Gadgets and clothes talking back to you on the way, say scientists

Get ready for video recorders that know what you like and automatically tape your favourite shows. And jackets carrying built-in mobile phones, and track suits that can analyse your tennis swing for flaws. All of these will come from miniaturised electronics, according to scientists who addressed the British Association meeting in Sheffield yesterday.

"Our homes will be filled with intelligent devices," said Dr Peter Saraga of Philips Research Laboratories. Electronics will be added to phones, toasters, televisions and clothing and these new creations "will improve and enhance our lifestyles". They will give us "what you want, where you want it, when you want it".

There will be nothing to stop fashion designers from creating a little black number that complains and nags you if you gain a few pounds. Video recorders will learn what you like to watch and automatically choose programmes for you during holidays.

These changes, Dr Saraga said, will kill off the notion of prime time television. Consumers will be able to record hundreds of hours of machine-selected shows for watching any time, presumably commercial-free, after automated editing.

The new devices will be speech and gesture-activated, he said, and will have intelligent displays that interact with the user.

"This is a technology that will offer the consumer huge options."

Prof John McCanny of Queen's University, Belfast, said information technology, television and digital broadcasting were converging into single combined products. These in turn would not be controlled by large computers but by small integrated microchips-specially designed for a given application.

"These are not pie-in-the-sky ideas," he said.

His group was already commercialising new types of microchips that could be used to provide cookers, videos and other home appliances with what Dr Saraga called "ambient intelligence." These developments are helping towards the development of the "laboratory on a chip," said Prof Andreas Manz, of Imperial College, London. These new chips will have active layers of chemical molecules, acting in a co-ordinated way, reminiscent of the way that chemicals are processed inside living cells.

They will be used for medical tests and diagnosis, chemical analysis and environmental studies, he said.