Mal Fletcher reports on the technologies you & your organisation can't afford to ignore.

Through VR, designers may also become more innovative. Neurological studies reveal clear links between the parts of the brain responsible for problem-solving and those involved with day-dreaming.

When people day dream, they imagine themselves within future scenarios and solve problems within those scenarios. (This might explain why so many of history's great inventors have been inveterate daydreamers.)

A technology that stimulates the imagination as VR will do, encourages this kind of immersive problem solving.

Virtual tools will also transform medicine, providing for a more widespread use of remote surgery.

A head doctor in one location will perform an operation on a patient in another, via either robotic tools or a human third-party surgeon. Augmented reality offers some benefits in this area but cannot compete with future VR.

We may soon also be visiting our local GP via Occulus Rift, potentially cutting waiting times, de-cluttering clinics and reducing costs for over-strained health services.

Again, like most digital technologies, VR will work best as an adjunct to face-to-face interactions, especially for patients who are not tech-savvy, or who may recover more slowly if denied the benefits of human touch.

In the end, patients will be likely to respond more positively if given the option of a virtual or "real" consultation from the start.

Meanwhile, mental health practitioners will use VR to condition clients to overcome anxiety-inducing situations such as the fear of flying.

In time, VR may well be used as an adjunct to human memory for people affected by Alzheimer's and similar conditions, especially as we move toward ever greater levels of life-logging using photos and video - and, in time, mobile 3D video.

In short, virtual reality will change our lives as it becomes more haptic, mobile - holographic smartphone calls are not far away - and mainstream - that is, as more technologists design unique apps for the VR space.

Robotics

A decade ago, Sony couldn't get a robot to walk. Today, it has an entire wing of its research facility in Japan devoted to the study of Robot Anthropology - an ongoing investigation into how these machines will interact with us in every facet of life.

Robots are becoming widely accepted in Japan as extensions of (and sometimes substitutes for) human beings, in industries including aged care, hotel services and retailing.