniker. There's smart government, smart drugs, smart bombs, McDonald's smart meals, smart parents (according to teenagers), and smart beer. For me, the smart thing to do now is sign off.