Tomorrow's world: tiny tech that will change our lives

“The main difference in the house of the future will be that you don’t see any ‘boxes’. Homes will look like houses from the 1950s. You don’t need the hi-fi stack or the video recorder or the satellite receiver. You will just have the occasional pot plant, nice comfortable seating and a flat screen on a wall that replaces windows, so you can choose the view you see.”

Chances are he’s right. Dr Pearson, who was speaking at the huge IFA tech fair in Berlin last week, has had an 80 per cent success rate in predicting technology trends during the past 30 years, forecasting music streaming services way before anyone else and inventing text messaging.

But rather than a nostalgic step back, he believes homes in future decades will have technology designed to make our lives easier and more fun. You just won’t see it.

“Homes will be high-tech but you just won’t see it because by then devices will have become invisibly small. This will allow properties to be much smaller, we will be able to get away with a smaller living space, which will be necessary to cope with global population growth.”

With families living closer together, appliances and gadgets will have to become quieter, quicker and more efficient to save resources like water.

“Augmented reality has a huge role to play. Today’s headsets fall far short of the mark but the next generation will be quite sophisticated and look like reading glasses or even contact lenses by 2030.

These will give you a full 3D overlay on everything you look at, which allows you to make your house look however you want it to. So you might be living in a little tiny box, a 16 square metre micro-flat, but as far as you are concerned you are living in Buckingham Palace; that the walls are as far away as you want and as luxuriously decorated as you want.

“You could even have aliens or sci-fi characters wandering around if you wanted. Augmented reality is a fantastic technology, it just is not quite there yet. We need to wait a while.

“People will not even need the screens on a wall to watch television or films but as they will only cost a few hundred pounds by then, why not have them anyway as you won’t want to wear your headset all the time.

“Screens will replace windows, so if you live in a tiny flat in a dingy area with a huge office block for a view, you might choose to look out on to a nice Caribbean beach.”

And rather than stopping us from meeting face-to-face for a chat, Pearson believes augmented reality will help us to build closer relationships with loved ones.

“The low-grade communication of text messaging and email today will become full, life-size 3D video conferencing. It will be taken for granted that people can communicate face-to-face. It will also help older people without good public transport links to see their friends without having to venture out. It could be used to avoid having to ever meet face-to-face but most people will use it to fill in the gaps in between face-to-face meetings.”

Dr Pearson, who is from Ipswich, adds: “When we look slightly to the future we will have materials coming in which are very exciting; nanocoatings like nano particles of silver that instantly kill microscopic particles of bacteria when they land on a surface. We have had these for a few years but the next wave will allow you to push a button and instantly sterilise an entire surface by passing an ultra-sonic wave through it.

“Some areas will not be covered by these coatings, like the underside of surfaces, but drone technology will be perfect for that and I would expect that, within a few years, we would have cleaning drones running around with ultra-violet lights on sterilising bits of the kitchen that the average household does not normally get to.

“But for something that can wander around tidying up after a dinner party and do the dishes, then we are looking 15 to 20 years at least before these things become common. I would say we are talking about 2050 before they become as common in a home as owning a car. By then they will have access to superhigh intelligence across the Cloud. It does not cost anything to produce that, so you will be able to talk to them and they will talk back, and they will understand it.”

Robots with Artifici¡al Intelligence that can be companions and counsellors for children will become a reality much sooner, within 10 years.

Dr Pearson, who has been advising domestic appliance brand Beko on technology that can transform day-to-day living, says: “Kids love robots and will grow up with them. They will be working with them as colleagues, so it is good that they are going to get used to them as children.

“If a robot tells a child they should be eating broccoli, it’s cool. They are much more likely to listen to them than their parents. Robots will have a positive role to play raising children.”

Two more long-term innovations will be colour changing, shape changing and texture changing materials, allowing consumers to choose and alter the appearance of appliances to match new floor tiles and surfaces.

And Dr Pearson believes self-driving cars can become a cheap and easier transport solution, saying: “The industry is going up the wrong street at the moment, by talking about using cars that cost £25,000 a piece. There is another way of doing this where you use conductive mats on the road with £250 pods made of fibreglass which don’t have anything in them.

“Your smartphone already has the tech you need to control them and, with 5G connection, in a couple of years it can be done on the Cloud through your mobile.

“The car industry will not embrace this as they want to make expensive cars; all it will take is a new company to come in and change everything.”

The first TV to use Artificial Intelligence was unveiled at IFA tech fair and will be in shops from the end of the month.

Samsung Electronics announced its Q900R OLED 8K TV complete with 8K AI upscaling that comes with giant 65in, 75in, 82in or 85in screens.

The 8K screens are designed to give better picture quality, producing four times more pixels than current 4K ultra high definition screens.

These new TVs use AI to convert any programme or film into 8K quality for colour, clarity and sound, automatically detecting their existing format and upscaling them.

An electric toothbrush that creates ION particles to kill bad bacteria that forms plaque on your teeth was unveiled at IFA tech fair in Berlin.

The ION-Sei, made by Japanese manufacturer Sanyei, uses technology previously only available in dental hospitals to treat gum disease associated with dental implants for a commercial electric toothbrush.

Colin Marson, consulting practice director, said IONs, which are charged atoms, are created by an interaction with a titanium bar on the brush and delivered to the teeth through the user’s saliva. This kills the bacteria that becomes plaque, ending the need for uncomfortable drilling and scraping by dentists to remove it.

“This process will prevent gum disease, which is very important for older people,” says Marson.

Costing £129.99, the ION-Sei has different brush heads for between the teeth and plaque clearing.

Making domestic appliances such as washing machines quieter, quicker and more efficient is a major theme of the tech fair.

Beko was displaying its Aquatech machines, which use patented technology to achieve the perfect mix of water and detergent, resulting in less water being used and a gentler washing cycle to avoid colour fade and fabric damage.

Rival manufacturer Sharp Home Appliances unveiled the fastest washing machines and tumble dryers on the market, which allow you to wash and dry a load in just 29 minutes.

The award-winning 1-Touch Pro Washing Machine, from £800, can do a wash in 12 minutes in an energy-saving 30C cycle, with the Easy Care Tumble Dryer Condenser, from £350, taking just 17 minutes. Both are available at major retailers now.