BAE Systems may have a cool wrist watch display for their planned spider robot surveillance devices (see MAST Spider Robots Like Minority Report for more information).
This picture is excerpted from this cool video of the BAE spider robots, recently released by BAE Systems. In their video, the spider robots deploy from a Packbot.
Anyway, I kind of liked the idea of a kind of wrist band or wrist bracelet that would give you a small screen monitor for surveillance footage provided by remote robots. I especially liked the idea when I read it in 1980, in Roger Zelazny's excellent novel Changeling.
The giant mechanical bird deposited Mark Marakson on the hilltop. Mark brushed back the soft green sleeve of his upper garment and pressed several buttons on the wide bracelet he wore upon his left wrist. The bird took flight again, climbing steadily. He controlled its passage with the wristband and saw through its eyes upon the tiny screen in the bracelet's center.
The oldest reference to the general idea of a small screen that showed live surveillance video, as far as I know, is the raytron apparatus from Ray Cummings' 1928 novel Beyond the Stars.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 5/5/2008)
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!)
is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for
the Invention Category that interests
you, the Glossary, the Invention
Timeline, or see what's New.
Humanoid Robots Building Humanoid Robots
''Pardon me, Struthers,' he broke in suddenly... 'haven't you a section of the factory where only robot labor is employed?''
Stratospheric Solar Geoengineering From Harvard
'Pina2bo would have to operate full blast for many years to put as much SO2 into the stratosphere as its namesake had done in a few minutes.'