10 Mind-Blowing Inventions Inspired By the Movies
It's sometimes said that life imitates art, and in some ways, that's truer of science
fiction any other type.
Early pioneers of the genre like Jules Verne dreamed of things like Tasers and electric-powered
submarines decades before they were invented; more recently, beloved movies like Avatar
and the Star Wars series have inspired new generations of scientists, designers, and
engineers to create amazing new gadgets and life-changing technologies that bring the
future to life.
Here are 10 mind-blowing inventions inspired by the movies.
Lightsabers – Star Wars series Pretty much everybody who's ever seen a Star
Wars movie has come away from the experience wanting a lightsaber.
They're the physical representation of everything we love about Star Wars.
Unfortunately, due to light's tendency to fly away from its source at, you know, the
speed of light, scientists haven't yet come up with a feasible way to build these “elegant
weapons for a more civilized age.”
But one engineer has come close: Allen Pan, the inventor behind a company called Sufficiently
Advanced.
His lightsaber is basically an insanely long jet of flame that springs from a modified
replica handle, complete with built-in sound effects.
We wouldn't recommend any high-speed acrobatics with it, but it's as close to the real deal
as we're likely to get in this galaxy.
Sexbots – Blade Runner, AI: Artificial Intelligence, and others
Whether you like, dislike, or have no opinion on the idea of robots built for people to
have sex with, it's likely that they're not too far off from being as fully realized as
those we've seen on the silver screen for decades.
As far back as the 1960s, films like Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine depicted robots designed
to entice humans – typically in the form of scantily-clad women – but it wasn't until
1982's Blade Runner that the idea was explored in a more nuanced way.
Because of Blade Runner's cultural impact, it's likely that most of the sexbot prototypes
in existence today – and there are several – were at least partly inspired by it.
And 2002's AI: Artificial Intelligence took the next logical step, depicting both male
and female-shaped sexbots designed to be ideal lovers in more than just a physical way.
With movies like these blazing the trail, the future of sex robots may eventually only
be limited by our imaginations.
Gesture Interfaces – Minority Report Touchscreen technology has been around for
a long time.
The first research into the technology was published in 1965, and accurate touchscreens
have been around since about 1988.
But at the time Minority Report was released, a screen that didn't have to be touched – that
a person could interact with merely by gesturing at it – was unheard of.
Watching Cruise toss, flip, and paw his way through information in a translucent hologram
without ever touching it wowed audiences.
Since then, a number of researchers and companies have been hard at work trying to bring this
technology to life, including a startup called Leap Motion that has a device that can read
finger movements in 3 dimensions, and Google, whose Project Solis tracks hand movements
at 10,000 frames per second and is small enough to be built into an Android smartphone.
We're not all the way to Minority Report levels of hand-gesture interfacing, but we're well
on the way.
Mobile Phones – Star Trek The long-running and beloved sci-fi franchise
Star Trek has inspired its fair share of cool inventions over the years, from automatic
sliding doors to the iPad.
But no single Trek-inspired invention has has as profound an effect on our day-to-day
lives as the cellphone.
More than just a hand-held communications device, today's smart cellphones can connect
to the internet, stream movies and music, play graphics-intensive games, and much more.
By the standards of even a generation ago, they're basically magic.
And we wouldn't have gotten to this point without Star Trek's iconic flip-top communicators,
cited as the inspiration for the original flip-phone cellphone, Motorola's StarTAC,
first released in 1996.
Self-lacing Shoes – Back to the Future Part II
Back to the Future Part II featured a lot of cool futuristic inventions for Marty McFly
to play around with – most memorably, hoverboards.
While skateboard decks that hover as you ride them are, unfortunately, still impossible
outside of specialized environments, another, slightly humbler toy from the magical future
of 2015 has actually become a reality, thanks to ongoing efforts from Nike's design and
research teams: the self-lacing shoe.
Nike built replicas of the high-top sneakers from the movie, of course, but those don't
actually lace themselves.
For that, fans will need patience and a cool $720 to snag a pair of Nike Hyperadapt 1.0s.
The company calls its innovation “adaptive lacing.”
The shoes are only available in a few select locations to start, but jump in a time machine
and head to 2047, and maybe they'll be a bit easier to find.
Smart Glasses – Terminator 2: Judgment Day Smart glasses had an inauspicious commercial
start with the rollout of Google Glass a couple of years ago.
Despite considerable fanfare and Google's best marketing efforts, people found them
clumsy-looking, less than subtle, and more than a little creepy.
With few early adopters and a lot of consumer misgivings about the product, the company
eventually gave up on it.
But that doesn't mean the idea is gone – in fact, it's very likely we'll begin to see
more and more of it in the near future, as designers and manufacturers get a better idea
of what people find interesting about smart glasses and how they're likely to be used
by ordinary people.
It's a technology whose time has almost come – and we have none other than the Terminators
to thank for it.
The real-time visual data displays used by the human-hunting robots in movies like Terminator
2 were reportedly an early inspiration for wearable “augmented reality” lenses like
Google Glass.
Autonomous Vehicles – Total Recall (1990) In the sci-fi thriller Total Recall, people
can still get around by car in the future, and some people still choose to take a taxi
rather than drive themselves.
But unlike today's services, the cabbies in Total Recall don't actually exist.
That's right – the cabs drive themselves, though a dummy figurine named “Johnny Cab”
serves as a familiar interface for their human customers.
Back when Total Recall was released in 1990, this seemed very futuristic – but today,
thanks to researchers at Google, Tesla, Ford and other companies, a world of self-driving
cars may not be very far away after all.
Though plenty of other movies since then have also used the idea – including I, Robot
and Minority Report – Total Recall was the first to explore the idea memorably and convincingly.
Laser Cannon – War of the Worlds (1953) Based on H.G. Wells' 1898 book of the same
name, War of the Worlds tells the story of an attack on Earth by technologically superior
Martian forces, who devastate Earth's defenses with massive heat-based ray guns mounted on
Martian spaceships.
Since then, ship-mounted laser weapons have become a common sci-fi trope, appearing in
Star Wars, Star Trek, Babylon 5 and other beloved franchises.
But we have to give credit to War of the Worlds for being an early inspiration for these mounted
laser cannons, which are now slowly beginning to become a reality.
Case in point: the new Laser Weapon System, or LaWS, mounted on the USS Ponce since 2014.
It doesn't fire a brightly colored line like in the movies, but it can still burn out vehicle
motors and bring down drones with just a few seconds of focused laser energy.
Lifelike Synthetic Limbs – Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
Everybody remembers the climactic scene of The Empire Strikes Back, in which Luke Skywalker
finally learns the terrible truth about his father, and loses his hand in short order.
In the final shots of the film, we're treated to a close-up of his new bionic replacement,
which looks just like his old hand, but which is actually a highly advanced piece of technology
with lifelike skin and a sense of touch.
What seemed like pie-in-the-sky dreaming back in 1980 is now quickly becoming a reality,
as scientists continue to make breakthroughs in artificial limb technology.
From robotics that can be controlled with a thought just like organic limbs, to brain
implants that can help bypass nerve damage, and advances in lifelike artificial skin,
we're rapidly approaching an era where the replacement for a lost limb might be not only
as good as the original, but even stronger and more durable.
Giant Mecha Robots – Avatar and others Robots that walk like people have been around
in the popular imagination for decades, but until recently, they were strictly the realm
of fantasy.
Now, thanks to a company called Hankook Mirae Technology, the world's first known bipedal
manned robot has been built in South Korea.
The robot is still tethered to its power source by a thick cord, and it's still a prototype
– though the company hopes to start selling working “mechs” by the end of 2017 – but
the 4-meter-tall, 1.5-ton beast, which has motion-controlled arms and working hands,
is nevertheless a dream come true for its creators.
And while the robot, named Method-2, may have been inspired by a lot of different shows
and movies, its final design looks startlingly similar to the one seen in James Cameron's
sci-fi mega-hit Avatar.
Whether by design or sheer coincidence, fans of the movie may soon be able to shell out
for their own giant robots and steal the show at every convention.
Those are ten of the coolest and most amazing inventions we've seen lately, but we'd love
to know about more!
What are your favorite new creations inspired by the movies?
Give this video a thumbs-up and tell us in the comments below.
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