FUTURE DIGS 2001.

Don't just take a peek, step on in ... to your future digs. Your "Intelligent Home" is waiting just for you. It's rigged walls and furniture. It features hidden monitors and speech recognition devices, among other sci-tech wonders.

Feel like taking a nap? Stretch out, and room sensors will automatically dim lights and shut the blinds. Can't find your wallet? "Your wallet is under the so a, a speaker in your den might announce. Need to jot something on your computer? It's

Researchers and scientists are already at work on gizmos like these to cater to your every whim.

"Tomorrow's technology is fun and quirky," says futurist Marian Salzman, co-author of Next: Trends for the Future (Overlook Press, expected U.S. publication date, 1999).

What are some amazing features of tomorrow's future digs, and what's the cool science behind them? Read on.

Health Flush

Some day you'll answer nature's call and get a health check-up--right on a toilet. Toto Ltd, a Japanese company, manufactures a toilet that, like a personal doctor, conducts medical tests after you've urinated.

A wand tipped with chemically sensitive paper, much like the pH testing paper in a school chemistry lab, dips into your urine to measure levels of blood sugar--the key indicator of diabetes.

Meanwhile, you would insert your forefinger in the toilet's armrest to check your blood pressure, the force exerted by blood against the walls of your blood vessels as blood is pumped by your heart. Test results are displayed on a screen affixed to the toilet and, in some cases, sent via the Internet to your doctor's office.

When will these toilets debut in the U.S.? No answers yet.

Read On

Feel like checking out the latest Stephen King thriller? Soon you'll be able to download your book of choice from an Internet bookstore--and read it right on a laptop tablet equipped with a color screen.

Four brands of paperless, portable electronic books, or E-books, introduced this winter promise to change the way you read. E-books are just mini-computers. Depending on the brand you buy, you can still see the original book cover, read side-by-side pages as you do now, and write in the margins.

But the "book" is empty until you visit an electronic bookstore on the Internet and download the pages for your book of choice. That's why the E-book is hitting shelves now. The Internet has become so fast that book-size portions of text and graphics can move through phone lines in minutes.

The smallest of the new brands, the Millennium Reader, weighs less than .4 kilograms (1 pound). Still, it holds 4,000 pages of text, or 10 full-length books. The lithium batteries last about 16 hours, so you can stay up all night reading.

Will the E-book kill the printed page? "Absolutely not," says Kim Woodward, marketing director of Softbook Press, soon to release its own E-book. "It will expand the audience for books, just like the VCR did for movies."

The good news: E-books could free students from hauling stacks of textbooks. The bad news: prices range from $200 to $1,600!

Super Screen

What if a pair of sunglasses could double as a big-screen TV? Japanese Eye Trek goggles mimic the sensation of a 1.5-meter (5-foot) screen by combining liquid crystal display (sealed liquid crystal that darkens when an electric field is applied to it) with a lightweight prism (a wedge-shaped glass that disperses light). Don't get too excited: you have to fly first-class on Japan Airlines to sample it.

Green Machine

Hate wasting Saturday afternoons mowing the lawn? Send a robot out in the hot sun while you sip a cola in the shade. Now being fine-tuned at the University of Florida's Machine Intelligence Laboratory, the battery-powered LawnShark will trim the yard (or an entire golf course) without anyone to push or guide it.

The 16-kilogram (35-pound) machine moves 0.3 meters (1 foot) per second. It can even climb a 15-degree hill. It crisscrosses the lawn at random angles, eventually snipping every last blade. As it roams, it scans for obstacles by using four infrared beams. Infrared is a type of invisible radiation along the electromagnetic spectrum that lies just beyond the range of human sight, and that can detect various grades of heat.

If the LawnShark's infrared beam encounters a lawn chair or sleeping dog, the mower detects the infrared light reflected off these objects. Then it stops, turns, and heads off in another direction.

What stops the LawnShark from attacking neighbors' flowers? It computes its location by receiving sonar signals, short bursts of high-frequency sound. The signals are emitted from transmitters planted at all coners of the lawn. By comparing angles of the incoming signals, the mower's computer calculates its location. The system, in short, is programmed to stay home. Best of all: the LawnShark will never complain.

Cool Cooking

Like most prototypes, or test models, the Electrolux Teo is designed to wow you with its sleek futuristic look. But the real heat wave of the future will come from a new generation of ovens that use induction heating (cooking with an electromagnetic force, instead of flames) to warm pots--but nothing else. You'll never accidentally fry your fingers on the stove again.

How does it work? Electricity flows through metal coils, creating a temporary electromagnetic field (a combination of electric and magnetic waves) that heats anything composed of iron (but not aluminum), including special cookware placed on the stovetop. The cookware--along with, say, the spaghetti inside--heats up as the magnetic force stirs the molecules (the smallest particles of a substance that can exist on their own). The stove's glass top is not heated by the magnetic field since it contains no iron. It stays cool.

Not to be outdone, the British-based NCR Corp. is developing the "microweb," a microwave oven with a built-in television and computer. Surf the Web or watch MTV while zapping popcorn. Just don't burn it!

Roving Robot

Imagine if Grandma could help you out with homework, offer dinner ideas, and scold your unruly dog--all from her house 2,000 miles away. That's what computer scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, had in mind when they invented the Personal Roving Presence (PROP), a four-wheeled robot equipped with video camera, hand-size screen, speaker, and microphone.

Imagine that your family is busily tending to daily activities, and the robot is taking in every detail--recording full-motion video, picking up sounds, and following the action of the scene around it.

If Grandma has a computer, even thousands of miles away, she'll be able to see and hear everything the robot sees and hears by logging onto a specially designated Web site. Through that site, all the robot's actions are transferred. And if Grandma wants to see your dog and not you anymore, she can remotely pass instructions through the Internet site to literally turn the robot around. She can even wave "hello" or "good-bye" by passing instructions through the Net to the robot's small arm.

One cool wrinkle? A computer stationed near the PRoP translates the Web commands into radio signals (electromagnetic waves transmitted through space) and beams them out to the ProP, so it doesn't have to be plugged in. "It feels more or less like being there," says co-inventor John Canny.

Fabric Touch

Ever shopped over the internet? If you crave something pictured in an online shopping site for, say, The Gap, you just click the mouse, arrange to pay, and--presto! it's yours. But what if you want to run your fingers across that parka or feel those fuzzy pajamas before you buy? Right now, you'd have to go to a store. What a drag!

Luckily, a device called the Phantom Haptic Interface invented by SenSable Technologies of Cambridge, Massachusetts, will give you the odd sensation of touching something you can see but can't actually touch. The computer translates the texture of the item you're looking at into digital code, the language of electrical pulses that drives computers and semiconductors. The computer relays the code to a device attached to it that looks like a thimble. The thimble, adjusted 1,000 times a second, exerts just the right force against your finger to simulate the feel of the objects on your screen--be they fluffy fur or patent leather.

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SMART THREADS

That new sweater hanging, in your closet today may be cool, but it's mighty dumb compared to your future clothes. Tomorrow's smart fashion trend? Wearable computers, say scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Laboratory.

It's likely in the next few years that microprocessors, the central brains of computers, will be so small, thin, and lightweight they'll be wearable--and the machine you now call a computer will be woven directly into your clothing. Patterns on your dress, sweater, or shirt (known as "smartkerchiefs") will be your keyboard. You will type directly onto your chest.

DIGITAL SPECS

Even if you don't need them, you'll wear eyeglasses, which will double as a computer screen. Tiny letters and numbers will scroll across a corner of the eyeglass lens even as you are peering out at the world. Wearable computers will alert you that you've got e-mail and keep track of appointments, too.

THE BODY ELECTRIC

And why not let your wearable computer clothes transmit electrical signals using your body? Your body already conducts small amounts of electricity. Scientists at MIT have figured out how to harness that electricity and transfer data (bits of digital information) from one wearable computer, through that person's body, to another person and then to his or her computer clothes. The method of information transfer: a handshake -- not so highly charged, of course, as to shock you. Just think, you can hand in tomorrow's homework by slipping your teacher a high-five.