If you really want to know, switch on the mirror

By Aoife White

Date: 23/06/05

Mirror, mirror, on the wall, does my bum look big in this? If you are really looking for an answer, step inside the Philips HomeLab in Eindhoven where the Dutch consumer electronics giant carries out its research on future technology.

The laboratory looks like any normal home, from the Van Gogh prints on the walls to the food in the kitchen.

But it has one important difference: every move the residents make is recorded and logged for researchers.

People-friendly design is crucial for a company like Philips, which has tried out several new ideas in the three years the lab has been open. Human guinea pigs stay in the HomeLab for up to two weeks experimenting with novelties such as voice-recognition technology that plays you a song from your compact disc collection after you hum part of the tune.

Few high-level concepts make it to the shops. Philips worked intensively on an intelligent mirror fitted with cameras that can zoom in on your eyes as you put in contact lenses and show you the back of your head when you blow-dry your hair. The bathroom mirror doubles as a computer display, showing you how you would look in different clothes or bright sunlight. Researchers have linked the mirror to shavers and weighing scales to tell you how close a shave you need and when you should start to shape up.

"Technology-wise, it is ready," says Philips research spokesman Koen Joosse. But you will not find a computerised bathroom mirror in the stores in this form. Bathroom manufacturers and hotel outfitters have looked at the virtual dressing-room but only part of the concept really took off. Hotels loved the idea of a flat-screen mirror that was also a television - the perfect space-saver for small hotel bedrooms. The Mirror TV created such a stir that Philips launched a version for the consumer market in 2003. Its far more intelligent computer cousin still sits in manufacturing limbo.

At the Philips HomeLab in Eindhoven in the Netherlands research on future technology takes place.