Future Technology Summit London 2015
London

Never mind solar energy. Startup company Pavegen has created a product that converts the kinetic force from a footstep into electricity. “Every time someone steps on the tile, they generate seven watts of power. The energy is stored within batteries, and then used to power lighting when it’s needed. It’s an off-grid power source for cities.”

GoodAI has released open-source software called Brain Simulator that can be used to train a series of artificial neural networks in how to respond to stimuli from a game environment. Through trial & error, these networks can learn how to play a simple game. Several networks can be chained together to create more complex behavior.

Deep neural nets can now recognize your face in thermal images. Saquib Sarfraz and colleagues at KIT in Germany have worked out how to connect a mid- or far-infrared image of a face with its visible light counterpart for the first time. The trick they’ve perfected is to teach a neural network to do all the work.

Dr Vanessa Diaz and the medical researchers at the DISCIPLUS project want to create a future where every person has a virtual twin: 3D-modelled versions of medical patients that will exist in hospital databases to aid doctors in treating patients. Your virtual twin could be predicting your medical treatments in the future.

Research on swarming robots may lead to the use of tiny nanobots for micro-medicine - swarms of miniature drones that could attack harmful pathogens in the human body with microscopic precision. "We are developing Artificial Intelligence to control robots in a variety of ways," said Roderich Gross, head of the University of Sheffield's Natural Robotics Lab.

Simon Schultz and his research team aim to understand how information is processed by brain circuitry to benefit society in two ways: to understand and treat brain disorders such as Alzheimers and to extracting basic principles of information processing that can be used to build better machines: new parallel computing architectures.

The Portable Eye Examination Kit (Peek) aims to improve opthalmic health in low-income countries by adapting smartphones with clip-on hardware and an app. Mario Giardini will share news on how the app scans eyes to help combat blindness.

The main objective of BioMot, the project José Luis Pons is leading on, is to improve existing wearable robotic exoskeletons exploiting dynamic sensory-motor interactions and developing cognitive capabilities that can lead to symbiotic gait behaviour in the interaction of a human with a wearable robot.

William Souillard-Mandar and team have created a new dementia-prediction tool that could diagnose conditions earlier, and with greater accuracy by using digital pen technology. The test demonstrates how people perform when it comes to verbal understanding, memory, and spatial knowledge, and is used to detect Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.

Solar-powered cars could become standard "within 30 years" says the team behind the world's "first solar-powered family car". "There's so much energy from the sun that's not being used," Solar Team Eindhoven explains . "It's still quite expensive to build [a solar-powered car], but within about 30 years solar cars could be a realistic way of transportation."

QuantuMDx has a working prototype for a device intended to quickly test a sample of blood, sputum or even tumor cells for genetic markers that provide information to guide a doctor's decisions on how to treat a patient. "We want to put a full diagnostic test into the palms of health professionals' hands," said Elaine Warburton.

With smart textiles we can "download new colours or patterns" to our clothes, said Francesca Rosella, Creative Director at CuteCircuit. "By embedding nanotechnology into fabrics, we can create "smart textiles" that are conductive, or even computational. Now through nanotechnology, some fabric can be coated with particles of silver or gold to become a conductive fabric.

Moritz Dörstelmann and team at the Institute for Computational Design have constructed a bionic research pavilion. The focus of the project is a parallel bottom-up design strategy for the biomimetic investigation of natural fiber composite shells & development of novel robotic fabrication methods for fiber reinforced polymer structures.

With the creation of so many data points defining our behaviours, activities, & locations, the next step in emerging tech is a service that consolidates our experience. A mash-up of the powerful NLP of IBM’s Watson, the voice-activated intelligent assistance of Siri, the productivity enhancement of Google Now, and the biometric & physiological quantifying of the self through wearables.

Drawing in 3D will soon be as "intuitive as sketching with paper". Hear from Pierre Paslier, Co-Founder of the revolutionary Gravity Sketch 3D drawing pad. "Gravity Sketch is a tool for creatives to quickly sketch out ideas in 3D space. It's a bridge between paper and computer."

Andrew Hudson-Smith, from UCL aims to cover everything relating to sensing, mapping and visualising digital technologies in urban environments, with a view towards smart cities, smart places and urban technology.