New navigation software for wheelchairs will allow people to travel around a building using only spoken commands. The chair, developed by researchers at MIT, uses the strength of Wi-Fi signals from nodes around the building to triangulate the chair鈥檚 location. Prior to use, the chair must be wheeled around the building so that the software can link spoken commands to a specific location.
The US Department of Homeland Security is pressing ahead with plans to develop a system that detects people with 鈥渉ostile intentions鈥� (New 杏吧原创, 11 August 2007, p 24). Volunteers are being paid to walk through a battery of cameras, lasers and infrared sensors in a bid to build a database of the physiological parameters associated with 鈥渉ostility and mal-intent鈥�.
