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BBC 00215.txt
Given enough time, Kampachi Farms will replace stagnant ponds with GPS-tracked cages stitched out of copper wire to enable a constant inflow of fresh ocean water without flushing out the precious fish.
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which has a lattice exoskeleton. These solutions are realised currently through industrial processes. But we have reached a point at the start of the 21st Century where we do not have to copy nature
BBC 00888.txt
For years, he had been using airborne laser sensors known as Lidar (Light Detection And Ranging) to map
In less than a week, the team collected more data than they had in a quarter of century of hacking their way through the jungle.
Radar has even been used, famously uncovering vast new areas of the vast Cambodian temple complex Angkor Wat.
All shoot thousands of pulses of laser light and then use sensors to detect any reflections.
 Using it in combination with GPS and other location technologies, it allows very accurate 3d maps to be built.
equipped with handheld GPS units his team spent three months on foot mapping the area in search of other treats.
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and store it in a battery. Â But this battery doesn't store electricity. Instead, it is a thermal battery that can"store cold Â. White won't go into great detail about the battery's design,
except to say that it features a phase-change material that can supercool quickly in a compact space.
The company recently field tested a 750 litre device with India's largest private dairy.
how charged the thermal battery is, and even about maintenance issues. Â The company is in the process of moving from Boston to India in the coming months
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the machinery sowing this new revolution includes supercomputers, molecular biology and arrays of sensors. Here, BBC Future profiles four areas of research to discover how close they are to feeding the coming nine billion.
supercomputers. Long's team broke photosynthesis down into a long series of mathematical equations and fed them to the National Center for Supercomputer Applications in Illinois. The supercomputer whirred through the numbers and spat out a list of"best-bet
 interventions. For example, one potentially easy win they identified was to dial up production of just a single protein known as sedoheptulose bisphosphatase, or SBPASE.
They do it by bringing electronic tools into their crop rows-global positioning systems, infrared devices that measure soil's electrical conductivity and light and sound sensors.
impactlab_2010 01547.txt
Multimedia could be a catalyst for spawning more reading. Vook does not disclose information about its finances or its payments to authors.
impactlab_2010 01611.txt
Over the holidays, for example, it bundled a new Sony TV, Playstation gaming system, game and Blu-ray movie for $900 less than it would cost to buy the items separately. oewe sold out of all the units in that promotion, notes Redsun.
impactlab_2010 02347.txt
uses heat sensors to detect a fire, then automatically relays the information to a forest station through mobile phone technology. oethe heat sensors are programmed to detect temperatures which are over 45 degrees Celsius,
said the soft-spoken inventor. oetemperature from the sun does not go beyond this level in terms of heating
Katana altered sensor levels to detect body temperate and then touched the sensor with his finger.
That immediately triggered a call to his mobile phone. oethis is how the system is expected to work,
impactlab_2010 02409.txt
Science will create real-time reactive sensors in our bodies that can read everything from the fluctuation of brainwaves, to micro changes in heartbeats, to gastro-digestive processes, to variations of skin perspiration rates.
The sensors will need to interface with an equally nuanced supply chain to meet the needs of this next generation, hyper-individualized consumer.
The entire production area in these silos will be managed with a robotic arm that travels up and down a central shaft performing all necessary tasks of planting,
which sunlight will be channeled to provide natural illumination for optimal plant growth as well as the primary rail for the robotic arm.
impactlab_2010 02830.txt
A form of money used in an online virtual world, such as oelinden Dollars in Linden Labs Second life or oegold pieces in Blizzard Entertainments World of Warcraft.
impactlab_2011 00054.txt
The Gamification of Business Currently a huge buzzword in techy circles, gamification is moving mainstream.
Simply defined, gamification involves applying game techniques such as leveling, rewards and competition, to any human experience.
Many limit their thinking about gamification to mobile apps but it has far broader implications.
Another example is the geolocation service Foursquare provides which encourages people to use its check in technology by giving them an incentive,
Look for gamification to start making major inroads into college offerings as well as nontraditional K-12 educational programs. 18.
Driverless cars and Autonomous Vehicles The next revolution in transportation will be here soon, and it won t be streetcars, monorails, Segway s,
and Volvo have begun early testing of driverless car systems. General motors has stated that they will have a driverless model ready for final testing by 2015,
Driverless cars will be far safer. Human-based foibles like speeding, inattention, inexperience, impairment and fatigue all contribute to road accidents.
Driverless cars will remove the human variable from the system. Along with fewer accidents will come the eventual elimination of traffic cops, traffic courts, stoplights, and parking lots.
and for Google to make a play to design an Android-like operating system for all driverless cars. 22.)
The Drone Side of Life-Sometime over the coming months you can expect to see a version of the following help wanted ad:
Full-time aerial drone pilots needed to help manager our growing fleet of surveillance, delivery, and communication drones.
We are also looking for drone repair techs, drone dispatchers, and drone salesmen.##In 2010 the U s. Military spent $4. 5 billion on drones, increasing to $4. 8 billion in 2011.
With this kind of focused spending, military drone technology has improved dramatically over the past decade. But as a technology, future drones will go well beyond military uses.
The stage is being set for thousands of everyday uses in business and industry all over the world.
With basic drone hardware being matched up with smartphones, and the bottom-up design capabilities of app developers around the world, drones will quickly move from the realm of personal toys to functional necessities that we interact with on a daily basis. For those of you looking to switch careers,
the drone marketplace will create one of the hot new industries of the future. More details here. 23.
The Coming Transparency Wars Can you feel the layers being lifted? Transparency is entering our lives in unusual ways
and much like having individual veils lifted from a multi-veiled garment; we are now able to see the world around us with far greater clarity.
Recently, several misguided thinkers have proposed the notion that the more transparent our society becomes, the better off we ll be.
when driverless cars start eliminating the need for street cops. More details here. 25. Going Waitless In our highly competitive business and social environments, we have need a to be active
Emergence of Food Printers-3d printing is a form of object creation technology where the shape of the objects are formed through a process of building up layers of material until all of the details are in place a relatively slow process often requiring hours to complete.
have created a very visual way for us to imagine next generation food that will come from similar 3d printers.
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Achieving more streamline data storage in the future will require de-duplication specialists who can rid our data centers of needless copies
3d printing Engineers Classes in 3d printing are already being introduced into high schools and the demand for printer-produced products will skyrocket.
and maintain the next wave of this technology. 13. 3d Food-Printer Engineers Pushing the envelope for 3d printer technology even further,
Converting 3d printers to work with cartridges containing food-stocks will prove difficult and demanding on a number of levels.
Smart Dust Programmers In it s simplest form, smart dust consists of a sensor combined with a wireless transmitter and some kind of power source.
Drone Dispatchers Drones will be used to deliver groceries and pizzas, deliver water, remove trash and sewage,
and change out the batteries on our homes. Skilled dispatchers for future drones will be high demand.
More details here. 34. Brain Quants Where the stock market manipulators of the past meet the brain manipulators of the future to usurp control of Madison avenue. 35.
Robotic Earthworm Drivers The most valuable land on the planet will soon be the landfills
In the future, robotic earthworms will be used to silently mine the landfills and replace whatever is extracted with high-grade soil. 39.
Time Hackers If we think cyber terrorists are a pain, it will seem like nothing compared to devious jerry-riggers who start manipulating the time fabric of our lives. 41.
Memory Augmentation Therapists Entertainment is all about the great memories it creates. Creating a better grade of memories can dramatically change who we are
Robot Polishers If we are going to have robots, they will need invariably to be polished. 54. Amnesia Surgeons Doctors who are skilled in removing bad memories or destructive behavior. 55.
impactlab_2011 00573.txt
to 3d printing of parts and objects, to next generation food printers. These aren t the artificial food devices that science fiction movies have been promising.
History of 3d printers 3d printing is a object creation technology where the shape of the objects are formed through a process of building up layers of material until all of the details are in place a relatively slow process requiring several hours to complete.
The first commercial 3d printer was invented by Charles Hull in 1984, based on a technique called stereolithography.
Stereolithographic 3d printers formed objects on a perforated platform that was immersed in a vat of liquid photocurable polymer.
Stereolithographic printers remain one of the most accurate types of hardware for fabricating 3d objects.
Since the first stereolithographic (SLA) technology came into existence, a number of related technologies have emerged giving the fledgling new industry a number of new options.
Unusual 3d printing Projects 3d printer technology has a way of unleashing the inventive mind in virtually everyone it touches.
Here are a few unusual examples of products designed around the limitless possibilities of 3d printer technology.
The world s first fully 3d printed car called, The Urbee The Urbee is a hybrid vehicle that has its entire body
Tissue engineers create artificial blood vessels on a 3d printer Tissue engineers are now printing#new body parts,
They have figured out a way to successfully print artificial bones with a 3d printer. The primary challenge was coming up with a strong,
Robotic Chef printing the ultimate cupcake and the ultimate banana At MIT, Amit Zoran has developed a series of digital devices that may one day be use to produce the food we eat.
The virtuoso mixer, the robotic chef and the digital fabricator all aim to bring the tools we use to make food up to date with digital technology.
the robotic chef handles the physical and chemical transformation of these ingredients into new compounds
impactlab_2011 00623.txt
Early visions of smart dust technology Smart Dust In the 1990s, Kris Pister, a researcher at UC Berkley dreamed up the idea of sprinkling the Earth with countless tiny sensors, no larger than grains
and extended life batteries, smart dust would have the capabilities of providing huge volumes of real-time data about people,
The sensors, which already have been developed, will be spread over a 6-square-mile area. That will be the largest smart dust deployment to date,
smart dust consists of a sensor combined with a wireless transmitter and some kind of power source.
Current moisture sensor Current state of smart dust technology Future smart dust sensors Future designs for smart dust will have them detecting everything from moisture content,
But contact lenses are also being developed that use embedded sensors and electronics to monitor disease and dispense drugs.
The language of plants will come into full view as we add additional sensors, probes, and other signaling technology.
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when my partner Ben Horowitz was CEO of the first cloud computing company, Loudcloud, the cost of a customer running a basic Internet application was approximately $150, 000 a month.
Todays fastest growing entertainment companies are videogame makers#gain, software#ith the industry growing to $60 billion from $30 billion five years ago.
And the fastest growing major videogame company is Zynga (maker of games including Farmville), which delivers its games entirely online.
Meanwhile, traditional videogame powerhouses like Electronic arts and Nintendo have seen revenues stagnate and fall. The best new movie production company in many decades, Pixar, was a software company.
guides drivers to destinations and connects each car to mobile, satellite and GPS networks. The days when a car aficionado could repair his
And the creation of software-powered driverless cars is already under way at Google and the major car companies.
Oil and gas companies were early innovators in supercomputing and data visualization and analysis, which are crucial to todays oil and gas exploration efforts.
Software-powered drones launch airstrikes without putting human pilots at risk. Intelligence agencies do large-scale data mining with software to uncover
and track potential terrorist plots. Companies in every industry need to assume that a software revolution is coming.
impactlab_2012 00042.txt
Some of this capability is available now in rudimentary form in computer games where the controller shakes to indicate an on-screen car collision. 2. Seeing the forest,
By embedding sensors in flood prone areas, this technology could warn users based on what it s learned from past sounds,
You can paint chemical sensors on a surface and when they detect a pattern, they give off a smell#you could make a rich paint with all sorts of sensors that mimic things that you like,
#Meyerson said. So, how s IBM doing as a sooth sayer? Since I m still waiting for the jet packs we were promised decades ago, I m skeptical about technology predictions,
impactlab_2012 00130.txt
This is a company that sealed batteries into its devices so people could not replace them.
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#Global manufacturing is changing with a new wave of robots At the new Tesla factory in Fremont, Calif,
. a robot might do up to four jobs: welding, riveting, bonding and installing a component. On the coast of China at the Philips electronics factory hundreds of workers use the old way of working to assemble electric shavers by using their hands and specialized tools.
At a sister factory here in the Dutch countryside, 128 robot arms do the same work with yoga-like flexibility.
One robot arm endlessly forms three perfect bends in two connector wires and slips them into holes almost too small for the eye to see.
A new wave of robots, far more adept than those now commonly used by automakers and other heavy manufacturers, are replacing workers around the world in both manufacturing and distribution.
it plans to install more than a million robots within a few years to supplement its work force in China.
has endorsed publicly a growing use of robots. Speaking of his more than one million employees worldwide, he said in January, according to the official Xinhua news agency:
#The falling costs and growing sophistication of robots have touched off a renewed debate among economists
#But Bran Ferren, a veteran roboticist and industrial product designer at Applied Minds in Glendale, Calif.,argues that there are still steep obstacles that have made the dream of the universal assembly robot elusive.
I had an early naã vet about universal robots that could just do said anything, #he.
And these things are still hard for robots to do.##Beyond the technical challenges lies resistance from unionized workers
The ascension of robots may mean fewer jobs are created in this country, even though rising labor and transportation costs in Asia and fears of intellectual property theft are now bringing some work back to the West.
Yet in the state-of-the-art plant, where the assembly line runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week, there are robots everywhere and few human workers.
and almost all of the precise work is done by robots that string together solar cells and seal them under glass.
where robots that zoom at the speed of the world s fastest sprinters can store,
Robots could soon replace workers at companies like C & S Wholesale Grocers, the nation s largest grocery distributor,
which has deployed already robot technology. Rapid improvement in vision and touch technologies is putting a wide array of manual jobs within the abilities of robots.
For example, Boeing s wide-body commercial jets are riveted now automatically by giant machines that move rapidly and precisely over the skin of the planes.
And at Earthbound Farms in California, four newly installed robot arms with customized suction cups swiftly place clamshell containers of organic lettuce into shipping boxes.
The robots move far faster than the people they replaced. Each robot replaces two to five workers at Earthbound, according to John Dulchinos,
an engineer who is the chief executive at Adept Technology, a robot maker based in Pleasanton, Calif.,that developed Earthbound s system.
Robot manufacturers in the United states say that in many applications robots are already more cost-effective than humans.
At an automation trade show last year in Chicago, Ron Potter, the director of robotics technology at an Atlanta consulting firm called Factory Automation Systems, offered attendees a spreadsheet to calculate how quickly robots would pay for themselves.
In one example, a robotic manufacturing system initially cost $250, 000 and replaced two machine operators,
each earning $50, 000 a year. Over the 15-year life of the system, the machines yielded $3. 5 million in labor and productivity savings.
The Obama administration says this technological shift presents a historic opportunity for the nation to stay competitive.
Moreover, robotics executives argue that even though blue-collar jobs will be lost, more efficient manufacturing will create skilled jobs in designing,
And robot makers point out that their industry itself creates jobs. A report commissioned by the International Federation of Robotics last year found that 150,000 people are employed already by robotics manufacturers worldwide in engineering and assembly jobs.
But American and European dominance in the next generation of manufacturing is far from certain. What I see is that the Chinese are going to apply robots too,
#said Frans van Houten, Philips s chief executive. The window of opportunity to bring manufacturing back is before that happens.#
The assembly line here is made up of dozens of glass cages housing robots made by Adept Technology that snake around the factory floor for more than 100 yards.
Video cameras atop the cages guide the robot arms almost unerringly to pick up the parts they assemble.
The next generation of robots for manufacturing will be more flexible and easier to train. Witness the factory of Tesla Motors,
Its fast-moving robots, bright Tesla red, each has a single arm with multiple joints.
While the many robots in auto factories typically perform only one function in the new Tesla factory a robot might do up to four:
welding, riveting, bonding and installing a component. As many as eight robots perform a ballet around each vehicle as it stops at each station along the line for just five minutes.
Ultimately as many as 83 cars a day#roughly 20,000 are planned for the first year#will be produced at the factory.
once the robots are reprogrammed. Tesla s factory is tiny but represents a significant bet on flexible robots,
one that could be a model for the industry. And others are already thinking bigger.
Hyundai and Beijing Motors recently completed a mammoth factory outside Beijing that can produce a million vehicles a year using more robots
The New Warehouse Traditional and futuristic systems working side by side in a distribution center north of New york city show how robotics is transforming the way products are distributed, threatening jobs.
They watch over a four-story cage with different levels holding 168 rover#robots the size of go-carts.
The robot gathers a box by extending two-foot-long metal fingers from its side
where it turns into a wide lane where it must contend with traffic#eight robots are active on each level of the structure,
From the aisle, the robots wait their turn to pull into a special open lane where they deposit each load into an elevator that sends a stream of food cases down to a conveyor belt that leads to a large robot arm.
The software is sophisticated enough to determine which robot should pick up which case first, so when the order arrives at the supermarket,
this robotic warehouse is inspired by computer designers who created software algorithms to efficiently organize data to be stored on a computer s hard drive.
Jim Baum, Symbotic s chief executive, compares the new system to a huge parallel computer. The design is efficient
the cases of food moving through the robotic warehouse are like the digital bits being processed by the computer.
requiring expensive reprogramming of robots. But that list is growing shorter. Upgrading Distribution Inside a spartan garage in an industrial neighborhood in Palo alto, Calif,
. a robot armed with electronic eyes #and a small scoop and suction cups repeatedly picks up boxes
Older robots cannot do such work because computer vision systems were limited costly and to carefully controlled environments where the lighting was just right.
this robot can quickly discern the irregular dimensions of randomly placed objects. The robot uses a technology pioneered in Microsoft s Kinect motion sensing system for its Xbox video game system.
Such robots will put automation within range of companies like Federal express and United parcel service that now employ tens of thousands of workers doing such tasks.
The start-up behind the robot, Industrial Perception Inc.,is the first spinoff of Willow Garage,
an ambitious robotics research firm based in Menlo Park, Calif. The first customer is likely to be a company that now employs thousands of workers to load
and unload its trucks. The workers can move one box every six seconds on average. But each box can weigh more than 130 pounds,
The engineers are confident that the robot will soon do much better than that, picking up and setting down one box per second.
a machine vision scientist who is a founder of Industrial Perception. I think it s not as singular an event,
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David Carroll, a cellphone case lined with the material could boost the phone s battery charge by 10 to 15 percent over eight hours,
A Finnish company, Myontec, recently began marketing underwear embedded with electromyographic sensors that tell you how hard you re working your quadriceps, hamstring and gluteus muscles.
according to Arto Pesola, who is working on an advanced version of the sensors, is that when you see data telling you just how inert you really are,
Researchers at the University of Michigan International Center for Automotive Medicine have created the predictive models by cross-referencing the crash data provided by sensors on cars, like speed and location of impact, with 3-D
The Rolling Arcade The industrial designer Jiang Qian has conceived of a subway strap that s also a video game.
Algorithms crunch the raw data from the sensor and tell you how to adjust your body to achieve ergonomic correctness.
Chaotic Moon Labs began testing a robotic shopping cart that acts a bit like a mind-reading butler.
The cart uses Microsoft s Kinect motion-sensor technology to track and follow you through the store,
and Tufts are working on a superthin tooth sensor (a kind of temporary tattoo) that sends an alert
The sensor may have wide-ranging use: the researchers have used already it to identify bacteria in saliva associated with stomach ulcers and cancers.
While the sensor won t last long on the surface of a well-brushed and flossed tooth, Michael Mcalpine,
the project s leader, says that the sensors will be inexpensive enough that you can replace them daily. 24.
Sleep Mining Wearing a small sensor on your head, at home, while you sleep, could be the key to diagnosing diseases early
using wireless soil sensors and G. P. S.-enabled equipment to determine which spots need the most attention.
The home landscaping company Toro already has a line of consumer-grade moisture sensors that turn on the sprinkler system
inexpensive sensors that you scatter across your lawn by the dozens and that will track everything from bug infestations to mineral deficiencies.
but its sensors allow it to mimic the reaction of a live animal whether you give it a nervous scratch or a slow, calm rub.
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The Silent Herdsman collar will track the movements of the cow using the same type of sensors found in Wii devices.
Researchers also hope to determine which movements the sensor will pick up to determine when cows are in heat The collar is being developed by researchers from the University of Strathclyde, Morrisons, Scottish Agricultural College, Harbro, Well Cow, National Milk Records (NMR) and Embedded Technology Solutions.
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and flexible data-capture sensors built-in. The fashion options here will be incredible. 3.)Self-moving Fabrics It will no longer be good enough for smart fabrics to merely collect
And they jumped on the cloud computing bandwagon with the new Evos Concept Car. But behind the flashy surfaces
and tech trimming lies some far bigger opportunities. 5.)Driverless cars The next revolution in transportation will be self-driving cars,
Google s self-driving car project has racked already up over 200,000 driverless miles on highways. 6.)Ground-Based Delivery Drones Before we have sold driverless passenger cars in any sizable quantities
we will see ground-based delivery drones hauling point-to-point cargo. Better to practice without passengers onboard to perfect the technology.
Parrot officially unveiled the follow-up to its popular quadrocopter at CES AR Drone 2. 0 Flying Drones
and already own an AR Drone. Unveiled at CES, the new Drone 2. 0 features a 720p front-facing camera
so that you can capture your flights in HD. There s also a whole raft of new sensors
including an onboard magnetometer so that it can always tell where the pilot is in relation to its flight path,
and a new air pressure sensor that allows it to be more stable when hovering. That said, these drones have very short battery life (10 min max),
and so far have little application outside of the hobbyist community. The world of flying drones will become infinitely more useful
when some of the following begin to appear: 7.)Flying-Hovering Monitor Drones Whenever an accident or disaster happens,
the initial first-step should be to get eyes on the scene.##Dispatching a flying drone with video cameras that transmits a live feed back to a central command center will give first responders critical information to formulate an action plan before they arrive. 8.)Video Projector Drones Once a video projector is added to a flying drone,
you suddenly have a marketer s dream tool with the ability to project images on the sides of buildings, on sidewalks,
or even on the side of a moving vehicle. 9.)Lighting Drones We ve been trapped into thinking that lighting can only be managed from stationary positions,
Audio Drones Drones outfitted with speakers are already being experimented with. Long Range Acoustic devices (LRAD) are being used as loud hailers to emit warning signals.
Audio drones, however, have far more potential in the marketing and entertainment fields. Floating and flying sounds create a far different sensation than stationary speakers.
Delivery Drones-Can you imagine a flying drone with UPS or Fedex on its side? Thinking beyond traditional delivery systems, flying drones could be used to deliver food, packages, water,
change out the batteries in your home, remove trash and sewage, and even vacuum the leaves from your front lawn.
Miscellaneous Technologies As with many new technologies, not all of them fit into easily definable categories.
Smart Dustin its simplest form, smart dust consists of a sensor combined with a wireless transmitter and some kind of power source.
But contact lenses are also being developed that use embedded sensors and electronics to monitor disease and dispense drugs.
to 3d printing of parts and objects, to next generation food printers. These aren t the artificial food devices that science fiction movies have been promising.
) Disposable Batteries for Smartphones At CES there was no shortage of battery companies. Virtually any object that needs power has a battery vendor exhibiting several different options.
But as of yet, there are no cheap disposable batteries for Smartphones. Yes, it is indeed a bad idea to fill landfills with more batteries,
but when the only option is either a $50 rechargeable battery or nothing at all, there is a huge need not currently being filled. 23.)
Accomplishment-Based Educational Apps-Much of what happens in today s colleges and universities is based on symbols of achievement,#not actual accomplishments.
Students that enter a classroom will typically find themselves immersed in an academic competition, a competition that pits students against each other to produce results that best match the teacher s expectations.
Swarm-Bots-Swarm robotics involves the design and operation of multiple robots, or swarms, inspired by the behavior observed in social insects, called swarm intelligence.
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