A lot of the technology from classic Star Trek has become a part of every day world. And while many of us dream of the day the transporter becomes a reality (especially when it comes time to move), it’s still looking like that one is a long way off.
However, the X-Prize Foundation is offering scientist a chance to make one piece of Trek tech a reality–the tricorder. And if you can pull it off, you’ll take home a cash prize.
“The winners will be the three solutions achieving the highest diagnostic score regarding a set of 15 distinct diseases in a group of 15-30 people in three days (full details will soon be available in the Competition Guidelines),” says the group. “This diagnosis must be performed in the hands of a consumer, independently of a healthcare worker or facility.”
This competition is brought to you by the world’s most innovative prize-makers, the X-Prize Foundation, and they mean business. The X-Prize, along with Qualcomm, has $10 million to hand out to the winning teams: first place receives $7 million, second place gets $2 million and third place earns a cool $1 million.
Current X-Prize competitions include building a lunar rover and sequencing 100 human genomes. The first X-Prize, known as the Ansari X-Prize, for the first team to build a reusable launch vehicle to go to space twice within 14 days, was won by Scaled Composites’ SpaceShipOne in 2004.
Now Scaled Composites is currently in a partnership with Virgin Galactic to bring tourists to space.
Although the Qualcomm X-Prize hasn’t released the exact guidelines for the device’s capabilities, we know that the tricorder can’t weigh more than five pounds. Also, competitors have three and a half years to build it.
Really cool.
But I question the requirement that the tool be used by a non-professional. I would think the best use case for a Medical Tricorder would be to assist the professionals in getting quicker results.
Putting a tool like this in the hands of a laymen for testing seems an unnecessary and unreasonable hoop.
I agree. Tricorders (at least the medical ones) in Star Trek are always used by doctors or medics. Scientific tricorders are different devices, entirely, which I could see having more consumer-friendly applications, like scanning an environment for a variety of purposes.