InDetail

I’ve listed these below in an effort to identify the top 10 advanced car technologies we’ll see in showrooms by 2020. 1. Autonomous Vehicle  — Let’s just get this one out of the way. Note I didn’t say  fully  autonomous vehicle. Why? Because it will take more than 5 years before a car can drive anywhere, at all times, without human oversight. But by 2020 we’ll have cars capable of being fully autonomous in certain circumstances, most likely rural interstates with minimal variables (and no inclement weather). Think early days of cruise control. 2. Driver Override Systems  — This relates to autonomous technology, but it’s different because it’s the car actively disregarding your commands and making its own decisions. We’ve already got cars that will stop if you fail to apply the brakes. But by 2020 cars will apply the brakes even if the driver has the gas pedal floored. The rapid increase in sensor technology will force a shift in priority, g...

Cheaper, quieter and fuel-efficient biplanes could put supersonic travel on the horizon For 31 years, the Concorde provided its passengers with a rare luxury: time saved. For a pricey fare, the sleek supersonic jet ferried its ticket holders from New York to Paris in a mere three-and-a-half hours -- just enough time for a nap and an aperitif. Over the years, expensive tickets, high fuel costs, limited seating and noise disruption from the jet's sonic boom slowed interest and ticket sales. On Nov. 26, 2003, the Concorde -- and commercial supersonic travel -- retired from service. Since then, a number of groups have been working on designs for the next generation of supersonic jets. Now an MIT researcher has come up with a concept that may solve many of the problems that grounded the Concorde. Qiqi Wang, an assistant professor of aeronautics and astronautics, says the solution, in principle, is simple: Instead of flying with one wing to a side, why not two? Wang and h...

Indoor air is, on average, five times   as polluted as outdoor air. It can worsen allergies and asthma, and over the long term can cause respiratory diseases and cancer. Yet today’s air purifiers and HVAC systems use decades-old filtration technology, and they often miss microbes, pollen, mold and nasty airborne chemicals that cause these problems. A new air-purifying technology could help. Instead of a filter, the device blows air over a photoactivatable catalyst to create highly reactive chemicals that destroy VOCs, pollen and other allergens, and microbes. Back in the mid-1990s, Yogi Goswami, a  solar energy researcher who directs the Clean Energy Research Center at the University of South Florida, had a personal reason to switch gears and investigate air purification technology. His son Delip, who’s now 35, had severe asthma and allergies as a boy, and conventional air filtration devices did not ease them. In his previous work, Goswami helped develop a sola...

According to a recent report by Credence Research, the global medical robotics market was valued at $7.24 billion in 2015 and is expected to grow to $20 billion by 2023. A key driver for this growth is demand for using robots in minimally invasive surgeries, especially for neurologic, orthopedic, and laparoscopic procedures. As a result, a wide range of robots is being developed to serve in a variety of roles within the medical environment. Robots specializing in human treatment include surgical robots and rehabilitation robots. The field of assistive and therapeutic robotic devices is also expanding rapidly. These include robots that help patients rehabilitate from serious conditions like strokes, empathic robots that assist in the care of older or physically/mentally challenged individuals, and industrial robots that take on a variety of routine tasks, such as sterilizing rooms and delivering medical supplies and equipment, including medications. Below are six top uses for ro...