IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 42

the Pacific. Since then, unmanned Dragon
capsules have docked with the ISS, bringing cargo, and SpaceX is working toward
the day when its spacecraft will also ferry
crew up and down.
Pearce's department is responsible for
all the electronics in the SpaceX rockets
and capsules, which include sensors, communications equipment, guidance and
navigation systems, and engine-control
mechanisms. Each component must be
robust enough to stand up to high temperatures, intense vibration, and radiation. And the systems have to do their
jobs even when isolated malfunctions
occur, so that one failure doesn't bring
down the entire mission.
Pearce currently oversees avionics
R&D, leading a group of about 60 people.
On his to-do list is the development of
sensors for SpaceX's newest project,
a reusable rocket known as Grasshopper,
which has already completed several
vertical-takeoff, vertical-landing test
flights. Reusable rockets are key to Musk's
vision of bringing life to other planets,
because they're far more economical.
He has argued that fully reusable space
vehicles could reduce the cost of reaching orbit by a factor of 100.
So what's it like to work for a daredevil
entrepreneur who is trying to reinvent
the aerospace industry? According to
Pearce, the best and the worst things
about working for Musk are actually the
same. "He doesn't feel the need to make
reasonable requests," Pearce says. "The
whole idea of SpaceX is not reasonable.
The idea that a dot-com millionaire could
take [US] $100 million and start a rocket
company that within 13 years would be
taking supplies to the International Space
Station, that's on track to take crew to
the International Space Station-that's
not reasonable."
Having a boss who dreams big makes
work extremely exciting and challenging, says Pearce. "But at the same time,
you can never say to Elon, 'You're asking
us to do that, but that's not reasonable.'
You have to either figure out how to do
it or get as close as you can," he says.
Reusable rockets? They're working on it.
A manned expedition to Mars? They'll
tackle that next. -eliza str ick l a nd
42

fEb 2014

nORTh aMERICan

the Willy Wonka
of electronics
Sony'S Jun rekimoto DreamS uP
GaDGetS for tHe far future

un rekimoto
stands in the corner of
his office, frowning at a
small white refrigerator.
He's not worrying about
his diet-in fact, there's no food inside.
Rather, he's showing off a new method of
interactivity with the world of appliances,
as a red frowny face lights up on the door
of the fridge. "You see, it won't open until
I smile," he says, pulling on the door to
demonstrate that it's locked shut. Then
the pensive researcher's face is transformed by a beaming grin. The fridge
responds with a smiley face of its own, in
bright green, and the door swings open.
This emotionally engaged fridge is
one of Rekimoto's many inventions for
Sony, but don't expect to see expressive
appliances in stores anytime soon. Sony,
as one of the most successful consumerelectronics companies on the planet, has
plenty of research-and-development
labs devoted to improving its televisions,
computers, cameras, and so forth. But
Rekimoto works at Sony Computer
Science Laboratories (CSL), in Tokyo,
an exclusive scientific sanctum where
researchers are encouraged to pursue
their wackiest ideas and push the limits
of technology. Rekimoto needn't concern himself with whether or not his
creations will turn into products in the
near term, because Sony wants him to
invent gadgets for a future that consumers haven't even imagined yet.
rekimoto trained his own imagination
early. He became fascinated by computers when he was growing up in Tokyo,
and in 1971, at the tender age of 10, he
went to a bookstore and purchased a

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textbook about programming. There
was only one barrier to his learning:
The personal computer didn't exist yet,
and a 10-year-old wasn't likely to gain
access to a university's mainframe. So
he wrote out his programs in a notebook and imagined the results. "I wrote
them down like a mantra," he says, "like
magic words."
Nowadays he has plenty of computers at his disposal. Rekimoto is sitting
in his office at the University of Tokyo-
he added a professorship in information
science to his job at Sony a few years ago.
The table in front of him is littered with
miscellaneous electronic parts and tiny
screwdrivers, finished projects hang
from the walls and sit stacked on shelves,
and a team of graduate students work
in the lab across the hall.
Although Rekimoto's projects are
wide-ranging, most focus on the interfaces between humans and technology.
The topic first fascinated him during
his undergraduate studies at the Tokyo
Institute of Technology in the early 1980s.
There, he came across an article by Alan
Kay, a legendary computer scientist from
Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center, that
discussed graphical computer interfaces.
Rekimoto loved the idea, and decided to
devote his career to crafting new ways for
people to interact with machines.
After earning both bachelor's and
master's degrees in information science, Rekimoto took a job in the R&D
department of NEC Corp., a computer
and communications giant, where he
worked on interfaces for Unix. Had he
followed the traditional Japanese career
path, Rekimoto would have stayed at NEC
until retirement. But in 1993, when he

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum February, 2014