Fitbot, a robot that tries on clothes for you before you buy

Fits.me has come up with a new prototype of their robotic manikin, or 'FitBot', for virtual dressing rooms. It allows people who buy their clothes on the web to preview what the garments would look like on their own body. You enter the various sizes of your body into the website, and it will return to you an image of the FitBot with those sizes, wearing the item you selected.

This appears to be a very complicated system for this purpose, especially when you consider the enormous amount -hundreds if not thousands- of variations that the FitBot needs to be photographed in for each piece of clothing. But it's worth it: the sales to new customers of clothes retailer Hawes and Curtis have gone up by an impressive 57%.



The ideal technology here would of course be to see a fully robotic or at least a very advanced software version of yourself in a fitting room, linked to the movements of your own body. Who knows, maybe we will have our first experience in a virtual body in the consumerist context of shopping. But it seems to be unavoidable that one day it's going to be quite common to have virtual out of body experiences during the activities of everyday life.

Here is a video that shows the prototype in action:

Diminished reality

This is controversial stuff which reminds me of the movie 'They Live'. Researchers have developed a software algorithm that can remove certain objects from a camera feed in real time, after you select those objects. They 'sell' it as the opposite of augmented reality, where we add more stuff to our existing reality. Now, you can make your reality simpler by simply removing objects from your perception.

Obviously this can get a little dangerous, and I can see this being the basis of a new Japanese gameshow, but another pitfall is that when people start using this, they could become so dependent on artificially simplifying their world that they lose all natural, mental abilities to do so. I think though that with an explosion of technologies blending the virtual and the physical, it will all work out organically as long as we stay aware.

More augmented hyperreality

This is a prime movie in its ability to show, in 3D, a potential future that is perfused with augmented reality. Data will float around us like an aura, we have to avoid not bird droppings but ads popping up in front of our heads, and we can customize the look of our world in an instant. Welcome to the world of distraction and illusion.

This movie raises one question very strongly, and that is of privacy. Do we want our data out in the open for anyone to see, or do we rather keep it private? Or do we want certain people to see certain things, and other people to see other things? Of course this is very dependent on the mental state of the person using the technology, and I think that we would want the individual to be able to decide. A main advantage of having it out for anyone to see is that for others, it makes sense what you are doing in your virtual cloud, so you don't look like a fool. Plus it may act as a trigger for communication to others, so you could come to collaborate and help each other with things. And do we want a world where people communicate, share, and collaborate? Or do we want a world where people keep things to themselves? I say the former leads to a more holistic and happy society, and we should try to nudge people towards opening themselves and their personal dataspheres up to everyone. Will it be chaotic and distracting? Oh yes. But I firmly believe that having an incredible amount of data out in the open will make it organically organize itself towards a world that is meaningful, interactive, and beautiful.

Touchable holograms

The virtualization of the physical world continues with the technology of touchable holography. Japanese researchers have devised a way to make a virtual object respond to touch, and at the same time remotely give ultrasonic vibrations on your skin, so you feel as if you were really touching something. And all that without having to wear or operate any special type of equipment.

Sculpting with pixels

We've seen it before that artists show a natural form as if it was digitally constructed. But every time we see such a thing, we can't help but being impressed by the beautiful strangeness of it. Here's another artist who shows what digitized nature can look like: Shawn Smith. This Austin-based pixelpaster creates sculptures from strips of MDF wood, painted in a dazzling array of colors. Check out the pictures.

Planet of the Pixels

The world is virtualizing quickly, and at the same time we are starting to look at the world more as a virtual reality, created by our own consciousness and alterable to our liking. In his animation 'Pixels', Patrick Jean takes it to an extreme and shows what happens when the world starts to pixelize, to ultimately end with the planet being one black pixel. And it all starts in New York City.

new concepts for 3D displays

As our bodies all want to get out of the flat computer paradigm, with our minds on the other hand desperately liking all the discoveries and freedoms that the window into the virtual offers, new ways have to be found to merge the virtual and the physical. We are seeing an uprise of 3D display technologies, as well as augmented reality, but this is all still kinda fake. What if the physicality of the display itself becomes programmable in space?

Underneath are a few ideas as to how that could look. Flyfire is an idea to have flying light emitting objects that can intelligently rearrange themselves in space and by changing color act as a true 3d display. 'Curious displays' by Julia Tsao is another project that shows how small display modules can be empowered to form a 3d display fragmented in space. Imagine your TV crawling onto your ceiling, dispersing its modules over it to show you a full starscape during a reflective moment in a movie. Of course - as I know from some experience - this will be very hard to realize on a large scale, but it is exciting stuff indeed.

Curious Displays from Julia Tsao on Vimeo.

Real baby starves, virtual baby survives

Virtual baby? Yes, one apparently can, as a virtual character in several game environments, give birth to a baby, feed it, and raise it.



Of course escaping the oh so limiting constraints of what we call 'physical reality', this baby can definitely have two heads.



Something about virtual babies gives me the creeps though. It just takes a lot of forced imagination to actually think this is cute and loveable - not that the appearance of a baby should influence the love it gets shared, but this still seems a common perspective. Anyway, if there were a lake in the uncanny valley, this for me is definitely deeply submerged in it.



But, people fall for the traps of the virtual world, especially when it allows them escape from hard situations in the 'real' world. Today, a baby in Korea has died from neglect by its parents. They were busy, as in, 12 hours a day busy, raising a virtual child in the game Prius online.

I do see the temptation; it is safe, it looks and feels good to be in the virtual world, it allows you to somewhat live out your dreams of a harmonious, peaceful life in an idyllic realm with purple skies and what not, and time is not an issue. The real world is dirty, messy, chaotic, and it for sure doesn't care about your emotional system. Virtual world are so great because we can control them, and in case it gets uncomfortable we can just get out in an instant.

We need to come back to the physical world though, and learn to appreciate its characteristics, as well as coming to see that we ourselves are not different. But this needs to happen through more virtualization, more cyborgization, until even the physical world can be digitally controlled. In this case, what would have happened if the virtual and real child would have been intrinsically linked - maybe even in the most superficial way with a few parameters - ? I think the love for both would only have increased. Let the world become more like a game, make real life attractive again, and then guide people towards living in line with physicality again.