Star Trek Swoosh Doors

[Buffy]

Finally we have Star Trek swoosh doors:

At long last, some Japanese researchers have created an intelligent automatic sliding door. No longer must you wait patiently for the door to slowly judder open; no more must you be frustrated by doors accidentally opening as you walk by them. This intelligent door (video embedded below) even has the ability to match the size of the opening depending on the number of people walking towards it — and if it detects someone running towards it, it slides open at max speed. Yes, this is this glorious realization of the Star Trek sliding door that opens just in time for you to cross the threshold. (But no, sadly, it doesn’t make a whoosh sound. At least not yet…)

 

Source: "At long last, engineers create automatic sliding doors with Star Trek-like intelligence", Sebastian Anthony, Extreme Tech Newsletter/extremetech.com, 6/13/2014

 

Oh adding the "swoosh" would be a minor implementation detail. You could probably design them to have their own custom "doortone."

 

The video is pretty impressive:

 

 

But of course we still don't have Flying Cars....

 

 

Ancient astronauts didn't build the pyramids. Human beings built the pyramids, because they're clever and they work hard, :phones:

Buffy

[Gregb]

Looks good! I'm a little surprised it's taken this long!

[sanctus]

I just wonder what happens if change your mind in the last moment and instead of passing by at 1m distance you turn around:is max speed enough for this?

[CraigD]

Not to naysay, but Trekkie, please! Comparing UEC/Hokuyo Automatic Co’s door demo to a Star Trek door is a stretch.

 

It’s just a different – apparently better – door opener sensor that uses a camera and a computer program to track and predict people’s movement. The system tells the door opening motors to open different speeds, and can open the doors partially or fully, but the maximum opening speed is no greater than an ordinary powered sliding door – not surprising, because they are ordinary powered sliding doors. The only new part is the camera/computer/controller add-on.

 

STTOS doors are fast, opening completely less than 0.1 s, more in the realm of camera shutter than normal door speed. They don’t need (though I imagine as reimagined in the 1980s STTNG or later, they have) sophisticated, control systems – just sense when something is close to them, open so quickly that even for a fast moving person, they need to begin opening when they’re only a few cms away. If they’re camera based, they should use a dense array of cameras – not something that could defeat with bit of tape or chewing gum.

 

Some hobbyist have made their own STrek-style powered pocket doors, but I’ve yet to see one as fast as the actual 1960s sets’. Those, of course, all respectable trekkies know, were actually “powered” by people pulling cords off-set, their sensor/motion tracking system they eyes and brain.

 

Anybody can buy a $30 gadget from ThinkGeek.com to make the "swoosh" sound when someone passes through an ordinary doorway. Respectable trekkies know the original sound effect was is an analog mix of a recording of paper being pulled from an envelope, ending with one of shoes squeaking on a floor.

[Racoon]

How sealed are the doors?

Can they keep out biological weapons and space dust?

 

Otherwise everyone can see these at a grocery store.

[Deepwater6]

On that note we haven't really seen any breakthrough inventions or discoveries in the recent past. There is nothing that I can see that completely changed our society. Yes we have the micro-chip, computers, and cell phones, but how many years on have those inventions been around now?

 

Sure we see strides in medicine and science every year, but nothing along the lines of the automobile, the washing machine, or a microwave oven. Something profoundly transformed and completely changed our society for the better.

 

Am I missing something? Voyager spacecraft reaching interstellar space was a great accomplishment for man, but it didn't change our lives. Many people on Earth had no idea it even occurred. It was expected that by 2014 we would all be driving flying cars, but I don't see that coming anytime soon. 

[sanctus]

Deepwater, you missed one: Internet. That definitely changed (the western) society. Thatis a breakthrough "invention" in my opinion, it changed completely our behaviour, just like the washing machine, car etc.

[Elisa]

Looks good! I'm a little surprised it's taken this long!

 

Isn't it funny how with some things, it just seems like they should have been developed before someone finally got around to doing them, or that the technology has finally caught up with our ideas. I was laughing the other night (I know this isn't science or tech related...), but we were watching the World Cup and they sprayed the line for the players to stand behind with what looks like shaving cream. The British commentator said, "I can't believe it has taken us this long to figure out that we should do that!". :)

[PiSquare]

I am impressed by the fact that the door only slides open for people who intent entering. How many times have we all watched a door opening when someone is just passing by, walking a bit too close to the door and thus triggering the opening mechanism?

[CraigD]

Taking a longer look at the sensor on UEC/Hokuyo Automatic Co’s system, I realized I was wrong when I wrote

It’s just a different – apparently better – door opener sensor that uses a camera and a computer program to track and predict people’s movement.

The sensor isn’t a camera (like a Sony Playstation 3’s Eye) but a Lidar (like an Xbox360’s Kinect)

 

This is a plus in that it’ll work in the dark, but a minus in that it can’t see color or small features, so can’t do cool stuff like face recognition.

 

The linked article says “current automatic sliding doors are incredibly dumb things that generally only have two functions: If someone or something triggers the infrared sensor in front of the door, it opens — and if someone triggers the infrared sensor across the door’s threshold, it will stay open so that no one gets crushed”. That’s not correct for most of the automatic doors in my experience. Those use radar. Folk with police radar detectors in their cars noticed this before 1980, as they give false alarms when around – sometime over 100 m away from – many automatic doors.

 

It’s unclear what the UEC/HAC system would do if confronted with a person in a wheelchair, a dog, a cat, a metal mesh shopping cart or a tumbleweed.

 

Back on the STrek cannon, I think it’s assumed that those doors not only opened automatically, but did so only for people for whom they should open. I don’t recall STTOS giving any explanation of how this worked. In STTNG, it was hinted that people were tracked and the right doors opened for them via their communicator badges – vaguely the way like Apple’s iBeacon and similar Bluetooth-based proximity sensing schemes in our real world now.

[Eclogite]

I've stood in front of manually opening doors for several seconds frantically trying to remember what the sub-routine is for getting through them by hand. I was born to early.

[Noire]

That is really cool!  Our neighborhood store has automatic doors that never seem to work.  The outside door will open and I find myself standing in front of the interior door with nothing happening.  When did I get so lazy that I wait a few minutes expecting it to open before I just push it open?