10 New Technologies That’ll Impact the World Big Time.
Mind blowing technologies that will change the world
1. Artificial Intelligence
Yep we’re talking about robots, but not the robots that you saw on StarWars, lots of them like Alexa and Siri. You can’t even see because they’re a computer program. What makes them robots is the fact they can take data, analyse it and learn from it and keep on getting more intelligent or the ones on google and Facebook that figure out what ads they should make pop up on your screen and for when you actually leaving the living room. Robots are already helping us build stuff in factories, analyse financial reports, act as virtual nurses for patients. In the future we could be talking about robots we have in our houses that will be able to Cook for us do all kinds of boring jobs and outside of our houses doing dangerous ones like fighting fires or picking up radioactive waste and a whole load of other things.
2. Brain Computer Interfaces
Imagine being able to Control a computer mouse and a keyboard or a drone with not a set of controls but just by thinking about it or hearing music not from speakers but that’s being streamed straight into your brain. Maybe that thought blows your mind or perhaps it even creeps you out, either way it’s already being developed and it’s coming soon and leading the way is Elon Musk’s company Neuralink which is looking at ways to implant a chip into your brain that will be able to communicate with computers. If the thought creeps you out a bit you’re not alone but the idea behind it is to help people compete with super intelligent robots and it also aims to cure disorders like depression and addiction by rewiring brain patterns.
3. 3D printing
This is old news, well yes but it’s about to go to a whole new level. Of course we’re not talking about those craft videos that come up on your own Facebook feed with decorations people have made with 3D printing. 3D printing fashion accessories, even car parts is kind of old school now. More cutting edge are 3D printed organs that use patient cells which will mean they don’t have to wait for an organ donor. In China they’ve 3D printed an entire apartment block and the future of 3D printed buildings could bring down the price of and solve the problem of homelessness. Also 3D printed rockets could be on the way too. NASA’s already made a 3D printed rocket injector and the California-based company “Relativity Space” aims to make the first fully 3D printed space rockets for a fraction of what they cost now and by throwing a bit of AI into the mix, the technology will be able to detect faults in the design and improve on next. But they’re not there yet, first they need to figure out how 3D print something that’s 100 feet tall and out of a material that can withstand the temperatures of take off.
4. Living Robots
These are completely different robot, no not one that’s so cute, it makes you think it’s alive. These so-called living robots are made of a real living tissue and could revolutionise medicine. Scientists have taken stem cells from frogs and they’ve used computer programs to assemble them into blobs, about a milli meter in diameter. They’re not robots as we know them and even though they come from living tissue, they’re not classes as animals either. They’re tiny programmable organisms that can move independently and could even work together as a team. They might even be able to self-heal their wounds, remove plaque from human arteries or take medicine into patients bodies. It’s fascinating stuff.
5.Augmented Reality
If you’ve played Pokemon Go, you’ve already used AR. But chasing Pokemon is just the tip of the iceberg with this exciting technology and the boundaries are just going to keep growing. Overlaying digital images onto real life backgrounds could have all kinds of applications in the future like the AR manuals. Think of the last time you had to fix a car engine but weren’t sure what you had to do, forget tutorials on youtube, soon enough you will be able to put on a pair of AR glasses or contact lenses and then look at the engine. With the help of a bit of AI, the software will analyse the problem and then show you exactly what you to do and then give you feedback on whether you’re doing it right. How about a city guide that doesn’t just show you the best restaurants and nightlife on a map but will point it out to you in real time with menus and review appearing next to them. And instead of seeing advertising billboards in the city your AR glass will show you virtual adverts tailored for you which means it’s got big potential for advertising as well or what about doing some online shopping for clothes and see yourself wearing them even though you’ve never been anywhere near them. Getting a preview of how furniture will look in your even though it is still in the warehouse or conference calling someone on the other side of the world and having them appear on your couch. These are just a few things AR could be bringing to us soon.
6. Tactile Virtual Reality
For any gamers out there you’ll know when you get hit in a game and you feel a dull thud from your control panel. That is the concept, tactile or haptic feedback but it’s about to be taken to a whole new level. Imagine the same idea but in a body suit with sense transmitters all over it. It’ll mean that your VR experience lets you feel the experience as well as see and hear it. Body suits like these that let you feel as well as see and hear virtual worlds are already on the market, and they have uses in sports training, rehabilitation and gaming too. The technology is also being tested for training surgeons in simulation programs for practicing complicated surgery. It helps to be able to feel the resistance of body tissued when they are being cut into. Programs that can do this make the training more realistic and are already in development.
7. Self-Driving Vehicles
Self-Driving vehicles are already on the market but what’s being done so far is only the tip of the iceberg. For all the companies out there, the goal is level 5 automation. That means there’s no steering wheels or pedals. The passenger just Inputs where they want to go and the car does all the work, that means we could be looking at the future where most people don’t own a car. Instead there’s just a fleet of self-driving vehicles on the road which you just jump into and enjoy the ride. Not so great if you love being behind the wheels but it promises to reduce congestion and pollution and it could make parking lots obsolete and free up the space for other uses. And speaking of self-driving vehicles why stop at cars, in Dubai, the world’s first autonomous drone taxis are in development. The company that develop them aims to launch by 2023 and they estimate that by 2030 a quarter of journeys in will be by drone taxi.
8. Hyperloop
When it comes to transport of the future, if drone taxis aren’t exciting enough for you, maybe this will be. Imagine doing long distance journeys at a speed even faster than a jet plane but without having to be airborne and potentially with zero carbon impact. Well that’s something Elon Musk is working on. It’s a joint project between Tesla and SpaceX. And it’s called the Hyperloop. It works by placing a pod inside a tunnel with low air pressure. And as the air resistance and friction are low it can travel at hypersonic speeds. In testing they’ve reached 460 km/hr. They aim to get that up to 1200 km/hr. That’s faster than a commercial jet. And Elon tells us that it will work even better on Mars where there’ll be no need for tunnel because there’s almost no atmosphere there. Good to know.
9. Hydrogen Power
The hunt is on for alternatives to fossil fuels and a carbon neutral feature. Everybody with common sense knows it’s the way forward apart from people working for oil companies or whose election campaigns are funded by them. We’ve all heard about electric cars but another option that doesn’t pollute is hydrogen power. Hydrogen fuel cells to power engines have been around for a while. In 2015 Toyota produced a car that runs on hydrogen. And by the end of 2019 they only sold 10000 of them. Not a huge number that’s because there’s still problems to deal with, before hydrogen really takes off. First even if Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe it’s still difficult to put it into pure form that makes it expensive. By the mile, it’s about four times as expensive as gasoline. Second, it’s highly flammable which makes it dangerous. Yes gasoline is also flammable but not as difficult or dangerous to store as hydrogen. And this makes the technology more expensive. And a hydrogen vehicle costs twice as much as a comparable vehicle that runs on gas. But the search is on to make hydrogen more available, safer and cheaper and if we could all that, hydrogen could b the power of the future.
10. Energy-Storing Bricks
If you think you’ve got too many wires i the house this one could be for you because soon enough instead of having your electricity coming through wires, it could be stored in your walls. Combine that with the few solar panels on your roof and we could be looking at steps towards carbon neutral living. And we’re talking about regular building bricks the world’s most familiar building material just ones that have been modified by scientists. The fact they contain iron oxide makes them red. They’re rechargeable and there’s also talk about them being able to directly turn the sun’s heat into energy. That would mean you wouldn’t even need a solar panel on your roof. The science on this is still on its early stages but a proof-of-concept brick has been developed at the university of st.Louis and Washington. It can even power devices apart from storing them.
