Technology of the future gets closer

There have been many amusing predictions about how we will live our lives in the future. Some 'predictions' had us all living on Moon colonies by now, being looked after by android servants while eating a diet of food pills. Somewhat fortuitously perhaps, this is yet to happen.

But the technology of tomorrow draws ever closer. Controlling a computer with nothing more than a swoop of your arm and no need for a controller - how space-age. Or how very Kinect.

So, in light of Microsoft’s ingenious new piece of technology released this week, we take a look at the top five technology predictions that haven’t quite happened yet but might do at some point in the future.

1) Cars that drive themselves: While the proliferation of satellite navigation devices has made driving easier than ever (unless the sat-nav goes wrong and gives incorrect directions), you still have to physically drive the car. A few decades ago, it was predicted that we'd all be driving around in cars controlled entirely by computers, thus allowing motorists to put up their feet and enjoy the ride.

It hasn't happened yet, but we're getting closer. Strangely, it is search-engine giant Google that recently made headlines with its fleet of automated cars.

Google announced that it had been testing automated cards and had already travelled more than 140,000 miles on roads in California. The cars use cameras, radar sensors, map data and lasers to scan the road and other cars nearby in order to drive themselves. So, cars can drive themselves – but only if they have lasers.

2) Jet-packs: The daily commute was meant to be on jet-packs by now. We were all meant to be looping through the skies in a mass confusion of fuel and flames in an exciting future-world.

Alas, it hasn't quite happened yet. One of the main issues is with the fuel. It costs a lot and obviously has to be stored in tanks that fly around with the 'jet-packer'. This makes long-term flight both expensive and potentially explosive.

Still, it hasn't stopped people trying. Jet-packs have been in the news twice this week with one man in Switzerland doing loop the loops through the sky, and another man from West Sussex hovering just off the ground for a few seconds. Admittedly one is perhaps more impressive than the other.

Needless to say, a mass consumer option for jet-pack travel is some way off yet.

3) Teleportation: This would be at number one, but at present it's the most impossible sounding of the lot, so we've relegated it to third place.

Teleportation is perhaps the ultimate dream. And there is a reality to it, but only sort of. In January 2009 scientists at the University of Maryland managed to 'teleport' information between two separate atoms over a distance of a meter.

Admittedly, that’s some way off the 'Beam me up, Scotty', but still, the science behind this feat is somewhat dazzling.

Quantum information, such as the spin of the particle or the polarisation of a photon, is transferred from one location to another, without entering the space between. Dubbed quantum teleportation, this is teleporting, but on an almost infinitesimally small level.

Admittedly the science behind this is somewhat difficult to understand. However, there is plenty of background information on it available, which makes for fascinating reading.

4) Invisibility cloaks: Much like teleportation, this is possible, but only on very, very small scale. A team of UK scientists explained how it can be done in a report published in the New Journal of Physics.

The team detailed how they had developed a new flexible film which contains tiny structures that form a 'metamaterial', which can manipulate light thus rendering objects totally invisible.

According to the report, such materials have been made before, but had the somewhat limited use of only being able to hide light on a spectrum that the human eye can't see in the first place. The technology works by bouncing light around in a set pattern to in effect make it invisible.

While making tiny nano-particles disappear might be some way off a full-on Harry Potter-esque invisibility cloak, advancements are being made in the field and we fully expect to be able to buy one in time for next Christmas.

5) Human robots: Robots have, for some time now, been a somewhat disappointing affair. There have been walking robots that don’t really walk very well, talking robots that don’t really talk very well and freakish 'human like' robots that look unsettling realistic but do very little. Shamefully, none of them have the ability to simultaneously do the hovering, make breakfast, wash the dishes and read us the Sunday newspaper.

And that’s sort of what we were promised a few decades ago. So while technology might be rather clever indeed, it is normally best when there is a human on hand to help it out.

The International Space Station, which recently celebrated its 10th birthday, is a great example of stunning technology full of robotic elements that would be mildly useless were there not human brains there to operate them.

Still, that won't stop people trying to create the perfect android that looks, talks, moves and thinks just like a human. We're just a bit apprehensive, as most attempts thus far have been a bit underwhelming.