Wow! If you’re near Selfridges pop in and check out Mr.Asahi the robot bartender - I particularly like the way they’ve made his appearance and actions quite human (he even gives you a bit of banter too!), a vast improvement on Asahi’s previous attempt the Motoman RoboBar.
Heard an interesting talk today by one of the other interaction designers in the BBC, he had a background in designing for mobile devices and was mentioning what the future was in this field. Obviously most people would say that multi-touch devices like Apple’s iPhone are gonna have a big place, however the other technology that may be on the horizon soon is less about touching the screen and more about gesturing towards it.
Nokia have apparently filed a patent recently which uses ultrasonic transducers to emit sound waves which are then reflected back when fingers and hands block the path. This essentially means that the phone can recognise hand and finger movements in three dimensional space Minority Report style!
More info on unwiredview.com