This time of year, I take a moment and look at innovations that were announced in the last year whose impact will be significant in the next 12 to 24 months. This year's list contains some intriguing innovations that are less about “new tech” and more about human ingenuity to look at problems and opportunities in unique and different ways. These 6 high impact innovations will change the world.

Here is this weeks show …

This weeks show notes/links:

#6: Edible Drones

Pouncer™, an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), is the brainchild of Nigel Gifford OBE, who was one of the innovative team behind the unmanned Ascenta™ high altitude, long endurance platform that was acquired by Facebook in 2014 as part of their internet global connective programme.

“Pouncer™ addresses the fast reactive need to deliver food aid into remote, difficult, damaged and broken infrastructures by overflying the difficulties and placing life-sustaining nutrition exactly where it’s needed”, said Nigel, who thought of the concept by combining his “far flung food” expedition background with his aerospace skills. The Pouncer™, covered by patent application, has an airframe skin made from biodegradable starch-based thermoplastic, filled with spars of compressed and vacuum sealed foodstuffs. The Pouncer™ fuselage is filled with the staple diet of those receiving supplies and carries water and fuel for cooking. It is to be produced in various weights to meet differing requirements.

#5: Wheelchair For Developing Countries

SafariSeat is the first project from the social enterprise, and is designed to be low cost, all terrain and open-source, so that it can be made in basic workshops using bicycle parts. Unlike existing wheelchairs, SafariSeat uses a patented mechanism mimicking a car suspension, so that all of the wheels are able to remain on the ground for better stability. As well as costing little to make, the designer will make the blueprints for the wheelchair completely free. This will act as part of an open source toolkit which will enable any workshop to manufacture SafariSeats to be used in the local community.

#4: Reusable Rockets

Thousands of rockets have flown into space, but not until 2015 did one return like this: it came down upright on a landing pad, steadily firing to control its descent, almost as if a movie of its launch were being played backward. If this can be done regularly and reusable rockets could be used over and over, spaceflight could become a hundred times cheaper.

#3: BOTS

An artificial-intelligence lawyer chatbot (DoNotPay) has successfully contested 160,000 parking tickets across London and New York for free, showing that chatbots can actually be useful.  The future of chat bots is accelerating and soon will be the primary (and I would argue preferred) way for us to engage with many of the companies, support services and information sources we interact with regularly.

#2: Ambient Backscatter

Ambient backscatter uses existing radio frequency signals, such as radio, television and digital telephony, to transmit data without a battery or power grid connection. Each such device uses an antenna to pick up an existing signal and convert it into tens to hundreds of microwatts of electricity.[1] It uses that power to modify and reflect the signal with encoded data. Antennas on other devices, in turn, detect that signal and can respond accordingly.

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