TECHNIQUE
Top 10 technologies of the future that you definitely have never heard of
and how it will change the world...
1 book of adrien
ADRIEN'S BOOK
CRISPR, Quantum, Graphene, Smart Dust, Digital Twins, Metaverse… You've heard of it all. He saw it all. Read it all. These technologies no longer hold any secrets for you. Heck, you've probably mentioned them over dinner or at work and become a point of contact for future innovation questions.
However, technology is constantly changing and this precious knowledge needs to be managed and regularly updated. With that in mind, I've compiled a list of the top 10 technologies of the future that aren't on the public's radar today, but are likely to make big waves in the future.
Find out which catastrophic business failures have gone down in history.1. Femtosecond projection Two-photon lithography What is it?
3D printing is a solution looking for a problem, and over the past decade the technology has failed to find a target audience. On the one hand, 3D printers are still too expensive for the average Joe; on the other hand, they are not sophisticated and fast enough for large manufacturing companies.
That may change in the next few years: researchers have developed a method that uses lasers to project millions of dots simultaneously onto 3D printing material, instead of using one dot at a time. And because they're bad at branding, they called it Femtosecond Projection TPL. To easily understand FP-TPL, simply imagine using a million heated needles to strategically melt a block of wax versus using a single needle. This means that incredibly small structures can be 3D printed much, much faster (a thousand times faster, give or take) while still ensuring good build quality.
How will it change the world?
So far, the teams working on the innovation seem to be focusing on flexible electronics and micro-optics. However, rapid discoveries around materials (both liquid and solid) have led researchers to believe that in the near future they will be able to build small but imagination-baffling structures. Once quality can be controlled on a large scale, it is easy to imagine this technology being used to create healthcare-related nanorobots, enabling the treatment of many diseases at the molecular level.
Read more about Femtosecond projection two-photon lithography here.
2. LiFiWhat is it?
Lifi
LIFI TECHNOLOGY USES LIGHT SOURCES INSTEAD OF MICROWAVES TO TRANSMIT DATA.
The name says it all: LiFi aims to use light to transmit information from point A to point B. The technology works by encoding digital data and turning LED bulbs on and off faster than people notice. The light then travels to the photoreceptor, which can decode the data and convert it to a more classic radio frequency (WiFi, 4G, 5G...).
Doing things this way has many advantages. In terms of the light used, the speed at which information is transmitted is very, very high — up to 100 Gbit/s, in theory; 5x faster than 5G. Furthermore, the sheer number of LED bulbs around us suggests a potential future where (cheap) access points to receive data will be everywhere. Finally, the light waves used as the basis for LiFi do not pass through walls (but can bounce off them). The risk of hacking is therefore much lower than with WiFi, although this severely limits indoor use cases.
On the other hand, using LiFi requires one to be close to the operating light source. Its range is thus very limited and interference with other light sources such as natural sunlight is possible.
How will it change the world?
To date, this technology of the future is very niche, despite being hyped in some circles for half a decade. One barrier to popular adoption is the size and cost of photoreceptors. As such, key use cases are in areas that are particularly vulnerable to hacking and/or electromagnetic interference, such as hospitals, aircraft, military operations…
There is also talk of its use for unmanned underwater vehicles, as well as for street lighting, for communication with smart vehicles or for municipal services to citizens if the technology were to become more democratized.
Read more about LiFi here.
3. Bricks accumulating energy What are they?
Scientists have managed to store energy in the cheap red bricks that we have been using for construction around the world for centuries. This process works for two reasons: the bricks are porous and contain something called hematite (which gives it its color). To store and then release energy from these bricks, the researchers heat them to 160 degrees and vaporize their surface with hydrochloric acid mixed with an organic compound called EDOT. When in contact with hematite, this mixture causes a chemical reaction to form a new plastic coating of nanofibers called PEDOT. This polymer is trapped in the porous surface of the brick and creates a continuous and electrically conductive layer on each of its surfaces. The humble building block can then act as an ion sponge to store and conduct electricity.
Currently, the amount of energy these bricks can store is still low, but the proof of concept is a stunning success. It's possible to power a small lamp for 50 minutes with 60 cubes, which doesn't sound like much until you realize that it only takes 13 minutes to recharge those cubes. This future-proof technology also has a long lifespan, as even after 10,000 storage and retrieval cycles, the bricks still retain 90% of their original capacity without changing their charging and discharging rates.
How will it change the world?
The main benefit of this technology of the future would be when used in a house equipped with solar panels. The bricks could then store unused electricity and thus compensate for the interruption of this renewable energy. This would make our homes energy self-sufficient and less dependent on electrical cables and/or lithium batteries. Discussions are currently underway with several companies in Europe and the United States to consider its commercialization, knowing that the next generation of bricks will be able to increase its energy capacity by 50%. Is it enough to charge the laptop? Only time will tell.
4. Robotic bees What are they?
robotic bees
PHOTO ALJAŽ KAVČIČ ON UNSPLASH
Let's be honest, climate-wise it's not great there. And that's killing the bees that we need to pollinate 35% of our crops, that we need for food, that we need to stay alive. Do we stop climate change to save the bees? Of course not, that's not how we roll. Instead, we'll create robotic bees to pollinate plants just like the real thing. And by "we" I mean Walmart.
Details are scarce, but most researchers estimate that the bees would work by attaching horsehair coated with ionic liquid gel to a small drone. The hair collects pollen from one flower and transfers it to another. Harvard researchers have long been working on "RoboBees" using these techniques. In addition, Walmart offers a wide range of sensors, cameras, artificial intelligence… to find the appropriate crops and pollinate them as needed.
Source: Google Patents
If this sounds like the premise of an episode of Black Mirror, you'd be right.
5. Unnamed Dynamic Neural Network Technology What is it?
A neural network uses hidden layers to break down information (input images, audio, video, handwritten text…) into small chunks of easy-to-understand components, allowing the computer to make predictions about the nature of said input. It does this thanks to a wide range of training data and mathematical models. In doing so, it works "similarly" to our brain, hence the name of the technology. This is far from new, but the world of data science has been looking for faster and more efficient ways to use neural networks for the coming IoT revolution.
Patent 10410117 suggests a way to do this by storing training data and mathematical models in the "hidden layers" (nodes) of the network itself, creating a kind of library that can be used to train another device. If you managed to get past this sentence, you understand that we are getting much closer to how the brain really works. Note that marketers haven't gotten around to it yet, hence the name.
How will it change the world?
Primarily, this technology reduces the computational resources required of the host CPU and lowers the cost of running data centers, which seems innocuous compared to all the issues discussed in this article, but is still incredibly important at scale. It also reduces the environmental costs of these centers, which is always a plus.
By optimizing neural networks for speed, accuracy and power consumption, this technology will lead to improvements in surveillance, advanced driver assistance systems, autonomous vehicles, vision-guided robotics, drones, augmented and virtual reality, acoustic analysis and the industrial internet. -of-things. All a worthy endeavor if you are interested in such a thing.
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