It's the question that's asked,in one way or another, throughout the year, every year, all around the country. It dominates the background hum at technology conferences, the alphabet soup of gatherings such as TED, PC Forum, DEMO, and the Emerging Technologies Conference at MIT. As attendees mill around between sessions with coffee cups in hand, there's one thing they most want to know: Who's working on something really new?
The question reflects both the tantalizing sense that somebody, somewhere, is working on an extraordinary breakthrough and the bedeviling suspicion that, whoever they are, they aren't turning up to do show-and-tells at big industry gabfests. The technology sector is starting to show signs of life again, but the stars of the next wave may not be the same folks who surfed the last one. A new cast of characters is out there, cultivating ideas that could really shake things up.
So Fast Company rooted around at academic research labs, the workshops of independent inventors, and corporate campuses to identify five innovators who are working on ideas that could either trigger earthquakes in existing businesses or give birth to entirely new ones.
They work in fields as diverse as portable power, biotechnology, and information visualization. Who's working on something really new? Here are five compelling answers.
Jerry Hallmark is into fuel cells in a very small way. Hallmark supervises research at Motorola's Energy Technologies Lab in Tempe, Arizona. For the past five years, his team of materials scientists have been working on portable power devices that could eventually replace batteries.
Batteries, Hallmark points out, are heavy. They take too long to recharge. They're an environmental concern. And as our world becomes increasingly handheld, portable, and digital, those problems will grow. "We think that the amount of energy a person uses on portable devices will triple by the end of the decade," Hallmark says, "and batteries just can't keep up."
His group at Motorola is developing micro fuel cells to power handheld devices. Instead of using a battery, you'd pop in a cartridge filled with methanol, and a chemical reaction involving oxygen from the air and either the methanol or hydrogen extracted from it would generate electricity. The waste products are heat, carbon dioxide, and a small amount of water.
One big benefit of having a tiny power station in your pocket is that you could replace a fuel cartridge instantly, avoiding those annoying recharging periods. Another is that it would last longer. A lithium ion battery, like the one inside your cell phone, can deliver about five hours of talk time. A fuel cell powered by methanol could let you gab for 24 hours straight--or supply a month of standby time. The race is on to develop these fuel cells, with Duracell launching its own initiatives and Toshiba and NEC preparing to market the first fuel-cell-powered laptops next year.
Hallmark and his team started with a fairly feeble prototype of their direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC)--one that produced just 100 milliwatts. The current prototype, unveiled last spring, produces 2 watts of power. It can run a portable TV, is roughly the size of a recipe-card box, and weighs less than a pound--not including fuel. The ultimate goal is a battery-size cell. "Then you'd have a computer that you could use on an airplane from the United States to Japan without having to bring a suitcase of spare batteries with you," Hallmark says.
Alan Broad is the Johnny Appleseed of sensors. He wants to sprinkle them everywhere.
Broad, the chief engineer of Crossbow Technology in San Jose, imagines a world where sensors can be easily placed anywhere to monitor and report on changes in an environment. That would make it easier for people (and computers) to gather information about the wider world.
Wireless sensor networks could be used in museums to keep tabs on the levels of light and humidity around individual works of art, or on battlefields to alert troops to the maneuvering of enemy vehicles. Already, Broad says, sensor networks are being used on Great Duck Island off the coast of Maine to allow researchers to study an elusive bird called Leach's storm-petrel without disturbing its habitat. And Intel is using wireless sensors to monitor vibration in chip-making equipment, getting a jump on production problems before they happen.
Crossbow makes sensors that can report on vibration, tilt, acceleration, temperature, and other factors. They're about the size of an ice cube and cost about $100. In turn, the sensors are networked by communications modules about the length and width of the two AA batteries that they sit on top of (though they're much thinner). These radios, which now run about $70 a piece, can transmit between 500 and 1,000 feet--but they need only relay their data to the next sensor in the network.
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