A Brief Look at New Technologies Of 2023
As technology advances, various products aimed at making life easier and getting work done faster are appearing on the shelves every passing day. Some of them increase accessibility and some provide a healthier life, but beyond practical uses, these now appear in a wide range of uses which reflect how creative humans can be. Not to forget that general users couldn’t even dream of having these gadgets at home in the old days. Only scientists working in labs could access these expensive devices that are becoming more and more common for everyone. Let’s have a look at some of these.
Ascending Stairs with a Scooter
MOQBA, which serves as an example of Suzuki’s commitment to innovation and inclusivity, was unveiled at the Japan Mobility Show. This unique vehicle combines wheels and legs into a single structure, presenting an unparalleled concept of mobility. Its chassis is mounted on four small electric wheels, each equipped with three degrees of freedom robotic legs.
Introduced as the first motorcycle designed for ascending stairs, MOQBA is currently in a conceptual stage but has the potential to revolutionize urban scooter usage. It is designed to address obstacles like stairs, even in areas with advanced public transportation.
MOQBA offers three different modes to meet various needs: Chair mode, Standing mode, and Stretcher mode. Each mode allows MOQBA to adapt to diverse transportation requirements. The Chair mode provides a conventional seat for riders, while the Standing mode offers an upright position for those who prefer standing while in motion. Lastly, the Stretcher mode is designed for the stable and comfortable transportation of injured individuals.
Although the MOQBA concept is in its early stages, it presents an exciting vision for urban mobility, particularly catering to people with disabilities and medical needs. While its transition to production remains uncertain, the design highlights future possibilities for transportation solutions that prioritize accessibility and inclusivity.
Smart Telescopes
Smart telescopes have brought innovation to sky observation with their built-in cameras and smartphone connections. Instead of traditional eyepieces, they are essentially used as digital astrophotography devices, as they display celestial objects on a screen, making them more akin to cameras. However, they operate like optical telescopes by capturing light from the night sky. Control is facilitated through smartphone apps, making image sharing more convenient.
These telescopes use advanced GoTo technology to align themselves automatically with the night sky. Users select their target celestial objects within the app, and the telescope adjusts its position. By directing the collected light to an image sensor, it creates an electronic image. The telescope’s computer enhances this image by digitally processing it, with preset exposure times and ISO settings for objects in its database. They also typically do not require eyepieces since images are transmitted directly to smartphones or tablets. Some models may include electronic eyepieces to offer a similar viewing experience to traditional telescopes.
An important feature of smart telescopes is their ability to filter out light pollution, allowing them to capture clean and detailed images of deep space objects. They perform excellently in city environments, although the best results are still obtained in dark areas.
These products have several advantages. They are user-friendly, eliminate the need for polar alignment, and can be operated remotely. Additionally, they excel in astrophotography. However, there are disadvantages to using smart telescopes as well. They cannot match the optical quality of traditional telescopes, have limited field of view, and are less resilient to vibrations.
The future of telescopic photography and astronomy has significantly advanced thanks to artificial intelligence (AI). AI provides professional astronomers with the opportunity to examine cosmic details in more depth and with ease than ever before.
AI programs have been used to expedite data and image processing, which would have taken scientists years. Additionally, they play a significant role in developing state-of-the-art telescopes like ALMA, enabling the observation of light from the early universe.
Virtual Workspace
Would you like a laptop that doesn’t have a traditional screen as we know it? How about a computer with a massive workspace of 250 cm, which can still fit in your bag, instead of the typical 33-45 cm screens we are accustomed to?
Imagine a scenario where you don’t need a conventional screen to get your work done. Instead, you put on a pair of glasses connected to your computer, and your desktop workspace instantly materializes in the air right before your eyes, with your favorite websites and applications ready and waiting. You can use your keyboard just as you would on a traditional screen, handling tasks like checking emails, joining online video conferences, or creating notes. The most remarkable feature is that only you can see the content you’re working on.
A groundbreaking system has entered the world of Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) products, offering functionalities beyond mere entertainment for everyday users. Developed over three years with the expertise of more than 60 spatial computing professionals, including veterans from companies like Apple, Microsoft, and Magic Leap, this new laptop represents the future generation of personal computing. The company’s CEO claims that this technology is the first augmented reality application that can seamlessly integrate into a user’s daily life. Until now, AR has found legitimate use cases in entertainment, manufacturing, technical trade, scientific, and military sectors but has yet to penetrate daily business or consumer workflows.
This product, which uses augmented reality to eliminate the physical limitations of traditional laptops, presents a virtual desktop significantly larger than the laptops commonly used today, with an average width of about 2.5 meters. As a result, users can carry with them a large, personalized virtual workspace they’ve designed, making it a truly unique product.
Flying Camera
What comes to mind when you hear the term ‘fully autonomous, flying, selfie camera’? We’ve all seen and played with camera-equipped drones, from those controlled by a dedicated remote to those managed via smartphone apps, even ones that use GPS to follow a transmitter placed on you.
But this new camera bids farewell to all of that, as it autonomously tracks you and captures stunning shots once you’ve selected one of its six shooting modes. It’s almost hard to believe, but after firing up the Hoverair X1 and holding it towards yourself for a few seconds, it takes off gracefully, handling its mission independently. With its laser sensors and distance measuring camera, it follows you, capturing shots effortlessly, all without the need for any remote, app, or similar devices. And when you reach out your hand towards it again, it lands like a docile and clever bird.
The standout features of this device include portability, ease of use, intelligently designed flight patterns, powerful tracking algorithms, and the ability to capture smooth, shake-free videos. While it doesn’t require it to function, it also offers a highly useful smartphone app for some additional functions. Drones are often deemed unsuitable for recording audio due to their noise. However, with Hoverair, it allows you to capture synchronized audio through your phone while recording video, ensuring you obtain noise-free, clear, and audible videos.
This means that anyone can effortlessly capture professional-quality aerial shots without the need for training, remote controls, and easily share their impressive results.
Portable Power Stations
Portable power stations have been advancing rapidly for the past couple of years. These portable batteries are now smaller and provide higher energy for longer durations, which even started to replace old fashioned power generators at homes. It is possible to charge these power banks via mains outlets, solar panels and even your car’s 12V DC supply. They mostly depend on lithium-ion battery cells and some brands even provide up to 12 kWh power with additional batteries. This means that now you can power most household electrical appliances with just a single product, from smartphones to tablets and laptops, to refrigerators and microwave ovens and even power tools like cable drills. These power banks are becoming quite attractive for nature lovers for their ability to provide continuous power during camping trips and for caravans, but now they are also preferable over gasoline generators for critical energy supply during mains power outages. You can even charge your car’s batteries with these units if you’re stranded during a trip. They come with a variety of features to choose from, thus with various pricing options. Before you make a choice, you need to know why you need a power station and for what purposes you’re going to use it. A mid-quality product can operate a 900 W laundry machine for 60 minutes. But if you’re looking for something much more powerful, then there are some high-end power stations which provide 2400W, 2048 Wh power, which have 16 ports to provide energy simultaneously for 16 different appliances, and can be fully charged via mains outlets in only 1.5 hours.
Technological Gadgets for the Health-Conscious
We’re used to seeing electric toothbrushes, but if you wish there was one that can also floss and even clean your tongue, there is one now. Launched as the world’s first “three-in-one” oral care device, OraWand offers a full-fledged oral hygiene experience. Conventional electric toothbrushes either use an oscillating system to make wide sweeping movements or a sonic system (sound waves) to clean with fast vibrations. OraWand, on the other hand, incorporates both technologies, effectively cleaning the teeth by breaking the plaque layer and completely removing food residues from the tongue and teeth with its wide sweeping movements. Other attractive features of OraWand are the ease of changing the tips with different functionalities, and its size -which is advantageous both in use and transportation.
It’s been a while since do-it-yourself urinalysis kits hit the market, allowing you to test your own urine at the comfort of your own home. But if you wish to do this without getting your hands dirty, the U-Scan, which has a diameter of 9 cm and can be easily installed in the toilet bowl, could be just what you’re looking for. The company is planning to produce this tiny “at-home” laboratory next year, which could be particularly useful in diseases that require frequent urinalysis, such as kidney diseases, urinary tract infections or diabetes. In addition to this device that can measure a good number of parameters and gives you health advice through its mobile app, the company also plans to produce a mat that can be placed under your bed and measure health parameters such as heart rate, respiration and body movements during sleep, giving us clues about what we may do with smart devices in our homes in the future.
Dyson, known for its vacuum cleaners, hair dryers and air purifier-humidifier systems, has recently branched out into audio technology. Its headphones are quite ambitious in terms of blocking background noise – thanks to 10 integrated noise-cancelling microphones, they monitor the surrounding 384 thousand times per second to filter external sounds. Depending on how much filtering you prefer, it has three different modes you can choose from. In isolation mode gives you the highest external noise filtering efficiency, while the conversation mode allows you to hear the person talking to you. You also have the option to connect to the MyDyson app to get information about the sounds you are exposed to in your surroundings. The custom-made neodymium drivers ensure that all audio components (bass, mid and high) are heard cleanly. If you’re wondering what the headset has to do with health-consciousness, its functionality is not limited to sound transmission and sound filtering. Dyson being the manufacturer, the headset comes with an attachable travel visor that purifies air by removing up to 99 percent of environmental pollutants.
Writing and Drawing with Technology
Digital pens have been around for a while, but with the addition of more and more technology, they are becoming much more functional (and fun) tools. These pens detect the user’s handwriting or brush strokes and convert this analog information into digital data that can be used in different applications. With such pens, you need to use special surfaces such as digital paper or tablets, which have sensors that detect and digitise information such as the location of the pen, its movement from that point, and the amount of pressure applied during the movement. Smart pens go one step beyond this, and offer additional functions such as voice recording and text scanning. However, these pens also require special surfaces.
The Nuwa Pen, created by a group of Dutch engineers, is announced as the world’s first truly smart pen. With the help of a triple camera system and motion sensors in the ink cartridge, it “sees” any surface that can be written on with ink -including traditional paper- and directly stores it in its digital memory. It can then transfer this data to a digital medium through a special application. The pen can also convert the user’s handwriting into text format. However, it cannot be used in colour.
If you want to use colour, you may prefer a smart pen like those produced by Colorpik, a company based in New York. This pen uses the special sensors in its design to “copy” any colour and mixes four different colour cartridges to create an exact replica, so you can work on paper or digitally.
The Colorpik Pen comes with three different sizes of tips and can produce 16 million colours, as well as the ability to save your favourite or desired colours.
Finally, let’s talk about a pencil that is truly eternal. Aeon, produced by the German design studio Stilform, has a tin and bismuth alloy tip that can be easily attached and detached thanks to its magnetised feature. This tip leaves a pencil-like mark on paper and does not wear out over time. For this reason, they are said to have an infinite lifespan. Actually, you don’t write in the conventional way. The pen’s metal tip oxidises the paper’s surface, leaving a pencil-like mark -though a bit paler. If you don’t like the pale lines and prefer the pencil feeling you are used to, it comes with a graphite tip option.
But either way, the pencil makes sharpening a thing of the past. Its plastic-free, lightweight metal body, decorated with very thin stripes of wood, is also very environmentally friendly. Smart notebooks that can be erased in various ways and reused over and over are equally environmentally friendly.
Charging Your Appliances While Pedaling
If you like pedaling to stay healthy, you can check out new products that lets you do this while enjoying other benefits. During and after the pandemic period, some of us started spend more time indoors and work from home, so the possibility to exercise and charge your laptops, pads and smart phones while working, is an excellent opportunity. Actually, this is not a new technology at all; we all used to power headlights of our bicycles while we were cycling, using just simple power generating dynamos placed on the wheels. Technology’s much more advanced now, but the principle is the same; turning kinetic energy into electrical charges. Also, using recycled plastics in such ‘green’ products is becoming widespread as well.
This power generating cycling units are either standalone ‘furnitures’ with a comfortable seat and a working tray to place your laptops, or can be used with your existing desks. They are designed with an ergonomic approach so you can spend even hours during your working hours. An average adult weighing 70 kgs, pedaling 20 km/h (around 60 rpm) burns 500-600 calories while producing 65-75 Wh current. You can easily charge your mobile appliances with this output.
REFERENCES
- 1. https://nuwapen.com/products/nuwa-pen
- 2. https://colorpik.ai/
- 3. https://www.stirworld.com/see-features-the-everlasting-stilform-aeon-pencil-with-magnetic-tips-is-designed-to-write-forever
- 4. https://www.orahub.sg/
- 5. https://www.withings.com/eu/en/u-scan
- 6. https://www.dyson.com/headphones/zone
- 7. https://gizmodo.com.au/2023/10/the-suzuki-moqba-concept-is-a-little-motorcycle-that-can-walk-up-stairs-and-i-want-to-ride-it/
- 8. https://www.globalsuzuki.com/globalnews/2023/1003.html