10 most innovative products

1. Motorola's SB1 Smart Badge

The category of Handheld Retail Devices—for retail and specialty markets—

moves us from the very big to the very small. Motorola has come up with a brand-

new category of mobile device. Motorola's SB1 Smart Badge displays not only a

worker's name and photo, but also has a push-to-talk function for hailing

colleagues, can scan bar codes, perform price checks, get inventory information

and even ring up sales.

2. IBM's zEnterprise BC12

Entries for the Cloud Solutions category included many highly innovative

software products. But this year, the award went to hardware. With support for

up to 520 virtual servers in a single box, IBM's zEnterprise BC12 packs an

enormous amount of cloud into a very small footprint—and does so economically.

3. Pocket Shower

Well the distant dream of being able to have a proper shower in the middle

of nowhere is now a reality thanks to the pocket shower. This tiny gizmo

unfolds to reveal a high performance waterproof reservoir that holds a

mighty ten liters of water. The black fabric will (given a sunny day) warm

the water up in no time. You just string it up to a tree and open up the

attached shower head – hey presto, you can now luxuriate in a seven

minute shower, get squeaky clean, and gloat at the wet wiped masses, and

it packs up into a neat package smaller than your fist. Beat the pong with

the Pocket Shower.

4. The solar powered UVonion illuminates and sanitizes

The “UVonion” by Yun Li is an onion-shaped solar ultraviolet lamp that

lightens up your surroundings and saves a tremendous amount of energy.

The UVonion, though it appears to be collecting the solar ultraviolet rays

during the daytime and emitting them at night, sanitizing your home from

the dangers of ultraviolet, but it actually converts solar energy into

electrical energy using solar cells and in turn produces UV light powered by

ultraviolet LEDs.

5. Ever changing Wallnado

It’s one big wall of turn-triangles. Each of these triangles has different

colors on them – white – black – and a slightly unique rainbow shade. As

you can see in the first picture here, when the color is on full blast, it makes

a mural all it’s own.

What combination of madness can be made? Choose your own adventure!

Same ideas of changing color wall are proposed before, however, they

designs are based on usage of electricity.

6. Medicine: Touch sensitive bionic arm

Researchers at the Cleveland Veterans Affairs Medical Center and Case Western

Reserve University have developed a new kind of interface that can convey a sense of

touch from 20 spots on a prosthetic hand. It does this by directly stimulating nerve

bundles—known as peripheral nerves—in the arms of patients; two people have so far

been fitted with the interface. What’s more, the implants continue to work after 18

months, a noteworthy milestone given that electrical interfaces to nerve tissue can

gradually degrade in performance.

Reason why it made the list: these breakthroughs in connecting electronic devices

through the nervous system can eventually enable everything from artificial limbs to

sensory organs like eyes and ears. It’ll probably be a while before we can plug into

the Matrix though.

7. TRANSPORTATION ELECTRIFICATION

An electric vehicle (EV), also referred to as an electric drive vehicle, uses one or

more electric motors or traction motors for propulsion. Three main types of

electric vehicles exist, those that are directly powered from an external power

station, those that are powered by stored electricity originally from an external

power source, and those that are powered by an on-board electrical generator,

such as an engine (a hybrid electric vehicle), or a hydrogen fuel cell. Electric

vehicles include electric cars, electric trains, electric lorries, electric aeroplanes,

electric boats, electric motorcycles and scooters and electric spacecraft.

8. MICROSTRUCTURE OPTICS FOR LED APPLICATIONS

Optics for use with Light Emitting Diodes are described. Microstructured optics are

available and customizable for a wide variety of applications. A few of these will be

touched on. A methodology of designing these optics and the photometrics of the typical

technology is overviewed.

With the increasing popularity of LED’s in lighting applications, there is a need for

engineered photometric control. Given exacting output requirements, it is unusual for a

given supplier’s LED to produce the correct emission profile. This can be remedied with

the use of auxiliary optics. Available classes of optics include refractive (continuous

surface and microstructured), reflective (continuous and facetted) and diffractive. This

paper will concentrate on microprism refractive optics with some mention of reflectors.

The type of designs considered here are light energy directing designs or “nonimaging

optics”. Some nonimaging design background will be outlined followed by mention of

some specific LED commercial applications. Design methodologies for microstructured

refractive optics will then be explored and a photometric analysis of a sample design will

be presented. Finally a discussion on some salient issues regarding LEDs and

microstructured optics is offered.

9. 3D printers

Simple models came onto the market costing less than £2,000, and a growing

community of modders uploading items which can be downloaded for free and printed

at home. The press got a bit overexcited, with some claiming that soon you’ll be able

to print practically anything at home, really cheap.

Just hold your horses though. Yes, 3D printers have come down a lot in price, but they

still have a while to go before they’re simple enough.