Sometimes you see something which is so funny, mind boggling and interesting, even if there is no direct link to CAT-iq, that is should be mentioned.

Yesterday I saw a Pleo. Pleo is the first truly autonomous Life Form capable of emotions that allow personal engagement. Developed, produced and marketed by Ugobe.

UGOBE ’s multidisciplinary team has blended engineering, life sciences, philosophy, and artistic design and developed a unique set of core technologies. The company’s unique products, known as Life Forms, intend to blur the line between technology and life.

By integrating three disciplines—organic articulation with sensory response and autonomous behaviors—UGOBE aims to revolutionize robotics and transform inanimate objects into lifelike creatures. Inspired by its dream, the group coined the word ‘UGOBE’, which translates to: “You! Go and Be!” a creative reworking of Descarte’s “Cogito ergo sum”—“I think, therefore I am.”

The company’s vision is to inspire mystery and awe in people, provide extended novelty and entertainment, and ride the edge between popular culture and science fiction. In a private R&D facility, UGOBE works to recreate known species, engineer beneficial hybrids, and transform previously inanimate objects into lifelike creatures using its Life Operating

System platform. UGOBE is in the business of developing unique proprietary and patent-pending technologies. UGOBE  innovations are leading to real world applications and are related to work being done at MIT, CMU and a host of other universities, as well as technical and biological science companies around the world.

 

Pleo incorporates all the basic traits of autonomous life and is specifically engineered to mimic life and relate to its owner on a personal level. Pleo will let its user know how it feels at any moment, and he is capable of multiple expressions, including joy, aggression, sorrow, and fear—every Pleo will eventually exhibit a unique personality. Pleo can also sigh, sniff, sniffle, snore, cough, hiccup, and sneeze, and when Pleo is tired, he will become drowsy and go to sleep, and sometimes even dream. Pleo is equipped with sensors for sight, sound and touch. Pleo will stretch when he first wakes up, and may cry when frightened or hungry.

 

See what Pleo is and can do in this video.

 

 

 

I spoke with some executives of the company and we talked about the future Life Forms. One of the topics was integration with a  wireless standard. There might be the link with CAT-iq. Total new productconcepts, services and the like for operators, software developers and even  hardware vendors.

 

True, this is far away from the business of wireless home phones, but realise that this might create total new markets in the digital home of the future. 

 

Isaac Asimov is getting close now

 

 

 

Although not much information about CAT-iq and provisioning is available yet, we found a white paper from Tilgrin with IMS and provisioning where the topics.  CAT-iq and DECT were mentioned. 

 

A short abstract;

Leveraging IMS to Deliver More Services to the Home 

This paper focuses on Tilgin IMS@Home developments, its key functional modules and examples of the services and applications it facilitates. The paper also gives more definition to the new next-generation services that operators are showing interest in.

 

This part is about DECT and CAT-iq 

 

 

For ISDN markets, the home gateways require not only POTS interfaces to legacy phones, faxes, and modems, but also BR

emerging interest for integration of a next generation DECT / CAT-iq base station into the home gateway, supplying more functionality as well as using wideband voice codecs to deliver better than PSTN voice quality.

 

Here you can find the complete white paper.

SPIRIT DSP, member of DECT Forum has become a licensee of SPIRIT's proprietary low bit-rate voice codec, VoStoC, for built-in voice quality on its digital phone baseband processors and SoC (System on a Chip) solutions, through its acquisition of the former Cordless & VoIP terminals businesses of NXP Semiconductors.

 

DSP Group Inc. has a wide portfolio of SoC solutions for portable multimedia, short-range communication and VoIP applications. Last year, DSP Group, Inc. acquired the Cordless & VoIP terminals businesses from NXP to create a market leader in the cordless and VoIP residential telephony market. SPIRIT's VoStoC voice codec (http://www.spiritdsp.com/products/gateway/speech_codecs/vostoc) will be used inside DSP Group's digital phone baseband processors and SoCs for digital answering devices. SPIRIT's excellence in high-quality speech processing makes crystal clear voice possible across millions of communication devices.

 

As CAT-iq offers high-quality audio, this voice codec could be of valid for new to be introduced CAT-iq products.

In the consumer electronics industry, the digital set top box market has been one of the fastest growing market segments over the past decade, and 2007 was no exception, reports In-Stat. Strong demand from Free-to-Air satellite service, coupled with the expanding availability of digital cable TV and IPTV services, fueled a record-setting number of digital set top box unit shipments.

Recent research by In-Stat found the following:

• Worldwide digital set top box unit shipments reached 143 million in 2007, up sharply from 121 million in 2006.
  
• Satellite set top box unit shipments accounted for just over 50% of all global digital set top box unit shipments last year, while digital cable set top boxes made up 29% of total unit shipments.
  
• Worldwide digital set top box product revenues hit $14 billion in 2007, an increase of $3 billion over 2006 revenues.
  
• The market for semiconductor components inside digital set top boxes also grew significantly last year. The total value of semiconductors embedded in digital set top boxes increased to $7.7 billion in 2007.

 

This is not direcly relevant for CAT-iq as this standard doesn't support streaming video.

However. combinig both worlds, like is being done on a router (Wi-Fi and DECT today, Wi-Fi and CAT-iq tomorrow) opens new opportunities for hardware vendors, operators etc.

Besides this trend also means that fixed networks will keep their importance, and in some areas even will grow. 

 

 

Infineon Technologies AG announced a cost-effective DECT solution, which when combined with a DOCSIS® 3.0 chipset, produces a platform for North American cable service providers to deploy next-generation Voice-over-IP (VoIP) services operating over DECT 6.0 cordless telephones. The resulting platform, which combines Infineon’s COSIC™ modem and DUSLIC™-xT with Texas Instruments’ (NYSE: TXN) PUMA 5 chipset, enables system integrators to develop eMTA (Embedded Terminal Media Adapter) products that conform to the latest standards in DOCSIS 3.0 (Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification), and the latest DECT 6.0 / CAT-iq™ cordless telephony standards.

The new platform unlocks additional revenue potential for cable service providers by offering the benefits of a user-installable VoIP solution, which require no home phone wiring or truck rolls, with extended features that enable the provision of additional revenue-generating services to the end user. The consumer will benefit from interference-free cordless phones that offer wideband audio (“HD” sound) and support for multiple concurrent calls to separate external parties, along with new Internet-like applications on the handset, such as access to online address books, buddy lists, and stock and weather tickers. The eMTA with integrated DECT 6.0 is also capable of continued service during power failure since the base station is powered by the eMTA’s standby battery, and the handsets feature more than 170 hours of standby and over 15 of talk-time.

 

See the complete article here.

Single-chip solutions enables compact, cost-effective DECT handsets with CAT-iq support

 

SiTel Semiconductor and Siemens Home and Office Communication Devices today announced that Siemens' latest family of Gigaset DECT and CAT-iq cordless phones are powered by SiTel's SC14480 single-chip DECT / CAT-iq solution. Combining radio and baseband functionality in one IC, the SC14480 reduces bill of materials, assembly costs and system size. It is also the first single-chip DECT / CAT-iq solution to enter full-scale production.

 

Siemens is using the SC14480 in the handset, basestation and base with answering machine of four models in its Gigaset range. The IC allows standard DECT handsets to offer CAT-iq support. In addition, its impressive processing power means the new phones can offer 8 kHz voice enhancement and full duplex echo canceling for standard and wideband audio for the highest sound quality. The SC14480 also enables text-to-speech services and complete Midi functionality including 32 voices, wave table and FM synthesis.

 

 

See the complete article here.