The Ten Most Promising Emerging Technologies In The Future Will Be Exposed For The First Time.

The team of 18 scientists has selected ten of the most important technological achievements to help people understand future technology trends, eliminate people's doubts and concerns about new technologies, and make up for the gap between investment, regulation and public perception that hinder technological development.

From UAV to AI, this list gives us a glimpse of the technology that is rapidly advancing into the future.

The future of manufacturing industry

From printing organs to

Lumber manufacturing is also plated into laminated manufacturing, mainly referring to 3D printing.

In 2012, Obama's state of the Union address has mentioned that innovative manufacturing is an important means to revitalize the manufacturing industry in the United States.

Among them, the accumulation of manufacturing is the breakthrough of Obama administration's innovation.

As indicated by the name, lumber manufacturing is the opposite of reducing material manufacturing.

The latter refers to the traditional way of manufacturing: for the desired shape, we need to remove or remove some layers of material from a larger material (wood, metal, stone and others).

Instead, lumber manufacturing utilizes digital templates based on loose materials (liquid or powdery) and is stacked up to three dimensions.

Unlike mass production, 3D printing can be tailored to end user needs.

The case is based on the user's tooth shape in computer graphics, customizing a mouth shaped, near pparent orthodontic appliance.

Other medical applications of 3D printing are more common in biology: direct printing of human cells, making living tissue, and in drug safety screening, these living tissues have broad application prospects, and ultimately help human beings achieve tissue repair and regeneration.

The earliest example of biological printing is the printed cell layer, which is used for drug testing and may eventually be used for the manufacture of pplant organs.

Nowadays, biological printing has been used to generate skin, bones, and heart and vascular tissue, which makes the prospect of personalized spraying widely.

The next important development stage of lumber printing will be the 3D printing of integrated electronic components, such as circuit boards.

Nano computer components, such as processors, are difficult to use 3D printing mode, because it is very difficult to connect electronic components with other components made of many different materials.

In other fields, today's 4D printing is expected to bring a new generation of products, which can change with the changes of the surrounding environment (such as heat and air humidity).

This technology is very useful in clothing or footwear products as well as health products.

Like distributed manufacturing, lumber manufacturing is disruptive to traditional manufacturing and supply chains.

Today, this technology is still in its early stage, mainly used in automobile, aviation and medical fields.

With more and more business opportunities emerging, technological innovation has kept its distance from the mass market. This technology is expected to develop rapidly in the next ten years.

Fuel cell vehicles:

Zero emission vehicle with hydrogen kinetic energy

Compared with power driven vehicles such as electricity or hydrocarbons, fuel cell vehicles have great potential and advantages.

Until recently, automakers planned to bring the new technology to market.

The initial price of the fuel cell vehicle may be around $70 thousand, but in the next few years, the price will decrease significantly as the sales volume increases.

Battery connected to external energy takes 5 to 12 hours of charging time, and fuel cell is different. It uses hydrogen or natural gas to generate electricity directly (without burning in the middle).

However, in practice, fuel cells and batteries have both, and fuel cells generate electricity, and batteries are used to store kinetic energy for driving.

Therefore, the fuel cell vehicle belongs to the hybrid electric vehicle. In the future, regenerative braking will probably be used to store the kinetic energy generated during braking instead of turning into useless heat, which is the key to achieve the maximum efficiency and scope of energy utilization.

Unlike battery electric vehicles,

Very long - each tank of fuel (usually compressed hydrogen) can travel 650 kilometers; hydrogen fuel filling time is only about 3 minutes; hydrogen burning clean, only discharge steam, so the hydrogen kinetic energy driven fuel cell vehicle will achieve zero emissions, which is a necessary means to reduce air pollution.

One of the major challenges facing mass production of cheap hydrogen is the lack of a hydrogen supply infrastructure that can keep pace with natural gas and diesel filling stations and eventually replace them.

At present, long-distance pportation of hydrogen energy (even requiring hydrogen energy to be compressed) is not economically feasible.

However, innovative hydrogen storage technologies, such as organic liquid carriers that do not require high-voltage storage and pportation, will soon reduce the cost of long-distance pportation and ease the risk of gas storage and accidental release.

Next generation robot goes down production line

People have long foreseen a future world where robots will take over heavy daily tasks.

However, the future of robotics is stubbornly resistant to reality.

Robots are limited to pipelining and other controllable tasks.

Although we have relied heavily on robots (for example, the automobile industry), because of the huge size of robots, they are threatened by workers who cooperate with them, and they have to be separated from safety facilities.

The rapid progress of robotics makes it possible for people to cooperate with robots in everyday reality.

Better and cheaper sensors enable robots to "understand" the environment and respond to them.

Inspired by the flexibility and adaptability of complex biological structures, such as human hands, the robot's body becomes more flexible and adaptable.

With the help of cloud computing revolution, robots can receive instructions and messages at long distance. There is no need to design them as a completely independent unit.

The new era of robotics will allow these machines to leave the production line of large manufacturers to help humans complete a series of tasks in their lives.

With the help of GPS technology, like smart phones, people began to use robots for precision agriculture, such as weeding and harvesting.

In Japan, robots are also used in the field of nursing, such as helping patients get up and strengthening limb control of stroke patients.

Smaller but smarter

It is mainly used to deal with some heavy or undesirable tasks.

In fact, robots are very suitable for two jobs: repetitive or dangerous work, which can work for 24 hours continuously, and the salary is lower than that of manual labor.

In real life, the new generation of robots will cooperate with humans rather than replace them.

Human participation and regulation are still crucial even in the light of possible progress in design and the development of AI.

Recyclable thermosetting

Plastics, farewell to landfill

Plastics are divided into two types: Thermoplastics and thermosets.

The former can be heated repeatedly and molded from children's toys to toilets, and thermoplastics are widely used.

Because it can be melted and remolded, it can also be recycled.

However, thermosetting plastics can only be shaped once they are heated, and even after high temperature and high pressure, they can still maintain their original shape.

Because of this durability, thermoset plastics play an important role in modern society.

They are widely used in many products, from mobile phones to circuit boards and aviation industry.

But this characteristic makes them difficult to recycle.

As a result, people had to landfill these thermosetting polymer wastes.

In view of sustainable development, it is urgent for us to recycle thermosets.

In 2014, significant progress was made in the recycling of thermoset plastics, and new thermosetting polymers were found to be able to be recycled.

This substance called polys or PHTs can be dissolved in strong acids, decomposing polymer chains and forming monomer like monomers. These monomers can be reassembled into new products.

Like traditional non recyclable thermosetting plastics, these new structures are very strong and are able to withstand heat and hard materials. They have great potential in the application market as well as their predecessors who are not recyclable.

Although it is impossible to achieve 100% recycling, if this innovation is widely applied, it will greatly reduce the landfills of plastic waste and accelerate the development of recyclable economy.

We expect that in the next five years, recyclable thermosets can replace non recyclable thermosets and can be widely used in 2025.

Precise genetic engineering technology.

Better with less controversy

Crops

Traditional genetic engineering has always been controversial.

The latest technology directly modifies the "plant" gene encoding, making plants more nutritious and better able to cope with climate change.

We believe that these advantages and the accuracy of modification can turn the current concerns and challenges into broad acceptance.

At present, crop genetic engineering mainly adopts bacterium Agrobacterium tumefaciens (DNA) to pfer the favored DNA to the target genome.

Despite widespread public fears, the technology has proved effective and reliable.

The scientific consensus is that genetically modified crops will not bring more risks than traditional hybrid technology.

New technology cuts specific gene loci, and changes the target genome to known and user selected sequences.

This technology can make the genes disappear or modify it, which is no different from the natural mutation.

By homologous recombination technology, the new DNA sequence and even the entire gene can be inserted into the genome accurately.

Another important breakthrough in the field of genetic engineering is the use of RNAi interference to crops. In recent years, RNAi has made breakthrough progress. It was named "one of the ten scientific advances in 2001" by Science magazine and ranked the top ten scientific progress in 2002.

RNAi can effectively resist viruses and pathogenic fungi, protect crops from pests and diseases, and reduce the use of chemical insecticides.

For example, the virus gene is used to protect papaya against ringspot disease. In Hawaii, after decades of use, the papaya itself has not evolved immunity.

RNAi has also benefited most of the food crops, such as protecting wheat from rust, grain, potatoes and bananas against Fusarium wilt.

Many of these innovations are particularly beneficial to small farmers in developing countries.

As people increasingly realize that these technologies can effectively increase incomes and improve the dietary quality of millions of people, there will be fewer and fewer controversies associated with genetic engineering.

Not only that, a more precise genome modification will also remove public fears, especially because there is no introduction of external genetic material, and ultimately there is no so-called pgenic animals and plants.

All in all, these technologies can greatly enhance the tolerance of plants and reduce their dependence on external resources, such as water sources, land and fertilizers.

At the same time, they are also more adaptable to weather changes.

Natural artificial intelligence,

When computers can learn

What will happen?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is simply the science of using computers to do what human beings can do.

Over the past few years, AI has grown significantly: most of us now use smart phones that recognizes speech, or use image recognition technology to get through the airport immigration quickly.

Self driving cars and automatic UAVs are in the testing stage before large-scale applications. In some specific learning and memory tasks, the performance of machines exceeds human beings.

The AI computer system Watson defeated the best player in the quiz game Jeopardy.

Like the next generation of robotics, AI will improve productivity significantly, just like machines replace artificial ones.

There is a lot of evidence that autopilot can reduce the probability of collision and avoid death and injury caused by road traffic accidents, because machines do not commit inhuman errors, such as lack of concentration, vision defects and other shortcomings.

Intelligent machines can quickly access information stored in large capacity, respond without emotional bias, and perform better than doctors in diagnosing diseases.

The Watson system is being applied to oncology to assist in diagnosis and to provide personalized, factual based treatment options for cancer patients.

For a long time, people have a science fiction nightmare for AI.

AI does bring risks. The most obvious thing is that hyper intelligent machines may one day surpass and enslave human beings.

Although decades have passed, experts are paying more attention to this problem.

To put it simply, the substitution of artificial intelligence for economic change by artificial intelligence may aggravate social inequalities and threaten existing job opportunities.

For example, no chance to replace most of the artificial pport aircraft, and automatic driving short-term rental vehicles will make taxi more and more useless.

On the other hand, natural AI may make those attributes that are limited to human beings - creativity, emotion and personal relationships - more valuable.

Distributed manufacturing:

Online factory at home

Distributed manufacturing is opening a situation on the way we make and pport products.

In the traditional manufacturing industry, raw materials are sent to large central factories, where they are assembled and processed into the same finished products and then sent to the customer's hands.

In a distributed factory, the raw materials and production methods are separated, and the manufactured goods are very close to the final customers.

In essence, the idea is to replace the material supply chain with digital information as much as possible.

For example, if you want to make a chair, instead of purchasing wood and manufacturing chairs in the factory, you will publish the cutting digital plan of the components of the chair to the local manufacturing enterprise using the computer cutting tool.

Consumers or local production workshops can assemble these components themselves and turn them into finished products.

The company already using this model is AtFAB, a furniture company in the US.

At present, the use of distributed manufacturing relies heavily on the activities of DIY players, and enthusiasts manufacture products with their own 3D printers and local materials.

In this way, consumers can personalize products that satisfy their needs and preferences.

Different from centralized production, creative design elements are more crowdsourcing. When more people participate in visualization and production, products will evolve more properties.

Distributed production is given the expectation that it can more effectively use resources and reduce capacity waste in centralized factories.

By reducing the capital needed to build the first prototype and product, it also reduces the threshold for entry to the market.

The important thing is that it will reduce the impact of manufacturing on the overall environment: digital information is pmitted through the network, rather than physical products are pported by road and rail, and the raw materials from the local area further reduce the energy needed for pportation.

If distributed manufacturing applications are more common, they will disrupt the traditional labor market and traditional manufacturing industries.

This is indeed a risk: regulation and control of remote medical devices may become more difficult, and gun products are neither legal nor dangerous.

Not all things can be made by distributed production, while traditional manufacturing and supply chains still exist to ensure that most of the most important and complex consumer goods are produced.

Distributed production will encourage today's standardized products such as smart phones and automobiles to become more diversified.

The scale of application is unlimited: a British company, Facit Homes, has built a custom house for consumers using personalized design and 3D printing.

Product functions are constantly evolving, serving different markets and geographical locations. Goods and services will quickly spread to areas that traditional manufacturing industries cannot cover today.

UAV capable of sensing and avoiding

The use of flying robots (known as driverless cars or unmanned aerial vehicles) to inspect cables or pport emergency supplies has become an important and controversial part of military capability in recent years.

The technology is also applied to agricultural photography and many other applications, which require cheap and extensive aerial reconnaissance.

But so far, these UAVs need human drivers. The difference is that these pilots are on the ground and control these aircraft remotely.

The next step of UAV technology is to develop machines to fly on their own and bring them to a wider application area.

For this purpose, UAVs must be able to perceive and respond to the surrounding environment, adjust height and flight trajectory to avoid collisions with other objects on their flight path.

UAVs with reliable autonomy and collision avoidance systems can start tasks that are too dangerous or too far for humans: for example, checking power cables, or providing medical supplies in an emergency.

Unmanned pport opportunities consider other aircraft or obstacles and find the best way to the destination.

In agriculture, no one has the opportunity to collect and process large amounts of visual data derived from air. According to these data, fertilizer and irrigation can be accurately and effectively utilized.

In January 2014, Intel and Ascending technologies demonstrated the multi powered unmanned prototypes, which could locate obstacles and automatically avoid humans walking on the routes they set.

UAV uses Intel's real-time perception camera. The camera weighs only 8 grams, and the thickness is no more than 4mm.

This level of anti-collision system will usher in the future of shared airspace, and there will be many UAVs flying near human places to perform various tasks.

UAV is essentially a robot operating on 3 dimensions instead of 2 dimensions. The progress of the next generation of robot technology will accelerate this trend.

Neuromorphologic techniques:

Imitating the human brain

Computer chip

Even today's best supercomputers are no match for the complexity of human brain.

The computer is linear, moving data between the memory chip and the CPU through the high-speed backbone network.

The brain is completely interrelated, logic and memory are closely intersecting, and its density and diversity are billions of times that of modern computers.

The neural chip attempts to process information in a completely different way from traditional hardware, that is, simulating the structure of the brain, and trying to improve the ability of computer thinking.

Over the years, miniaturization has developed greatly in the field of traditional computing power, but the bottleneck of data pfer in the central processing unit and storage is that it will consume a lot of energy and cause heat loss, thus limiting the long-term development.

On the contrary, neural chips store data in data processing part in the same interrelated module, which can make use of energy more effectively and become more powerful.

In this sense, the system replicates billions of network neurons to make up for the human brain.

Neural morphology technology will be the next stage of powerful computing, which will greatly improve the speed of data processing and improve machine learning ability.

With more powerful computing power, less energy consumption and smaller volume, the neural chip with these advantages will bring more intelligent small scale machines to bring miniaturization and AI into the next stage.

Potential applications include: UAV can better handle and respond to visual cues, cameras and smart phones can be more powerful and intelligent, large-scale data operations can help decipher the financial market or weather forecast.

Computers will predict and learn, not just respond programmatically.

Digital genome:

When your genetic code

Stored in a U era.

Health care

For the first time, it has spent many years and billions of dollars in the DNA sequencing of 3 billion 200 million pairs of human genome. Today, only a few minutes and a few hundred dollars can be used to sequenced and digitize your genome.

The results can be saved on the U disk, or even easily shared through the network.

This rapid and inexpensive ability to determine our unique and individual genome brings more personalized and more efficient health care reform.

Many human health problems, from heart disease to cancer, are related to genes.

In fact, cancer is the best description of diseases caused by genes.

With digitalization, doctors will be able to determine the way patients treat cancer through cancer genome.

This technology has also made precision medicine a reality, opening up the development of highly targeted therapy, which can provide the potential effect of improved treatment, especially for those who are fighting cancer.

As with other personal information, because of privacy reasons, people's digital genes need to be protected.

Personal genome analysis has faced challenges, and more understanding of human genetic diseases risks, and other people, such as employers or insurers, will want to get and use this information.

However, interest is likely to exceed the risk, because personalized therapy and targeted therapy can create more potential and can be applied to many diseases caused or caused by DNA lesions.