Tech maestros IBM are set to turn their digital wizardry on the mobile phone by augmenting the pocket plastics burgeoning armoury of features and functions with five more - the human senses of smell, taste, sight, touch and hearing.
IBM predict that within five years smartphones will be able to do everything bar do the dishes; from translating a baby’s gurgles to sniffing its owners bad breath for viruses.
Described as an ‘era of cognitive systems’ this bold new world of intelligent gadgets is being heralded as a key milestone on the road to an ultimate merger of biological and electronic systems.
To achieve this trick IBM’s engineers are developing a vibrating capability within the device to mimic the sensation of touch. If that sounds too good to be true then future sonic performance really is, it is confidently predicted that phones will be able to pick up and interpret sounds from their background environment to establish people’s mood and even identify looming threats such as avalanches.
If you smell a rat here then you’re not alone either as the pocket wonders of the future will be able to analyse odours for any malicious viruses whilst fresh advances in the study of taste could break down ingredients to a molecular level – allowing chefs access to a whole new recipe book of crazy concoctions.
If that doesn’t catch your eye then your phone will certainly spy it, todays paltry megapixels are set to be superceded by an all-seeing lens which could capture details invisible to the mark 1 eyeball.
Bernie Meyerson, a vice-president of IBM’s Innovation department, said: “Just as the human brain relies on interacting with the world using multiple senses, by bringing combinations of these breakthroughs together, cognitive systems will bring even greater value and insights, helping us solve some of the most complicated challenges.”