Top 5 Technology advancements

Curated from AI magazine, Marketing AI institute, Singularity Hub, Interesting Engineering, NASA.

1. Bionic Arm

Image Source: Google

Fine-tuned prosthetics are being built by Cleveland Clinic in collaboration with the University of Brunswick and the University of Alberta.

The result is the development of prosthetics which can be controlled directly by the brain waves. But the earlier versions weren’t solving a huge problem, which is, amputees had no idea what their bionic arm was up to until recently scientists found a way out, called Kinesthesia. Bionic arm supported with Kinesthesia interface can do a lot more than usual bionic appendages. It can track the sensations down till joints and muscles to compute where the arm is, even without direct touch feedback. Kinesthesia is necessary for every fundamental move you make taking from scrubbing your back to eating the popcorn even when your eyes are glued to the movie screen.

Primarily, this new device restores kinesthesia by vibrating the tendons for up to 70 to 115 Hz. The illusion is too strong this way, giving away ideas to scientists that if multiple tendons are vibrated, the body can finally sense complex arm movements in space even if the body is devoid of physical movements.

2. Robotic Bees

Image Source: Pinterest

Is NASA sending bees to examine MARS?

Yep, but the robots.

They are bumblebee size flyers with cicada-sized wings. NASA published the motivation behind sending a flock of Marsbees (it’s literally named after the planet) on March 30. After NASA’s Curiosity rover detected the presence of low-level methane gas, though no one is sure if it was biologically produced, the intention behind this project, i.e. to collect the traces of planet’s thin air seems feasible.

As far as the technologies we use on earth, rotary-wing quadcopters are popular than the flappy-wing robots. The advantage of designing flappy robots to explore MARS is, this will allow the swarm of robotic bees to labour with less-power and regularly return to the home base to recharge themselves.

Additionally, the low-gravity on MARS will further equip the swarm of Marsbees to function flawlessly despite the planet’s thin air atmosphere.

3. The Moments In Time

Image Source: Flickr

The Moments In Time is an ongoing project at the MIT-IBM laboratory by Dan Gutfreund — a principal investigator at MIT-IBM Watson AI laboratory and Aude Olivia — a principal research scientist at MIT computer science and AI laboratory.

Understanding The Moments In Time dataset, it is built on a compilation of 1 million annotated video streams of rapidly transforming events unrolling within three short seconds. The fact backing up this research is a well-known trait of humans.

For humans, understanding an event depicted in various forms is a pretty straightforward capability. Machines are literally a failure in this case. The final outcome of this research initiative is to teach machines to recognize different actions.

Teaching the deep-learning algorithms to recognize actions by providing them with a vast coverage of dynamic visual and auditory moments.

For example, cooking, opening, running actions are fed to the deep-learning algorithm with a minimum of 2000 videos to understand those actions without having to be compulsorily taught under supervision.

4. DNA Synthesizer

Image Source: Glassdoor

As per the research group from IDC, by 2025, the world will have produced 163 zettabytes of digital data causing more than 1.2 trillions of iPhones to show “memory full” warning. This is where the current epoch’s the most unreal technology comes into play, Twist Bioscience — a five-year young startup.

Emily Leproust, the CEO of Twist tells that it now offers its customers to store up to 12 megabytes of data in the DNA for $100,000 sum. Twist’s production room contains Applied Biosystems model 394 DNA synthesizer which is equipped to make 4 strands of DNA per day. Evidently, Twist now makes three million strands every day.

Its technology appears to be an ink-jet printer hacked together, the commencing process leads the tiny drops of Adenine, Guanine, Cytosine and Thymine (A, G, C, T) of DNA squeezed from the storage tanks into 9,600 nano-wells, each with the width of a hair strand. The mega market for synthetic DNA is whooshing undeniably.

And the most alluring phrase of words anyone can hear is, what Leproust said, “This one capsule of DNA stores as much data as an entire Facebook data centre”. At the moment, of all that we know, the team has already encoded music videos, songs from the Montreux Jazz Festival.

5. Brain Machine Interface

Image Source: YouTube

One of the mind-boggling technological advancement that has occupied enough space on-stage is brain-machine interface technology. Primarily, connecting the human brain with a machine which is believed to enhance cognitive functions and thus capabilities. It is still at its early stage but perhaps is evolving at a quick pace than it was normally expected.

A very well known boffin, Ray Kurzweil believes that by 2030, we will almost have begun connecting our brains to the internet via nanobots. Kurzweil, therefore, sums up the future of our brains as, “provide full-immersion virtual reality from within the nervous system, provide direct brain-to-brain communication over the internet, and otherwise greatly expand human intelligence.” Considering the promised potential of brain-machine co-existence and functioning, how will we imply this technology to decipher our consciousness and self-awareness?

As a workaround for what we call the magic caused by the neurochemicals inside our brain, scientists are using non-invasive brain simulation via EEG. Giving away a massive amount of nutrition, virtual reality experience and other whimsical awareness by creating a suitable environment and factors.

Took a good 6 months of hiatus from writing 😌 😌 ☺️

Will be covering technological innovations and everything marketing moving forward.

Cheers folks!