IHF Roundup: 365 Days (and counting) until ISC West, Robots Making Pizza in Italy and Other Top Headlines This Week

ISC West went off with a bang! Caught up with many folks I see only once in a blue moon, demoed our new S-Series SmartRecorder and grabbed a few drinks with the industry's finest. All in all, a fantastic show -- our new CEO looks happy!

Check out some great blog posts by Security Director News' Rhianna Daniels, SecurityInfoWatch's Geoff Kohl and Security Dealer & Integrator's Deborah O'Mara about their interviews at the show, industry trends they see forming and any other general impressions.

All industry eyes were on the show floor, but beyond the Las Vegas city limits, wheels kept turning. While product announcements flooded the wires all week, a few robotics headlines caught my eye. Here we go.

So, Japan is using robots to teach in classrooms, and British scientists are using robotic fish to detect oil leaks and pollution in bodies of water -- what are robots in Italy doing? Making pizza, of course!

Built at the University of Bologna, this pilot robot chef kneads water and flour into dough, adds and spreads tomato sauce, cheese and appropriate toppings and even cooks it with its own infrared rays -- all in less than three minutes! While classic Italian pizzerias are insulted by the apparent disregard to traditional preparation methods, maybe this innovation will work in kitchens. It's possible the robots won't take off in Italy, but the rest of the world might be intrigued to find out how a robot stacks up against the neighborhood Domino's or Little Caesar's. With a robot behind the oven, no reason your next delivery shouldn't be there in 30 minutes or less.

From pizza to psychics -- Honda introduced a robot that reads people's minds and allows them to control a bipedal robot, Asimo. The robot boasts a 90% success rate in recognizing and carrying out four commands (raising the right or left hand, and moving one's legs or tongue) just by the power of human thought alone. All you need is a special helmet connected to a large "box of top-secret machinery."

Honda hopes to expand this technology elsewhere for more practical purposes. Think how convenient it would be if your trunk opened automatically when your hands were full, the heat turned on when you felt a slight chill in the car...

Combining the two technologies, maybe we'll see robot chefs in our houses that make personalized made-to-order pizzas by our mere thinking about it. Hey, a guy can dream.