MIT has just published a list of the ten
technological innovations which should make us sit up and take notice
this year. They relate to public health, manufacturing industry and new
ways to harness energy.
As every year, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has just published a list of the
10 breakthrough technologies which
are expected to make an impact this year both on companies and on the
(wo)man in the street. MIT’s ranking demonstrates how digital has gained
ground in three main areas which could prove key to sustained economic
growth. Firstly the health sector should benefit from a wider range of
tools, e.g. to help restore long-term memory capability, to enable
pre-natal DNA sequencing, or use ‘big data’ to help understand the
spread of diseases. On the industrial front, MIT identifies technologies
that will help make solar power generation much more efficient, make
highly efficient DC power grids feasible, and take firms further along
the road to automation. Last but not least, customer experience is also
in the spotlight this year: a smart watch, ‘deep learning’ and a
‘temporary social media’ concept are three further breakthrough
technologies set to have an impact in 2013.
Four innovative processes helping drive sustainable economic growth
MIT underlines that
General Electric is
on the verge of using the 3D printing process to make some jet engine
parts. This ‘additive manufacturing’ approach is seen as a major
breakthrough for manufacturing machine parts rapidly and seamlessly in
high-tech materials. Ground-breaking technology in automation features
in the shape of the
Baxter robot,
which works safely and intelligently alongside people on a production
line, carrying out simple repetitive production tasks such as moving and
assembling components. MIT’s list also includes two new technologies
for the energy sector. A design being worked on at the California
Institute of Technology is expected to double the efficiency of a solar
cell, which would completely change the economics of renewable energy.
The idea is to use a prism-like device to split sunlight into six to
eight component wavelengths, each of which would then be dispersed to a
cell made of a semiconductor capable of absorbing it. Instead of
converting barely 20% of the energy into electricity, this approach
would garner more like 50%.The second energy sector project is the
brainchild of Swiss-Swedish conglomerate
ABB.
The engineering giant has developed a high-voltage Direct Current
circuit breaker capable of disconnecting parts of a DC grid that are
experiencing a problem, allowing the rest to keep working. DC grids are
more efficient than the more usual AC networks at connecting far-flung
sources of renewable energy (RES), and so this breakthrough would help
provide RES more efficiently and help them compete better with fossil
fuels.
Six breakthroughs for health or wellbeing
Among the advances made in the health sector, one of the
breakthroughs on MIT’s list is an electronic implant into the brain
which mimics the signal processing that properly-functioning neurons
perform. Long term, Theodore Berger, a biomedical engineer and
neuroscientist at the
University of Southern California in
Los Angeles, hopes to be able to restore the ability to create
long-term memories by implanting chips like these into the brains of
stroke victims or other brain-damaged patients who have lost this
faculty. ‘Deep learning’, another technology in the area of the brain is
also tipped to make great strides this year. The basic idea – that
software can simulate the neocortex’s large array of neurons in an
artificial ‘neural network’ – is decades old, but improvements in
mathematical formulae and increasingly powerful computers now enable
computer scientists to model many more layers of virtual neurons than
ever before. With this greater depth, they are producing remarkable
advances in speech and image recognition. ‘Deep learning’ can also help
perform work such as identifying molecules that could lead to new drugs
by zeroing in on those molecules most likely to bind to their targets.
Last but not least, MIT has highlighted two trendy technologies which
are likely to enhance customer experience: smart watches, on which
L’Atelier reported in a recent article, and ‘Temporary Social Networks’,
the example listed being
Snapchat,
a photo messaging app developed by four students at Stanford
University, which enables users to set a time limit on how long
recipients can view their photos, after which they will be hidden from
the recipient's device and deleted from the company's servers.
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