The Future This Week: Bionics, Exoskeletons, and the Future of Memory Storage

In The Future This Week, Serious Wonder dives deep into its memory banks in search of this week’s headlines of the future, from three-armed drummers aided by robotic arms to 3D printing the most realistic biomimetic artificial set of hands the world has ever seen (so far). This week it’s all about the future of humankind, whether we’re alleviating their disabilities with powerful exoskeletons or are enhancing their memory storage with glass disks that’ll survive billions of years.

Sometimes the future can appear almost scary, considering just how fast we’re accelerating towards it. And when we consider just how radically different humanity will be in as little as 30 years from now, it certainly can be overwhelming. But it’s one of which we’re designing ourselves for ourselves! We look at where we are today and then proceed to envision the world of tomorrow that’ll make things better. We are forever-wandering pioneers. Welcome to the future!

In a huge step in the right direction, a medical review board has ruled that a (currently unknown) health insurer that operates in the Pacific Northwest must pay for a patient’s ReWalk robotic exoskeleton suit. SOURCE

Thanks to a team of robotics engineers at Georgia Tech, the future of music has been etched in stone with the development of a robotic limb that’ll act like a third arm to increase the creative capability of drummers. SOURCE

Photo Credit: Digital Trends

Researchers at the University of Washington’s Department of Computer Science & Engineering have 3D printed what they believe is the most biomimetic, anthropomorphic artificial hand ever made. SOURCE

Scientists at the University of Southampton’s Optoelectronics Research Centre have officially engineered a nano-structured glass disk that can store up to 360 terabytes of information, capable of surviving billions of years without damage or data loss. SOURCE