FX.co ★ Future within reach: 10 breakthrough innovations in 2018

3D metal printing

The technology of 3D printing had been discovered several decades ago, but it has become widespread quite recently, mainly among professional designers and enthusiasts.

There are still not so many prototypes, but this innovative technology promises to be more affordable in a financial and production terms providing many advantages: manufacturers will no more need uncomfortable and expensive warehouses, it will modify the entire production process, reduce the number of factories and improve product quality, create more durable and lightweight details, including the most complex forms, and also increase the reliability of products by tracking the microstructure of metals and so on.

The first 3D metal printers have already been presented by Markforged and General Electric.

Artificial embryos

The British scientist was the first to creat a simpler structure resembling a mouse embryo in a lab dish. That work involved two types of stem cells and a three-dimensional scaffold on which they could grow.

This completely reversed the generally accepted idea of ​​how life was created, and provided a unique opportunity for experimental research and genome editing.

The only factor that has an inhibiting effect on the development of breakthrough technology is an ethical issue related to the appropriateness of such experiments.

Smart cities

Over and over again more than a dozen researchers attempted to bring to life their most courageous scientific ideas of ​​creating a smart city.

The project design by Alphabet Holding and Sidewalk Labs, aimed at the innovative re-equipment of the port quay in Toronto, is quite encouraging. Cooperating with the Canadian government, the two giants expect to achieve significant success in using not only autonomous public vehicles. They also want to create open source software, through which third-party companies can create their own services.

Artificial intelligence for all

Undoubtedly, such technological giants as Baidu, Amazon, Microsoft and Google became pioneers in the field of artificial intelligence (AI).

With the help of the so-called cloud services, the implementation of AI systems, which was previously too expensive and complex, can be undertaken by medium-sized companies.

So, AWS by Amazon, TensorFlow by Google and Azure by Microsoft make it possible to simplify the process of introducing neural networks considerably, so AI can step far beyond the standard technology industry.

Neural network contests

Modern neural networks can not only recognize a huge number of images but also behave like a simplified mathematical model of the human brain.

Canadian researcher Ian Goodfellow invented the competitive generating network (GAN), consisting of two identical neural networks: the forger, known as the generator, creates forgeries, with the aim of making realistic images.The expert, known as the discriminator, receives both forgeries and real (authentic) images, and aims to tell them apart.

Thus, on the one hand, the technology opens a huge space for creating fakes at a highly professional level, on the other hand, it provides the artificial intelligence with the imagination necessary for better work with the surrounding reality.

Babel fish

The fictional Babel fish from the famous film “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy” became a reality thanks to Google.

At its relatively low price, only $159, Pixel Buds headphones can do automatic simultaneous translation of speech in 40 languages, but so far they only work with a Google Pixel 2 smartphone, which, coupled with speech recognition problems on noisy streets, makes them not quite perfect.

Zero emission gas power station

The zero-emission innovative gas-fired power plant, presented by the start-up of Net Power Corporation in Houston, is the latest turbine that can fit in a room just over 5 square meters.

NET Power will drive its turbine with a loop of hot, pressurized CO2. The first step is to fill the system with CO2, which must then be heated in order to drive the turbine — much like a conventional power plant heats water to create steam. The combustor then ignites a mixture of natural gas and oxygen, which is extracted from the atmosphere in a separate facility. This heats up the CO2 in the loop that drives the turbine, but it also produces additional CO2 that must be siphoned off to keep the system in balance.

Net Power in its development relies on electricity, rightly believing that the demand for it in connection with the massive transition to electric cars will only increase.

True privacy online

Using the zero-knowledge proof protocol in the newest Internet identification system allows you to verify your identity without providing any personal data.

Interest in this technology was spurred by Zcash cryptocurrency, whose principle of operation is based on the improved zk-Snark cryptography system: money is sent to any part of the world in such a way that it is impossible to track down the addresses of participants in the operation.

The developers do everything they can to make this technology work in full force, since only 10% of transactions are currently “truly private”.

Quantum computers

Many people, especially chemists, were eager to announce the advent of quantum computers. Such devices have enormous computing power and can create new electrolytes, innovative molecules and proteins for more effective drugs.

The Forest quantum computer of the American company Rigetti Computing can be used for machine learning: it is located in the cloud and is capable of performing calculations on a 19 qubit processor. IBM presented in early 2018 a quantum computer with a capacity of 50 qubits.