“No matter how far a person can go the horizon is still way beyond you,” said American author Zora Neale Hurston.  It’s that quest for the horizon that keeps researchers busy throughout the world. Two pieces of news caught my eyes this week – one came out of Japan on the news that Toyota and the Japanese government research laboratory demonstrated a brain/machine interface (BMI) that has been demonstrated to control a wheelchair using a person’s thoughts.

Japan has a rapidly aging population, which is set to be accompanied by a shortage of healthcare workers to tend to them – developments such as a brain/machine interface could help the aged maintain their self-sufficiency.  The system enables a person to make a wheelchair turn left, right, forward or stop simply by thinking the commands. The response time is in milliseconds – 125 milliseconds to be exact.

With a 125 milliseconds delay over a telephone call you would probably notice the delay, although it would still be acceptable by today’s standards. GIPS’ research team continues to work hard to improve the telephone and video delay issue – along with all the other intrinsic unhelpful traits of IP networks such as jitter, echo, packet-loss and background noise.  So it’s impressive to see this BMI development out of Japan – it could have far-reaching impact on our future.

The second development was simple yet is a welcome initiative in reducing the amount of unnecessary waste in the EU by introducing universal cell phone chargers – albeit for smartphones.

The EU commission requested the mobile phone industry to come forward with a voluntary commitment to provide a universal mobile phone charger, which should reach the market from 2010 onwards.

According to CNET, there are 400 million mobile phones in Europe, and approximately 185 million mobile phones are sold each year in Europe. It’s expected that over half of all new phones sold in 2010 will fall in the smartphone category. This is great news to read as smartphones are nearly all Wi-Fi enabled and have the ability to allow mobile VoIP – potentially great news for GIPS.

The universal mobile phone charger should lower packaging and shipping costs along with a reduction in carbon footprints for wireless carriers. The only downside for consumers is that the chargers will have to be purchased separately (eventually) – so hang on to your universal charger. Hopefully North America will follow suit too.

Tags: mobile VoIP, research, smartphones, toyota

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