Martin Frey's interaction projects make your senior thesis look lame

Sure, it might be a little bulky, and could probably use a few months / years of polish before it's ready for market, but we want one now. Martin Frey's prototype Just In Time Watch (pictured) is designed to eliminate to difficult and time consuming mental processes that usually go on when you look at a watch: what time is it, when's that next appointment, how long will it take to get there, when should I leave, etc. The watch can communicate with your cellphone to leech the internets and a GPS position. It then looks up your next appointment, and maps where you are in relation to the next place you need to be, along with how long it'll take you to get there, then displays the amount of time you have left to draw shaving cream smiley faces in the mirror before you actually need to take off. Another project by Martin Frey, titled "SnOil" is decidedly less functional, but makes up for it with extra sexy. The device is basically a low-resolution display made out of Ferrofluid -- you know, that weird magnetic-ish liquid stuff -- which lets you play a simple game of Snake on its few pixels, including a "GAME OVER" message when you screw up. Finally, Martin's CabBoots are a bit more conceptual, but are designed to steer the user by tilting the sole of the shoe to guide the wearer based on GPS data. Soon, in the Frey-designed future, we will always be on time to appointments (for our Ferrofluid massage, naturally) which we will arrive at after blindly following our shoes. We can't wait. Peep shots of this other stuff after the break.

Read - Just In Time Watch
Read - SnOil
Read - CabBoots

[OiD @ Feb 7th 2007 6:13AM]

Ohhh its lovelyyy. I want one too!

[strider_mt2k @ Feb 7th 2007 7:00AM]

You might want to dumb down "Conceptual" for some of the good folks, Engadget.

[Information Central @ Feb 7th 2007 7:13AM]

I was wondering what he'd been doing since ABC's heyday in the '80s.

[User @ Feb 7th 2007 8:01AM]

He's not only a great artist and inventor but a really nice guy too. I met Martin at the "Europrix Top Talent Award" in Vienna last year, where he had enough confidence in his CabBoots to demonstrate them on a table. Can only wish him best of luck for future projects and competitions.

[craig @ Feb 7th 2007 8:11AM]

Not one but three certain failures!

[Scott Culp @ Feb 7th 2007 8:41AM]

Failures?? Because they are not marketable products that can make him masses of money? Who cares, they are cool and required alot of imagination and hard work. The shame is that more people are not this creative and ambitious and feel the need to sit around and criticize the creativity of others.

[tekdroid @ Feb 7th 2007 8:46AM]

Just In Time Watch. Honestly, some things are far more complex than they need to be. A watch that communicates with your cellphone (cellphones are the modern watch nowadays) to get extra info on a tiny display? How 'bout no watch and just doing it with a cellphone, with its larger display? Even then it's far too complex and the implementation better be damn good to be useful.

And I wonder if green-on-black can be seen in the sunlight, anyway?

Don't know enough about the rest, but nothing here even raised an eyebrow as something I'd potentially want, even when converted to a higly-refined saleable product.

Some nice ideas, but beyond that can't say I'm the least bit interested. Would be happy to eat my words if/when any of this makes it on the market and is successful.

[banryu @ Feb 7th 2007 9:07AM]

Well yeah, can't imagine why I'd want my cellphone data on a watch so I don't have to pull my cellphone out of my pocket...

Don't know if green-on-black can be seen in sunlight...huh? OK...not sure where that's a particular problem. Maybe, maybe not?

Anyway, looks like a fun piece of hardware to me; lets get cool watch-wireless-type functions non-proprietary (e.g. boo Sony Ericsson watch) and I'd be happy to pay for a good implementation of this tech.

[zeekeorage @ Feb 7th 2007 9:13AM]

well unless that watch can run a probability algorithm to predict traffic jam , riot , accident , helping hot girl on street or plain old banana peel its just assuming to many things 'bout our world ..... well then may be those 'cabboots' can ensure we keep moving no matter wat

[Mickey Jones @ Feb 7th 2007 10:35AM]

Screw the function, I want it for it's off-the-hook geek-chic style. Surely this will attact the babes.

[Brad Knowles @ Feb 7th 2007 3:32PM]

The J-I-T Watch makes sense for the same reason that Bluetooth Caller-ID watches make sense -- a phone is a reasonably bulky item that many people may carry on their hip or in their bag, but do not necessarily have instantly available to them at a glance. Contrariwise, many people do wear watches on their wrist, and they are immediately available at a glance.

Now, to be honest, all this work could be done on the phone, with just the display portion happening on the watch. I think that's much more practical, and much more likely to be seen in a real-world device in the near future.

But you do need to know position data (and GPS signal may not reach inside where you are, so you also need to be able to triangulate off cell tower data, as well as having accelerometer and digital compass data to back that up), you need to be able to access traffic information, you need to know where you are in relation to your transportation options (and if you're going to take the train what the schedule is like), and a whole host of other things.

Personally, as a first step, I'd just like to see a handheld/car-mountable GPS device that can access both the radio broadcast traffic information (currently almost always requires an external 12VDC car adapter on all the GPS devices I've seen that support this option), as well as Internet access to traffic data (e.g., Google maps), so this might require an integrated GPS/cell phone device of some sort. Once we get this integrated GPS/traffic device, we can worry about trying to add some additional intelligence to it.

[pito189 @ Feb 7th 2007 3:44PM]

Those boots could be very useful for blind people.

They could also be pretty cool tied in with an audio tour of a place and the shoes direct you to each new location. Very cool stuff.

[Murali @ Mar 23rd 2007 1:45AM]

Need to know very much about bluetooth and its thesis