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IMAGINE AN ELEVATOR that can both tell you’re going to use it or even predict the floor you want to travel to.
It mightn’t be happening any time soon but it’s one of the projects Microsoft’s research department is currently working on.
Using a Microsoft Kinect camera positioned in the ceiling, the elevator tracked the behaviour of people who got on the elevator and those who bypassed it on their way to a nearby cafeteria.
By doing this, it taught itself to identify the behaviours of those who wanted to board an elevator and those who didn’t.
Once its training period was completed, the learning portion was turned off and the system was used to control the elevator and act on the user’s behalf. It would regularly predict the people who want to take the elevator and act on their behalf.
In an interview with Bloomberg, the Head of Microsoft Research Peter Lee offered an example of how the technology could be used.
If your environment knows, for example, that it’s lunch time, that you had spoken yesterday about having lunch with a colleague on the second floor, and that it notices that you seem to be now leaving your office to go to the elevator, the elevator can be smart enough to take you, without your need to operate anything, to your colleague.
The team behind the project have begun a second phase of the project, this time experimenting with human-like interactions between elevators and the people riding them.
Microsoft Research have worked on a number of similar projects in recent times such as a speech translator that repeats what you said in a different language, and its own smart contact lens back in 2011, similar to what Google is currently working on.
(Video: MicrosoftResearch/YouTube)
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Since when did pressing a fckin button become a problem?!!!
Pressing buttons is a thing of the past
Sales of PS4 and Xbox One suggest otherwise.
Very tough business to break into. It has its ups and downs.
Sort out your OS first Microsoft. Worry about lifts later.
Cos pressing that button is so difficult!
Can’t see it getting off the ground meself:-).
I can only imagine how pissed of i would get of the smart lift brings me to the wrong floor…
Sort out windows 8.1 first. It’s useless. Just had laptop I bought at Christmas changed to Windows 7.
Story made me smile. We all need a lift sometimes.
And here I am using my brain and finger to pick a floor myself, like a schmuk!
This would save sooo much time.
Elevators 8.1
So we have a few billion to spare. We could (a) stop hunger/malaria/disease – a la Bill or (b) invent something nobody needs (or is pressing a lift button WAAAY too intense for modern life?)
Their founder spends$1.5 billion a year doing just that Anne.
And my point was that Bill does the good thing while his company wastes resources on bull!
If you’ve got two working legs then use the feckin’ stairs.
Scary stuff as it surely blue screen or have a million security vulnerabilities in the code
It can’t be as smart as Amazon – they can predict where you want to go even if where that is is not in the same building.
Or in the case of the Labour Party when to get off !!!
Does the lift automatically get stuck when James Reilly enters??
So they finally made “Happy Vertical People Transporters”.
If it spots James Reilly it locks the doors and runs for the basement
http://www.joe.ie/tweet-of-the-day/health-minister-james-reilly-gets-stuck-in-a-lift/
Some people in tech companies have way much spare time.
Just scan for the MAC address of people’s phones and pick the floor there going to on previous events.
I am already going out with HER, time to catch up google!!! Elevators are simple…person in or out, what time of day, what floor, etc
Only way is up from here on.
Should look for Microsoft’s “home of the future on youtube”
have your say