The website of Scientific American recently published an article on the top ten emerging technologies in 2020. An international expert steering group has selected the top ten emerging technologies this year. Recognized technologies must have the potential to drive social and economic progress, need to be innovative, and may have a significant impact in the next three to five years.
1 Microneedles Could Enable Painless Injections and Blood Draws
2 Sun-Powered Chemistry Can Turn Carbon Dioxide into Common Materials
3 Virtual Patients Could Revolutionize Medicine
4 Spatial Computing Could Be the Next Big Thing
Imagine Martha, an octogenarian who lives independently and uses a wheelchair. As Martha moves from her bedroom to the kitchen, the lights switch on, and the ambient temperature adjusts. The chair will slow if her cat crosses her path. If she begins to fall when getting into bed, her furniture shifts to protect her, and an alert goes to her son and the local monitoring station.
The “spatial computing” at the heart of this scene is the next step in the ongoing convergence of the physical and digital worlds. It does everything virtual-reality and augmented-reality apps do: digitize objects that connect via the cloud; allow sensors and motors to react to one another; and digitally represent the real world. Then it combines these capabilities with high-fidelity spatial mapping to enable a computer “coordinator” to track and control the movements and interactions of objects as a person navigates through the digital or physical world. Spatial computing will soon bring human-machine and machine-machine interactions to new levels of efficiency in many walks of life, among them industry, health care, transportation and the home.
5 Digital Medicine Can Diagnose and Treat What Ails You
6 Electric Aviation Could Be Closer Than You Think
7 Low-Carbon Cement Can Help Combat Climate Change
8 Quantum Sensors Could Let Autonomous Cars ‘See’ around Corners
9 Green Hydrogen Could Fill Big Gaps in Renewable Energy
10 Whole-Genome Synthesis Will Transform Cell Engineering
From the Internet