DHAKA: The 2013 has involved many significant scientific events and discoveries. The list sees Argus II Retinal Prosthesis System, Atlas humanoid robot, Bounce Imaging Explorer, Google Glass and so on. CNN has made a list of top ten innovations. We present the list for our esteemed readers.

Argus II Retinal Prosthesis System

In the old TV show ‘The Six Million Dollar Man’, astronaut Steve Austin was given bionic body parts after a horrific crash. Austin gets a new right arm, two replacement legs and a left eye with a zoom lens and night-vision capacities.

The Argus II Retinal Prosthesis System isn’t quite that advanced. But for the vision-impaired, the ‘bionic retina’ is a huge leap forward.

The device, which was created by the California-based company Second Sight Medical Products, has been available in Europe since 2011.

It received US approval in February – the first visual prosthesis to do so. Second Sight CEO Robert Greenberg has devoted more than 20 years of his life to the invention.

Atlas humanoid robot

Even just to look at, the Atlas humanoid robot is impressive. At 6 feet and 2 inches and 330 pounds, it’s the size of an NFL defensive tackle.

It can walk and lift heavy objects, replace its hands with customized attachments and complete tasks without direct human supervision, thanks to an on-board computer and plenty of sensors.

The hope is that Atlas someday soon will be working alongside human first responders to earthquakes, typhoons and other disasters, helping to carry supplies or clear debris.

It also could be sent into situations deemed too dangerous for humans, such as the 2011 disaster at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan.

Automatic

In the future we will have self-driving cars that weave in and out of traffic and coordinate silently with other vehicles on the road, all while we sit back with a latte, reading a book.

That future is still a ways off, and even when those cars arrive they will be expensive. But Automatic brings a bit of the smart-car future to our existing vehicles with a small device that attaches to a car`s onboard computer via a port under the steering wheel.

It works with most gas-powered cars from 1996 or later. The hardware syncs with an iPhone app over Bluetooth.

Bounce Imaging Explorer

Most of us might want to throw our camera only when we just missed the perfect shot. But this new gadget is geared toward saving lives by letting users like firefighters, soldiers and police do just that.

The Bounce Imaging Explorer packs six cameras into a rubber orb the size of a baseball, along with a Wi-Fi transmitter and sensors to detect things like temperature and air quality. It also contains a microphone to transmit audio.

The Explorer’s design allows users to throw it into an area that for safety reasons they’d rather not enter themselves. The data it picks up can be beamed back to the user via a smartphone or tablet.

MakerBot Digitizer

Printing of three-dimensional objects has been a hot trend in the tech world for the last several years, but an obstacle has kept the process from going mainstream: To print anything, you first need a computer-created digital model that tells the printer what to make.

Models are available online for thousands of common objects, but if you wanted to print a rare or custom-made item you had to somehow model it on your own.

Google Glass

People see what they want to see with Google Glass. For some, the wearable computer is the next step up from the smartphone.

It’s a real-time GPS, a videocamera, an Internet browser – and it does it all while perched on the bridge of your nose like eyeglasses. Just say ‘OK, Glass’ or gesture with your hands, and Google Glass responds instantly, showing the results in a small display that floats just above your right eye.

GravityLight

Turning on lights with the flick of a switch is a luxury most people don’t ever question. But for the third of the world’s population that lives off of main electrical grids, something as simple as getting light can be a costly challenge.

To the rescue comes the GravityLight, a simple, ingenious device that generates light without access to electricity.

The portable device doesn`t have any batteries or require any fuel or cranking by hand. Instead, you hang the lamp on a wall and fill its attached bag with whatever heavy material is handy, such as rocks, dirt or sand.

Then you simply lift the bag and let it go.

Oculus Rift

Get in the game. That’s not just an order barked from the sidelines any more. The folks behind Oculus Rift are hoping it’s the future of video gaming.

Rift is a head-mounted, virtual-reality device designed specifically with gaming in mind. The idea behind the goggles-and-headphones style contraption is to immerse players in a 3D world that’s as close as possible to the real one.

So, yes, Rift could be a real-world step toward the ‘Star Trek’ Holodeck, a chamber which could simulate any environment, so many of us have dreamed about for decades.

Soccket energy ball

A soccer ball Barack Obama kicked in Tanzania wasn’t just any soccer ball.

It had power. Literally. The Soccket may look like a soccer ball, but it’s really an energy source. Kick it around for 30 minutes, and thanks to some internal mechanisms, the kinetic energy is converted to about three hours’ worth of electricity – enough to charge a basic cell phone.

A full charge, 72 hours, can be had for 16 hours of play.

The idea: Bring electricity and light to parts of the world that are power-poor and often make do with toxic, fume-producing kerosene lamps.

Tooth ‘tattoo’ sensor

In the bizarre world of body modification, tooth tattoos, while they do exist, aren’t near the top of many people’s preferred procedures.

But a scientist at Princeton is working on a temporary one that could help detect tooth decay, gum disease and other illnesses.

The tiny sensor is made of graphene, the same substance that forms the graphite in pencils. But applied to ultra-thin layers of silk, it stays flexible enough to attach to skin, or, in this case, tooth enamel.

‘It is like the difference between a tree and a piece of paper,’ said Michael McAlpine, an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Princeton.

BDST: 2057 HRS, DEC 31, 2013
Edited by Robab Rosan, Current Affairs Editor