JAXA and Toyota team up to create a Moon buggy with a 10,000km range
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF It’s a question of when, not if, we go back to and live on the Moon, and we’ll need transportation… Interested in the future and want to experience even more?! eXplore More. As more nation states, space agencies and billionaires, like China and NASA, Elon...
Toyota’s zero emission hydrogen trucks start hauling cargo in California
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Hydrogen powered and Lithium Ion battery powered electric vehicles have been battling for dominance for years, and now fuel cell technology is starting to hit the roads for real. Interested in the future and want to experience even more?! eXplore More. It’s been two...
Japanese researchers unveil their stunning “full body DeepFakes”
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Pandora’s Box has been opened, and very soon you won’t be able to tell what content was created by a human, and what was created by a machine. I’ve been talking about the rise of realistic, people fooling synthetic content that’s created by machines...
Scientists bring 28,000 year old woolly mammoth cells back to life
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Many scientists see de-extinction, as well as immortality and re-incarnation, as a mystery we simply haven’t solved yet. In a world rife with movie plotlines about bringing extinct animals back from the dead, and actual scientists thinking about actually doing it, scientists in Osaka,...
New pre-crime tech detects shoplifters before they commit the crime
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF AI’s that can predict outcomes from users behaviours are becoming increasingly common, and one of the biggest beneficiaries of that is the area of pre-crime detection. It’s watching, and knows a crime is about to take place before it happens – this is the...
Simple paper blood test diagnoses disease faster and cheaper
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Not everyone has access to a lab that can process blood tests, so this breakthrough will help people in developing nations diagnose disease faster. Dutch and Japanese scientists have developed an inexpensive new paper-based blood test kit that quickly determines if patients have infectious...
Nitanic’s revolutionary AI’s evolve and battle for gamers loyalty
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Traditional marketing, where marketers create and distribute content, is being automated by AI. This is the future of marketing – automated, viral, and intelligent. Niantic, the company behind Pokemon Go, have announced that they’re going to be using a “thought provoking campaign” that “uses AI to...
Hyundai unveils the worlds first car with a solar power panoramic roof
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF In the future electric cars won’t solely be reliant on Lithium Ion batteries, as battery technology and new materials evolve we’ll see the emergence of battery-less electric vehicles. If you ever watch one of my keynotes on the Future of Transportation, like the one...
World first as scientists just turn human blood cells into human eggs
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Biology keeps surprising us, and scientists are finding amazing new ways to treat infertility and create new life. Scientists at Kyoto University in Japan have announced they’ve made significant progress in the quest to combat infertility by creating the precursor to a human egg cell in a...
World first as Japanese rovers relay incredible photos from distant ancient asteroid
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF In galactic terms Earth’s neighbourhood is huge, and we’re only just beginning to explore it. First Japan wants to be the world’s first country to drill a hole through the Earth’s mantle, and build the world’s first space elevator, and now the Japan Aerospace...
Collapsing bee colonies prompt researchers to build robo bees
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF We rely on bees to pollinate nearly 75 percent of our crops, but as colonies continue to collapse researchers are looking for new alternatives to pollinate crops. Food security continues to come under the spotlight which is why we’ve recently seen research that uses...
World’s first space elevator hitches a ride to the ISS to begin first trials
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The cost of getting astronauts and cargo into space is still astronomical, a space elevator could eliminate the need for costly rocket launches and democratise access to space. Let’s be honest, launching things into space with rockets is a pretty inefficient way to do...
Japanese team show off their new flexible skin display technology
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Displays will one day be more than just slabs of glass stuck to our devices, and this is another step in that journey. Palm reading could take on a whole new meaning, thanks to a new invention from Japan in the form of a...
World’s first crystal robot goes for a walk
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Our ability to turn almost any material, seemingly, into a robotic device, including crystals, will help us open the door to new drug delivery and healthcare applications as well as ones we haven’t discovered yet. All of a sudden I’m seeing a new glut...
FDA approves use of world’s first neuro controlled exoskeleton
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Today millions of people in the world, for a variety of reasons, have trouble moving their bodies, but new brain controlled exoskeletons could help them regain their movement and rehabilitate them at the same time. People familiar with the Terminator series from the 1980’s...
Researchers use mind-reading AI to put people’s thoughts on TV
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Being able to read people’s minds, and visualise what they’re thinking and their memories on a screen will revolutionise almost every part of society, and that’s before we start talking about telepathy and futuristic brain downloading. It already seems a little like computers can...
Hitachi’s newest surveillance AI can follow you through a crowd
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF You might not care too much about your privacy today, but what about your children’s privacy tomorrow? The technologies to track and analyse our every thought and move have already been assembled, the next step is deployment. Not only can a new Artificial Intelligence...
LG unveils their giant rollable 65 inch and 88 inch Crystal Sound OLED TV’s
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Display and sound technology are starting to progress, and the fixed formats we’re used to are going to one day be replaced by more flexible, integrated systems. Last year Samsung showed off their new 11k display with naked eye 3D effect, and Panasonic showed...
Toyota’s autonomous vehicle concept signals the death of the car
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF By 2040 the concept of the car will be dead, replaced instead by autonomous multi-modal pods, and this is Toyota’s vision of a possible future. As we begin to stare the death of the car in the face, with even companies like Audi realising...
Japanese scientists show off their latest 3D volumetric display
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF One day we’ll move away from 2D screens and be entertained in true 3D, whether it’s holograms or naked-eye 3D screens, but researchers are still trying to find the perfect technology. 3D displays, like Samsung’s “soon to be released” naked-eye 11k displays, have been...
