Building a patently better future

Tech companies patent every idea they have, to prevent others from stealing a march on their clever innovations.

That doesn’t mean that every patented feature will end up as a real-life product, however. Here, we examine the most intriguing on-paper inventions, from smart contact lenses to flying cars, and spoke to a pair of futurists to assess when – if ever – they’ll become reality.

David Wood is the chair of London Futurists, a meet-up group for future-looking technologists. Wood also founded consultancy firm Delta Wisdom, which looks at the impact of technology on people, and co-founded Symbian.

Glen Hiemstra is the founder of Futurist.com, Hiemstra advises businesses and governments on future trends in economics, technology, transportation and more. He’s also an author and technical advisor on television shows.

Thought-controlled robots

Honeywell (patent no: US20130138248 A1)

If you have a sofa, you might want to hide behind it. Honeywell has patented a system allowing soldiers to control UAVs and battlefield robots with their minds.

The patent envisions a helmet fitted with bio-electric sensors and screens containing relevant commands – forwards, backwards, invade country and so on – that soldiers would think to control the robot. This information would then be fed through software into the robot’s mechanical brain, and hey presto, subjugated locals.

Current versions of this technology allow people to type messages with their brain, but Honeywell wants soldiers commanding platoons of robots simultaneously.

Glen Hiemstra: “Successful experiments are already taking place with this technology and I’d expect it to be commercial by 2020. Initial applications will be limited to non-lethal and non-critical functions, but it won’t become genuinely useful until the ability to control something by thought is automatic enough that we can also carry out other activities. Right now, these interfaces require an operator’s complete attention.”

David Wood: “This sounds far-fetched, but many companies have been looking into similar technologies, with the field brain-computer interfaces attracting a lot of attention.”

Flying cars

Zee.Aero (patent no: US20130214086 A1)

The lack of flying cars is something the future is forced to apologise for every day. Hope arrives in the form of Zee.Aero, which has patented a small jet vehicle with eight rotors for lift and two rotors to propel it forwards. Zee.Aero reckons its “personal aircraft” would be “safe, quiet, easy to control, efficient and compact”, fitting in a normal car-parking space.

Some models would even have room for passengers and shopping, with all of them powered by electric batteries and a suite of sophisticated software. The patent’s author is Ilan Kroo, an aeronautics professor and NASA scientist, which is exactly the CV he should have.

Glen Hiemstra: “I think the first sales will come in 2020, although they’ll be to a few wealthy people as a hobby, with societal impact limited by the fact that these are personal flying vehicles, not really cars to be driven down the street. Widespread adoption will be hampered by three issues: getting regulatory approval to use the skies, a process that can take years and varies by country; reaching a decent price point; and controlling noise levels so that neighbours will accept take-offs and landings next door.”

David Wood: “There’s little evidence Zee.Aero has done any serious work in this. The case for flying cars might make sense in some military instances, but I’m unconvinced about the merits for general public use. This technology is likely to be overtaken by a combination of autonomous vehicles – by Google or the University of Oxford – and vacuum-tube transportation systems.”

Smart contact lenses

Google (patent no: US20140088881 A1)

One day Google will be able to stuff itself into our brains with relative ease, but until then, our eyes will have to do. Google’s contact lenses feature embedded circuits, cameras and sensors, bulking out our frugal sensory palate with the ability to see heat or zoom in on things.

For blind people, the contact lenses could translate visual data into useful audio cues. Ultimately, these contact lenses could fulfil the lacklustre promise of augmented reality, with tiny screens constantly displaying information on the things we’re looking at.

Glen Hiemstra: “This will be commercial in some basic form by 2025. But the impact on society will be moderate as other forms of augmented reality will have been around for a decade, including Google Glass. Reading other people’s biometrics will be the spookiest part, and is addressed in the film Transcendence. The biggest hurdle will be integration with the eye industry, since there are possible regulatory issues.”

David Wood: “Early versions will deliver small amounts of functionality, but other features such as built-in cameras are likely to take longer. Also, like smartphones and smart glasses, it will take time for smart contacts to “cross the chasm” into mainstream acceptance, but the benefits they provide will prove decisive. In 20 years’ time, most people will be wearing smart contacts, or something similar, most of the time.”

Nanorobotics

Neal Solomon (patent no: WO2008063473 A2)

Imagine a world where clouds of tiny robots can create buildings, or swim in your bloodstream, fixing you before you even know you’re sick. In truth, lodging a patent covering nanorobotics is like naming
a planet you haven’t found or can’t reach, and exists in a dimension you can’t see.

We can’t power anything this small, which doesn’t matter because we can’t build nanorobots anyway and, even if we could, we haven’t yet solved the artificial-intelligence problems necessary to make them work together. More importantly, how do we avoid having to wash billions of dollars’ worth of technology out of our hair when we accidentally stroll through a cloud of them?

Glen Hiemstra: “To create these robots in the numbers required implies self-replicating machines and we haven’t done that at any significant scale. The other really big issue is creating an energy package that small that lasts more than a few minutes. Once they’ve been created, the impact will be huge. The planet will become more self-aware, and the threat of machines taking over could be seen as real. Commercial by 2050.”

Pandemic prevention scanners

Boeing (patent no: US20130130227 A1)

If the recent Ebola outbreak has taught us anything, it’s that we should all tape our doors and windows shut, and never go anywhere ever again. Boeing disagrees. It has patented a technology for monitoring common areas in airports, with a raft of sensors tracking sneezing, vomiting, shakes, sweats and even high body temperatures. Software would then match all this to a database of conditions, alerting the pandemic police to the imminent zombie apocalypse.

The patent even suggests implanting biometric sensors into boarding passes, allowing the system to keep an even closer eye on your health.

Glen Hiemstra: “I first heard this proposed around 2000, but not much progress has been made so far, so allow another ten years at least – I’d say 2025. Societal impact will be significant, since it will not only decrease the chances of a pandemic, but it could also lead towards more preventive medicine, allowing for a healthier population and cheaper healthcare. The difficulty will be building the sensitive, non-contact sensors required, coupled with privacy issues.”

Vactrains

Robert Goddard (patent no: US2511979 A)

Pneumatic tubes have been around for decades, with offices using them to send messages and parcels between floors and buildings. Vacuum trains operate on the same principle, except we’ll be shooting people through them at speeds of up to 4,000 miles per hour (6,437kph).

Researchers at the National Key Laboratory of Traction Power at Southwest Jiaotong University claim they’re working on a prototype “vactrain” capable of travelling at 370mph (595kph), which will be ferrying people within the decade. Unfortunately, the magic of tomorrow is hampered by the physics of today: how do you safely slow down an object from 4,000mph? When a car crashes at 100mph it smears itself across a good proportion of the road. What happens if a vactrain does that? Destination: splat!

Glen Hiemstra: “We need to see full-scale prototypes to know how real this will be, especially in terms of cost versus other forms of intercity travel. Societal impact could be huge if it proves cost-competitive, because the technology promises to speed up travel times while cutting energy and environment impacts. Several start-ups are trying to get this idea going, although their challenge will be to stay alive long enough to take the concept to commercial rollout, especially in light of the long lead time for permitting and building. If all goes well, it could be commercial by 2035.”

David Wood: “Elon Musk is looking hard at this idea in his Hyperloop project, so we ought to take it seriously. Even so, it’s a project more likely to take 20 years than, say, five.”

Weather-altering satellites

Franklin Chen (patent no: US5984239 A)

This is one of those “on-the-fence” technologies, where one side is a golden land of food, water, peace and plenty, and the other side is… well, Tesco at closing time.

Chen’s patent envisions a network of satellites capable of altering the weather at our command, bringing rain to the African plains, or bottling up the clouds when floods threaten. Science can’t explain any of this because Chen’s clearly never heard of it, but that isn’t stopping conspiracy theorists from suggesting that countries will soon be battering their enemies with hurricanes.

Glen Hiemstra: “We’ll only see this kind of technology if climate change creates enough urgency that it’s seen as vital to survival. If that doesn’t occur, I doubt very much that it could overcome environmental objections. We could see something by 2050.”

David Wood: “This is an enormously important topic. It fits into the broader category of geo-engineering. In its wider form, it’s set to be discussed often, because of its potential to address climate-change issues.”

Mechanical telepathy

Department of Defense (US6470214 B1)

There was always going to be a moment when the US government became a dastardly parody of itself. That moment occurred on 13 December 1996, when the Department of Defense (DoD) patented a technique allowing it to theoretically broadcast messages directly into our brains.

The science is lovely, using the microwave auditory effect first discovered during World War II when soldiers working near radio equipment heard audible clicks that others couldn’t. Research found that signals at certain frequencies agitated our auditory apparatus, with a US study in 1973 claiming to have silently communicated single-digit numbers.

The DoD has since used the technology to try to discombobulate enemy soldiers and scare pigeons off sensitive equipment, but would like to find a way to send entire messages.

Glen Hiemstra: “I couldn’t begin to predict when this could become commercial, although it sounds very doable. The idea of conversations happening sub-vocally would be fascinating – which is why it’s a staple of much science fiction. It will be difficult to manage because we’ll have to investigate which nerves need stimulating to cause a thought to ‘pop’ into somebody’s head. And we don’t know if these are standard, or unique to each person.”

David Wood: “This is something likely to be further into the future, perhaps 25–30 years’ time. For an excellent series of novels looking into the implications of this kind of technology – albeit implemented differently – see Nexus and Crux by Ramez Naam.”

Flexible, rollable smartphones

Motorola (patent no: US20130285921 A1)

The endless march of iterative smartphones is one of the most boring pageants in the technology industry, with companies trotting out echoes of each others’ devices every year. Motorola’s patent describes a flexible, rollable screen that could act as a phone or electronic paper, with sensors automatically altering the size and position of text, images and video depending on where you’re looking. It’s the kick in the screen smartphones need.

Glen Hiemstra: “This has been on the drawing boards for years, but I don’t know of a serious commercial effort yet. I suspect it’s difficult to produce a screen such as this with sufficient refresh rates and clarity compared with alternatives. I hope for it, though, as it has a high cool factor. The question is whether they could build it as cheaply as current screens. It could be commercial by 2030.”

David Wood: “We’re already seeing smartphones with (slightly) curved screens, from companies such as Samsung and LG. New designs are being investigated involving different material from before. I believe that, within ten years, flexible screens will be much more commonplace.”

Quantum entanglement communication

Erann Gat (patent no: US20030133714 A1)

Einstein called quantum entanglement “spooky action at distance”, presumably while holding a torch to his face and scaring the pants off Niels Bohr, Nathan Rosen and Erwin Schrödinger.

Quantum entanglement refers to the phenomenon of two entangled particles appearing to influence one another instantaneously, no matter the distance between them. In the case of quantum entanglement, that influence is usually an opposite: one particle spins left, so the entangled particle spins right.

Gat’s patent optimistically envisions using this phenomenon as the string between two cans, gifting us with a communication device capable of traversing vast distances.

Glen Hiemstra: “Many fundamental discoveries would have to be achieved before we can use – and not just observe – quantum entanglement. And they aren’t trivial. I wouldn’t put a commercial development date on this before 2075. If they could be overcome, societal impact would be huge – helping to turn us into a space-faring civilisation – but with all the basic science yet to be understood, investment would be unpredictable.”

David Wood: “This is, by far, the most unrealistic idea in this group. Quantum entanglement is a fascinating subject, but it has been known by the physics community since the 1930s that entanglement, despite its apparent non-local aspects, can’t be used to communicate a message faster than the speed of light. None of the more recent experiments have done anything in the slightest to challenge that principle. Sadly, this fact doesn’t prevent huge numbers of writers getting overly excited about this possibility.”

On the other hand, quantum entanglement can be used for purposes such as determining whether a third party has interfered with a message intended to have been distributed securely. But that’s something quite different.”