Top 10 Tech Surprises of 2014

The year 2014 has really made its mark in the field of technology. This year, we heard of many technologies which left us open-mouthed, amazed us, and somewhere deep, they even made us proud to witness them and to be a part of the era. 

So here are the top ten technologies from 2014 that never let up the entire year:

#1 Solar Power

The average solar panel now costs about 75 percent less than it did just five years ago and the price continues to drop.

A report from the US Department of Energy says, “The year 2014 marks a significant milestone in the history of American solar energy." Five new concentrating solar power plants were scheduled to come online in 2014, of which, three are in California, one in Nevada and one in Arizona.

The biggest of those and so far, the world’s largest solar plant is the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System which is in California’s Mojave Desert and it came online earlier this year and is generating 392 megawatts of power which is enough to provide 140,000 homes with electricity.

This Year, Solar Power has come down drastically in price. So, it should come as no surprise that the electricity which is generated from the solar plants is rising. According to a report by Forbes, as of September of the year 2014, solar power in the United States reached 15.9 gigawatts of installed capacity, and was enough to power 3.2 million homes. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, that number is almost twice as big as that was back in the year 2013.

Moreover, the efficiency levels are improving too. This year, scientists at the University of New South Wales set a record as they developed solar cells that have the ability to convert 46 percent of the Sun’s energy into electricity and that is the highest conversion till date.

But, this is surely not it, solar power will continue to improve and do the good.

#2 3-D Printing

A man looks at a model of a Buddha being printed from a 3-D printer at the 2014 China International Industry Fair in Shanghai.

This year, nearly every time, there was someone who was 3-D printing something. If you don’t have much info about it, let me tell you. A 3-D printer contains a special kind of ink that is less like a pen ink and more like a viscous plastic. The work starts from a digital file and then later a 3-D printer builds up a three dimensional object by printing one thin layer at a time. After the “ink” dries, the printed objects becomes solid.

The technology was used to print just about everything, anything you could possibly imagine of. The list of the printed things include garments, drones, cars, houses, chairs, customized sex toys, electronics, biological parts like prosthetic devices and skull parts and even food. The list can go on and on and will surely keep you amazed.

#3 Augmented Reality

A model demonstrates a virtual fitting room using a technology of augmented reality, produced by Japan's apparel shop chain Urban Research in Tokyo.

Want augmented reality? Just add graphics, sounds, the illusion of touch or even smell to your world and you have got what you wanted. Google’s Glass, which overlays graphics onto the world via the lenses is just one example. After the introduction of Glass back early in 2012, augmented reality tech seems to be growing in popularity.

Recently, Jaguar Land rover announced the use of this technology to overlay graphics on the vehicle’s windshield that not only provides navigational information but also provides the information about the pedestrians and other cars that the driver may not be able to see. The technology is also being adapted for retail stores to allow shoppers to try different outfits, without actually having to wear one.

The same technology has also been used in a helmet made by Fusar Technologies which incorporates a heads-up display (HUD) system, plus video recording and voice commands. And if you want to try this technology, then you can buy a scuba diving mask that has a built-in HUD indicating dive time, depth, water temperature and much more.

#4 Brain Computer Interfaces

A pilot inside a flight simulator wears an electroencephalography (EEG) cap and uses his thoughts to land a plane.

What is on your mind? Don’t tell it to the scientists, they can just figure it out as the scientists are getting better and better at interpreting brain signals and converting those messages into computer commands. A few years ago, researchers figured out a way for a person to use her brain to control a cursor on a screen. But from that time to today, science has advanced much further.

In the month of May, a team from the institute for Flight System Dynamics and the Berlin Institute of Technology developed a technique that allowed the pilot to maneuver a plane in a simulator without touching any of the controls or pedals.

Flying a plane in a simulator is fun but there are nobler causes. Namely, controlling a prosthetic device wired to the nervous system of a person. So-called neuroprostheses are becoming more and more advanced, giving amputees the ability to move artificial limbs as if they were real.

Back in the month of October, at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland and the Chalmers University in Sweden, two research groups, reported of their success in enabling two patients with prosthetic limbs to gently get hold of some objects and moreover the patients could even feel the texture of those objects.

And if that were not enough, the Japanese exoskeleton manufacturer, Cyberdyne, announced that they were making some exoskeletons, which are brain controlled. These exoskeletons would assist people by detecting electrical pulses in a person’s skin when a message would be sent by the wearer’s brain to the limb to move.

But, the most popular and perhaps the most viewed event related to the Brain Computer Interfaces was in the FIFA World Cup games, when in the opening ceremony in Sao Paolo, Brazil, a paraplegic man wearing a mind-controlled exoskeleton made the first kick of the World Cup.

#5 Exoskeletons

A more complete version of this military exoskeleton should be ready between 2016 and 2018.

In the #4, I did mention a bit about the exoskeletons. So we have it on the position of #5 in our list of top 10.

This year, the U.S. Military made available a prototype of its Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit, or TALOS. This suit has the ability to protect its wearer from bullets, assists the wearer with heavy lifting and it also comes with an arsenal of technology to sense the environment it is in. But, these suits are not just to work for the military.

The workers at Shipyard, employed by the South Korean corporation Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering are wearing these exoskeletons and use the exoskeletons to assist them with heavy-lifting duties. And the researchers at MIT have developed wearable robot arms to help warehouse workers reach and lift heavy packages.

One of the biggest indicators that exoskeletons are blasting onto the scene was the announcement of a new competition called the Cybathlon. This competition is for the people with disabilities who use advanced assistive devices, including robotic and exoskeleton technologies. The competition is being organized by ETH Zurich and the Swiss National Competence Center of Research in Robotics to not only challenge parathletes but also the technologies that assist them. The first event will debut in the year of 2016.

#6 Activity Trackers

FitBit Force - The latest in FitBit tech.

Wearable tech, namely activity trackers or fit bands, came into the market with a boom. This year, many of the top companies like LG, Samsung, Sony, Apple, and even Microsoft, all have been competing in this market of making wearable techs. This market, the market of SmartWatches or Fitness Band has many products like the Apple SmartWatch, Samsung Gears, Microsoft Band, and many more. We also have an article on the Microsoft Band, if you wish to read it, you can do so by following the given link.

This year, we had a number of choices to go for on the name of SmartWatches or Fitness bands, but what is interesting to us is not necessarily the uncounted choices, but the data being gathered for the first time ever. Because of these wearable techs, researchers have been able to collect tons of information which will surely help them to study the human behavior and routines. Gone are the days that scientists used to rely on the surveys and all as now they can collect the actual data points amassed by the sensors. More than ever before, scientists are now able to study even the things like how and when people are moving, as well as analyze when people are sitting, standing and walking.

#7 Quantum Computing

A handful of experiments this year teleported the quantum state of a light particle, that is, the direction it was spinning, from one location to another.

In the year of 2014, we heard several buzzes, bleeps and blips coming from the quantum computer room. But, the research in quantum computing has not yet crossed the line of complete advancement.

First, we had a news early in the year that documents provided by Edward Snowden have revealed that the NSA was building "cryptologically useful quantum computer." Such a computer would be very, very faster than any of the supercomputer currently known to the humankind and would also be virtually impossible to hack, thanks to some laws of quantum physics.

We also learned this year that the NSA is not the only one working hard to develop such a computer as in the month of September this year, Google hired physicist John Martinis and his team from the University of California, Santa Barbara, to work on a quantum computing chip. In the past, Google has even funded the research for D-Wave Systems which is a Canadian company that has a machine with quantum properties. And not to be left behind, Microsoft, which has also been devoting resources to the area for several years, launched a new quantum hardware design group this year, headed up Burton Smith, a well-known supercomputer designer.

The favorite piece of the news this year in the field of quantum computing, however, comes from a team of researchers from the University of Geneva, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. In the month of December, they announced that they were successful in teleporting the quantum state of a particle of light, i.e., the direction it was spinning, 15.5 miles across an optical fiber, becoming the farthest successful quantum teleportation feat yet.

After coming to know this, for sure, all the minds start to roll over a new field of imagination. Just think of the technology that can teleport us from one part of the world to the other in just a blink of an eye. Really gives me the Goosebumps!!!

#8 Fusion

A concept fusion reactor creates renewable, emission-free energy.

Fusion energy has always been one of those areas that always seems to be a part of a dream story that seems decades off from becoming a reality. But if that dream story would come to reality, we could power the planet with limitless, emission free energy.

Well, as of this year, a new announcement this year was the first ever to indicate that we might be closer than ever to fusion energy. Researchers from Lockheed Martin demonstrated the feasibility of a reactor which is small enough to fit on the back of a truck, but still capable of generating 100 megawatts of electricity.

These researchers claim that they could be having a prototype build in a year and surprisingly a working truck sized reactor in a decade’s time. Now this is a cracker!

#9 Cloaking

Using simple, inexpensive, off-the-shelf components, researchers were able to hide objects in the visible spectrum of light.

Cloaking technology is omnipresent in science fiction.  We have evil Romulans from Star Trek, who can cloak their spaceship at a moment's notice, and we even have Harry Potter's famous cape, which can turn the wearer invisible. In research labs, however, cloaking technology is still fairly new.

Up until this year of surprises, most researchers had some success cloaking parts of the light spectrum not visible to the human eye. They have found a way to hide a 3-D object from magnetic waves, cloak sound, hide metal objects from a magnetic field and make an entire city impervious to the seismic waves from an earthquake.

But this year, we had our wish come true. Researchers at the University of Rochester used simple, inexpensive, off-the-shelf components to hide objects in the visible spectrum of light. They did not even touch the expensive “meta-materials” used by others who were trying to do the same thing. John Howell, a professor of physics at the University of Rochester, and graduate student Joseph Choi combined four optical lenses to bend light and send it through the center. This cloaking device is not a perfect one yet, but demonstrates that some of the most difficult problems often have simple solutions.

#10 Floating Architecture

Scientific research has show that over the last 100 years, sea levels worldwide have risen by as much as eight inches.

Alright, so here we are at the #10.  The Floating Architecture.

Perhaps it was all of the news about melting glaciers, the drastic rise of global temperatures and we also heard that it would be irreversible, but we sure did see a lot of news this year about floating architecture too. To name a few, there was the floating farm that harvests iceberg melt-water, the floating beach planned for NYC, the floating nuclear plant that would be unaffected by a tsunami, and an underwater city.

The Netherlands-based architectural firm, Waterstudio, leads the pack in this area. They've come up with several different concepts, including an apartment building, a hotel, and a complex for low-income people and even a nature preserve.

So, now, we have finally reached at the end of 2014 with a bag full of technology that would make our future better and having all this, we surely are ready to blast off for a new and hopefully an awesome new year – THE YEAR 2015.

                                                                    

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