Things That Think

-- In 1987, I watched with fascination a video (click here to see the video) produced by Apple for a concept called “The Knowledge Navigator”.  The video shows a tablet computer (just like an early version of the iPad) with an intelligent personal assistant agent (just like Siri on the iPhone 4S), video conferencing (like Skype), and gathers information by itself from other sources on the internet in order to see if the user needs to leave earlier for his appointment.

I felt that there would come a day when many of our every day devices would be intelligent enough to think independently and use information from their environment, peers and other sources both locally and remotely to monitor, manage and control systems the make our lives better and operate our businesses.

I became focused on technologies that could enable this vision. I developed ARCnet and Ethernet based interface products and eventually built one of the first programmable embedded device servers that enabled any device to become intelligent and go “on line” so it could be controlled, monitored and managed over the internet -- and it was only the size of a large sugar cube.

I continue to create visions and concepts for products and systems that leverage intelligent devices to run business processes more efficiently, make our lives safer, save energy, and keep us healthy.

I designed this blog to be a place where I could share some of my thoughts on smart devices, things that think, robotics and autonomous systems.