One of the issues and challenges for the assistive technology is the global aging of population, and aging will indirectly affect the growth of the number of disabled people because the research shows that the prevalence of disabled people in the elderly population is higher. The demand for assistive products will also increase in 2050, because assistive technology is the basic medical and health care security, and needs to maintain high sustainability.
One of the necessary assistive technology for disabled people is the bionics that is an advanced technology that can be integrated with all parts of the human body. It is mainly used in artificial limbs. There are two outstanding examples, one is myoelectric limbs that can make the movement and behaviour of limbs more natural according to the mental and physical stimulation of users. And another is the mind-controlled bionic limb is a kind of prosthesis which can be integrated with human tissues including the nervous system. They are more advanced and can respond to commands from the central nervous system, so they can replicate normal movements and functions more closely.
Although these devices are beneficial in preventing dysfunction and loss of muscle strength, long-term use can cause joint and overuse, and resulting in pain or discomfort and physical fatigue. Most of the products are made up of various metal and electronic devices, which are heavy in weight and troublesome in assembly. And the biggest challenge to bionics is that the current technology can not completely copy the complexity, range of motion and function of normal human limbs.
Every part of the body, from the limbs to the viscus, can be built in 2050 and applied to people's bodies. Bionic mechanical devices such as artificial limbs are no longer tools to support the body but can be regarded as a part of the body to feedback to the user the pain and the space feeling of the prosthesis, and the user can feel the existence of "hand" and "leg”.
Speech recognition technology is one of the important research fields of artificial intelligence. With the introduction of Siri, voice assistants began to appear in 2010 and were recognized by the public. Then various types of AI promoted the rise of digital voice assistants.
With the development of technology, the personalized functions and types that voice assistants can provide become more and more abundant and intelligent. It can perform almost any operation required by the user. Speech recognition technology is widely used and has been applied in many fields, including mobile devices, smart home appliances, cars, medical treatment, etc., which provides a lot of practicability for users' life. Many industry experts predict that in the future, almost every application will use speech recognition technology in some way.
However, due to the diversity and complexity of speech signals, the system can only achieve satisfactory results under certain conditions. Therefore, it has the issue for the deviation of the recognition accuracy, for example, when the ambient noise is too large or sentence segmentation and other factors affect the reception of correct information. On the other hand, due to the polysemy of a word, it is difficult for the machine to understand human language because it is still a relatively but mature shallow semantic analysis technology.
Though it was only used as an auxiliary function of the smartphone, it has great potential with rapid development. In 2050, it will become the mainstream of human-computer interaction, and improve the life and work efficiency of users in various fields by speaking. Voice assistants may have the ability of autonomous learning, memory, association and reasoning by stimulating the activity of human brain neurons. The language model will be changed from a probability model to a grammar model based on linguistics, so as to truly understand human natural language. Through the combination of facial expression and mood, and the user's personal voice or other personalized factors to identify the user's emotional state and accurate purpose. To give a more suitable response to the current situation, and no longer need to accept specific set instructions.
VR - virtual reality, is a developing technology which can sense the human body's related actions, such as head rotation, position movement and so on, and produce corresponding effects in the virtual world displayed by the equipment, and give users the simulated immersion feeling of vision, hearing, touch and other senses.
At present, VR needs a relatively closed perspective space to apply, so users can't perceive the external environment when using it, and it is easy to cause problems such as collision and drop. Limited by the performance of perceptual devices, and as the virtual scene gets closer to reality, more devices are needed. The helmet with closed vision, various interactive devices such as a host and headset make the system more cumbersome and the experience worse. However, I believe that in 2050, it will become light, just like the development and change of smartphones and computers. The large-size helmets will be replaced. Its appearance will be as thin as glasses, or like an electronic headband. In short, the cumbersome accessories will disappear.
If VR wants to enter the mass market, it must first attract consumers. Only when the product is easy to be accepted by users, can it become the mainstream. But at present, the VR device experience in the eyes of some viewers looks like a crazy man dancing with a helmet, and it mainly focuses on the application of entertainment, which leads to some prejudice against it. The game industry initially promoted the rise of VR, so in the future development, will VR be inseparable from games, and will games “kill” VR.
I don't think so. Although the current mainstream of professional VR devices is oriented to the game field, in 2050, the field where VR technology can be applied is far more than the single field of entertainment. The most obvious reason is its immersive experience and interactive characteristics, which can not be achieved and realized by other technology or products at present. Many industries need this particularity to present content products to achieve better results. Its potential use is enormous, and its development and application will be unlimited in 2050 and further into the future. Science and technology will not be confined to just one field. Their development always needs constant exploration. I think that as long as it can form large breakthroughs in a relatively great practical content, the user penetration rate can be greatly increased, the innovation and integration development, the cultivation of new models, so as to expand the application space of VR.
But with the development of technology, VR can bring the real world sense of emptiness. People gather in the virtual world and become accustomed to paralyzing themselves with virtual reality. They gradually become independent individuals in reality, which will increase social loneliness.
However, In 2050, VR will interact with AR, AI or other high-tech technologies, which will bring about radical and subversive changes to our future lifestyle, and give economic and social benefits. We will no longer stay in the simple plane interaction between fingers and screen. In 2050, it can be multi-dimensional complex interactive control such as three-dimensional space + gesture + voice. However, this may lead to the elimination of some industries or cause conflicts, but technology is always improving, and competition is inevitable.
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