The term smart city originally meant little beyond using much more information technology IT. However, new IDTechEx report, "Smart City Opportunities: Infrastructure, Systems, Materials 2019-2029" reveals that much more dramatic changes are both required and possible and humans will be in the driving seat.

Fiber lasers have a large share of the laser material processing market but are typically limited to aerospace and defence applications in the sensing market segment. That is set to change within the next decade as emerging applications of fiber laser technologies include automotive LiDAR, multi-species gas sensing and structural health monitoring.

The term machine vision describes a group of technologies that enable a machine to see via imaging for the purpose of process automation, and often refers to industrial vision systems. Applications of machine vision include automated product inspection and vision guided robotics. Here we consider four technology types: illuminating, sensing, processing and learning.

5th-Generation Wireless Systems (5G), says the optimist, will revolutionize our life as the 3G/4G systems did.

This article sets out to show that the assumption that QDs are a stagnant technology would be very wrong, demonstrating that QDs have now entered a time of growth, and crucially, rapid technological change.

IDTechEx will be hosting a free webinar on Thursday 2 August titled Digital Health Insights.

5G is believed to be next revolution that will change our society entirely.

As society and equipment become more mobile and remote from grids, diesel and gas gensets will be bought in larger numbers for a few years yet - possibly peaking at around $30 billion global market size when over 600GW will be deployed. The Zero Genset market will rise to at least $100 billion if it replaces significant grid power.

Fiber lasers: A versatile technology for lightweighting, battery manufacturing and LiDAR in the automotive industry. Recent advances in fiber laser welding are highly advantageous for lightweighting and battery manufacturing. Fiber lasers are reliable, compact and energy efficient systems that offer the best beam quality for applications where precision is important.

In any emerging technology, the pace of innovation is rapid, sometimes dauntingly so. Patent Analytics is a service that IDTechEx provides utilising our long-standing expertise in a range of emerging technologies to provide clients of our services the answers they need.

In this article IDTechEx gives a short overview of the topic of wide bandgap semiconductors covering the fundamental material science, the key players, the market potential. The impact on a range of applications will also be discussed, with a focus on renewable energy systems and microgrids.

IDTechEx attended the event last week to meet with key stakeholders including industrial OEMs, power module manufacturers, established semiconductor companies and innovative new GaN (gallium nitride) and SiC (silicon carbide) developers to report back on the current and future trends. The following article is the second of two parts and provides a summary of some of the key GaN related developments and at the event and their impact on various industries and applications.

IDTechEx attended the event last week to meet with key stakeholders including industrial OEMs, power module manufacturers, established semiconductor companies and innovative GaN (gallium nitride and SiC (silicon carbide) developers to report back on the current and future trends.

Autonomous mobility, in the general public's eye, is now synonymous with cars. Whilst this might be the largest ultimate prize, it is by no means the only commercial manifestation of this technology. Indeed, as the IDTechEx Research report New Robotics and Drones 2018-2038: Technologies, Forecasts, Players demonstrates, numerous autonomous mobile robots are being commercialized in applications where there is (a) a clear commercial purpose and (b) a more structured and predictable environment.

IDTechEx will be hosting a free webinar on Thursday 24 May titled Robots and drones: How everything is changing.

There is an increasing demand for monitoring environmental air conditions both indoors and outdoors, as poor air quality is a growing threat to the public health.

In this article, we will describe the upcoming transformation in the world of robotics. This analysis is drawn from our report New Robotics and Drones 2018-2038: Technologies, Forecasts, Players

Recent progress in renewables has bordered on the surreal. At ICREN Barcelona recently we were invited to consider those giant wind turbines sweeping 200 meters of sky. Up there the wind is stronger and more consistent and that size of turbine is more efficient.

Single crystal silicon photovoltaics will now be very affordable, obsoleting polycrystalline Si PV by having efficiency much higher. Laminating it onto supercapacitor sheeting will form a load bearing material that both makes and stores electricity, delivering it exceptionally fast when needed.

Agriculture is facing major long-term challenges. Some forecasts suggest that world population is set to grow by 2.3 billion by 2050. This, together with rising global income levels that typically increase food demand per capital, would require raising food production in 2050 by 70% compared to 2005 levels.