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Home / Business

The 100 greatest innovations of the year

Washington Post
29 Oct, 2016 07:36 PM2 mins to read

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The Samsung Family Hub Refrigerator, which made the list, allows people to check what's in the fridge before they get home. Photo / Samsung

The Samsung Family Hub Refrigerator, which made the list, allows people to check what's in the fridge before they get home. Photo / Samsung

Robot mall cops, a vaccine for dengue and 98 more of the greatest innovations of the year are highlighted in the November/December issue of Popular Science.

The magazine's annual roundup of "The Best of What's New" provides a snapshot of the latest, coolest, most-cutting-edge products and concepts - or, what the next generation of teens will likely think of as "Oh, that boring stuff?"

Thanks to the tech of 2016, today's kids can experience gee-whiz features from birth. It all starts on the ride home from the maternity ward in a 4moms Self-Installing Car Seat, which "contains 20 sensors, including accelerometers and gyros, that work with motors to level the seat and tighten the straps."

When fever strikes, a concerned dad can check his child's temperature with the no-touch Withings Thermo. It takes "more than 4,000 readings from the temporal artery" with just a simple pass across the forehead. And when boys and girls get that first cavity? Dentists can anesthetize them with a couple of squirts of Kovanaze nasal spray instead of a painful shot.

To unwind, they can rock out with Ossic's X headphones, which "adapt to a listener's anatomy" to create ultrarealistic audio effects. They can fly to Belgium and take a seat on the Mack Rides Pulsar, a roller coaster that splashes into a lake at 60 mph. They can run around on ice without slipping because they're wearing shoes with Vibram Arctic Grip soles, designed to mimic the clawed paws of polar bears.

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And they can complain that there's nothing to eat in the fridge even if they're not at home: The Samsung Family Hub Refrigerator boasts three internal cameras.

That's when parents can turn to another innovation circa 2016.

Intelligentx Brewing calls itself the first artificial-intelligence brewmaster. Using a "machine-learning algorithm," it crafts beers using online feedback from drinkers. Cheers to the future.

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