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XPrize Founders Launch Tech Innovation Competition
metlin writes "The organizers of the Ansari X-Prize have launched the equivalent of the X-Prize in a variety of technology areas, called the WTN X-Prizes. The idea is to have a series of prizes for important technology challenges facing humanity in the 21st century, which will be judged by the World Technology Network. The website mentions that, 'The concept of the WTN X PRIZES is to utilize the concepts, procedures, technologies and publicity developed X PRIZE Foundation's Ansari X PRIZE competition for space and the global science and technology innovators identification process and community developed by the World Technology Network (WTN) to launch a series of technology prizes seeking to meet the greatest challenges facing humanity in the 21st century.' Sounds like a good idea, maybe this will help make that flying car a reality?"
Actually, if you follow the link, there's a space where you can suggest what the prizes should be for.
$30 Off All Plans: Use code TRIPLESAWBUCK
Here is a very rough and incomplete list of the sorts of challenges that might be appropriate:
Can they make one of the 1st prizes some of the X-ray specs so I can see through womens clothing! (Yes, it must have a gender filter)
Instead of fusion power constantly being 10 years in the future, it'll now be stuck at 5!
There are 10 kinds of people in the world; those that understand binary and those that do not.
like e.g. making Microsoft Windows secure? :-)
SCNR
I'm getting a bit worried that the X-Prize people have lost focus. Better to do one thing right at the time as they have with the Ansari X-Prize.
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Seriously... why is having flying cars lauded as "the next big thing" all the time? There are several things that would make travel easier and cheaper, such as electric or hydrogen powered cars. Or, even at the less techinical side of things, an effective public transport system. Also nicer to the environment.
Also, think of the mess you get when theres a car crash on a motorway. Now multiply that by 40 times - thats the mess you get when flying cards run out of fuel and plough into regular traffic.
Instead of worrying about flying cars, lets just try and make the cars we DO have less of a hassle.
Are we afraid the guy who invents the usable flying car won't be able to sell any? Is there someone with an AI sitting around saying, "If only I could figure out how to make some cash off this?"
The prize for the space travel thing was incentive to do it cheaply, wasn't it? That doesn't work when the hard part is doing it at all.
That said, it's still pretty cool.
I feel someone should offer a nice prize for creating an efficient and clean way of producing hydrogen for fuel cell technology. Fuel cells already exist, but the cost, pollution and work involved in producing the hyrdogen required to run a fuel cell is prohibitive. If cheap and clean hydrogen production was achieved, we would be able to stop burning fossil fuels, the world would be a cleaner place, and stuff like flying cars could very well become a reality due to the sheer amount of power fuel cells can produce.
I'd hope they come up with real 21st century ideas, rather than rehashing old 20th century ones. Besides, what's the point of being able to fly to work when you still can't find anywhere to park? Anyway, the real problem isn't making a cheap flying machine as much as making it safe for the average person to control it - so what they'd really need are AI pilots, rather than flying cars.
I just hope one of the prizes is for a technology to help us kick our oil addiction... Peak Oil is coming people!
Flying cars sound really great, but quite frankly, I think it's a waste. Unless it offers considerable advantage, it would never take-off (pun intended). By considerable advantage, I mean it can get to places a lot faster or uses less fuel or something. I can see the use of them, but not on a large scale basis. Flying cars will obviously use consierably more fuel than regular cars and other ground transports. For other purposes, there's the airplane, which has been economized and travels much faster.
The flying car, then, I think will end up being like helicopters - but perhaps slightly more common. Wealthy people will have them and for emergency purposes (organ transplants, etc.), but other than that, I don't see flying cars as truly useful. In the U.S., we already consume so much energy driving, etc., do we really just need more ways to consumer energy faster?
(Granted, if we all had this attitude, we would have had the technology advances we've had up to know, airplanes and all, but current energy usage trends are quite alarming).
A true highway autopilot in a sub $30k car
Safe fog and rain navigation for the same car
Economic and RELIABLE robotic assembly lines
Stuff like that.
Always going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse.
The concept of the WTN X PRIZES is to utilize the concepts, procedures, technologies and publicity developed X PRIZE Foundation's Ansari X PRIZE competition for space and the global science and technology innovators identification process and community developed by the World Technology Network (WTN) to launch a series of technology prizes seeking to meet the greatest challenges facing humanity in the 21st century.
What will the prize be for a foolproof way of teaching writing skills?
Cheap ways to purify water etc.
The much-talked about global water-crisis in the making needs some attention.
Crazy ideas aplenty: Thinking of Dune: the big 'stills, that take moisture out of the air and cool it, so it condenses, comes to mind. But something like that would be possible to build with simple stuff... In 'underdeveloped' nations...
Where is this "Anti X-prize" then ?
My personal idea for the contents for such a prize would be:
Prize for the craft that crashes most spectacular (without people, duh)
Prize for the most useless invention on (name your territory here)
Prize for the worst overshoot of a set target (wanted to the moon, went to Mars)
Any more ?
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A prize for software that takes overly long and unweildy sentances, and converts them to plain English.
offer the prize for making a working ethanol (or bio diesel)production plant that has a lower cost of energy than say a 30 dollar barrel of crude oil. As far as fuel cells go, I guess adding fuel cell tech to efficiently use ethanol, would be useful.
..........FULL STOP.
...The NEW Cadillac Escalade Flyin' SUV! With motorized "spinner" rims that spin even when you're flyin!
Gimme a friggin break! The X Prize was cool and all, but that's not quite effective for everything, only encouraging lower costs. If you wanna help the world by offering a prize, try these:
1. Energy Efficient homes. The car is a good start, but the american home could stand to be improved. How about homes that produce more energy than they consume?
2. Space Resource gathering/production. This is what the X prize should work toward IMO. The nearest asteroid is worth (I think) ~3 trillion. Now that's smart resources!
3. Energy production. Solar energy "farms", in space!
4. Energy transport. Friendly/safe synthetic fuels or batteries are a must.
For most of these 10M may not cut it. But I'd like to see some kinda push.
Why can't all fpga/microcontroller manufacturers just release free optimizing compilers???
... sure it isn't as "cool" but is the greatest problem facing humanity.
I think the biggest challenge facing humanity right now is energy. I don't know if everyone realizes how many of the world's problems are based on energy consumption and how much better off we would be with some alternative energy source that is safe, clean, cheap and plentiful. Surely we've put our minds to it before, and maybe it's futile to hope for such a miracle, but maybe it's time to try again. Any hope of finally getting that cold fusion to work? :) Or maybe some combination of high yield solar panels with efficient storage cells.
Imagine -- forget mideast oil and all their conflicts; forget pollution -- most of it comes from our current, primary energy sources; forget nuclear waste disposal (after we're done with what we've already got to deal with); and if the energy source is reasonably self-contained / localized (like solar panels on the house), forget transmission problems and dangers. If I had to pay double taxes for 2 years to get this worked out, I'd be all for it!
1. Robots and AI
Robot players beats human world championchip masters in a standard soccer match.
2. Space
2.1 - Race around the mon.
2.2 - Land on the moon.
2.3 - Bring back one kilogram of moon material
2.3 - Land on mars.
3. Medicine
Neural computer interface(say matrix)
4. Energy
Superconducting powerline over 100km
5. Transportation
Antigravity
I believe one very good place to start off would be IT development in the poorest of the poor countries (which is one of the UN's goals for the millenium). The reason is that, as others pointed out, the X Prizes work best when used to increase incentive for things we already know how to do. This could improve the lives of people living in these countries AND make us, as a species, better able to know what we know.
The concept of the WTN X PRIZES is to utilize the concepts, procedures, technologies and publicity developed X PRIZE Foundation's Ansari X PRIZE competition for space and the global science and technology innovators identification process and community developed by the World Technology Network (WTN) to launch a series of technology prizes seeking to meet the greatest challenges facing humanity in the 21st century.
Man, what a complete trainwreck of a sentence.
Solar panels are still pretty expensive, so why not have a prize for an efficient process for making solar panels?
maybe this will help make that flying car a reality?
Oh God I hope not. It is bad enough now with drivers not watching what they are doing in two dimensions and now you want to add a third!? The day that they let the average Joe Blogs drive a flying car is the day I give up driving and to back to walking/cycling/public transport - I'll live longer!
Karma? Hey I just call it as I see it.
I've been thinking about this for a long time.
Here's my list:
1. Medical technique (drug/etc.) to stimulate regrowth of tissue, as various lizards do. Lose an arm? Regrow it. this would have to take into account the replacement of scar tissue with healthy new tissue. Important in this are skin, nerve, and heart tissues.
2. Replacement teeth. Along the same lines as tissue regrowth for the gums, replacement teeth would have similar properties to existing teeth but be permanently implanted. We have this for hips, knees, etc., why not for teeth?
3. Technique to artificially stimulate (nuclear) Beta decay. This would allow us to reduce radioactivity immediately in radioactive materials.
4. Method/device to increase, decrease (even to become negative) the force of gravity acting on an object. This would NOT include any mechanical device; I'm talking about a gravitational FIELD force here.
5. 3 dimensional display as a transparent globe that we look into to view projected images. This would allow 3-D viewing, and would vastly assist all manner of medical and engineering processes.
6. Caller-id. Oh, sorry, we have that.
7. Recognition in the social sciences realm that peace studies deserves more research and development, allowing disparate, traditionally hateful relationships between ethic/religious/etc. groups morph into peaceful coexistence, without resorting to genocide of one or the other groups.
8. Airborne refuelling using liquid oxygen instead of jet fuel.
9. Ramjet or scramjet jet engines that can go from 100% atmospheric oxygen variably to 100% onboard oxygen, burning kerosene.
10. Same suppemental oxygen engines that are rated for very high mach numbers in rarified air.
11. Space suits that are very thin and easy to put on/take off, and work at higher than 2 psi so there's no prebreathing requirement.
12. Very high specific impulse (ISP) engines (from 1000 to 10,000) with thrust ranges in the tens or hundreds of newtons instead of millinewtons.
Just a smattering of goals here.
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So, will this compete with the Nobel Prize? Personally, I'm glad that there are visionaries that want to see the advancement of science and engineering and are willing to add monetary incentives to this goal.
and come up with a shaving system that doesn't involving scraping sharp pieces of metal across our faces!
I mean seriously, if someone could pack a laser hair removal system into a handheld gadget built for the home user, I'd buy it. I'm all about the not shaving for 4-6 weeks part.
"Crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of their women." - Conan
Yes, I find it really interesting, and perhaps ironic that the fuels we are using now - hydrocarbons - have a higher hydrogen density than any of the mechanical (temperature, pressure) or chemical (metal hydrides) methods proposed for hydrogen cars. Not to mention the additional energy stored in the form of chemical bonds. It makes you think that perhaps nature was onto something when (nearly?) every life form on this planet uses hydrocarbons as their primary source of energy.
Also, if you think about it, hydrocarbon fuel cells are a step towards a fuel "metabolism" that closer mimics biology than current combustion engines. Maybe our next improvements in fuel efficency won't come from pure chemistry but learning from and modififying existing biological systems. Genetically modified biocrops, which power biological inspired fuel cells, both tuned specifically for each other.