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Biometrics technologies have made enormous advances in recent years. Many airports already use finger-print or iris scanners to protect borders, and Google employs iris scanners to control access to its data centers.

Imagine a world where you can talk to almost any electronic device in your household; you give commands to your fridge, your microwave, your car, your mobile and your TV without pressing a single button. Your voice is the sole control of the actions that you want executed by the device in question. It is a hands-free society, ruled by voice and gesture recognition. But aren’t we there already? There’s voice control technology out there that allows making simple requests like ‘call Fred.’ However, there’s one fundamental question about this technology; how intelligent are these human-machine conversations?

Do you dream about conversational virtual assistants that recognize your voice? First try to talk to your search engine. Your voice will be recorded, transcribed subsequently by the speech server, and then sent back as text. With Google Voice Recognition application users can talk to the computer through a microphone and search for results by speaking, as presented on the video below.

You’re walking down the street and passing by a multiservice kiosk. Would you like a virtual guide to be at your service? This video demonstrates how it could look like - watch it and check for yourself if it’s worth using.

At the Computer Human Interaction conference in Atlanta (12/5/2010), Simon the Robot demonstrated he has more capabilities than before. Originally he was only able to move some blocks very slowly, now he is capable of learning household chores without commanding him all over again or having to pre program him with a set of tasks. For example, Simon identifies colourful items: a blue book, a green plastic case, a red flower and several others, and puts them into the corresponding colours bin.

Do you ever ask yourself if you are going to need an umbrella today? Or: ‘Where can I get a green tea latte’? Or: ‘What’s up this weekend’? With a new free iPhone 3GS app Siri, you simply ask these questions by talking to your phone. Your question will be interpreted and displayed and suggestions will follow immediately. Very, very cool.

And when you feel like travelling this weekend, you can just continue your questions after ‘what’s up this weekend?’ by asking: ‘How about San Francisco?’, as if you would speak to a real person. Sire will recognize that you’re still interested in something to do for the weekend as it’s context sensitive.

Awesome! Also check out review below the fold showing more examples of how you can use

Microsoft’s Project Natal delivers a new addon to your XBox that allows you to play without controller. The system has a 3D camera that maps the exacts position of your hands, your fingers, your feet, your header, your nose, everything in a 3D map. This allows you to control the game with only your body, in great detail, and no controller needed. Furthermore, it recognises voice and faces and supports complex video chat.