Technology is improving rapidly, offering new innovations and revolutionary projects every year. At any given moment, scientists, engineers, and some very sharp minds are creating the next future technology that will change our lives. It feels like scientific progress is steady, but over the past half-century, we've experienced a period of tremendous technological advancement.
There are innovations happening now that are ripped straight out of science fiction. Whether it's robots that can read minds, NFTS, bionic eyes, sweat-powered smartwatches, or many other exciting technologies, there's a lot to look forward to in the world of future technology. We've picked out some of the biggest and most interesting ideas below.
No longer a science fiction metaphor, the use of brain-reading technology has improved dramatically in recent years. One of the most interesting and practical uses we've seen tested so far comes from researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne.
Thanks to machine learning algorithms, robotic arms, and brain-computer interfaces, these researchers have managed to create a way for quadriplegics (people who can't move their upper or lower limbs) to interact with the world.
In tests, the robotic arm will perform simple tasks, such as maneuvering around obstacles. The algorithm will then use EEG caps to interpret signals from the brain and automatically determine when the arm has made a movement that the brain considers incorrect, such as moving too close to an obstacle or moving too fast.
Over time, the algorithm can adjust to personal preferences and brain signals. In the future, this could lead to brain-controlled wheelchairs or assistive machines for quadriplegics.
3D printing is a promising industry for everything from inexpensive home construction to affordable, sturdy armor, but one of the most interesting uses of the technology is building 3D-printed bones.
Ossiform specializes in medical 3D printing, using tricalcium phosphate, a material with similar properties to human bone, to create different bone substitutes tailored to patients.
Using these 3D printed bones is very easy. Hospitals can perform MR*** vibration imaging and then send it to Ossiform, which creates a 3D model of the desired patient-specific implant. The surgeon receives the design, and then once it's printed, it's ready to be used in surgery.
What's special about these 3D-printed bones is that thanks to the use of tricalcium phosphate, the body will remodel the implant into vascularized bone. This means that they will be able to fully restore the function that the bone it replaces has. For optimal integration, the implants have a porous structure with large holes and channels for cells to attach to and remodel the bone.
You've heard of cultured "meat" and Wagyu steaks grown cell-by-cell in the lab, but what about other animal foods? A growing number of biotech companies around the world are working on lab-made dairy products, including milk, ice cream, cheese, and eggs. More than one thinks they have cracked it.
The dairy industry is not environmentally friendly, not even close. It contributes 4% of the world's carbon emissions, more than air travel and shipping combined, and there's a need for greener splashes in our teacups and cereal bowls.
Compared to meat, it's actually not that hard to make milk in a lab. Rather than growing it from stem cells, most researchers try to produce it in a fermentation process that produces the milk proteins whey and casein. companies such as Perfect Day, some of whose products are already available in the US, are currently focusing on recreating the taste and nutritional value of regular milk.
Beyond that, researchers are working on lab-produced mozzarella that melts perfectly on pizza, other cheeses, and ice cream.
Carbon emissions are a huge problem when it comes to commercial flights, but there's a potential solution, and it's already getting a lot of funding.
A ￡15 million UK project has unveiled plans for a hydrogen-powered airplane. The project, known as ZeroFly, is being led by the Institute of Aerospace Technology (IAT) in conjunction with the UK government***.
The project proposes a concept for a medium-sized aircraft powered entirely by liquid hydrogen. It would have the capacity to fly around half the globe non-stop with about 279 passengers.
If this technology is realized, it could mean zero-carbon flights with one stop between London and the western United States or from London to New Zealand.
In Star Trek, where many of our ideas for future technology germinated, humans could walk into medical pods and digitally scan their entire bodies for signs of disease and injury, and the makers of Q Bio say that doing so in real life would improve health while reducing the burden on doctors.
The U.S.-based company has built a scanner that can measure hundreds of biomarkers in about an hour, from hormone levels to fat buildup in the liver to inflammation markers or any number of cancers. It intends to use this data to generate a 3D digital avatar of the patient's body - called a digital twin - that can be tracked over time and updated with each new scan.
Q Bio CEO Jeff Kaditz hopes this will usher in a new era of preventative, personalized medicine, in which the vast amounts of data collected will not only help doctors prioritize which patients need to be seen most urgently, but also allow for the development of more sophisticated diagnostics for diseases. Read an interview with him here.
After a dramatic name change, the company once known as Facebook has become Meta, marking the entry of Zuckerberg and his massive team into the virtual world - a physical internet accessed primarily through virtual and augmented reality.
As part of this move, we'll start to see Meta devote more time to devices that enter this new world - primarily in VR. Announced back in 2021, Meta has been working on a new headset called Project Cambria.
Unlike the brand's previous VR projects, this won't be a device aimed at the average consumer, but instead seeks to deliver the best VR experience they can make.
Cambria is reportedly focusing on advanced eye and face tracking (to improve accuracy in avatars and in-game movements), higher resolution, a larger field of view, and even trying to make the headset significantly smaller.
Between Meta, Google, Sony, and many other big tech companies, VR is getting a lot of funding right now and will see huge advances in the coming years.
Through photosynthesis, trees are still one of the best ways to reduce carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. However, new technologies can perform the same role as trees, absorbing more CO2 while taking up less land.
This technology is called direct air capture (DAC). It involves extracting carbon dioxide from the air and storing it in geological caverns deep underground, or using it in combination with hydrogen to produce synthetic fuels.
While this technology has great potential, it has a lot of complexity right now. There are direct air capture facilities up and running now, but current models require a lot of energy to operate. If energy levels can be reduced in the future, DAC could prove to be one of the best technological advances for the future of the environment.
Sustainable living is becoming a top priority for people facing the reality of the climate crisis head on, but what about environmental death? Death is often a carbon-heavy process, the final mark on our ecological footprint. For example, the average cremation reportedly releases 400 kilograms of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. So what's a greener way to go?
In the US state of Washington, you can instead compost. The body is placed in a room filled with bark, soil, straw and other compounds that promote natural decomposition. Within 30 days, your body is transformed into soil that can be returned to your garden or woodland. Recompose, the company behind the process, claims it uses one-eighth of the carbon dioxide used in cremation.
Another technique uses fungi: in 2019, the late actor Luke Perry was buried in a customized "mushroom suit" designed by a startup called Coeio. The company claims that its kits are made from mushrooms and other microbes that help break down and neutralize the toxins that the body normally produces as it decays.
Most of the alternatives for disposing of dead bodies are not based on new technologies. They are simply waiting for social acceptance to catch up. Another example is alkaline hydrolysis, which involves breaking the body down into its chemical components over a six-hour process in a pressurized chamber. It is legal in some states in the United States and emits fewer emissions than more traditional methods.
Bionic eyes have been a mainstay of science fiction for decades, but now real-world research is starting to catch up with visionary storytellers. A plethora of technologies are coming to market that could help restore sight to people with different types of visual impairments.
In January 2021, Israeli surgeons implanted the world's first artificial cornea in a 78-year-old man who was doubly blind. When his bandages were removed, the patient was able to read and recognize family members immediately. The implant also fuses naturally with human tissue without the recipient's body rejecting it.
Similarly, in 2020, Belgian scientists have developed an artificial iris that fits into smart contact lenses and can correct a wide range of vision disorders. Scientists are even working on wireless brain implants that bypass the eye altogether.
Researchers at the University of Montash, Australia, are experimenting with a system that allows users to wear a pair of glasses equipped with a camera. This would send data directly to an implant located on the surface of the brain and provide the user with a basic sense of vision.
Our crowded cities desperately need a breather, and relief may come from the air rather than the roads. Plans to build an alternative transportation hub - one for delivering drones and electric air cabs - are becoming a reality, with the first urban aerodrome receiving funding from the UK government.
It is being built in Coventry. The center will be a pilot program and is expected to be a proof of concept for the company behind it. Powered entirely off-grid by hydrogen generators, the idea is to remove the need for as many delivery vans and private cars on our roads as possible and replace them with a clean alternative in the form of a new small aircraft, with designs being developed by the likes of Huyundai and Airbus.
Infrastructure will become important. Organizations such as the Civil Aviation Authority are looking at creating air corridors to connect urban centers with local airports or distribution centers.
Scientists have found a way to store energy in the red bricks used to build houses.
Researchers led by Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, have developed a way to turn a cheap and widely available building material into "smart bricks" that can store energy like a battery.
Although the research is still in the proof-of-concept stage, the scientists claim that walls made from these bricks "could store large amounts of energy" and could be "recharged hundreds of thousands of times in an hour.
Red-brick device developed by chemists at Washington University in St. Louis lights up with green light-emitting diodes D'Arcy Laboratory/Washington University in St. Louis
Researchers have developed a way to turn red bricks into a type of energy-storage device called a supercapacitor.
This involves applying an electrically conductive coating called Pedot to brick samples and then penetrating the porous structure of the fired bricks, turning them into "energy storage electrodes.
Iron oxide, the red pigment in the bricks, helps with this process, the researchers said.
Engineers at the University of Glasgow have developed a new type of flexible supercapacitor that can store energy, replacing the electrolyte in conventional batteries with sweat.
It can be fully charged with as little as 20 microliters of liquid and is robust enough to withstand the 4,000 bends and flex-type cycles it is likely to encounter in use.
The device works by coating a polyester cellulose cloth with a thin layer of polymer, which acts as an electrode for the supercapacitor.
As the fabric absorbs the wearer's sweat, positive and negative ions from the sweat interact with the surface of the polymer, creating an electrochemical reaction that generates energy.
"Conventional batteries are cheaper and more plentiful than ever before, but they are often made with unsustainable materials that are harmful to the environment," said Professor Ravinder Dahiya, head of the Bendable Electronics and Sensing Technologies (Best) group at the University of... James Watt School of Engineering in Glasgow.
"This makes it difficult for them to safely handle potentially harmful devices in wearables, as broken batteries can splash toxic fluids onto the skin.
"What we've been able to do for the first time is show that human sweat offers a real opportunity to completely eliminate these toxic substances with excellent charging and discharging performance.
The scientists developed what they call living concrete by using sand, gel and bacteria.
The researchers say the building material is structurally load-bearing, self-repairing, and more environmentally friendly than concrete - the second most consumed material on Earth after water.
The team from the University of Colorado at Boulder believes their work paves the way for future building structures that can "heal their own cracks, absorb dangerous toxins from the air, and even glow on command.
Tiny hybrid robots made from frog embryonic stem cells could one day be used to swim around the human body to specific areas where medication is needed, or to collect microplastics in the ocean.
"These are novel living machines," said Joshua Bongard, a computer scientist and robotics expert at the University of Vermont, who ****co-developed the millimeter-wide robots, dubbed xenobots.
"They are neither traditional robots nor known animal species. This is a new class of artifact: a living, programmable organism."
We can't seem to survive without the internet, but still only about half the world's population is connected. There are many reasons for this, both economic and social, but for some people the internet is just not accessible because they don't have a connection.
Google is slowly trying to solve this problem by using helium balloons to beam the internet to off-the-beaten-path areas, and Facebook has abandoned plans to use drones to do the same thing, which means that companies like Hiber are jumping on the bandwagon. They're taking a different approach, launching their own shoebox-sized network of microsatellites into near-Earth orbit, which wakes up the modem plugged into your computer or device as it flies by and transmits your data.
Their satellites orbit the Earth 16 times a day and are already being used by organizations such as the British Antarctic Survey to provide Internet access to extreme regions of our planet.
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