Surface computing meets home automation: ROSIE Coffee table touch-panel

Surface computing is moving full steam ahead and this latest release from Savant is another reminder that even the wireless mouse is an outmoded piece of technology. The ROSIE Coffee Table Touchpanel Controller offers the latest is home automation functionally coupled with interactive multimedia capabilities.

The ‘ROSIE’ home control system was recognized earlier this year by Electronic House magazine when it was selected as one of its Electronic House Products of the Year for 2007. The same controller house now been integrated into an Apple-based touch panel coffee table that connects to iTunes, digital cameras, IP network cameras, business card readers and various high-tech devices around the home.

Victor Saverino, director of product management at Savant said, " The ROSIE Coffee Table is truly the evolution of interactive technology—it can seamlessly download photos from digital cameras, play music, movies, and TV shows as well as accomplish complete home control all from within one elegant forty-inch interface."

ROSIE is designed to offer users in the home a number of different furniture styles ranging from contemporary to traditional. The emphasis of ROSIE is on reliability and a maintenance-friendly open platform.

Microsoft is almost ready to roll-out similar offering called “The Surface”, a 30-inch coffee table display that not only enables direct interaction with digital content, but also responds to natural gestures and physical objects. The products also differ in that The Surface is aimed at public spaces in hotels, retail establishments, restaurants and public entertainment venues rather than the family living room.

Both ROSIE and The Surface are indicative of the continued convergence of practical and entertainment technologies in effort to consolidate our over crowded lives.