There was an incredible amount of hype surrounding the Segway, being described as a green form of transportation that would revolutionize personal transportation. While both fun and impressive, it was too expensive for the average American and never really lived up to the hype.

Within the field of personal transportation, there are a couple of new devices coming out which are smaller, more efficient, and more affordable than any of there predecessors. Here’s a couple examples of gadgets you could soon be riding around town.

Some interesting animalistic robots are being perfected by some of the finest minds that the world has to offer, what will their primary applications be?

One of the most exciting pieces of technology soon to be unleashed on the world has got the be the powered exoskeleton suit. An exoskeleton is “a hard outer structure, such as the shell of an insect or crustacean, that provides protection or support for an organism.” Human’s are naturally equipped with an endoskeleton, but imagine the possibilities if we could have both?

We take for granted our ability to drive hundreds of miles in just a few hours time. We don’t think twice about being able to stand on two different continents in the same day. For thousands of years, we were limited to where we could walk. For hundreds of years, we were limited to where we could float. It’s only in the last 100 years, the blink of an eye, that the automobile and airplane have enabled us to span the globe. The evolution of travel will continue into the future, and we are nearing a new step in that process.

Tesla Motors is garnering national attention and notoriety as a game changer in the auto industry.

The company is named after renowned electrical engineer and physicist Nikola Tesla and based off of his original ideas from 1882! Tesla’s competitive advantage is their lithium-ion battery cells, of which they are the first in the world to bring into reality. In 2009, GM Vice-Chairmain Robert Lutz said in the New Yorker, “All the geniuses here at General Motors kept saying lithium-ion technology is 10 years away, and Toyota agreed with us — and boom, along comes Tesla.”

Graphene is the strongest material known to man at 200 times stronger than steel. It is the thinnest possible material feasible, and scientists have said that it almost conducts electricity too well to be used in computers. If you had a saran-wrap thin piece of graphene, an elephant standing on a pencil might not be able to break it. Graphene has the properties to revolutionize electronics and countless other aspects of the world. It may very well change our lives forever.

A lot of people hate to cook. What often starts off as perfectly good chicken embryo quickly finds itself burnt to a crisp and unable to be consumed. Thank goodness for technology. Forget having to borrow a cup of sugar from your neighbor, just make sure you stock up enough edible ink! Simply go to the iGrub recipe store, pick out whatever your palatte desires, click print, and enjoy. Just like grandma used to make!

3D Printers have been being perfected for over a decade, and are finally being produced on such a scale that they are becoming affordable. If you still aren’t sure how 3D printing works, then you can find out more here. The applications are nothing short of amazing; soon we’ll be able to print everyday objects with color and depth that we can use immediately. So why not change the “ink” of a 3D printer to something edible? Now that’s an Easy Bake Oven.

Cell phones can do so much these days. You can check the weather, stay in touch with people instantly from all over the globe, get satellite-fed directions, and even look up the answer to any question you could ever imagine. Cell phones are great, cell phones are awesome; but they are not good enough. Who wants to have to hold something all day anyway? If you hate having to use your hands to multitask, then 2012 is the year for you.

The definition of the word wearable is simple and self-explanatory: capable of being worn or suitable to be worn. The term has seemed pretty ordinary for hundreds, if not thousands of years. That’s all about to change. Some of the biggest names in technology are fine-tuning devices combining the coolest in 21st century gadgetry, that can be worn on your wrist, around your neck, and even on your face.

If you haven’t yet heard of Augmented Reality (AR), then brace yourself for a game-changer. Unlike virtual reality which attempts to bring real life into a virtual world, AR overlays artificial information about the environment and its objects onto the world we live in.

Augmented reality is a “live, direct or indirect, view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented by computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data.” You may have seen early forms of AR on your cell phone. There are several apps out, such as the night sky app, that recognize an image, and project new data on top of the image. With augmented reality, the possibilities are both endless and entertaining. Business cards, for example, are changing forever, with personalized secret messages only visible through the AR spectrum. Check out an amazing example below.

We are incredibly lucky to be living in the golden age of technology, where things that we once knew were impossible are becoming reality. Thirty years ago, would anyone have ever imagined that you could create a 3D file in a computer, and immediately create a corresponding object? Even though most people have never seen them in action, 3D Printers have actually been around for over a decade. While most uses to date have been industrial, this technology is becoming more affordable and making it’s way into many of our offices and living rooms.

3D Printing is a form of additive manufacturing, as opposed to subtractive manufacturing. Subtractive manufacturing is what we’ve been doing for thousands of years; cutting, drilling and shaping objects from metal and other materials. This is not only more time consuming, it also wastes up to 90% of the material byproducts. Additive manufacturing requires less raw materials, less assembly, and allows the flexibility of creating the same object in many materials.