But were they touching us?

It may not seem likely that they may have a direct impact on our daily lives anytime soon. Partly, because not everyone of us knows how to play the violin or trumpet and therefore it is very difficult to appreciate what it takes to master these instruments. Further, if you are not an engineer it is hard to imagine the meta- and learning skills required to create a machine that virtuously plays an instrument.
To most of us – and I spoke to some – it was not very colorful to watch some machine do something we cannot fully comprehend. The robots remained something very distant.

But watch now! These robotic musicians will soon be able to run like this newly unveiled running robot:

Does this humaniod-like thing  make you think? These movements – don’t they seem real? I think this is colorful. I can imagine how one of these knocks my door any moment …

This running robot has impressive specifications according to the Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Blog: the Partner Robot (as it is called by toyota) weights only 50 kgs and is only 130 cm tall. That’s a very practical size giving the possiblity for countless missions in our daily lifes. Potentially it fits through your door, it could stand next to you while cooking, it could bring the morning newspaper, mail and milk right to your breakfast table (which of course the robot laid). It could instantly document what you are doing on twitter and have its own facebook account and be your friend … (uh!?)

But besides these humanoid phantasies, roborts are being developed for short-distance personal transport at home, for crossing streets or moving through a city in a combination of personal and public transport systems. Transporting patients, bed-bath support and other special abilities in the field of medical care or nursing are being researched.

So in reality there are plenty of areas where robots can be made useful besides in manufactureing.

I don’t know what you think! But I believe that PAHs (Personal Assistant for Humans) for the mainstream will surely become a hot market in the not too distant future!

If you are new to the field of robotics I recommend skimming over this one page (pdf-file) on the development and future initiatives of the partner robots. You get the idea of the usefulness of robots even quicker by looking at Toyota’s overview of the project to develop partner robots designed to function as personal assistants for humans.

The Release Candidate 1′s Installation at a Glance:

It installs in about 40 minutes. Then it takes quite some time to get all the devices up and running. I think it took about one and a half to two hours. But I did the  installation of the drivers as an aside. Easily I got ALL devices up and running – which is much better than with the previous Beta1.

The Installation in Detail:

Step 1: Installing the Windows 7 RC DVD:

Windows 7 installed without any visible error. Looking into the Device Manager right after the installation finished brings some devices without drivers to our attentioin:

(click images to enlarge!)

In Windows 7 Beta  I was never able to successfully finish the Windows Experience Rating (the LE1600 hung and I had to reboot.)  – so I tried running the system performance index right away, before any Driver of motion could tamper with the results:

And here is the result of the assessment AFTER installing all the correct drivers (screenshot taken after step 11 below):

Correct  drivers improve the Desktop Graphics performance to almost 2. But overall it remains a 1 because of the 3D graphics performance of the aged Intel Onboard card. But who needs 3D for typical management tasks or business applications anyway?! If you do CAD you would have never bought this Slate in the first place …

Step 2: Connect to the Internet and run Windows Update:

In this step I wanted to check the drivers’ availability over Windows Update. It would be great if all would be installed and setup automatically.

Windows Update finds two important and one optional downloads:

AuthenTec Inc Driver for the AES2501A , MotionComputing Tablet Button Drivers and the optional driver for the Network adapter.

After confirming a warning dialog to remove all fingerprint data  before installing the AuthenTec fingerprint driver,  Windows update presents a transparent overview of its’ results:

and the Device Manager shows the following status:

Step 3: Reboot & run Windows Update again

3 problems are still waiting to be solved:

And windows wants to reboot again after it downloaded a driver for the chipset.

Step 4: Reboot & run Windows Update again

I had the device manager look for a current driver. As it did not find any Windows 7 asked me wether I wanted to troubleshoot … So I gave it a try – and I have to say that I was well surprised how the Troubleshooting Assistant transparently and systematically went through all the problem devices. Congratulations Microsoft – someone has done his homework here!

After checking all the problem  devices Windows 7 presents this overview:

It is transparent and informative! I like that! Deveice Manager looks like this by now:

The Grapics Adapter is still a generic VGA and some device remain unknown.

The list of installed updates reflects the issue which was resolved by the troubleshooting assistant:

Step 5: Manually Downloading Drivers

We have seen how we can get using Microsoft as a source for device drivers. Much farther than with previous OSes but not quite to the finish.

So we still need to get some drivers from the MotionComputing website for those devices which were not automatically installed by Windows Update all by ourselves.

Step 6: Installing the Motion Dashboard 5.0.2.8 & Reboot

I need to mention that I installed the Motion Dashboard from the LE1700(!), since the one for the LE1600 did not work for me.
But it brings no change to the status of unknown/ driverless devices.

Step 7: Installing the Motion Vista Driver for the Graphics Adapter

The first try fails.

When Windows 7 asks whether this program installed correctly answer no and try again with recommended settings. That works!

Step 8: Reboot & Update & Reboot

Checking the devices still show a missing Audio Controller and an unknown device.

Suprisingly Windows Update reports important updates:

These updates were for the Mobile Intel 915GM/GMS .. adapter and after the second reboot the drivers seem to have been installed ok.

Step 9: Installing the Motion TPM 3.0 & Rebooting

The TPM for Vista  finally resolves the unknown device.

Step 10: Installing the C-Major Audio XP Driver on Windows 7

There is no driver for Vista and Windows Update does not recognize the device by itself. This is an error of the explanation on the Motion Support Site. But installing the XP-Driver from the Motion Website does the trick. It installs neatly and there are no devices with issues left in the device manager.

Last Step 11: Installing the IntelliSonic DX filter on Windows

The IntelliSonic / Knowles Acoustics – 2.0.1 could not be installed under Beta1. Now with the RC it seems to work just fine. You can select all the available options for the Microphone Speech Enhancements.

Overall it is possible to get the system up and running without any  driver issues. That looks promising  also for other older hardware. It shows that Microsoft is on the right path but also that Motion has developed solid drivers  in the past. It would be nice if also graphic drivers for laptops could be obtained through windows update. Downloading these individually does not make sense these days.

For some fun The Onion shows the  UserInterface of the Windows 7 future competition: Apple’s Laptop without a keyboard:


Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard


There is a comparison between Windows 7 and Mac OS X Snow Leopard features, too!

And here are the 20 editions of Windows 7.

Have Fun!

And please feel free to post links to other funny stuff about the new OS.

I tested it for English Blogs. You should try the nice Spam-Free search feature.

They also have a very cool Realtime Blogsphere ScreenSaver: