CEATEC JAPAN 2004 coverage continues today with a few random, but still cool, technologies. It seems like things have basically gone into “chill” mode until Saturday, the final day of the show. Today’s coverage includes a “reversible LCD,” bandwidth of the human body, a camcorder with 802.11b streaming, and a capacitator to charge laptops in one minute.
Mitsubishi had on display what they are calling a “reversible LCD.” Although the system was announced back in February of this year, this is the first of I’ve heard of it since then. According to “Heartbeat Motors,” making the technology practical is soon to be done; but plans for commercialization still aren’t finalized.
So what does this do? As you can see in the above pic (compliments of Impress Watch), there is indeed a different image in the mirror. While the display closest to the guy taking the picture shows the front of some character (I guess it’s a cat?), the reflection in the mirror shows the back of the cat. At this point, you’re probably thinking, “well what’s so cool about that, my phone has an external display too.” But that’s just it; your phone has an internal display and external display. These are two separate screens, independent of one another.
But that’s not how this technology works. It is, in fact, one LCD screen depicting two different images depending on which side you view it from. Things get technical from here on out, but to sum it up, you basically have two transparent backlights on either side of the LCD. When one backlight is turned on, an image can be seen on the LCD from the opposite side. Turn both backlights on, and the same image can be seen from both sides. Since this alone wouldn’t create two different images on each side of the screen, Mitsubishi’s technology involves swapping out the LCD’s image 120 times per second. I hate math, but 120 / 2 (for two screens) would give you 60 frames per second on each. Not too shabby.
Ever wondered how much bandwidth a human body has? Matsushita Electric Works and NTT certainly did. Both companies are running demonstrations of their respective “human body communication” systems are this year’s CEATEC. I’ll go into both, because they’re both pretty nifty.
Matsushita Electric Works has named their setup the “Touch Communication System.” A special wristband is attached to each wrist, which contains some sort of chip. In some mysterious method that likely causes cancer, Matsushita’s technology can transfer data signals between both human and machine as well as human and human. I presume this means some touchy-feely action going between wristbands. Sadly, with a bandwidth of a mere 3.7kbps, you won’t be doing too much “peer-to-peer,” though. Matsushita’s demonstration consisted of trays containing various food products. When you would touch a special panel on each tray while wearing the wristband, a computer would display the name of the product on its screen. For example, if you pressed the panel for “hamburger,” then touched the computer, “hamburger” comes up on the screen. Yeah, I know that doesn’t sound too exciting, but trust me, I’m sure they’ll think of some cooler applications.
NTT was on a different level from Matsushita however, with their “Contact Communication” demonstration. An optical electric field sensor detects the feeble electric field of human beings – which somehow provides a maximum throughput of 10 megabits per second, both ways. NTT’s demonstration consisted of a copper impression connected to a PC. When a person would stand on top of the copper impression, a special receiver would begin playback of a movie being streamed from the PC, allegedly through the medium of your own electric field. NTT claims the advantage to using copper is that the voltage in the metal is enough that data can still be trasmitted through induction charges. So in other words, even if you stand on the copper panel wearing rubber-soled shoes, data can still be transmitted through your electric field.
Personally, I just can’t help but think this makes you a million times more prone to being struck by lightning.
This is a video camera on display from Victor (known to you as JVC), which contains an SDIO slot. SDIO is exactly what it doesn’t sound like – you can use a SecureDigital card slot for inputting and outputting data. You may remember products like the “Memory Stick Camera” and “Memory Stick GPS Module” released for Sony Clies a couple years ago. It’s taken some time for those same kinds of capabilities to be added to SecureDigital cards, but the result is SDIO.
Now that you know about SDIO, you probably already understand why it’s cool to be in a video camera. It’s simple: wireless LAN. Using 802.11b through an SDIO card, JVC has essentially created a wireless webcam that doubles as a camcorder. Movies can be recorded using MPEG-4, but network movies are transmitted using the Windows Media format.
Power Systems is displaying their capacitator at this year’s convention whose claim to fame is being able to allow a laptop to operate for an hour and 20 minutes with only 1 minute of charging. The company’s demonstration consisted of a VAIO type U laptop/PDA thingy, whose lithium ion battery was swapped out for a nanogate capacitator. Don’t ask me what that is, but charging it for 10 seconds resulted in the demonstration screen being display for 1 minute.
According to ITmedia’s coverage of the booth, a nanogate capacitator uses coal and aliminium foil to store electricity; the charging process can be greatly reduced when compared to the chemical-to-electric processes of lithium ion batteries and the like.
Apparently what has been holding back capacitators from entering the market is their price – “you’d be surprised” was all a boothie could say. The company plans on commercializing the technology once they can bring it down to three times the cost of current lithium ion solutions. “The life of nanogate capacitors,” after all, “are about 10 years long – three times that of lithium ion batteries.”
Read – CEATEC JAPAN 2004 Link List [Impress Watch]
