Whenever I see amazing new design concepts such as these, I always come away less than impressed. Maybe its just the problems they attempt to address. For example:

We have seen video phones hundreds of times in movies. However, why can't we act naturally in front of videophone cameras? Conventional visual communications at a distance have been limited due to the display devices and terminals. This terminal enables showing of the surrounding atmosphere and group-to-group communication with a round display and a central super-wide-angle camera.

I guess that is a problem....maybe? Is it worth spending a ton of R&D money on? Not so sure. Especially when looking at the final product. It's basically a bird bath with a camera in the center.

Why all the fluff? Aren't there enough real problems to solve? Can't we find ways to make existing products easier to use? Can't we make our lives more efficient instead of throwing one more useless high-concept "imagine a world where" product into the mix?

Companies need to start thinking about how people actually live, instead of how they would like them to live. Then maybe some of the design concepts they create might actually make it to market.

Here is an idea for you: spend time and energy on making a self-aware refrigerator that reads the RFID chips in my food and tells me that I'm almost out of eggs, or that my milk is about to expire. Then send me a text message so I don't forget to stop at the grocery store. Then it would be helpful if it could generate dinner recipes based on what ingredients I have available so that I can make a nice meal without spending 30 minutes searching through the kitchen. Assimilate into my "life-flow" instead of forcing me to modify it.

There are plenty of existing things to fix without creating useless new ones. I'm all about progress and the advancement of technology, but lets make it useful. All this design fluff is like buying new paint to fix a crack in your foundation.

Or maybe I'm just jaded because I still don't have my damn flying car.