For many years, the TV and film industry has been determined to scare us with fictional horror stories that show the unforgiving aftermath of technology taking over. The Terminator franchise with its Skynet nemesis probably resonates the most with people, and more recent examples include sci-fi flick Ex Machina and cult TV show Black Mirror, which show technology one upping us in extreme, distressing and manipulative ways. Yet, in spite of some really bad endings to science fiction horror stories, humanity seems determined to build killer robots aka lethal autonomous weapons.

Top CES 2017 Innovations – Imagine how cool it would be to control machines, gadgets and other interfaces with just your thoughts.

In this blog post we check out the latest display products at the Integrate show, and share our near term predictions for the digital signage space.

Scott O'Brien (Humense) is a pioneer in the fields of augmented and virtual reality. He's working on a new project - generating ultra-high definition virtual reality scenes. In this blog post we visit Humense's lab environment for an early look at an 8K VR projection. VR has lots of potential commercial uses. Right now though, one of the biggest drawbacks of VR as a business tool is the clunkiness of VR headsets.

Last December, the Australian Bureau of Statistics quietly announced a major change to the way the 2016 Census would be conducted - making it mandatory for people to include their name and address, along with highly sensitive personal information about their household income and habits. A number of people, myself included, raised red flags about this massive breach of privacy.

It’s impossible to know exactly what’s in the food you’re eating, and for some of us — diabetics, celiacs, allergy sufferers, and others with food sensitivities — that can be a serious problem. By combining the established technology of spectroscopy with mobile communications and cloud computing, startup Tellspec is developing a handheld scanner that might one day reveal all. In this Future Tech interview we talk with Tellspec founder and CEO, Isabel Hoffmann, about Tellspec’s technology and plans, food allergies, additives, genetically modified organisms, and more.

Facial recognition systems rarely have the luxury of taking full frontal photos from stationary people: for many applications they need to rely on side-on, or top-down views of people in motion. In this Future Tech interview we talk with Brian Lovell, founder and CTO of Imagus Technology about the challenges of facial recognition and the capabilities of his company’s technology. Brian also discusses some of the implications, good and bad of facial recognition technology.

One of the biggest challenges facing robotics engineers is the development of sensors able to gather visual data at the speed and accuracy needed for rapid and correct decision-making, and that are light enough to be incorporated into small and mobile devices, such as drones. In this Future Tech interview we talk with the founder of Ocular Robotics, Mark Bishop, and commercial director, Dr Ramin Rafiei, about the technology the company has developed to solve these problems, and the application possibilities it opens up.