Startup Forefront
November 09, 2018 - Venture Capital Self-media Quality creators in the field of science and technology
Originally produced by "Technology Forefront" under "Startup Forefront"
Author | A Few Words
With the continuous innovation and advancement of science and technology, disruptive technologies are emerging all over the world, especially with the rapid development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in recent years, science and technology has penetrated into every aspect of human life, affecting human clothing, food, housing and transportation.
The future of life is full of possibilities.
01
Smart driving cars and flying taxis
With the change of technology wave, the first thing to be subverted must be the way of traveling.
American architecture studio Oiio has boldly designed an AI smart-driving car called Oto to improve traffic congestion and air pollution.
It looks like a large transparent bubble, consisting of two parts: the cockpit and the engine, each of which can be used by four people at the same time.
It can be equipped with different transportation bases in different scenarios, and in addition to normal driving, it can also carry people to "fly over walls", as cool as taking the elevator.
Oto is equipped with a fully intelligent system that is centrally controlled by an artificial intelligence system (AI) when it is on the road, but also allows riders to fine-tune the various features of the car according to their individual needs.
It won the competition's top five in the 2017 Design and Developer Challenge hosted by Microsoft.
Another U.S.-based company, Kitty Hawk, has developed Cora, the world's first unmanned flying cab, and completed a public test flight in Canterbury, New Zealand, in March this year, and has already secured an investment from Larry Page, Google's co-founder and chief executive of Alphabet Inc.
The company is headed by Sebastian Thrun, former chief executive of Google's X Labs, and Cora is powered by electricity, with automated flight software, and its body is equipped with 12 rotor blades to generate vertical takeoffs, landings and forward thrusts, allowing it to complete liftoffs and landings without the need for a runway.
Cora flies at an altitude of 150 meters to 910 meters, with a single propeller that allows the body to reach 180km/h and a range of about 100 kilometers.
Big companies such as Uber, Lilium, Airbus, and Rolls-Royce have now jumped on the bandwagon of developing flying cabs.
It is expected that flying cabs will be operational within the next decade. Once flying cabs are popularized, they will revolutionize the way people travel short distances.
02
Indoor Vertical Farms
The next thing to be disrupted with the push of technology may be food.
German startup Infarm is developing an "indoor vertical farm" system. They want to create a mini-farm ecology to revolutionize the way people buy food:
What you buy in the supermarket will not be packaged vegetables transported from all over the world, but directly through the "indoor vertical farm" container, personally pick the freshest vegetables.
In order to meet the different needs of different kinds of vegetables, Infarm has made a set of algorithms to provide plants with nutrients through an Internet-controlled irrigation and nutrition system.
In this way, the vegetables grown by the vertical farm system are not constrained by seasonal changes, and the whole process does not add any chemical reagents, so they are pure natural and pollution-free fresh vegetables.
Osnat Michaeli, one of the founders of Infarm, said, "As it stands, the entire food industry is looking to high tech as a solution to supply chain inefficiencies while reducing waste."
It's not long before we'll be able to buy fresh vegetables from supermarket "farms" that grow them themselves.
03
Remote charging and following suitcases
Of course, it's the smart devices that are disrupting our lives the most, compared to transportation and food.
While, at the moment, wireless charging technology is still stuck in the stage where it can only be realized if the device is in contact with the charger, Energous, a US-based wireless charging technology company, has invented WattUp, a long-distance RF wireless charging technology.
Not long from now, all you need to do is room install a wireless power transmitter, and all the devices in the room, including smartphones, tablets, and wearable smart gear, can be charged anywhere, anytime, at the same time.
And users can also set charging priorities and times by commanding WattUp to, for example, only charge a device when it's less than 5 percent charged, or manually control the device's charging via the companion app.
Energous' WattUp technology arguably offers a richer, more versatile wireless charging experience than traditional wireless charging technology.
And at CES 2018, a smart follow suitcase called 90FUN Puppy1 from Xiaomi ecological chain company Runmi Technology caught fire.
90FUN Puppy1 has a built-in Segway special customized following chip, adopts UWB precise military radio positioning technology, and through the equipped special remote control, it can not only directly control the travel case's travel, but also set up an automatic following mode, which realizes one-key summoning of the travel case within a range of 20m.
Additionally, it is also equipped with a variety of auxiliary travel modes, such as electric power, slope power, deceleration, parking brake, etc. The maximum climbing angle can reach 30 °, and it can be driven continuously for 15KM.
It is reported that the 90FUN Puppy1 is the world's first two-wheel-driven self-balancing and self-balancing intelligent following suitcase, and it is expected that it will be formally mass-produced and marketed in the second half of this year.
04
Intelligent Warehouse Robot
Today, when everyone has been immersed in buying and buying can not be extricated, the major e-commerce platforms orders are increasing day by day.
In order to solve the massive goods sorting and transportation, the United States Locus Robotics independent research and development of logistics warehouse robot Locus Bots.
Locus Bots and the ordinary warehouse robot compared to the appearance of a more unique, like a display screen with a code scanner shopping cart.
It travels at a regular speed of about 2 meters per second and can run for 10 hours on a single charge, and it can automatically avoid people and obstacles to help staff transport goods quickly, greatly improving work efficiency.
Locus carries a picking box that wanders through the shelves, and when staff members put goods into the box after completing a code scan, it automatically moves to the desired location based on the code scanning information.
At present, large e-commerce platforms like Amazon, Jingdong, Tmall and others have developed their own intelligent logistics warehouses, and in addition to the warehouse robots, they have made all the processes of logistics process-oriented, integrated and intelligent.
05
Of course, these ideas may soon be able to realize, I believe that in the near future, human life will be driven by science and technology to change dramatically.
Perhaps, in the future, human beings will be able to communicate remotely at home through three-dimensional holographic virtual technology, with the help of VR and AR:
Satisfy the desire to buy shopping:
Even, along with the rapid development of medical technology, cancer may be able to be cured:
Human cryogenics has been recognized, and "resurrection" has become possible. Resurrection" will become possible, or human beings will transmit their consciousness to new beings to achieve some kind of "immortality":
It is no exaggeration to say that with the development of science and technology, the world will change in ways that human beings can never imagine!
Some material references: Kryptonite Thinking, Tencent Digital, TechCrunch Chinese Edition, Global Migration, Mysterious Earth, Pixel Technology, Tencent Auto.