The world is filled with a lot of creative people, entrepreneurs, scientists, journalists, and professionals of all fields. Heck, we’ve got thousands of them right here on Cad Crowd! And then there are students, early technology adopters, and general consumers which make the vast majority of the population. Innovations are born when creativity collides with science; combined with entrepreneurship and persistence, innovative ideas become inventions. Before the 2016 ends, we’ve come across a number of notable inventions as follows.
While 2016 may have brought quite a bit of bad news, there’s also been a lot of awesome new invention ideas and products that have come out this year. We may be losing celebrities, but we’re gaining all kinds of fun new things. Like…
Unless you’ve been living in solitary during the last decade or so, you must have heard about 3D printers and how they are changing the world of manufacturing. While the technology has been around since the 1980’s, people only started to really get to know it around 2007 when they became more accessible price-wise and more commonly used. The first commercially available 3D printer hit the market in 2009.
Fast forward 7 years later, Rize One 3D Printer came to existent. Unlike any of its predecessor, this 3D printer requires zero post-processing. Utilizing a patented technology that the company calls Augmented Polymer Deposition, this industrial-class desktop 3D printer offers almost instant usability of printed object. Previous technologies need up to 3 hours of post-processing before the object is actually ready to use. With this development, 3D printers take another step towards usability and friendliness that will soon see the devices in more homes, offices, and makerspaces around the country and around the world.
Road safety has been one of the major driving forces of inventions such as anti-lock brakes, traction control, electronic stability control, and navigation systems. Most of those, unfortunately, are only really helpful for drivers and passengers in cars. It’s still a dangerous world out there for bicyclists! Well, British design firm DCA Design International has come up with this brilliant idea to help cyclists improve road safety without using many fancy technologies. Well, unless you count an augmented-reality helmet as fancy.
This futuristic helmet is equipped with front and rear cameras as well as ultrasonic sensors. The drop down visor can overlay live video feed from the rear camera onto wearer’s field of view. Optic Helmet is able to display alerts including proximity warnings and potential collision. GPS navigation and trip statistics can be displayed as well. All that functionality, and the thing looks pretty slick, too. That’s good design, baby!
Everybody is familiar with solar power these days. When the term “solar power” is used, the first thing that comes to mind is an unsightly roof design that often diminishes, let’s say, the architectural themes or aesthetic of a place. But, regardless of how ugly the power panel looks, it actually helps reduce carbon footprints and potentially erases the entire electricity bill from your home. Oh, what a conflict! Not anymore! Tesla and SolarCity have collaborated to help you save the environment in style and without getting your neighborhood association all a fluster.
The absence of big bulky metal boxes on the roof is expected to attract more people into the world of sustainable renewable energy. Harnessing power of the sun does not always mean you need to sacrifice a beautiful roof. The company even gives several design options including Tuscan, Slate, Textured, and Smooth, letting you match your solar system with your architectural vision.
Selfie sticks: you either hate them or love them with a passion usually seen only in the pages of Shakespeare. Some may say that a selfie-stick is the best invention since the rotisserie. Finally, we can take pictures of ourselves standing in front of some thing without the close-up viewpoint necessitated by the puny length of our arms. And you can post the result confidently to the Internet for the whole world to see how good you look in front of that thing. Well, if you think a selfie-stick is good, you certainly haven’t heard about the AirSelfie, a pocket-sized drone equipped with a very capable camera.
The AirSelfie has four rotors and a lens. It can fly up to 20 meters high and take pictures using its 5MP camera. Measuring only at 94.5mm H x 67.4mm W x 10.6mm D, AirSelfie is even smaller than most modern smartphones out there. You have basic control over the drone, but it actually handles a lot of things automatically such as balance, navigation, and altitude. As soon as AirSelfie captures photos (up to 8 consecutive photos are possible), it sends the images directly to your smartphone.
If Optic Helmet by DCA Design International makes cycling safer, Morpher by Strategic Sports encourages cyclists to wear helmet in the first place. Invented by an award-winning British inventor Jeffrey Woolf, Morpher is a helmet made from interweaved plastics, allowing it to be foldable into nearly flat design. As it turns out, the main reason cyclists are reluctant to wear a helmet is that it is too bulky and thick to be conveniently stored in backpack or portable container.
Despite its seemingly fragile design, Morpher has been developed to meet and exceed all relevant safety standards. The products are manufactured by Strategic Sports LTD, leading OEM helmet manufacturer based in Hong Kong. Could 2016 be the year of bicycle safety?
Medical marijuana has been a fierce subject of debate for a while, but recently many states have passed the regulation to allow the use of cannabis for medicinal purposes. The hmbldt, a company based in Northern California, offers a range of vaporizer pens mainly used as a cannabis delivery method to induce sleepiness, pain relief, calmness, and blissfulness; all without being intoxicated.
When inhaled, each of those vaporizer pens dispenses a dose of cannabis oil to deliver the intended medicinal purpose. Different pen is filled with a different combination of ingredients as well, without fillers or addictive substances. Future developments include rechargeable vaporizer pens and oral spray.
The toothbrush is an excellent invention on its own. Without theproper tool to brush our teeth, we would all suffer the severe effects of bad dental health. We all know now that tooth decay and gum disease can cause severe irreversible damages to the mouth and even contribute to heart disease. According to dentists, the proper way to brush your teeth is all about the up and down movement of the brush head rather than forward and backward perpendicular to the teeth. Unfortunately, many (if not most) people make that mistake without even realizing it. Thanks to the iBrush 365 by iBrands Technologies Inc., this stubborn old habit is no longer a problem.
Key design element of iBrush 365 is its cylindrical brush head. Powered by rechargeable battery, the brush head rotates in either downward or upward direction even when you move the toothbrush forward and backward. You don’t need to struggle to change your habit to make sure that you are doing it right now. Up and down movement makes sure that the soft 13,200 soft micro bristles do not hurt the gum as well.
An occasional glass of wine is a nice experience that many of us enjoy.Wine is, however, a delicate beverage that’s quickly ruined after the cork is opened. As the cork is removed, the wine no longer stays in an airtight container; air (including everything in it such as oxygen and nitrogen) reacts with wine and spoils the flavor. Kuvée bottle aims to eliminate those unfortunate consequences, and it seems to do it well.
Kuvée system consists of two components: cartridge-like bottle and a pouring device. The bottle is essentially a sealed capsule with a valve that prevents air from entering the bottle. It’s like a constantly reusable cork. As long as you pour with Kuvée pouring device, the valve will minimize the amount of air that goes into the bottle even as the wine pours out.
This is not actually a new technology, but Kuvée has improved it significantly it by integrating Wi-Fi into the pouring device. As you insert the bottle into this device, you get interactive information about the wine.
The term “personal accessories” no longer refers just to clothing/fashion articles such as wristwatches, hats, necklace, bandana, bracelets, or glasses. Many people use modern technologies as everyday accessories. Just think of fitness bands, smart watches, Google glasses, heart rate monitors, and the most common of them all: the smartphone. IQbuds by Nuheara offers an innovative wearable technology to augments the audio experience of other wearable devices.
The IQbuds are Bluetooth-enabled earbuds that connect wirelessly to smartphones or any other audio-reproducing devices. IQbuds can interact with apps including music player, podcast, and any voice-activated functions on the phone. Users can make hands-free phone calls with a single tap on the earbuds as well. But what makes IQbuds innovative is the way it tackles noise-cancellation technology. IQbuds actually amplifies the sounds that you want to hear and eliminates unnecessary background noises. Nuheara calls this SINC (Super Intelligent Noise Cancellation).
Virtual Reality is not exactly a brand new technology, but Modal VR improves the overall experience of the digital world by incorporating not only human sensory systems but also full body movement. A combination of VR and full-body tracking suit allows the technology to manage positioning and analyze body motion more accurately. The Modal VR platform even allows up to 10 people to experience the same virtual environment at the same time.
Nolan Bushnell, the person behind Atari and Chuck E. Cheese, is a co-founder of Modal VR project.
So, there you have it! Of course, these are only some of the awesome inventions that have been released into the world in the past year. Who knows what innovations we’ll see in 2017! Maybe you’re working on the next big thing yourself. If that’s the case, you’ve come to the right place! Cad Crowd has all the freelance design and engineering expertise you need to make your new invention a reality. Get a free quote today, and we’ll connect you with the leading top-tier freelancers you need for your project to be on the list for best inventions of 2017!
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