Other
| Emerging technology | Status | Potentially marginalized technologies | Potential applications | Related articles |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Anti-gravity | Theory and experiments | |||
| Arcology | Theory | |||
| Atmospheric carbon dioxide removal | Research and development | Fossil carbon sources | Climate change mitigation, closing the carbon cycle, input for carbon neutral fuel production | Carbon dioxide removal, Virgin Earth Challenge |
| Biometrics | Diffusion | Keys and ID documents | ||
| Bioplastic | Some products developed | Fossil fuel plastics | ||
| Cloak of invisibility | Successful experiments cloaking small objects under some conditions | Camouflage | Cloaking microscope tips at optical frequencies | Metamaterial cloaking |
| Digital scent technology | Diffusion | Smell-O-Vision, iSmell | ||
| Domed city | NASA develops a geodesic dome for a moon base | Weather-controlled city, colonization of the moon | ||
| Force field | Theory, experiments | Armor | Military and law enforcement, space travel | Plasma window |
| Hypertelescope | Theory | astronomy | ||
| Immersive virtual reality | Theory, limited commercialization | Consensus reality | An artificial environment where the user feels just as immersed as they usually feel in consensus reality. | Virtusphere, 3rd Space Vest, haptic suit, immersive technology, simulated reality, holodeck (fictional) |
| Inflatable space habitat | Developed, prototypes built and tested | Traditional "aluminium can" space habitat modules | Space habitats | Bigelow Aerospace |
| LED lamp | Commercialization | Incandescent lights, compact fluorescent lights | ||
| Magnetic levitation | Research, development, Commercialization (Maglev Train) | Wheels, tires, conventional transportation systems | High temperature superconductivity, cryogenics, low temperature refrigerators, superconducting magnet design and construction, fiber reinforced plastics for vehicles and structural concretes, communication and high power solid-state controls, vehicle design (aerodynamics and noise mitigation), precision manufacturing, construction and fabrication of concrete structures, maglev car, maglev based spacecraft launch | Levicar |
| Magnetic refrigeration | Already used for achieving cryogenic temperatures in the laboratory setting (below 10K) | Conventional refrigerators | Refrigeration without the need for compression and with more energy efficient which may be in refrigerators, air conditioners and spacecrafts | |
| Magnetorheological fluid | developed and researched | Shock absorber | Magnetorheological damper heavy motor damping, operator seat/cab damping in construction vehicles, seismic dampers positioned in building absorbing detrimental shock waves and oscillations within the structure making them earthquake-proof, enhance body armor fluid bullet resistant, Humvees, and various other all-terrain vehicles employ dynamic MR shock absorbers/dampers. Magnetorheological finishing was used in the construction of the Hubble Space Telescope's corrective lens, shock absorbers of a vehicle's suspension are filled with magnetorheological fluid. | Electrorheological fluid |
| Miniaturized satellite | Research, development, some prototypes | Conventional satellites | Inexpensive satellites, constellations for low data rate communications, using formations to gather data from multiple points, in-orbit inspection of larger satellites. | |
| Synthetic biology, synthetic genomics | Research, development, first synthetic bacteria created May 2010 | Chemical industry, petroleum industry, process manufacturing | Creating infinitely scalable production processes based on programmable species of bacteria and other life forms | BioBrick, iGEM, synthetic genomics |
| Tricorder | Research and Development | Medical examinations | Diagnosing medical conditions | Medical tricorder |
| Vehicular communication systems | Research and development, some diffusion | Automobile safety | vehicle safety obstacle inform others warnings on entering intersections, Traffic management Accommodating ambulances, fire trucks, and police cars to a specific situation such as hot pursuits and bad weather, Driver assistance systems, Automated highways. | Artificial Passenger, Dedicated short-range communications, Intelligent transportation system |
Read more about this topic: List Of Emerging Technologies