Year in Review: Bright Ideas: Innovation in 2011 --- The Year's Inventions: From IBM's Jeopardy-Playing Watson to a Replacement Heart Valve

1176 words 30 December 2011The Wall Street JournalB4English(Copyright (c) 2011, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.)

Apple, Facebook and Google aren't the only companies coming up with cool ideas.

Though news of the latest iPhone or Facebook remodel dominated headlines in 2011, the year saw many other companies quietly -- and some not so quietly -- flex their own creative muscle. Inventions ranged from the high-tech (brainy computers and self-piloting planes) to the startlingly simple (bits of paper that can diagnose some of the world's most troubling illnesses).

While many this year mourned the loss of Apple's Steve Jobs, considered one of the great innovators of his time, creativity and invention are far from gone.

Here is a handful of some of the year's most impressive inventions:

IBM's Watson Computer

Reality caught up with fiction when International Business Machines Corp.'s Watson computer system thumped two "Jeopardy!" champions in a nationally televised competition this February. The victory marked a milestone for the field of artificial intelligence, conjuring memories of the HAL 9000 computer from the classic science-fiction flick "2001: A Space Odyssey."

Watson -- a group of technologies designed to understand the complex domain of words, language and human knowledge -- is more than a cool R&D project. Health-plan company WellPoint Inc. plans to use Watson to help suggest treatment options and diagnoses to doctors. IBM executives believe Watson has the potential to grow into a billion-dollar business in three to five years as it is applied to other fields, such as call centers and engineering.

Watson shared the spotlight this year with one other disembodied assistant: Apple Inc.'s Siri voice-recognition software for its iPhone. While limited, Siri is a precursor for a range of new voice-activated consumer products, and could be followed with variants that make decisions for users, too, based on their past behavior and preferences.

-- Spencer E. Ante

Northrop's X-47B Drone

In February, an unmanned, bat-winged fighter jet soared over a desert north of Los Angeles in a 29-minute test flight that signaled a new age in naval aviation. This isn't your average drone, piloted remotely with a joystick by someone with extensive flying experience. A computer takes care of the X-47B's flight mission, while an operator can simply click a mouse to start the engines and send it on its way.

Northrop Grumman Corp.'s X-47B, which can carry up to 4,500 pounds of weapons in its two internal bays, will also be the first drone that can take off and land on the moving deck of an aircraft carrier.

Drone technology has made enormous strides over the past decade, but its limits were demonstrated late in 2011, when Iran claimed to have downed an RQ-170, a pilotless stealth aircraft operated by the U.S. military. Carrier-launched drones will be near-invisible to enemy radars.

-- Nathan Hodge

Lytro's 'Living Pictures'

Many technological breakthoughs come from labs at big companies, but it was little Lytro Inc. that generated big buzz in the photography world.

Billed as a revolutionary development in digital photography, the start-up's still cameras create what it calls "living pictures," which can be refocused after they are taken. When viewed through a Web browser, users can click on different spots to bring objects into focus.

Lytro says it updated a century-old invention called light-field cameras, which capture much more information than conventional digital cameras. Lytro in October began taking orders for its cameras, priced at $399 to $499, but doesn't expect to fill them until early 2012.

-- Don Clark

Leveraged Freedom Chair

Rolling around a city in a wheelchair is difficult enough without ramps and elevators. Toss in unpaved roads full of rocks and mud, as found throughout the developing world, and it becomes impracticable.

A new wheelchair created at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Mobility Lab could be the solution for millions of disabled people in these countries, a large share of whom live in rural areas and travel upwards of two to three miles to get to work or school, or stay at home.

Built with bicycle parts found cheaply and abundantly in developing countries, the Leveraged Freedom Chair costs only about $100 to make -- compared with a few thousand dollars for conventional push-rim wheelchairs -- and is designed with a special lever system that enables the user to muscle over rough terrain and up steep hills.

After several years of testing, the chair will begin production early next year in India, with other countries likely following.

-- Scott Austin

Sapien Heart Valve

The Sapien, made by Edwards Lifesciences Corp., does for diseased aortic valves what the stent did for clogged arteries: It enables treatment without open-heart surgery.

Made partly of cow tissue and polyester and approved by the Food and Drug Administration on Nov. 2, it's the first replacement heart valve delivered via catheter, through either a leg artery or a minor chest incision, rather than open-heart surgery.

The rise of stents, which are implanted only by cardiologists, meant a big reduction in cases for heart surgeons, rupturing relations between the fields. The new valve was developed collaboratively and can be deployed by both groups. If the device is widely adopted, Sapien's true innovation may be in healing the rift between the specialties.

-- Ron Winslow

Diagnostics for All

Postage stamp-sized paper could be a key to diagnosing some of the world's troubling illnesses -- all for less than a penny.

Diagnostics for All, a Boston-based non-profit organization created by biotechnology executive Una Ryan and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, has developed a blood test using specially treated paper that channels a single drop of blood or urine and in minutes will change color if a problem is found.

Its first target is African AIDS patients with tuberculosis who often die of liver failure because of the highly potent drugs they take. This liver function test, which detects toxicity in blood, will cost 0.10 cents or less and work without external power or equipment, the group says.

-- Scott Austin

Tri-Gate Transistors

Personal computers, smartphones and iPads would never have arrived without the relentless improvement of computer chips. Intel Corp. took a radical step to keep the innovation going, into the third dimension.

The Silicon Valley giant's forthcoming microprocessors incorporate the most fundamental shift in semiconductor design since 1959. Intel is building key parts of transistors in each chip using a vertical, fin-like structure, much as architects developed high-rise buildings pack more office space in a city.

Intel says the 3-D design, a departure from the flat circuitry of previous builds, will result in 37% better performance and a 50% drop in power usage than current chips -- helping to ensure that tomorrow's gadgets will be better than today's.

-- Don Clark