What is Sensitive Object cooking in its laboratory?
Pick your weapon: holographic lasers or acoustic waves.
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Following on my blog post about Light Blue Optics (LBO) – the pride of Britain – I could not omit to talk about Sensitive Object (SO) – the French musketeer. Sensitive Object (just like LBO) is also a brilliant example of innovation that aims to potentially disrupt the way we interact with our environment.
SO – created in 2003, now based in Paris and Singapore – is a spin-off from the Wave and Acoustic Laboratory (LOA) of the French Science National Research Center (CNRS). After more than 20 years of research, they came up with fancy formula to operate “time reversal” of acoustic waves.
Their solution is called Reversys and can basically turn any surfaces into a touch sensitive object – just as it says on the tin. So take a surface like a window or a table or what have you, place at least one sensor on it and Reversys will do the rest. Reversys will cross correlate – from its internal library of impulse responses – where on the surface the tap (or double tap) is coming from. Then you can assign a function to each taps.
Imagine those acoustic sensors placed under your largely expensive wooden desk, on the surface of which a designer engraved two buttons (one that says <on> and another one that says <off>). Well, when you will double-tap <on> with your little finger, the acoustic sensors will listen and locate where on the surface the tap is coming from (using Reversys internal database of 980 acoustic signals), and will be able to redirect an impulse to give the order to switch on your light or turn on your radio or whatever the designer thought of.
The company expects that its Reversys technology will be scaled to the ICT world (desktop, laptop, mobile phones, MID, e-book, gaming) and other industrial sectors (ATM, home appliances, automotive, etc). They also claim that designers will be able to embed its technology in “all type of surfaces” whether it is made of wood, steel or glass in order to define new functions for day to day objects.
In December last year, Motorola Ventures – the company’s strategic venture capital arm – made an investment in Sensitive Object. But it looks like SO is still owned by the Tyco Electronics Group though. It is easy to imagine the possibilities for Motorola to use this venture to push for their vision of mobile convergence that they have been talking about for years. SO’s technology could help to develop new home-entertainment products that could be linked to other devices and services. The convergence possibilities could be endless and Motorola could come up with some disruptive solutions and partner with a large number of industry outsiders to encourage creativity and scalability.
But if I were in the shoes of Motorola Ventures’ big cheese, I would have considered investing in Light Blue Optics. First, LBO seems to have a better sense of marketing and commercial priorities than SO which seems to be still living in its smoking laboratory. Secondly, LBO has a proven track record in the ICT space whereas SO still has work to do in developing flexible and user-friendly software applications. Thirdly, LBO is already developing solutions in the automotive industry with BMW and other solutions dedicated to specific niche segments. Lastly, LBO’s Light Touch is in itself more flexible and more easily scalable to curved surfaces than SO’s sensors.
But maybe that it’s this spirit of freedom that attracted Motorola’s interest. SO was surely looking for an experienced partner to develop mobile phone use-cases and Motorola was probably a best fit than Tyco Electronics which main skill is to manufacture electronic components. Motorola will surely pump up its marketing brain behind this venture to develop the best retail solution. The only concern is – as always – time-to-market! Knowing Motorola’s excellent track record in bringing compelling devices to market too late, there’s a high probability that by the time they commercialize a cool product based on Sensitive Object’s Reversys technology, the marketing genius using Light Blue Optics’ Holographic Laser Projection will already have created its own empire. And you can trust Foxconn (LBO’s partner and also Apple iPhone’s manufacturer) to put a lot of efforts into it.
The equation is on! z = (SO + Motorola) x (LBO + Foxconn) / consumer appeal^10