On devices that are equipped with Android, Google's operating system for cell phones, it's now possible to recognize someone by their iris. Developers have shown this.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Brands are given more and more tools to recognize the consumer. Their voice, their walk, their vocabulary, their fingerprint or their iris. In the long run brands will be able to recognize their customers better than humans. And they’ll be able to continue the dialogue where it was left off previously. This technical development certainly adds to that.

Japan's National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) has developed a 3D LCD display box, the so-called gCubik, that with its 10cm diameter fits into your hand perfectly. The developers will commit themselves to creating sharper images in the coming years.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

More and more displays are inhabiting our world. Bigger, smaller, more real. As long as it looks most like our real world. Because that is, after all, how people think. And this is the world in which brands transform themselves. Soon brand agents will be walking in such displays like it’s never been any different.

Related trends

• More 3D

Scientists at Tel Aviv University in Israel have developed an electronic ear to measure a voice's vibrato. Vibrato means the regular changes of height in a tone (in an instrument or singing voice), the 'trembling' of tone height, as it were. Vibrato can make a tone sound warmer.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

New technology like this can lead to all sorts of new applications. This shows how a coaching brand can develop in the area of singing: we’ll be guided from when we’re a small child and receive coaching without needing an expensive tutor. Another application is in call centers that recognizes emotions in voices and that the scripted text can take into account. Or that, in videos of young new talents, we can find the truly talented people extremely fast. But eventually this is about the automation of listening: brands will be able to understand every detail in a customer’s voice. And for all I know you’ll sing what it is you want.

This prototype screen can be controlled from the back. With it, users can use ten fingers on a relatively small screen without seeing solely their fingers.

Asimo, Honda's humanoid robot, can now distinguish three different people shouting through one another perfectly. Asimo distinguishes (the direction of the) voices with eight microphones that have been set up in the matrix on the head and body of Asimo. Currently the three test subjects are solely shouting their name, but scientists except that Asimo will be able to handle more complex sentences and even more people in future.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

And so laboratories develop techniques, robots that can communicate more intelligently than we can. Although it will take a while before robots enter our lives, it’s easy to picture that a Nintendo Wii with a similar built-in function can detect the speech comments of different people and develop a great game around that. We can shout what we want, the noise makes everything unintelligible, but the game splits it up effortlessly.

This video shows a laboratory version of Google Earth on an iPhone.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Google Earth is at this moment giving a more and more realistic image of the future. The newest iPhone (which will be for sale in the Netherlands in July) will immediately recognize the location and, based on the images of the camera, also the direction. This allows the iPhone (or any screen) to form a window to the world directly: like you’re looking through it. With the difference that you can now say: ‘what building is that to the right?’ That’s not so far away now and in a year or five consumers will be using this en masse. Exactly according to plan.

The Sencil of the Alfred E. Man Institute for Biomedical Engineering is a hair-thin biosensor. Its extremely sensitive tip is fastened in a blood vessel with a flexible fiberglass thread and sticks out of the skin like a normal hair. By attaching measuring devices you can, for example, measure the glucose concentration (video demonstration).

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Everywhere in our bodies we’ll build sensors which are in permanent contact with the outside world. This way brands can react to us directly. If our heart rate rises when we see a new bikini the brand will know they’re on the right track. That’s another interpretation of ‘listening to your customer’!

This is a demonstration of how a game can be controlled with brain impulses. The player here is also moving, but in principle this isn't necessary because the helmet reads his intention.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

If we can measure our intentions, we’ll also know when we’re not doing something that we’d actually like to do. That can lead to a break-through in all sorts of therapies, in coaching and in personal development. Then we’ll know how people really react to something instead of asking the question (in marketing research for example) of the cortex. If you do that you get socially desirable answers. This could make research much more trustworthy.

Samsung SDI and the German company Bundesdruckerei have collaborated to design a passport with a paper thin screen. On this screen different kinds of content (like video, lines of text, etc) can be shown.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Data is recorded in as many ways as possible. This is a small step towards a bigger development where security is concerned, but especially where personal mobile information is concerned. With development we see that the technical developments of today allow us to make paper thin screens that show us from head to toe in our passports. With the personal data we’ll put on the internet these passports will register even our DNA, fingerprints and our most recent visits and pass this information to customs. It may sound far-fetched, but this is a serious step towards the development of this kind of scenario.

Rallypoint has designed a glove for soldiers that enables them to use firearms and a computer simultaneously. It's supposed to ensure that computer usage won't be restricted to safe situations.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Soldiers are equipped with less weight and more and more technology. In principle the possibilities become endless. Think of commands that can be sent to fighting robots, asking for air-support during a fire fight or live satellite-images of the surrounding area. In future these technologies will be refined. As soon as these become cheaper they’ll be made available to the consumer.

Google has invested in several DNA-research centres. These centres offer paid services in which they analyse your DNA and present it to you in online reports. The test results of your show if you have a genetic chance of medical conditions such as Alzheimer's disease, cancer or rheumatoid arthritis.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Such a service is useful to us worried consumers. It also fits in the tendency that we as consumers take matters in our own hands more. In the future we’ll be our own specialists and we’ll be able to make our own diagnoses. In combination with the indexation by Google we’ll have no more secrets. Getting turned down on your first job interview, based on your DNA, supermarkets with specific departments for Altzheimer’s patients or insurance companies that decide if you get a policy based on a simple Google search. It seems far away, but with this the first steps have been taken.

Related trends

• Coaching brands

Apple has patented light weight spectacles with extremely thin lenses, comparable with thicker lenses, they are steered via a laser that is connected to your belt via an optic cable. There is a battery in the apparatus on your belt.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Ever more technology is being developed to stimulate our senses as much as possible. This will make experiences in the virtual world much more realistic. This naturally also applies to brand experiences too.

Technical experts have succeeded in allowing people to steer their avatars in virtual worlds like Second Life by standing opposite a screen. By jumping, bending backwards, forwards, left or right it is possible to get the avatar to walk in the desired direction. It is also possible to fly by using certain movements of the hands. This is nice step forwards but there is still a long way to go.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Virtual worlds are becoming ever more real. In this example on a small screen in front of us later they will be projected life sized in front of us and, more importantly, around us. When we walk our avatar will walk in just the same way. When we speak our avatar will speak in exactly the same way (but in another language if necessary, or with a nice accent or with a gender switch if appropriate). When we look down at our own body whilst wearing the glasses we will see the avatars clothing rather than our own. Or no clothing if the avatar is naked. The virtual world is evolving into a more real world and our brains are having more trouble distinguishing real from virtual. Things are developing increasingly in that direction.

Twelve supermarkets will be using Vision Tracking technology from May. The consumer will wear a pair of glasses with a built in camera which registers everything that is looked at and the reaction it produces. The information gathered is to be coupled with the turn over figures.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Now the information is coupled to the turn over figures, but within a few years the local supermarket will know exactly what we look at, how we look at it, how we react to various stimuli and the effect that all this has on their turn over. Now glasses with a built in camera are used, but soon it will be done via micro cameras and screens in our shopping trolleys. The perfect personalized route through the store and tailored sales advice will be shown in real time on the screen. Online and off-line environments will adapt increasingly to the consumer, based on the items that we are focusing on at any given moment our every whim will be served.

Two researchers have developed an Android application called Enkin that combines virtual maps with reality. This application couples Google maps with real time images from a telephone camera and show which object you are looking at and how far away itis. You will never get lost looking for your hotel again.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

In no time at all these applications will be common property. This means that you’ll only need to point your mobile at an object to know which object or building it is, how far away from you it is, which company is based there, how many people are currently there, what the opening hours are, what the contact information is and what projects the company/brand are working on or which family lives there! By coupling information from the real and virtual worlds and integrating it into equipment we will be helped and led by the had wherever we are.

ApriPoko is a prototype living room robot who will operate all sorts of devices for you. ApriPoke receives the infrared signals from remote controls and uses a voice to ask for the action requested by the remote control. The user can give an answer such as "I turn the radio on" or "I mute the sound". The next time you want to mute the sound you ask ApriPoko and he does it for you (from pt). Our environment is becoming increasingly responsive to our behaviour, our movements and our voice. We are becoming more used to an environment that adapts its self to us. In the long term brands will be able to anticipate dialogues with us. This development is a step in that direction.