An unexpected plus of freelancing has been that I’m constantly dipping into very different technological worlds that I wouldn’t know about otherwise. There is so much new stuff out there, it’s mindboggling… I have to be selective and just pick a few things that have caught my non-expert eye. A quick whistle-stop glimpse of interesting technologies that are on the cusp of breaking big…

Hydrogen-powered train
The hydrogen economy has been talked about for decades, and finally it’s happening. The premise is that when you burn hydrogen in air you get H₂O as a waste product instead of CO₂ when you burn carbon. The downside is the combustibility of the fuel. The solution is hydrogen fuel cells and already there are two models of cars using hydrogen fuel cells to power them. The next breakthrough is Coralia iLint, the hydrogen train, which has just gone into service in Germany. OK, hydrogen needs to be produced sustainably, and then there’s the whole refuelling supply chain… but this train is a great step on the road to the hydrogen economy.

Additive manufacturing
Truly disruptive, this technology takes the principle of 3D printing and applies it to manufacturing, producing pieces of equipment by producing layer upon layer of material to build the finished object. Unlike traditional ‘subtractive’ manufacturing there’s no waste or bits to be cut off, and so tooling costs tumble. Not yet at the stage of replacing mass production, the new technology does give freedom to design bespoke objects in small numbers. Imagine, you want a metal table, but you want it a bit longer, or higher than ones you’ve seen, and with an ornate design that you saw on a lamp stand. Suddenly, all is possible. The implications for traditional manufacturing are significant.

Genetics and anthropology
The advances in genetics are revolutionising our view of the human story. When modern humans were moving out of Africa, we weren’t the only humans around. Did we interbreed with other branches of the human family tree? A UK documentary TV programme Horizon revealed that not only did modern humans interbreed with Neanderthals and Denisovans, but other human cousins that don’t even exist in the fossil record. So, we humans are not so ‘human’ after all and the science is exploding our understanding of ourselves.

Digital supply chain
One of the implications of big data could be a severe honing of supply chains. Just-in-time meets ‘the Amazon effect’ where consumers pull the supply chain rather than retailers pushing it. A click to order a punnet of blueberries in a UK supermarket could be the one that triggers the pickers in Chile to go out to the fields and start picking the next delivery, which, in turn, triggers the aircraft to be chartered, the lorries to be primed, and the supermarket to book in the next delivery. With billions of automatic transactions across industry and commerce, all algorithmed to within an inch of their lives, production and supply is heading for total transformation.

Autonomous vehicles
There has been so much talk about autonomous self-driving vehicles that you could be forgiven for thinking that they were already here. They’re not, but they soon will be. Perhaps in only a year or two. The industry is going through a transformation – going electric, with more and more automation in every new car. Now it is all about the ‘in-car experience’ and what we will be doing in our pods when we no longer have to worry about driving. The big players are teaming up with software companies and techy start-ups in the race to launch the ultimate ‘non-driving’ experience.

Exoskeletons
Keep an eye on these, it is an idea whose time has come. Wearing an external robotic suit is handy for all sorts of things, more power to your elbow in the workplace, helping you stand up, sit down balance and carry. Perhaps the most obvious growth area will be in the health market, aiding people with mobility difficulties to safely move around. The applications are numerous, the technology is developing and the costs are coming down.

Robots, cobots and mobile robots
They have been here for years but they are now getting everywhere. In the industrial world, its mainly robotic ‘arms’, but cobots, or collaborative robots, are increasingly working alongside humans in factories, picking and packing and performing a host of intricate operations once performed by the human hand. Robots are also becoming more mobile, delivering goods around warehouses, samples across hospitals and pizzas around university campuses. The range of robots available, priced from high to low and burgeoning applications mean that robots will have an effect on jobs, but it’s not all bad, as the field of robotics is creating a host of interesting career opportunities.

Digital twins
A logical extension of all the processes needed to create and run a machine, a digital twin is a product of engineering, artificial intelligence and big data… or the industrial internet of things. Imagine building, say, a ship. It is designed on computers, and details of all its engines, heating systems, power supplies, sensors, well, everything, is in the computer. When the real-life ship goes to sea, a digital version exists, receiving all the signals from the ship’s onboard sensors, learning every aspect of the ship’s behaviour as it sails the ocean. The digital ship can tell the real ship when to replace a pump, inspect a busbar or adjust its operation. Not only can the digital twin process all the data to fine tune the maintenance and performance of its real-life counterpart, but all the learning can be incorporated into the design of the next ship.

Truck platooning
A ‘quick hit’ in vehicle-to-vehicle digital communication is truck platooning, where lorries drive in convoy much more closely – practically bumper to bumper – than they could do without the technology. The advantage? Up to 25% of fuel consumption is down to air drag, so with several lorries hiding behind each other they can save a lot of fuel. Imagine the savings if all lorries could communicate with each other and get into convoys on the motorway? A bit tricky to overtake tho’.

SpaceX Hyperloop
I criticise some of our most flamboyant entrepreneurs for wasteful behaviour, but sometimes I marvel at the madness. Think back to those old-fashioned tubular postage systems, where documents ‘flew’ across sorting rooms in vacuum tubes. The vacuum means that objects can move at great speeds because of no air resistance. Now imagine a tube big enough to take a pod full of humans and whizz them from A to B in a jiffy. Elon Musk’s SpaceX Hyperloop competition is all about designing such a tube that could transport passengers at 1,000 km an hour, in the future. Paris to Berlin in an hour. Fantastic, yet possible?