Wearable technology has the potential to take our lives to a whole new level, but so far the emerging contenders are a little disappointing. Google Glass is far less useful and versatile than we expected it to be, and smart watches are similarly disappointing in their scope.

The future of wearables, however, might be objects that go under the skin rather than outside of it. New Deal Design envisions the future as a gadget like UnderSkin.

Just like it sounds, UnderSkin is a wearable that is embedded beneath the skin on your hand and runs off of the electrical energy created by your body. The UnderSkin is a flat, pentagonal device that, while it isn’t close to being produced yet, the designers believe will become common within approximately five years.

The possibilities for the UnderSkin range from the mundane – unlocking doors or making payments – to the intriguingly personal, like providing health alerts or exchanging contact information between two wearers. Different display patterns on the lights in the device could indicate what kind of information is being provided or exchanged.

One of the potential challenges of the UnderSkin system is future obsolescence. Mobile phones have progressed light years in just a short time, and it would be considerably more difficult to upgrade a device that’s actually implanted in your body.

Even with these potential obstacles, UnderSkin and other similar wearables could facilitate the simple exchange of information without requiring us to constantly stare at screens.

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Getting robots to do our dirty work (namely cleaning) has been a human fantasy for years. Cleaning robots have even come into fruition in the last decade or so with the introduction of the wildly-popular Roomba carpet cleaner and a window cleaning robot called the Winbot. A new design called the “Mab” cleaning system wants to tackle entire rooms.

An entry in the 2013 Electrolux Design Lab competition, the Mab system was developed by Adrian Perez Zapata, an industrial design student from Columbia. The “inspired urban living” theme of this year’s competition contains an ‘effortless cleaning’ category, and the Mab concept is at the forefront.

A spherical core, into which the user pours water and cleaning solution, contains 908 mini robots. After the liquid is distributed evenly among the tiny cleaners, they disperse and hunt down dirt, which is carried back to the core. The little robots would use solar power absorbed through their wings. It’s a bold concept, and convenience isn’t the only thing Zapata wants to get across.

“The thought behind Mab is to restore a sense of wonder in the everyday life, and to recapture the magic in simple processes, providing human shelters an autonomous purification,” Zapata wrote on his project page.

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Visions of futuristic homes have been swirling in our collective minds since the dawn of the industrial revolution, and technology has finally caught up to our fanciful notions. Openarch is a working prototype of a super high-tech smart home with a functional digital layer.

Openarch functions on a platform the designers call Domestic Operating System, or D. OS. The system includes utilities that allow residents to control the home’s functions with simple gestures, easily keep track of the weather or the home’s energy consumption, and stay connected to friends and family.

The super-smart home has surprising features like apps that allow you to change the look of an entire room. Your living room can go from boring to the center of Times Square in an instant.

The walls and floors of each room can become huge gaming surfaces, letting you play Tetris while you wait for your toast or enjoying a first-person shooter game in an immersive environment.

Just like the very first smart house ideas predicted, Openarch enables residents to use their home itself to complete daily tasks. An alarm clock app wakes you up without the need for an actual alarm clock, and the walls become massive touchscreens that let you carry out all of your online business wherever you are in the house.

The home is plenty capable on its own, but the things inside of it are just as impressive. Music collections can be accessed with a few quick taps, coffee pots turned off or on with a gesture, and household data can be monitored or controlled simply by moving a cell phone closer or further away.

Is the house of the future one that will make life easier, or will it only serve to stress us out? How will we handle being constantly connected and surrounded by data every second of our lives? We predict that some will embrace the technology wholeheartedly while others will rebel against the technological revolution and happily remain in their non-connected homes.

The post Welcome to the World of Tomorrow: Smart House Prototype first appeared on Gajitz.

Insects have the right idea when it comes to traffic. If two groups of bugs happen to cross paths, the larger group goes first and the smaller group waits patiently until the way is clear. This fascinating example of nature’s wisdom inspired Carnegie Mellon University telecommunications researcher Ozan Tonguz to explore whether the same concept could be useful for human vehicular traffic. His concept, which has been in development since 2009, is called Virtual Traffic Lights. In theory, it would involve a vehicle-to-vehicle wireless network that would connect cars to one another via short-range communication.

As cars approach an intersection, the system would compare information on the size and direction of each group. Cars in the largest group would be given an in-car green light and cars in other groups would receive in-car red lights. After the larger group has gone, the next-largest group would get a green light and so on. According to initial simulations, the system could reduce rush hour traffic drive times by 40 to 60 percent. Future research and refinement will undoubtedly put to rest any worries about drivers in smaller groups waiting excessive amounts of time for their green lights. The project has already attracted $2 million in funding as well as the interest of the US National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration.

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Thirty years ago, Atari was on top of the gaming game – and they also apparently employed some remarkably clairvoyant people. Atari’s Chief Scientist Alan Kay collaborated with Encyclopedia Brittanica consultant Bob Stein to picture how people might use encyclopedias in the future.

Their result was these surprisingly accurate illustrations (drawn by Disney animator Glenn Keane). In essence, the men predicted Wikipedia…way back in 1982.

The images look kind of commonplace to us these days. Most of us have looked up old videos online, read about things in which we’re interested on Wikipedia, or checked stock quotes from a portable device.

But for all of their accuracy, the images missed a very important factor: the human one. Stein points out that, in imagining their conceptual future network, the men completely overlooked the fact that this type of technology could connect people to one another.

Interestingly, the predictions included handheld, wireless devices that were way smaller than the computers being used for real in 1982. See the images and their original captions over at the Future of the Book blog.

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