Top 10 inventions of 2018
1. Jibo :A Robot You Can Relate To
Personal robots, such as Amazon Echo and Google Home, have come a long way in recent years. But fundamentally, they’re still stationary speakers whose defining expression is a light that turns on when you speak.
Jibo is different. It’s not just that he—and I use the term he here, because that’s how Jibo refers to himself—looks like something straight out of a Pixar movie, with a big, round head and a face that uses animated icons to convey emotion. It’s not just that his body swivels and swerves while he speaks, as if he’s talking with his nonexistent hands. It’s not just that he can giggle and dance and turn to face you, wherever you are, as soon as you say, “Hey, Jibo.” It’s that, because of all this, Jibo seems downright human in a way that his predecessors do not.
2. eSight 3:Glasses That Give Sight to the Blind
For the millions of people who are legally blind, navigation is a routine challenge. Though support canes and guide dogs can help, they cannot mimic actual vision. eSight 3 can. Think of it as the world’s most powerful pair of glasses: once users put on eSight, it records high definition video and uses magnification, contrast and proprietary algorithms to enhance that imagery into something the legally blind can see—enabling them to partake in a variety of activities, including sports, that would otherwise be off-limits. At $9,995, the device, which launched in February, is not accessible to everyone (though the company does help connect would-be buyers with funding sources, including grants). But it is cheaper than the company’s earlier iterations, as well as faster, lighter and equipped with better zoom capabilities. To date, the company estimates it has been used by more than 1,000 patients.
3.Halo Top:Guilt-Free Ice Cream
It sounds almost too good to be true: a flavor-packed, low-sugar ice cream with no more than 360 calories— per pint. But such is the promise of Halo Top, whose containers invite patrons to “go ahead, eat the whole pint” in one sitting and whose product the company’s CEO, Justin Woolverton, routinely calls “healthy.” On the latter point, there has been some debate. Halo Top,which is also enriched with protein, maintains its low calorie count using the zero-calorie sweetener Stevia, along with cane sugar and sugar alcohol. While those ingredients are fine to consume, they’re not exactly paragons of nutrition. Then again, Halo Top’s goal isn’t to replace fruits and veggies; it’s to give diet-conscious consumers “an option to eat ice cream again,” says Woolverton. To that end, Halo Top (which retails for about $5 per pint) is succeeding in spades. Its annual sales soared roughly 2,500% last year, and it recently beat out Häagen-Dazs and Ben & Jerry’s to become the best-selling pint in America.
4. Fenty Beauty:Makeup Shades for Every Skin Tone
“Makeup is like a secret weapon,” says pop superstar Rihanna. “It can go from very subtle to a complete transformation.”But for many, that secret weapon is too secret: makeup companies often cater to women with light to medium skin tones, both in products and advertising, and sideline women of color. Not so with Rihanna’s line, Fenty Beauty, which launched in September with 40 shades of foundation and a diverse array of makeup models. “It was important that every woman felt included,” she says, noting that she had “100% involvement” in the development process (alongside parent company Kendo). Almost immediately, the deeper tones started selling out at Sephora; shortly thereafter, brands such as Make Up For Ever and L’Oréal launched campaigns targeting women of color. Now Rihanna is focused on launching new Fenty Beauty collections and taking her brand to the next level. “I love challenges,” she says. “So I’m going to continue to have fun and push the boundaries in this industry.”
5.Ember Mug:Mugs That Heat Your Coffee Just Right
Anyone who’s ever sipped coffee knows how temperature can affect taste: if it’s too hot, it’ll scald your mouth; too cold and it’s barely worth drinking. By one estimate, you have only about 37 seconds to enjoy the brew at an ideal level of warmth. “That didn’t make any logical sense to me,” says Clay Alexander, CEO and founder of Los Angeles–based Ember Technologies. So he invented a solution: the stainless-steel Ember mug. Reinforced in white ceramic coating, it keeps coffee or tea at a precise temperature—anywhere from 120°F to 145°F, set through an app—for about an hour on its own and for an unlimited amount of time on its charging saucer. It’s the second in Ember’s series of smart drinking devices, following a temperature-control tumbler last year. And it may be poised to become a desktop staple: the mug launched on Nov. 9 and is already being sold in 4,600 U.S. Starbucks stores.
6. Thyssenkrupp MULTI:Elevators That Move Beyond Up and Down
What if elevators could move sideways, instead of just up and down? It’s a question straight out of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Germany-based Thyssenkrupp has a real-life answer: MULTI, a system of elevators that ditches old-school pulleys for the same magnetic levitation tech that enables high-speed trains. The elevator cars can travel in multiple directions and even pass each other within a shaft—features that could not only reduce wait times, but also fundamentally “change how buildings are constructed,” says Andreas Schierenbeck, CEO of Thyssenkrupp Elevator. (Think horizontal offshoots of straight, vertical towers.) Following a successful test this year, the first MULTI is set to debut in Berlin by 2021.
7.Apple iPhone X:A Smarter Smartphone
To Dan Riccio, Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering, the iPhone X is quite literally a dream come true. “I look at the design as something we really wanted to do since day one,”he says. It’s easy to see why: the X is arguably the world’s most sophisticated smartphone, with a screen that stretches from edge to edge, a processor optimized for augmented reality and a camera smart enough to allow users to unlock the phone with their face. (Though some of these features first arrived on devices from Samsung and LG.)
But in order to make it all possible, Apple had to kill the home button, a popular all-purpose navigation tool. Much like the company’s move to nix the 3.5-mm headphone jack on the iPhone 7, this decision was driven by “looking to the future,” says Jonathan Ive, Apple’s chief design officer. “I actually think the path of holding onto features that have been effective, whatever the cost, is a path that leads to failure.” At $999, the X is also the most expensive iPhone yet. “As you would expect,” Ive says, “there’s a financial consequence to integrating the sheer amount of processing power into such a small device."
8.Forward:Clinics That Redefine Preventive Care
In the U.S., patients tend to visit doctors only after they get sick. But what if both parties worked together to pre-empt medical issues as well? That’s the idea behind Forward, a new type of wellness clinic that works much like a high-end gym. For $149 a month, users get unlimited access to genetic screenings, blood testing, weight-loss planning, routine doctors’ visits and more all of which help Forward“look toward your future and look out for things that are longer term,”says Adrian Aoun, the founder and CEO, and a former Google executive. (Forward does offer reactive medicine too, including unlimited generic medications without co-pays.) Critics argue most Americans can’t afford the clinics, especially since they do not accept health insurance. But as a niche experiment, Forward appears to be working: the company, which is based in San Francisco, has reportedly raised $100 million in funding and recently opened a location in L.A.; it plans to expand to other cities in the future.
9.Adidas Futurecraft 4D :A Shoe Engineered to Boost Performance
Imagine a shoe that lets you run faster, pivot better and jump higher. That’s the idea behind the Futurecraft 4D, a new sneaker from Adidas whose mid sole can be expertly tailored to the needs of its wearers—not only in size and shape, but also in flexibility, impact type, cushioning and more. The key is the 3-D printing process, which enables Adidas to“look at every single square millimeter of a mid sole and tune it from a performance standpoint,” says Al VanNoy, who headed the project. It would take weeks to make those modifications using traditional shoe making methods. But the Futurecraft 4D mid soles can be printed in as little as two hours, meaning Adidas could even produce them in stores. At least that’s a possibility for the future. For now, Adidas is rolling out a standardized version (based on 17 years’ worth of data from runners) beginning in mid-December.
Electric cars typically have one of two problems: they’re either too expensive, or they have a too-limited range. Tesla’s Model 3 aims to render both issues moot: it’s the buzziest in a series of $35,000-and-up electric cars offering more than 200 miles of driving distance on a single charge (alongside the Chevrolet Bolt). Consumers are certainly intrigued: demand for the Model 3 is so high—as many as 1,800 orders each day, per company estimates—that Tesla is struggling to keep up. “We are deep in production hell,” Elon Musk, the company’s co-founder and CEO, tweeted in October. But Tesla remains confident it will catch up—which is good for its shareholders, and also the environment. Vehicles like the Model 3, which runs on batteries rather than gasoline, are likely to play a major role in combating climate change.
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