The New Year is here and with a bang! With every New Year we usher new thoughts, dreams and plans for the future and the Science and Technology community ushers new innovations and creations to enrich mankind in some or the other way. Let’s have a look at some of these technologies that plan to enrich and improve human lives.

• Robotics: We are fixated with the idea of having robots doing our daily as well as important chores. Though we haven’t witnessed advance robots as depicted in movies, there are still many of our machine friends who are helping a lot. 2016 will be a good year as home and family robots likeJibofinally arrive and more advanced humanoids likePepperbegin working in global corporate offices and show rooms. At the same time, toy, STEM, telepresence, and home appliance robots will continue to sell reasonably well in 2016.

• Virtual reality is here to stay:Virtual reality is going to be a show stealer in the coming year, the trends suggest and why not? ‘Occulus Rift’ will soon make its debut at CES 2016 and with 360-degree videos and simpler viewers like ‘Google Cardboard’ the trend is going to catch up quite fast. Not only the virtual reality devices like Oculus Rift, the accessories to these devices will also be present at the event for sure. Camera systems for capturing spherical footage will be a big focus, and considering the eyeballs that Microsoft HoloLens garnered augmented reality systems could undergo a revival. Instead of IMAX, it’s You-MAX; an immersive screen of content wherever you look and characters that are not only aware you’re there, but react to your “physical presence.”

• New and advanced materials: Hardware is as important as the software. So while the world will discuss sophisticated computer programs it will also expect this year to bring forth new rich advanced materials. Recyclable thermoplastics which are basically super-strong plastics used in smart phone bodies are one such example. They could start showing up in high-end phones this year and may help redefine their look and feel. Corning is preparing for its next edition of super-hard yet pliable Gorilla Glass andJapanese competitorswork on what may eventually be a Gorilla rival. And there is optimism floating in the air regarding the super-material graphene being utilized in actual practical applications owing to the fact that researchers have finally found out a way to make it at far more cheaper prices. This may be the iconic year when we may witness a graphene based CPU.

• The Smart Home:The smart home has been a dream of consumers from quite a long time and the wait is certainly not over yet. There has been news about Apple’s Homekit and Google’s Brillo that will, it is rumoured, connect all our smart devices to a single user-friendly system but the problem is, this project has been progressing quite slowly. Yes, competitors Samsung (with Tizen) and LG (with webOS) are making their way into this strata but still something concrete is still to appear. In 2016, there certainly would be products from various manufacturers claiming to be those ‘perfect’ single-point-control systems, but the ones who will win will be the ones that create gadgets that provide some ‘real’ help like the sensors detecting floods.

[adinserter block=”7″]

Next page For More