The Economist Technology Quarterly September 7th 2013 Monitor 1 Contents On the cover Across the developed world, people worry that robots will take their jobs. A new breed of collaborative robots is intended not to replace humans but to work alongside The race is not to the swift them, making them more productive. They could also help out in homes, schools and oces, page 18 Monitor 1 Next•generation games consoles, an oral sensor in a Video games: The newest games consoles look surprisingly underpowered tooth, preventing fuel•tank and are very similar to PCs. That’s because the business is changing explosions, decision aids for N MAY 21st, on a stage ooded with Indeed, their technological guts are strik• football referees, improving Ogreen light, Microsoft unveiled its ingly similar. That is because of the way hospital hygiene and the third video•games console, the confusing• the gaming industry is changing. merits of quiet products ly named Xbox One. This followed Sony’s The chips that power both the Xbox announcement of the PlayStation 4 in One and the PlayStation 4 are modied, Di erence engine February. Together with Nintendo’s Wii U, beefed•up versions of a chip produced by 6 The rebirth of the diesel engine launched last November, these machines Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), which New diesels are giving electric make up the eighth generation of games has long been Intel’s only competitor cars a run for their money consoles. They have been a long time when it comes to the processors that coming. Their predecessors were power desktop PCs. For Microsoft, this 3D printing launched in 2005 and 2006, aeons ago by marks something of a return to its roots. 7 Scaling up the standards of the computer industry, The original Xbox, released in 2001, was How 3D printing is being and were beginning to show their age. based on a standard Intel Pentium chip. integrated into manufacturing Both the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 But all of Sony’s previous consoles have will go on sale in time for Christmas, and featured custom chips built for gaming. High•tech fabrics Microsoft and Sony are already competing vigorously to convince potential buyers of Power underwhelming 10 Material benets the merits of their respective machines. Going with a general•purpose PC chip will The textile technologies making But veterans of such battles will notice a limit the new machines’ performance. But the world a safer place curious absence. At previous console there are good reasons to make that trade• launches, executives have boasted about o . One is simply that the cost of design• Biofuels their boxes’ whizzy technological innards. ing chips has risen dramatically as they 12 What happened to biofuels? Sony in particular was a dab hand at this have become more complicated, says Making fuel from organic matter sort of thing, coming up with names like Jordan Selburn of IHS iSuppli, a market• is proving harder than expected Emotion Engine and Reality Synthe• research rm that specialises in computer siser for the chips that powered its previ• hardware. At the same time, the benets Working with robots ous consoles. But this time neither Micro• of customisation have shrunk. These days, 14 Our friends electric soft nor Sony seems very keen to talk up most of the innovation in graphics pro• Collaborative robots don’t steal the technical prowess of their new boxes. cessing is conned to two big companies, jobsthey make them easier To be sure, compared with the current AMD and Nvidia. It makes sense to leave generation of machines, graphics will take the job to these specialists. Brain scan a leap. But the truth is that the new con• The business reasons for switching to 17 Microsoft’s other mogul soles will be merely catching up with the more standardised components are com• A prole of Paul Allen, the other current state of the art, rather than den• pelling, too. The traditional business co•founder of Microsoft ing it. Both consoles have about as much model for a games console is to sell the raw computing power as a reasonably fast machines themselves at a loss (at least in desktop PC and are, for all intents and the years after their launch, before techno• purposes, ordinary PCs in fancy boxes. logical advances bring manufacturing 1 2 Monitor The Economist Technology Quarterly September 7th 2013 2 costs down) and to make up for it by tak• Computers in Zurich on September 11th, ing a cut from the sale of each game. These show that people talk and chew in di er• days, however, consoles face sti competi• ent ways because their mouths and teeth tion from games played on mobile devices If tooth be told are di erent. However, if the system is or running inside web browsers. In this trained, it can recognise what that mouth newly competitive environment, Micro• is doing 94% of the time. soft and Sony may prefer a less risky The next step is to make the device strategy. Using standard parts cuts costs. easier to wear. One way, at least for those It also makes life easier for the rms Wearable computing: An oral sensor who do not have a full set of natural that create games. Mastering the intrica• mounted in a tooth can work out gnashers, would be to incorporate it into cies of a custom•made chip can take pro• whether you are eating, drinking, an articial tooth that might be part of a grammers many years, a problem that was set of dentures. At the moment, the sensor particularly acute with the unusual chip talking or coughing is attached to the outside world by a thin that powered the PlayStation 3. The new S COMPUTERS continually shrink, the wire. This carries electricity in and data consoles’ PC•like architecture will make Aera of wearable devices is nigh. Nike’s out, but it is inconvenient to have to walk developing games much more straight• FuelBand slips over your wrist to track the around all day with a wire sticking out of forward. It will also make it easier to create amount of exercise you do. Google Glass your mouth. If it were part of a set of games that run on both new consoles and is a head•mounted display similar to a pair dentures, though, the sensor might be on PCs too, and to release them simulta• of spectacles that can be sported by the tted with a small battery that could be neously. Game prices have not risen for always•online. Apple is thought to be charged up overnight, when most wearers many years, even in nominal terms, but working on a wristwatch•sized sidekick of false teeth remove them, and thus not the cost of creating them has ballooned. for its smartphones. And from Taiwan need the wire for power. Data might also Simultaneous release on multiple plat• comes another example: a tooth that be extracted from the tooth at this time. forms maximises the potential market. monitors what your mouth is up to. Alternatively, information could be re• Besides, ever•snazzier graphics are only This might seem an odd thing to want layed directly from the mouth by incorpo• one area in which gaming rms can in• to do, but Chu Hao•hua and his colleagues rating a wireless link into the sensor novate, and one in which returns are at National Taiwan University believe using Bluetooth, of course. 7 diminishing. The rst games with elab• there are uses for a device capable of oral orate, three•dimensional game worlds, activity recognitionin other words, such as Quake and Tomb Raider, were monitoring such things as chewing, drink• revolutionary when they appeared in the ing, speaking and coughing. In particular, mid•1990s. These days, extra graphical it could have medical applications: record• Bang but no power is used for more subtle features ing the amount of coughing caused by such as more accurate lighting or more respiratory problems, for instance, or boom realistic•looking hair. With each new tracking how much munching someone generation of consoles, the improvement does when he is supposed to be on a diet. in graphics is less dramatic. This means To test the idea, Dr Chu and his col• Fire suppression: Engineers are console•makers must nd other ways to leagues built a set of tiny accelerometers, nding ways to reduce the risk that convince gamers to upgrade. which measure movement. Eight volun• fuel tanks will explode under enemy Given that the two new consoles are so teers had one of the devices xed to a re or in an accident similar internally, the obvious means of tooth with dental cement. They were then di erentiation is in novel control mecha• asked to do things like coughing continu• AMAGE to aircraft fuel tanks doomed nisms. Nintendo led the way in 2006 with ously or drinking a bottle of water while Droughly half of the 5,000 or so Ameri• the launch of its Wii console, which did the team took measurements. can warplanes and helicopters destroyed not try to compete with the Xbox 360 or The results, to be presented at the during the Vietnam war. Some crashed or PlayStation 3 in graphical power, but International Symposium on Wearable blew up after only a few bullet hits instead used innovative motion•sensitive drained or ignited their fuel, says Robert controllers to appeal to people who Ball, the author of a textbook on the com• would not normally consider playing bat survivability of aircraft. But such video games.