News & Analysis
Ten emerging technologies to watch in 2010
Peter Clarke
11/18/2009 11:40 AM EST
Recessions are the times of change when R&D investments get pushed to the fore. It is well known that when markets and prosperity return they never return in exactly the same form that they went away.
We have deliberately favored the hardware- and physically based side of the technology landscape, although software is also likely to increase its impact and importance in 2010.
There are also some technology trends that are so self-evident and long-term that we have not listed them. We would include amongst these the need to reduce power consumption and the need to pursue low-carbon and reduced materials content solutions. We see these as drivers for some of the more detailed technologies we list below. We don't claim to have a perfectly accurate piezoelectric crystal ball, but some technologies and some technology providers are going to change the landscape in 2010. The ten technologies listed below, in no particular order, might just be part of our changing times.
1. Biofeedback or thought-control of electronics
A number of companies and research institutions have shown how brain waves, captured using sensors on a skull cap or head-set, can be used to control computer systems. The applications are medical — giving communications and control of the environment to heavily disabled people — military and, increasingly, in consumer and computer games control interfaces. This may seem like science fiction but the thought-control human-computer interface is here now and is being promoted by companies such as Emotiv Systems Inc. (San Francisco, Calif.).
2. Printed electronics
The possibility of the rapid printing of multiple conductive, insulating and semiconductive layers to form electronic circuits holds out the prospect of much lower cost ICs than those prepared by conventional fabrication methods. Printing semiconductors usually implies the use of organic materials (although see below) with very different performance to silicon. It is also implies much larger minimum geometries than can be attained in silicon. But there are applications that can benefit from modest performance on flexible subtrates at low cost; the RFID tag is one and the active-matrix backplane for displays is another.
Kovio Inc. (Milpitas, Calif.), a privately-held pioneer in printed silicon electronics, has been plowing the printed electronics furrow since the company was founded in 2001, and in July 2009 announced that it had raised $20 million in Series E financing. Kovio said it planned to use the money to commence volume shipments of its Kovio RF barcodes.
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Peter Clarke
11/18/2009 1:34 PM EST
You may not like our list. You may think we have missed an imminent and important technology that is going to shake things up in 2010.
If so, please tell us and your peers about it through the medium of the forum. After all it doesn't have to be just 10 technologies to watch.
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DH123
11/18/2009 4:14 PM EST
EEStor, after 9 years of development, has promised a new groundbreaking universal capacitor/battery to ZMC, initially for high capacity fast charge electric cars, by the end of 2009, has received a permit to expand into 2800 feet of adjoining store, and requested UL certification of a product earlier in 2009. Also has backing from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers who funded Google, Amazon Sun etc, & has signed a deal with Lockheed Martin.
Surface Power (Ireland) has just signed deals for a $30 million distribution agreement for New Zealand, and a EUR 20 for Ireland, for its new solar water heater panels that use a closed heat cycle gas system in each tube of each panel, and are claimed to be the worlds most efficient with low installation costs and a East-West facing installation options. TUV Rhineland has certified it for demonstrating up to 131% more efficiency in daybreak and sunset time and 76% more efficiency at noontime than other water panels.
eSolar (Califirnia, Google backed) completed its (& America's) first high efficiency utility scale solar power tower electricity power plant (5MW) in 2009, design to operation in less than 1 year, & has plans for up to 465MW more in California/New Mexico, and has licensed the technology to India based ACME group for 1GW more. It uses pre-manufactured & quickly installed lowcost tracking panel arrays.
On a less certain note for 2010, Greensun (Israel) have a $2.10/W solar panel in operation and are developing a $0.94/W (appears to be final product cost) version (at least one solar panel manufacturer recently reached the $1/W raw production cost level), that disperses heat while collecting mostly only useful light from a wide range of angles (hence relatively efficient for cloudy days).
Also, probably not in production for 2010, yet emerging, Graz of Austria along with battery manufacturer Varta have announced a new Gel electrode coating that doubles Li-Ion battery storage capacity (a precusor model has been built, no full production dates given yet), and has the possibility of being developed for a capacity increase of up to 10.
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Peter Clarke
11/19/2009 9:52 AM EST
DH123 is clearly an enthusiast for efficient energy sources. Let's put his battery recommendations in with our own and label solar power as the 11th emerging technology of 2010. What else do readers have?
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GeniusEE
11/19/2009 3:06 PM EST
The key here is "emerging" technologies, not a tactical list of things that have been done or are an evolutionary aspect of existing technology.
Solar, while news, is not "emerging", it's "surplus" right now. Solar towers have been shown by Sandia THREE decades ago in AMERICA ( http://www.sandia.gov/solar/CSP_papers/Tower/SAND92_1381_heliostat_testing.pdf ) and commercially deployed in Spain, and are not "emerging".
As far as 10X (!) battery capacity in Li-Ion, I'm healthily skeptical and want to see some solid evidence vs marketing hype by vested interests.
I expect any journalist producing such lists, as was apparently done in these 10, to have tracked and vetted candidates, not merely regurgitating old tech or bowing to the vested interests of promotional campaigns by companies or financial people.
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Eric Verhulst
11/22/2009 5:19 PM EST
The list seems indeed a bit odd and inconsistent. For example, parallel processing is old hat. People have been building parallel hardware en programming in parallel for decades (our largest embedded system had 12000 processors, mixing DSPs, micro's all in a single grid 15 years ago). The parallel programming solutions exist.
The breakthrough however needs to come from the way we educate people and learn to write decent software.
Multicore with more then 4 cores fails for two reasons. 1. Apparently top designers don't understand that shared memory is a bottleneck or 2. The programming model is flawed. Design and think parallel, optimise by sequentialisation and all problems go away. You can call that an emerging technology, I call it plain common sense.
Eric Verhulst @ altreonic.com
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akvish
11/25/2009 12:58 AM EST
The emerging technology that will enable & absorb multitude of technologies will be
Flying Car. It is 21st Century now and this technology is the key platform that will
involve multi-disciplinary solution. It may not exactly fit 2010 timeline but definitely
in the near term.
It will also absorb many of the "Ten emerging technologies lto watch for in 2010" & beyond.
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