Future Technology Trends

Robots or nanodevices of the future may have mechanical segments replaced with softer parts that mimic what can be found in nature.  This will enable the machines to have a much wider range of behaviors than what is currently possible.  Researchers are developing new tools to create an array of flexible biomimetics.  A conference is taking place a little over a month from now and will discuss progress towards the goals of more versatile robotics.  Many of these advances could be used to create care-taker bots that can look after people who are older.  Bio-compatible actuators may also facilitate improved human cybernetic interfaces or remote controllable insects.   Read More »

MABEL is a two-legged robot that can move at a swift pace of up to 6.8 miles an hour.  The researchers believe that it is the world’s quickest bipedal robot that has knees.  This is not quite as impressive when you realize the fact that it is anchored down with a rotating apparatus or that the fastest human runners can move at over 20 MPH (short distances).  However, it is still quite a feat to accomplish and builds on a previous incarnation that was much slower.  The prospect of robots outmaneuvering people is still probably quite a ways off.  Breakthroughs such as these could eventually lead to very agile machines with amazing capabilities. Read More »

Historically, hard drive capacity has doubled in size approximately every year or so. Recently this trend has slowed to around every two years. The first 3.5-inch terabyte drive was introduced in 2007. In 2009, this number was increased to two.  Four terabyte devices are probably going to be sold on the market between 2011 or 2012.  New technologies will propel further growth in this area.  Existing techniques are already reaching fundamental barriers that will impede progress. Perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) technology is expected to reach a limit of about one terabit per square inch because of superparamagnetic affects. There are a number of ways to overcome these density constraints.  Thermally or heat assisted magnetic recording is being investigated by A*STAR researchers as a novel way to make more capacious electronic devices.  This is one of the most promising future methods.   Read More »

The Collective Experience of Empathic Data Systems (CEEDs) project is looking to create new technologies that can help people understand very large sets of statistics.  Many scientific endeavors are producing a vast amount of information that can be difficult for a single person to comprehend.  For CEEDs, they plan to utilize a variety of different variables like eye gaze, heart rate, speech and EEG signals.  This venture needs to have unobtrusive and wearable contacts that will be able to read the various biological parameters.  By taking measurements, the computer can then give an assessment of the subject’s underlying mental, physiological and behavioral status.  These signals are translated into what the person will view on a large virtual reality monitor and guide their choices as to what they should see next.  It is taking cues from futuristic movies like Minority Report in order to perfect human media interactions.  Empathic systems will be able to respond swiftly to any user request and can help that person to digest the info.  Read More »

The Swarmanoid project is part of the Future and Emerging Technologies initiative and was funded by the European Commission.  It lasted four years from 2006 to 2010.  The major goal of this research was to design and implement distributed systems that could work together as a team.  The general idea was to create a variety of autonomous robots that each have a specific role to fulfill.  They built around 5 dozen of these bots.  There are 3 different types which include eye-bots, hand-bots and foot-bots.  The eye-bots have the capability of surveying the environment around them and can easily fly from one place to another.  The hand-bots are able to climb surfaces that are located in their proximity.  The foot-bots are best suited for crossing ground terrain.  The swarmanoid hardware page has more information on each kind of device.  Ultimately the researchers wanted better machines that would be able to perform increasingly complex tasks in unstructured environments.  Speculatively they might even be used to replace human labor.  An intricate mass of this specialized hardware may be able to build things on its own.  Recently “Swarmanoid: The Movie” received a best video award at the AAAI-2011 annual event in San Francisco.  You can watch it below. Read More »

A*STAR is a Singapore government agency for science, technology and research.  They are presently working on their own artificial brain project.  Singapore is one of the many nations that invest significant resources towards this pursuit.  Though the country is small, it still has the potential to contribute to the initiation of some sort of neuro-singularity. Read More »

Scientists have constantly been creating better tools to decipher the code of neuronal functioning.  Graphics processing units are ideal for carrying out simple mathematical operations in a parallel manner.  Current chips can approach a teraflop/s of power in double precision instructions.  That’s near a trillion floating-point operations per second.  The first supercomputer broke the teraflops barrier in 1996 and now that calculating muscle is available in a single microchip.  GPU’s have been adapted for numerous scientific endeavors in addition to their usual role as powering video games.  Neurological data can potentially be collected and analyzed in a faster fashion using these processors.  Decoding neural activity is a computational intensive process and there is always a desire to have better methods.  Neurophysiology Extended Analysis Tool (NEAT) is an original software route to exploit GPGPU capabilities.   Read More »

Superconducting supercomputers have been sought after for years, but their viability still remains unproven. Some of these technologies are kind of like nuclear fusion, always existing at a juncture 15 or 20 years into the future. Lots of money has been poured into research yet thus far it has mostly been relegated to vaporware status. Single flux quantum (SFQ) and reciprocal quantum logic are two possible superconducting methods to create ultra-fast CPU’s. SFQ currently has useful niche applications but  doesn’t come close to competing with standard complementary metal oxide semiconductor in most markets. Reciprocal quantum logic is an even newer approach to the problem. There is hope that some offshoot of these technologies could be used to power future systems at an exaflop/s or beyond. It may be necessary as the energy consumption of the fastest machines is growing ever higher (superconducting for high end computing).   Read More »

A number of new projects are helping to advance the science of harvesting energy from the environment for electronics or nano-products. This research could eventually allow nanosensors to be completely autonomous and require no recharging whatsoever.  Another goal is to transform waste heat from circuit functioning back into electricity to enable greener electronics.  This can be accomplished with performance breakthroughs in novel thermoelectrics. The work is taking place under the umbrella of the ZeroPower consortium for information and communications technology. It is being funded in the European Commission’s Future and Emerging Technologies initiative. Read More »

Electrical signals move at close to the speed of light and can be confined in very small areas. This makes them ideal for carrying out on-chip calculations. A fiber-optic connection, on the other hand, is able to transfer large amounts of data from one region to another. The frequency of photons means the bandwidth can be much higher than electricity in copper wires.  The worldwide telecommunications network is in need of better chips than can effortlessly alternate between these different mediums.  There is a constant desire to have a greater internet capacity due to a voracious consumer appetite for streaming or downloading large media files. Silicon nanophotonic chips are a way of enabling higher speeds. Researchers at A*STAR have helped propel this technology further to help accomplish this. Some of the main problems are the challenges to fabricating a microchip in an easily manufacturable form that has a high output. Read More »