IHF Roundup: Female Robot Struts Her Stuff, Robotic Fish Invades Foreign Waters and Other Top Headlines This Week

Some ongoing trends I've been seeing for a few months are all relating back to technological innovation in industries traditionally uninterested in the stuff. Whether it's biometric systems, robotic deployments or surveillance initiatives, they're popping up everywhere. In particular, a couple robotics headlines caught my eye this week as they have been making their way into unfamiliar waters -- and runways.

British scientists are developing robotic fish to detect pollution. Coming in around $29,000 apiece, these wireless robots, five feet in length, are enabled with sensors to smell out hazardous chemicals leaking from marine vessels and underwater pipelines. They're being tested in the northern Spanish port of Gijon, and if successful, could potentially be used worldwide. Price point might need to drop a bit to ensure large-scale deployment, but very exciting potential here to sniff out and eliminate leaks polluting our waters.

Almost on the other end of the robotics spectrum, Japanese robotics teams have created a female robot that walk and talks -- down fashion runways, that is. Making her debut at a Tokyo fashion show next week, the five-foot two-inch black-haired HRP-4C robot will ultimately be used to "perform simulations of human movement" in amusement parks, exercise clubs and other such crowded environments. Perhaps, a long lost relative of this robotic performer...

Happy to say that Frost & Sullivan released validation for the growth in biometrics technologies this week. According to Matia Grossi, Frost & Sullivan's industry analyst, "The market for biometrics products is going to almost triple by 2012 from its 2008 value." Exciting stuff, but not entirely surprising considering check and retail fraud rates are skyrocketing and security breaches are causing chaos everywhere. Obviously, the demand for appropriate security initiatives is there and technologies will increase accordingly.

While traditional biometrics have primarily rooted themselves in government agencies, financial institutions and airports, educational outlets, hospitals and even airlines themselves are now implementing these systems. While the current statistics show governments to occupy 44.5% of the market, it's evident from headlines this week growing initiatives in other sectors may soon shift that majority elsewhere.

We've seen biometric security systems implemented all over airports, from the security checkpoints to customs. But biometrics to board planes? That's new.

Air France announced this week the beginning of trials of its new fingerprint-based boarding system -- "smartboarding" -- on the Paris-Amsterdam route. With this new procedure, passengers book their flights online normally and check in at airport kiosks where they receive their thermal-inked boarding pass. Once at the gate, their fingerprints are scanned prior to boarding the airplane. If it saves me from taking my driver's license in and out of my wallet five times before sitting down in my seat, I'm all for it.

Continuing this biometrics growth, schools nationwide, specifically Wyoming and Florida, are installing biometrics keypads in cafeterias to improve accounting systems and provide speedier service. One article even states lunch sales at one school improved 17 percent after using the devices. If not only to get kids into their seats more quickly, bringing in more revenues from those lunches can't hurt struggling schools. Gives new meaning to the term 'fast food.'