Wireless Home Showcases Futuristic Technologies

A smart medicine cabinet and a remote-access baby-monitoring system grace this week's cellular telecom trade show.

Grace Aquino and Yardena Arar, PC World

NEW ORLEANS--In the home of the future, a smart medicine cabinet will warn you when you grab the wrong pills, your cellular service may power your landlines, and your infant will be able to see your face even when you're many miles away.

Products and services enabling such technological marvels--some of them wildly futuristic and others more imminent--were on display in a huge mock home that promises to be one of the major attractions at the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association's (CTIA) largest annual trade show, which opens here today.

More than 700 companies are exhibiting at the three-day show, the largest in the organization's history. Products and services range from infrastructure enhancements (such as network equipment to allow carriers to offer seamless roaming between cellular and Wi-Fi networks, the industry's new Holy Grail) to consumer items such as handsets, ringtones, and games.

Oh, Baby!

The 7000-square-foot home on the floor of the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center showcases all manner of wireless technologies. Accenture's prototype medicine cabinet, for example, uses RFID technology to tell who is reaching for medication and then to determine if that person is grabbing the right container from several similar-looking ones on its shelves. If the meds and the person match up, a display embedded in the cabinet provides information on both; if not, it throws up a big warning sign.

In a related demo from the University of Florida, a cell phone with built-in bar-code scanner and a tablet-style terminal was used both to issue voice-activated reminders to people who had forgotten to take their medication, and to verify that the right pill was being taken.

Accenture also showed a prototype of a health monitoring system that included a digital life vest and an LCD monitor. If a person's vital signs take a turn for the worse, the monitor alerts the caregiver at a remote location. The caregiver can then call up the person's medical history and determine the next step, such as calling the patient to see how he or she feels or calling emergency services.

In one of the bedrooms, a prototype of a sophisticated remote-access baby-monitoring system put an LCD display and a Webcam into an infant's crib so that the baby could watch its traveling parent (also equipped with an LCD and Webcam) in live video transmitted over the Internet. The setup also included interactive features such as a toy tractor set up near the crib, with a duplicate in the parent's hands. When the parent moved the duplicate toy, the one near the baby would move accordingly.

Another remote-access prototype allowed a Motorola cell phone user to view live Webcam images transmitted over the Internet.

Moving to the Living Room

In the living room, meanwhile, ultrawideband technology by a company called Freescale Semiconductor powered a wireless network that streamed two different high-def programs from a single notebook to two large plasma TVs. A Freescale representative said the technology could transmit up to 110 megabytes per second, but only for distances of up to 10 meters (32 feet).

A couple of companies had equipment you can use to replace conventional landline phone service with a cellular account. Basically, you do this by plugging a wireless adapter into a phone jack so that you can access your cellular service via any conventional phone in the home. Telular's Fixed Wireless Terminal, for example, provides a wireless connection for a landline phone, fax, and computer equipment.