RIDE INTO THE FUTURE vol.3

RIDE INTO THE FUTURE 50 PHENOMENA THAT WILL TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR FUTURE

Supplement of

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ARE YOU A VISIONARY?

JENS KATEMANN HEAD OF COMMUNICATIONS

As recently as the 19th century, it took 100 years for mankind to double its knowledge. Today, some fields need less than two years to accomplish this. Digitisation has rapidly accelerated technological development.

There are 20 billion interconnected devices and machines in the world, and according to some estimates, the number will increase 25-fold, to half a trillion, by 2030. This will make our lives simpler, safer and more entertaining.

Let’s have a look 10 years into the past. Back then, there were no apps to watch your favourite team’s matches from anywhere you wanted. What time does the next bus arrive? Where is the nearest open restaurant? When does the supermarket close? When travelling nowadays, we get such information on our smart phones, and we take it for granted.

At ŠKODA AUTO, we have developed a number of applications for you, our colleagues. Jezdíme spolu is a new app that works like a daily co-driving control. The application creates ideal groups that can travel to work together. This way, we save time, money and protect the environment. Would you like to join? You only need to sign up at: https://jezdimespolu.skoda-auto.cz/ There are many more examples of how technology can improve our lives. Some people might be afraid of how quickly these changes are happening. We would like to deliver you from that fear. In order for you to grasp the technological innovations, we are briefly introducing 50 of them on the following pages. And if you want to test whether you are a visionary, gadgeteer or conservative, try our questionnaire.

We hope to have prepared some interesting and entertaining reading for your days off. Have a great holiday!

Do you like innovations and enjoy the latest technology?

Are you optimistic about the future? Or is it all confusing, scaring you that it may go too far? Find out how you are doing! Complete a short quiz at: www.skoda-auto.cz/ rideintothefuture

ABOUT THE SUPPLEMENT Muum! Daad! Open your eyes!

You are creating my future.

These simple words could introduce the profiles of ŠKODA employees’ children and this year’s first-grade pupils, as well as our interns and trainees – the young generation connected to ŠKODA AUTO who will certainly experience the world in 50 years.

What are the odds they will encounter our 50 guesses? We have estimated the probability and functionality of the smart assistants in our graded navigation. at the starting line in the pits close to the finish

RIDE INTO THE FUTURE SUPPLEMENT OF ŠKODA MOBIL Editor in chief: Tomáš Novotný Graphic design and production: Boomerang Communication Content contributors: Simona Havlíková, Martin Šidlák, Štěpán Vorlíček, Kateřina Šulcová, Jindřich Novák, Šimon Halamásek Published: 29. 6. 2017

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TOMÁŠ HACKL 6 YEARS OLD

“People will be fine all over the world. No one will be starving, and there won’t be any wars.

People won’t be driving but flying in automatic machines, something like drones. When they get in, they will say where they want to go, and the control centre will get them there.

People will be taking trips into space in rockets or long lifts.

There will be hotels flying around the Earth, and tourists will be able to stay in them. We will probably be speaking with aliens who will send robots to explore the Earth, but we won’t meet them because humans won’t be able to survive such a long journey just yet.”

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On a Plate

Our taste buds won’t be left behind. Whether it’s crickets, instant space cream sauce or a preprinted pizza, we can look forward to some genuine gastronomic surprises!

ONDŘEJ FIDRA INTERN – EGV In order to achieve the desired task, it won’t be us who programme the future systems – they will learn on their own and even educate us. They will process the data from their surroundings, evaluate the behaviour of the world, which will teach them to react and plan accordingly, and after some time, they will find an optimal strategy for living. We won’t be thinking so much about what to do first because these systems will plan out and even prepare, for example, our daily activities for us.

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FOOD OF THE FUTURE WITH FLAVOUR Could you pack your bag for a two-week hike in the barren mountains? What food would you take? It needs to be light, nutritious, long-life and tasty, of course.

All these requirements are met when it comes to astronauts’ food in space.

Their diet is planned in recurring 10-day to 16-day cycles. The dehydrated food’s volume can be reduced by up to 80 percent.

When mixed with water, it doesn’t look very tempting, but supposedly it’s tasty and nutritious.

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50 GRAMS OF CRICKETS Nuts, chia seeds or Chinese boxthorn – you may have heard about these superfoods. Scientists claim that the future ones will beat them: the African Moringa plant, baobab, açaí berries, micro-algae, the large-scale eating of insects, worms, or bee pollen, which is one of the most nutritious substances on the planet. All of this is on the horizon.

3 CENTRALISED GARDEN Vegetable and herb community gardening is already happening in many places in the world. A few neighbours share a balcony, or several (dozen) families cultivate a field together. Growing inside cities will become a trend, and one day, we’ll live to see centralised greenhouses for entire countries and the world.

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CTRL+ENTER AND A PIZZA IN A MOMENT People produce more food than ever before – and yet, it’s not enough. One of the solutions is 3-D printers. Nowadays, they can print a range of technically sophisticated parts, from car parts to implants and even cakes. It’s not a distant future, however. When it is possible to replace plastics and carbon with seaweed and hydrocolloids in a 3-D printer, then pizza, filled pasta and pies will be printed!

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On the Road

Travelling from point A to point B is not always easy on the human body, which has very low speed and endurance. Humans will get it right in the future, however, and invent more effective possibilities.

IRYNA KASUMAVA TRAINEE STR/1 – HR MARKETING Because we are heading towards a shared, trouble-free and autonomous future, I can imagine that carmakers will mainly be fulfilling the role of mobility providers. They will be offering people solutions on how to get from point A to point B, even if they don’t have a means of transport. This future will see far fewer cars, and many car parks will disappear as a result. People will have much more space in the streets, which will create parks and places for leisure activities.

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RIDESHARING IN CAPSULES This is a combination of public and passenger transportation in electrical capsules that can be attached to one another. This system is based on grouping the passengers into trains. Unlike traditional public transport, there are no predefined driving directions, and the capsules will be booked by phone.

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STRADDLE BUSES

7 ON CLOUDS TOWARDS THE UNKNOWN An interesting concept, was inspired by clouds drifting across the sky. It’s a set of spherical balloons with steel construction and coating made from resistant nylon fabric. The travelling is easy and slow: You climb up, sit down and admire the view; and you wait for the wind to gently push you away… wherever.

‘Straddle buses’ on high legs spanning the width of the entire street are a smart solution for overcrowded roads by leaving the traffic flow below. All it takes is narrow rails on the edges of the lanes.

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CONTROLLED

BY THOUGHT We are gradually beginning to control our cars by gestures, and we ask our personal voice assistants about the weather forecast. And yes – one day, we’ll be able to control our machines by thought. As Mark Zuckerberg says: One day, it will be possible to capture a thought or a feeling in your head as an ideal and perfect shape and then share it with others.

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VACUUM TRAINS 9

FAST AND FURIOUS CABLE CARS This is another less expensive thing – an urban cable car that will whizz around pretty fast: up to 250 km/h. According to its creators, the system is up to 10 times cheaper than conventional railways, monorails, maglev or common motorways.

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Superconducting trains of the Evacuated Tube Transport system run in vacuum tunnels at an incredible speed of 6,500 km/h.

This way, you could visit the upcoming Winter Olympics in South Korea in less than 2 hours!

Another advantage of these trains is their low energy demands: They are supposedly up to 50 times more efficient than electric cars and conventional electric trains.

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A LIFT TO SPACE Today’s tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, is 828 metres tall.

It is to be surpassed by the Jeddah Tower, a skyscraper in Saudi Arabia that is expected to be exactly 1 kilometre high. Such buildings can’t do without lifts. But can you imagine a lift that goes 20 times or 1,000 times higher?

It’s not so far-fetched.

Scientists have been thinking for a long time about how to make space flights cheaper, and such giant lifts could present a solution. For example, the Canadian company Thoth Technology has

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already submitted a patent for the construction of a lift that goes 20 km high.

Although such a lift has a long way to go to reach the Earth’s border with outer space (100 km), getting the astronauts or cargo so high up would save nearly one-third of today’s space flight costs.

And the lift could be used by tourists, too. Japanese scientists have come up with an idea of a lift that would link Earth with the space station 36,000 km above the Earth’s surface.

The journey would take about a week. Construction would start around 2030.

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TADEÁŠ FOJTŮ 7 YEARS OLD

“Everything will be controlled by robots; you will only call one, and it will be arranged.

You’ll send them to go shopping or bring lunch and they will deliver a pizza to your table and pour water into your glass. And because robots are electric, you’ll use them to charge your electric car when it’s run out of juice. The car will be able to fly. Its wheels will turn flat, and as they are spinning, the car will take off. And we’ll be setting out on journeys from our couch as well; its four legs will be robotic and electric.

I’m looking forward to it. We can expect a nice world in 50 years’ time.”

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At home

We’ll make our lives easier and take control of our households entirely.

Or will it take control of us? It will be flawlessly interconnected, and our household will become a universal home assistant.

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SHARED FAMILY It may sound crazy, but future families won’t have the traditional form we know today. There will be more couples of the same sex, or people who get along well and don’t mind raising children from previous relationships together. It will also affect grandparents who will probably be fulfilling their roles in several families at the same time.

JAN MATOUŠEK INTERN GQD-3 Future technologies will enable us to communicate effectively through the Internet of Things via fifth-generation mobile networks.

Together with Industry 4.0, this will be the next revolutionary step. You’ll wake up in the morning, and your refrigerator will tell you to hit the road earlier because you’ll need to refuel on the way to work. In turn, on your way home from work, your car will tell you which food in your fridge you are running low on.

Your home will recognise that you’re approaching, switch on the heating, open the blinds and turn on your favourite music. With the Smart City concept, there is an innovative tomorrow ahead of us.

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AT HOME, VIRTUALLY What will you have for dinner? Fish? At that moment, virtual breams start swimming around your kitchen. You point at one of them, and the order is sent to the seller. Are you going to the theatre? Feed your smart robot with plastic bottles, and make clothes out of them as per instructions.

14 A CAR AS PART OF THE HOUSEHOLD Electric cars will change from being a pure receiver of electricity to home batteries. They will be charged with surplus electricity from photovoltaic power stations, and if not used for driving at the moment, their big batteries will serve for a period of increased household consumption. Cars will also be part of the house – you will only move from your armchair to the seat in your car, which will then unfasten itself from the facade and leave for its destination.

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SHOPPING BAG OF THE FUTURE A robotic shopping bag is a promising end to lugging the heavy shopping home. We largely do our shopping on the Internet, but what if those standard bags don’t disappear completely? The first prototype was presented by the Italian Piaggio Group. The shopping bag is called Gita; it can accommodate up to 18 kg, and its maximum speed is 35 km/h. It navigates in space thanks to a 360° video camera and a number of sensors; it’s driven by electricity and constantly communicates with its owner by radio. The bag can do the shopping autonomously – you just order, pay and then send the bag to a desired location.

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ELECTRICITY TODAY, GAS TOMORROW We are currently focused on the ecological use of energies, but the truth is that the core idea is mainly to optimise their utilisation. Future housing will evaluate the weather and the prices of energies in real time. Then, they will decide which sources to use and how much.

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SHARED HEAT Imagine that water in your home circulates inside the floor, walls and ceiling. Instead of common pipes, heating is done via numerous thin capillaries that are densely packed side by side. Advantages? Less water and the possibility of heating and cooling at the same time: Heat from the one room warms the other.

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WHEN THE HOUSE DOES WHAT YOU WANT Smart houses will not only react to us but also make decisions themselves. Sensors will be able to tell us why we wake up at night. The house will open the windows, turn on the light in the bathroom or even make some morning coffee for us. They will easily identify the residents and, based on their mood, fill the living room with their favourite music or create a more cosy atmosphere by lighting the fireplace.

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19 The Tamagotchi toy craze swept the world years ago. A robotic pet of the future will, however, look completely different. Many families do not have pets because their flats are too small, they are allergic to fur, they would not be able to take the pet with them on holiday, or they are just not sure whether their kids

would still want the puppy in two weeks’ time. This is where robotic pets come in.

Sony already introduced the first robodog, called Aibo, to the world in 1999, and today it is very easy to buy a mechanical puppy or kitten. However, they still look too “robotic”. But in the next few years, mechanical pets will start looking more

MY PET IS A ROBOT

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and more like real animals.

They will be able to react to human voice or touch, will be 100% anti-allergenic, and, above all, there will be no need to clean up after them. Maybe the trend will be different after all, and we will be buying pets only in virtual reality. How else could the whole family find out what they really want?

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MARIE & ŠTĚPÁN KULICHOVI 7 YEARS OLD

Š: “There will be cars, but no one will be driving them. The driver will only say where to go, and the car will drive them there. There will be robots that do everything for our mums. Perhaps they will do the shopping, cooking and cleaning.”

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M: “Then there may be cars that will have wings and will be able to fly.” Š: “In order for people not to have to walk, they’ll have a kind of roller skates that will automatically be put on and will get you wherever you want to go…”

M: “And I’d like it if there were medicines for various diseases.

My cousin Adámek suffers from diabetes, so these medicines would cure him, and he’d be completely healthy and could eat anything.”

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In production

It will be possible to wield smart materials through mere thought, react to the current external changes and autonomously solve some of the current standard problems. Hard to believe? Just you wait.

KAREL SLÍVA TRAINEE STR/1 – HR MARKETING The extent to which we influence our future is continually rising. We control our time, things and thoughts, and who knows how long it’ll take before we understand, by using technology, whether someone’s angry with us, what they think or what is troubling them.

I’m a big fan of technological progress, but I don’t like this idea so much.

I rather believe in reason, emotions and that there is something special that makes everyone unique and helps us to devise all those marvels and oddities.

I like this world, and I’ll be honoured to take part in something that might change it. Let us think, create, learn and innovate, but let’s not forget that if we exclude the human factor from human life because of machines, we will destroy the very nature of man, and life will cease to be real under all that material, engines and rotors.

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MOODDEPENDENT What will the super textiles of the future be capable of?

A carpet at home will be able to change its colour based on your wish or mood. So-called thermochromic colours are already being tested.

Kerri Wallace, a British designer, expects a complete revolution in the sports clothing field. Her shirts will change their colours based on the intensity of the performance – as it rises, the colours gradually fade.

The new textiles are also promising not to get dirty at all!

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THINNER THAN HAIR Nanofibers are 1,000 times thinner than a strand of human hair. They show huge potential, mainly in the field of making miniature sensors.

In building construction, the nanosensors will be able to monitor wear and tear and the resistance of the material, and in the packaging of grocery items they will be able to tell whether the expiration date is approaching.

22 MINDCONTROLLED The aspiration to manipulate computers with our minds alone is already four decades old, and the possibility of actually doing so is now almost within our reach. Scientifically speaking, it is referred to as BCI, or brain–computer interface. The goal is to scan brain activity in such a way that it would enable us to control a computer directly. Experiments are being conducted for a headband with sensors placed all around the head. However, it is expected that a more elegant solution will soon be found. Its primal usage would be in the field of medicine, but it will definitely be possible to control home devices this way as well. But beware, it is only one step away from mind reading, which is something many people would not wish to happen…

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POCKET POWER PLANT How will batteries be charged?

Everything will be solved by a pocket solar panel, a prototype of which has already been introduced by a team of Dutch scientists under the HeLion brand. The prototype is a flexible strip with solar connectors rolled into a miniature case. If needed, the strip can be unrolled and connected to a phone and because it is waterproof, it can withstand the rainiest days.

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SMART ALL AROUND Will the smart materials be able to resolve some of the common problems we face today? At Australia’s RMIT University, scientists are developing a textile that will be able to clean itself by using only light and the catalytic reaction of the nanostructures.

Another project that is underway is self-repairing car paint, which will be able to remove all the scratches. And in Japan, a new technology called UltraEver Dry, which promises a clean car at all times, is being tested.

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SENSIBLE MACHINES A pilot project to optimise some traffic situations and systems deals with a Beijing taxi service that is managing approximately 10,000 vehicles. The algorithm being developed should provide the best possible movement of cars in the city and thus shorten customers’ waiting and driving times. We expect even more from quantum technology – to solve some of the problems of autonomous driving, or the construction of an intelligent factory, where the machines will learn from their mistakes to make production cheaper and faster.

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ENERGY OF TOMORROW The energy of the future in the form of nuclear fusion in a thermonuclear reactor represents an almost infinite source of fuel with basically zero CO2 emissions. Physicist Richard Feynman says: “If we managed to build a device that was able to process thermonuclear fusion, it would be possible to extract the same amount of energy that all the electric plants in the USA produce from a water flow of 12 litres per second.”

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FISH WITH BOX-LIKE BODIES AND KINGFISHERINSPIRED TRAIN DESIGNS Bionics is a field that is inspired by nature and brings solutions derived from it to modern constructions. This is how high-strength materials, as well as dirt-repulsing paints or Velcro, saw the light of day, but the first person to take an interest in this field was Leonardo da Vinci.

In one of its concepts, Mercedes-Benz was inspired by boxfish – fish that have box-like bodies and live in coral reefs.

Their shells are surprisingly hydrodynamic and provide

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them with protection and excellent manoeuvring abilities: Small whirls, which help stabilise the fish in turbulent areas, are formed on the edges of their bodies. Or take the high-speed Shinkansen trains: At the entrance to and exit from a tunnel, they used to emit a deafening bang. The solution came again from nature: a new type of train was constructed that took inspiration from the beaks of kingfishers and from owl feathers.

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JULINKA PRAŠILOVÁ 7 YEARS OLD

“I think the world will be the same. I’ll be going on trips with my grandchildren; we’ll be fine, and we’ll be playing a lot.”

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On roads

It won’t be long before roads are can communicate with each other, direct the cars away from traffic jams and manage themselves.

Forget your horse-drawn carriage, this will only happen with electric cars!

PETR VENCL TRAINEE STR/1 – HR MARKETING 2067 definitely won’t be the ideal time for those of us who enjoy the current way of driving.

Most people will be transported from point A to point B by software-controlled and shared, autonomous “cars”. There’ll be fewer accidents, more free time and comfort, but still, I’d keep the last non-autonomous OCTAVIA in my garage, for sure.

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FINGER RECOGNIZED

BY SCREEN The spatial visualisation of real objects will find its use not only in cars but also in mobile phones.

Holographic, or 3-D, views will bring image transfer to the next level. Buttons will completely disappear from cars. Everything will be personalised for the driver, who will have a virtual touch screen right next to the wheel. When they reach in its direction, the system will recognise where the finger is and send out an order to activate the desired function.

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INTELLIGENT ROADS

30 SET A LOCATION AND GO The roads of the future belong to autonomous cars.

A recent VISION E study showed, apart from everything else, ŠKODA’s vision of how the level 3 autonomous cars will function. The final goal is level 5, in which you will just set the destination and, perhaps, start the car. The rest will be taken care of by the car itself, which will be able to take the passengers anywhere they wish to go. The producers expect that the autonomous cars will mainly improve safety and have additional benefits for people with disabilities.

Smart cars won’t be able to drive on “dumb” roads. This is the reason why smart roads will be able not only to collect and evaluate data but also to communicate with the cars that will “talk” to each other. New road lines will increase safety, collect light energy during the day and consequently light up at night.

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SOULMATE FOR THE ROAD The companies EDAG and Bosch have come up with an interesting concept of a car of the future. Their idea is that it will become a personal assistant as well. Its name is Soulmate, and it adjusts to the needs of its owner. As soon as a meeting in your diary is cancelled, it will change the route for you. And when the postman rings, you can remotely let him in.

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ACCIDENTS? NONE! They cars of the future will be very different from what we know today – by being connected to each other, and together with the smart cities they will be able to predict situations. Accidents and crashes will diminish – they will simply not occur. Therefore construction workers will no longer have to care about the safety aspects and limits or deformation zones.

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GOING TO WORK IN MOVIE TIME How will we spend our free time during a trip when the cars will drive completely autonomously? One of the possibilities is video content streaming.

Cars will be so smart, they will plan your route in such a manner that you will reach your final destination by the time the end credits of your favourite series or movie start rolling, so you won’t have to finish watching it in the parking lot!

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GET YOUR FOUR WHEELS OFF THE GROUND

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Imagine what it would be like not to suffer in traffic jams but simply to leap off the ground and peacefully fly to your destination… In 1940, Henry Ford already dreamt about a machine that would be a combination of a car and a plane. Only now is this dream becoming a reality, and the first customers will be able to get their four wheels off the ground in a couple of

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years. Recently, several such prototypes were introduced.

One of the first serial types of this vehicle could be the Slovak AeroMobil. It can fit in a regular parking space, can be parked in a garage and runs on regular gas. To take off, it needs only a track a few hundred metres long, which can also be a grass surface. Testing has proved that it needs a track only 50 metres long to land.

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At the doctor’s

Some diseases will soon be a thing of the past.

Medicine will not stay focused only on perfecting healing skills – we’ll be able to print body parts in a 3-D printer and our muscles will be stronger than steel!

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GENETICS FOR BABIES Will we be able to heal by just having doctors implant modified genes into our cells?

Most likely. We will thus be able not only to cure most types of cancer but also to prevent them: After detecting a hereditary disease, it will be possible to fix the genetic information in the womb already, so that the disease never even breaks out.

MICHAL ČAPEK INTERN – FIV I see the greatest potential in the development of health care.

Hospitals will work like today’s e-shops. People will have chips implanted in their bodies to monitor their state of health; if there is a problem, the chip will order, for example, a new kidney in the hospital. A 3-D printer will make it, and the patient will drop in for outpatient surgery over their lunch break. The protection of personal data, however, remains a big issue.

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PRINT ME AN EAR 3-D printing is usually an industrial and production topic. It is, however, used more and more often in medicine as well. It will become commonplace to print out working joint replacements or ear implants and aesthetic prostheses.

Burns or skin injuries will also be treated through 3-D printing thanks to stem cell growing. And one day in the future, it might also be possible to print out liver tissue or even whole organs.

37 REMOTE HEALTH TRACKING Biotelemetry is already being used to trace our current fitness level and adjust our training based on the results. In the future, advanced systems will also be capable of monitoring the driver’s tiredness, sending out distress calls or diagnosing injured people. Such biometric systems will not send you to the doctor if you get behind the steering wheel with a runny nose, but they will be able to detect micro-sleep or heart attacks even before they take place, and they will stop the car automatically on the side of the road.

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ADAM SOUKUP 6 YEARS OLD

“I think cars and motorbikes will have flames instead of wheels, and they will fly. Everything at home will work automatically and robotically. I’ll have a smithy and make knives.”

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VENOUS GROUND PAPRIKA Still rudimentary, but real: artificial blood in powder form that only needs to be mixed with water. It can help deal with urgent cases during wars and catastrophes where transfusions are hard to carry out. The blood is freeze-dried, preserved at ambient temperature and easy to use.

Medics will carry the blood substitute with them as it can last for over a year. Like ground paprika, it will be

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stored in sachets and, when necessary, the doctor can simply mix it with sterile water and inject it into the body.

Artificial red blood cells simulate the blood life functions as precisely as possible. Scientists are now working towards making the body accept them. So far, they have tested the powder blood only on mice, and it will be ready for use on humans in 10 to 12 years at the earliest.

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LIVER, PLEASE! Scientists are testing it already: They are growing embryonic stem cells from which they will be able to grow whatever tissue they want. When they manage to resolve “personalisation”, meaning making the new cells acceptable to the body (DNA will be extracted from the cells designed for reparation, and the patient’s DNA will be inserted), it will also be possible to grow entire organs.

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SHOES SAY, ‘LOSE WEIGHT’ Are you doing it right? Smart things we use every day will have the answer.

For example, an electronic toothbrush with a gyroscope, accelerometer and a movement analysing chip. An analysis of your teeth being brushed will then be sent to your tablet, for instance. And what about smart shoes that can evaluate your walking style and suggest appropriate orthopaedic soles or tell you that you have a couple of pounds to shed?

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GELS INSTEAD OF MUSCLES Hydrogels have various uses ranging from bandages to soft robots. Japanese scientists have recently developed hydrogel composites strengthened with glass fibres – five times stronger than carbon steel. These hydrogels could one day be used in the health sector as artificial ligaments and tendon replacements.

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NEWS AND MOVIES INTO YOUR EYE New materials will allow to manipulate light – like filter particular colours – and still remain transparent. They are based on synthetic nanocrystals of titanium oxide and work as dielectric resonators . Therefore, we will have contact lenses as functional displays. Apart from correcting vision of its user, they’ll enable watching media in quality comparable to human sight.

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In the city

In 2050, as much as 66% of the world’s population will live in cities that will inevitably become technological epicentres.

What will living be like in such anthills? What should we expect?

PAVLA DOROTÍKOVÁ INTERN – SBP I look forward to all the things the future will bring. It’s obvious we need progress. Nevertheless, it’s important to keep reminding ourselves that we mustn’t give up on our fundamental values.

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THOUGHTCONTROLLED Modern touch screens are easy to use, but they can be made even easier. What if you only had to say the order or merely think about it? The BrainGate research team has succeeded in implanting a paralysed patient with a chip that conveyed the brain signals to a device that decoded them so that the patient was able to move a cursor on the screen in the same way as if she was moving a mouse with her hand. It is probably not very tempting to have a chip inside you, so wireless sensors that would only be attached to your head are also being developed.

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UNLIMITED INTERNET The significance of the Internet will grow and so will the necessity to transfer data faster. People will not store images, text, videos and files on specific devices anymore but will send them to Internet storage places, or clouds, accessible from any device at any time. We will stop sending attachments and share only links.

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45 MOBILES OF THE FUTURE Smart phones, tablets, intelligent glasses and watches… but who is supposed to carry, make sure not to lose, and constantly charge all of these devices? Everything will be solved by one universal mobile device that will be powerful, portable, work- and entertainmentfriendly and able to store data in a cloud.

One such device was introduced by designer Callil Capuozzo a few years ago: His portable computer of the future looks like a flexible tablet with a sensitive touch screen that can be folded up into the size of a mobile phone. Part of the device can also be separated and shaped into smart glasses. It will replace a wallet for contactless payment in the future.

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THE END OF CHARGING Battery life is dramatically decreasing.

How can we change this? Phinergy is working on a new solution that may change charging forever. The company has introduced a battery that produces electricity from the reaction of water and oxygen and whose life is 40 times longer than that of common batteries today. Scientists from Stanford University are working on an aluminium-graphite battery with ion electrolyte that can be fully charged in one minute.

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PURE SOURCES Energy is all around us; we just don’t know how to use it. Apart from thermonuclear reactors, the biggest potential is in solar energy.

At Ocean University of China, they are working on photovoltaic panels with a graphene layer that will allow electricity to be harvested from water drops. However, we cannot rely on the elements alone; scientists have also developed a textile that can produce electricity by being bent or folded, or through friction.

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STREET TALKS How will the streets look? Thanks to autonomous driving, roads will be narrower, and therefore, more cars will be able to fit on them. They will “talk” to each other and to the infrastructure as well. Portable electronic devices will alert in time that, for example, a child could run into the street or that you are approaching the red light too quickly.

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ADAPTABLE The lighting in a room can already be changed in accordance with our mood, but it will not take long before we are able to change the colours of walls with the wave of our hand, for instance.

Or imagine this: A hero in a fairy tale is getting ready to fly somewhere, but your daughter doesn’t like planes? One sign, and they get on a train instead!

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ONE CURRENCY, ONE LANGUAGE, ONE WORLD This is CBH speaking. Do you remember? The Central Brain of Humanity from the popular local TV series The Visitors was far from perfect.

Is it possible, however, that humanity will have to deal with such centralisation one day?

Will some future Bitcoin dominate world payments? Or will it be the Chinese yuan? It

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recently surpassed the British pound to become one of the three most traded currencies in the world. Is the currency union of the old continent only a forerunner of a unified currency for the world?

Will there really be a central government and one economy one day? Probably, yes. And what about a resurrection of, let’s say, Esperanto as the only

world language? Or will the Chinese dragon take over the world and make the planet speak Chinese? Scientists say that every two weeks a language perishes, and the dominating ones have more and more words in common.

It is therefore probable that people will, in the end, choose a single unified language – whether artificial or not.

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