DATELINE–Cologne, Germany

The ballots are in for this year’s Ramelli Ingenuity Award in Technological Experiments (RIATE). The annual awards ceremony honors some of the most intriguing inventions in the research and development pipelines of high-technology companies around the world. Several thousand guests of the RIATE Committee attended this year’s ceremony which was held at the K–lnMesse in Cologne, Germany.

The RIATE award is named after Agostino Ramelli, a French inventor from the 16th century famous for his book of technical experiments entitled “The Various and Ingenious Machines of Agostino Ramelli.” Previous years’ winners include Artemis Research for their WebTV console (U.S.A.), Kawakami for the Battery Free Mobile Phone (Japan), and RiceTec AG’s patented BAS-867 (Liechtenstein).

From a diverse field of over 200 contestants, 12 companies are selected for honorable mention and four lucky candidates are deemed finalists. Highly coveted in engineering circles, the RIATE award brings both fame and fortune to the finalists who are rewarded with a hefty cash prize of $250,000 for their “contribution to the noble tradition of man-made wonders.”

This year’s finalists include a smart phone, an anti-growth hormone, a pill that simulates altitude sickness and a portable MRI scanner.

The American Motorola Corporation captured top honors for its Intelligent Personal Operator TM , a cellular telephone with a built-in computer that can speak with a human voice. At first glance, the IPO TM looks like a standard Motorola cell phone and uses conventional AMPS/NAMPS analog technology to transmit telephone calls.

But what sets the IPO TM apart from any other portable telephone on the market is its ability to make calls on its own. At the heart of the IPO TM are Motorola’s most advanced semiconductors which allow the phone’s built-in computer to synthesize the human voice and handle such complex operations as interacting with a live caller.

In an on-stage demonstration, a representative from Motorola received a call, literally, from his IPO TM phone. The call was a reminder: “Hey Max, don’t forget to thank the 68HC05s Team when you get up the podium.” This was not a previously recorded message. Rather, the IPO TM phone had received a call from a Motorola engineer in Austin, Texas, and engaged the live caller in a brief conversation. After chatting with the engineer long enough to discern his reason for calling, the IPO TM bid him a casual goodbye and proceeded to call the IPO TM ’s user with the above message.

Not only can the IPO TM handle incoming calls like a human operator, it can also make outgoing calls to both its owner and just about anyone else. The IPO TM can be “taught” how to make calls through either direct conversations with its user or a software interface. Using this innovative feature, the IPO TM ’s owner can call the IPO TM to let it know that an important package is in the mail. The IPO TM can then use this information to call the shipping company and/or the owner’s secretary to check up on the status of the delivery. Then, based on its owner’s activity patterns, the IPO TM selects an appropriate moment to call its user with the update.

Unlike the voice emulation-recognition machines of the past, the IPO TM ’s high-speed circuitry allows it to mimic and understand the pauses, noises and slips that regularly occur in normal speech. This ability also allows the IPO TM to reproduce faithfully its owner’s voice as well as that of a friend or family member. After the RIATE awards, a demo IPO TM fielded questions from the press alternately employing the voices of its inventor, a well-known news anchor, Motorola’s CEO, and, humorously, the voice of the inventor’s mother. Motorola plans to bring the Intelligent Personal Operator TM to market by 2002.

The second prize went to the Japanese biotechnology firm Cosmobio Corporation Ltd. for RGHR-214, a recombinant growth hormone receptor antagonist that retards maturation in mammals. Recent clinical trials of RGHR-214 have focused on the hormone’s success rate in domestic animals. If administered within 60 days of birth, RGHR-214 can arrest all further growth without any significant side effects. Cats, dogs and other small mammals treated with Cosmobio’s synthetic hormone receptor antagonist will live out their natural life span as baby animals.

The Swiss NutriaRX was awarded third place honors for its HemoStop TM dietary supplement. Developed to assist mountaineers training for extreme high-altitude climbs, HemoStop TM induces the pathophysiology of altitude illnesses. The new supplement uses a hemoglobin oxygen binding inhibitor to impair the body’s ability to process 02 resulting in the swelling of cells. HemoStop TM thus produces symptoms of mild Hypoxia at any altitude, allowing professional mountain climbers and everyday athletes alike to experience Mt. Everest-like conditions anywhere.

And, finally, FONAR, an American company founded by the pioneer of nuclear magnetic resonance scanning, received fourth place for its MPATH scanner, an experimental hand-held MRI device. The MPATH is a miniature version of the company’s “open MRI” system which provides doctors with a non-invasive method of examining human tissue in three dimensions. Using “probability map” target modeling software previously designed for the military, the briefcase-sized MPATH is able to analyze minute changes in the brain’s chemistry. FONAR hopes a future version of the MPATH scanner will be used by doctors and therapists to verify the emotional state and possibly the thoughts of their patients.