33 Best Inventions Of 2015 That You Probably Didn't Know About!

2015 was a year full of advancements in most industries around the world.

Technology emerged and took a very large leap in 2015. Along with the technology sector, generic pharmaceuticals, home health care, remote staffing, and 3-D printing were also some of the booming industries in 2015.

Everyone knows that 2015 was a great year for entertainment, with blockbuster movies and celebrities everywhere. People are still buzzing about movies including 'Star Wars', 'Jurassic Park', and 'Avengers', but they don’t seem to be talking much about the other things that happened this year.

What about the technology that changed our lives? What about the breakthroughs in medical research? What about the great new methods of transportation that were invented?

What about the inventions that were created for the future of our generation and the generations to come? What about the cures that were discovered to help our bodies heal faster?

Best Inventions Of 2015

The year 2015 was one of the best years for technology as many new inventions were introduced for our use. These inventions were so amazing that we can’t wait for them to be launched in the market so that we can buy them for our own use.

We have brought a list of the inventions and products of 2015 that you may not have known about, such as in October 2015, Steve Mahan, a blind man, drove a solo ride in Google's pod car for 10 minutes in Austin. Google hence had its first-ever driverless ride live on the public roads. Yes!

Self-driving cars were one of the prominent inventions of 2015. Let’s take a look at some more.

You might know that currently, there are already cars in existence that contain features of a self-driving car. These cars are produced by very famous car manufacturing companies like BMW, Mercedes Benz, Volvo, Audi, and Tesla.

There is a feature of self-parking in a BMW and also in a Tesla. There were also tech giants like Google, Baidu, and Delphi that were relentlessly trying to build cars that were completely autonomous, which means there would be no need for any human at any point and time during the drive.

Have you heard of the Skype translator? Yes, it is the app that lets people communicate in real-time even if they speak different languages by translating them automatically in real-time using AI and machine learning. You can call it a companion app.

This invention was officially released for public use in October 2015. Almost a year of user beta testing was performed before this application was released.

Back in 2015, it had seven languages from which the translation was possible. These languages were: English, Portuguese, French, Italian, German, Mandarin, and Spanish. Today, this feature is also available as a smartphone or mobile app.

A drinkable water-filtering book was one of the best and most astonishing inventions of the year 2015. Around 600-650 million people did not have access to clean drinking water back then, and almost 3.4 million people fell prey to diseases that were caused due to poor water hygiene.

This drinkable water-filtering book claimed to solve this problem in a cheaper and more reliable way than any other.

It used silver nanoparticles to filter out and kill almost 99.99% of bacteria in the water. The trials for the same were conducted in countries like Bangladesh, South Africa, and Ghana.

Needles are painful, aren't they? But in 2015, needle-free vaccine technology was invented, and it amazed the whole world and changed the world of medical supplies too. Kasia Sawicka, a biomedical engineer, invented ImmunoMatrix. It's a painless alternative to needles, and this patch can be used to vaccinate anyone without breaking their skin.

One other interesting invention in 2015 was that disease-free mosquitoes were released into the air. Now, no one likes mosquitoes. They can spread harmful diseases like dengue fever, chikungunya, and yellow fever.

So scientists released genetically mutated and sterile male mosquitoes into the air so that when they mate with the females, their offspring do not live or survive. The trials took place in Brazil, Panama, Cayman, and Malaysia. These trials were successful and reduced the target mosquito population by 90%.

Best Tech Inventions Of 2015

2015 was a year full of ups and downs, just as any other year. Technology saw innovations in areas including the smartphone, wi-fi, virtual reality, and much more. Let's take a deeper look into what were some of the best technology inventions that happened in 2015.

The first one was a sensor that sniffed out gluten. We could buy it at 6SensorLabs’, Nima.

This little sensor would find traces of gluten in any food sample in as quickly as two minutes. One interesting fact about this device was that if a gluten trace was found, a frowning face lit up, and if there was no trace, a smiley face lit up.

Bionic ears were an amazing invention made by Doppler Labs, which are New York-based. They created a Here Active Listening system, which can amplify or decrease any or all noises at once.

This is the processor that syncs earbuds with a smartphone application, so the user can pick the frequencies to be filtered using a smartphone screen. The CEO of Doppler Labs called them augmented audio reality in one of his interviews.

A creation that astounded many was Juno, a device that makes the process of making millions of copies of DNA easier. It takes three hours to amplify the DNA and cuts back on time because otherwise, it would take a full day for scientists to do so.

Fluidigm invented Juno in 2015. This product saved time and helped match the DNA for bone-marrow transplants, find cures for genetic diseases, and many other areas.

Samsung, along with Leo Burnett, an ad agency, created a transparent truck in that same year. This truck had four LCD screens on which the live footage of the front of the truck would be displayed.

This would give the drivers behind a clear view of what exists ahead. The initial test took place for three days, and it covered 620 mi (1,000 km) without any accidents.

Are you a fan of Fitbit? Do you wish to know if your baby is fine?

In 2015, Sproutling came up with a device that works just like Fitbit for us. Once on, it keeps track of body temperature, heart rate, blood pressure, and more. It would also notify the baby's parents if there's any harm caused via a specially created mobile app.

What was invented in 2014?

We are exploring some of the innovations that occurred in the year 2015. But what were some of the inventions that happened the year before and after 2015?

Various inventions came out in 2016, like the speaker that talks back, folding helmets, levitating LED bulbs, the street-saw hoverboard, Playstation VR, China's Space Station, and the 'real life' barbies. Now, let's look at the inventions that happened in the year 2014.

Many people call the year 2014 a windfall for the field of additive manufacturing. School students, especially middle school students, used 3D printing technology to build 3D models of their favorite cars.

Teachers used 3D printers to print out cars to teach real-life physics to their students. They also printed human organs in 3D to add a real-life aspect to teaching biology and make it way more interesting. To improve jet efficiency, GE also used 3D printing technology.

BMW introduced I3, an electric car, in 2015. They hoped to provide an affordable electric car with a novel design that was able to drive between 70-110 mi (13-177 km) with a single battery charge and could run for at least three hours straight.

In 2014, there was a massive Ebola outbreak in Africa, especially in Africa's western and central parts. Ebola can take a toll on a person's immune system, making it horribly weak. But an Ebola-dialysis machine, named Hemopurifier, made it possible to filter blood and remove the Ebola virus from a person's blood.

India made history by being the first Asian country to place a spacecraft safely in the orbit of Mars on Sept 24, 2014. The mission was known as Mangalyaan.

ISRO, the Indian Space Research Organisation, also became the first space agency on earth to safely land a spacecraft on Marsian orbit on the very first try. This invention demonstrated India's incredible space exploration potential.

What technology was invented in 2015?

Let's get into the world of food. Have you heard of power pasta? Yes, that scrumptious banza or garbanzo chickpea pasta that you love was invented in 2015.

The recipe was tried and tested for over 10 months to get to the right taste. This was the same year when tomato sushi, the midnight scoop, and the gluten-free banana flour were invented. Enough of the food though, let's get into the different technologies invented in 2015.

Doctors always prefer early detection for the treatment of cancer. Dennis Lo, a doctor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, made detecting cancer early easier in the year 2015.

He created a technology that would detect cancer from simple blood tests. The test searches for a specific type of DNA, which is released by tumorous cells into human plasma.

The best technology to have advanced the whole medical field's progress in studying brain activity was invented in 2015. It was named the Brain Organoids and was a new way of growing human brain cells in labs.

This technology would help in uncovering the secrets of diseases like mental illnesses, dementia, schizophrenia, insomnia, and much more, and help to find cures for them.

Communicating cars is an interesting tech, right? In 2015, there was an emergence in car-to-car communication. Cars could broadcast position, speed, brake status, steering-wheel position, and more to other cars, avoiding collisions or accidents.

Honda and Toyota launched their zero-emission and fuel-cell cars in the year 2015. Both intended to focus on sedan types of cars.

As you may know, the Turing test is a test that a machine goes through to check if it has the same behavioral and complex thinking patterns as that of humans. In 2015, the Eugene Goostman program became the first-ever artificial intelligence algorithm to pass the Turing test.

This showed us that computers are getting smarter day by day with the advances in technology.

In 2015, Microsoft took the concept of computing of virtual and augmented reality to the next level by introducing HoloLens. It was the very first holographic computer.

It replaced the idea of human-computer interaction by placing holograms that could be controlled by gestures like voice commands or flick of the eye done in front of the human's eyes. It was a major improvement in the computing field for its future.

Cupertino experienced one of the greatest advancements in 2015. Apple introduced smartphones that had screens that would detect pressure and force with some other multi-touch features. These screens were called 3D touch.

Jobs Created Since 2015

Advancement in innovation and inventions means improvement in employment numbers. When the market works forward to innovate, the number of jobs created certainly becomes more day by day. Let's see how many jobs were created in 2015 and what was the unemployment rate back then.

The year 2015 was said to be the second-best year in terms of jobs creation since 1999. There were around 2.65 million jobs added in the United States of America throughout the course of the year.

The unemployment rate back then was just 5% which was considered as 'full employment' by most economists. The unemployment rate was 10% in the United States of America in 2009. It was cut down to half in 2015 due to the large number of jobs that were created.

Government Led Inventions Of 2015

Every year, there are new advances in the tech field that are hard to catch sometimes. Wireless headsets, laptops, phones, and other interesting technology. In 2015, Asus Chromebit and Intel’s Compute Stick were the hardware devices that changed the world by bringing a computer on a stick!

These were, in a sense, private inventions. But what are some of the government led inventions of 2015? Let's take a look.

Governments play an important role in spurring inventions and innovations. Though not directly, the US government invests through a decentralized network in various companies like NASA, The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the National Science Foundation, and the Small Business Innovation Research program (SBIR).

So, the innovations of these companies are funded and supported by the government.

The government has invested hefty sums in the life sciences and energy sector. In 2015, the US government particularly focused on the inventions in the fields of Semiconductors, Antibiotics, 3D printing, Nanotechnology, and Robotics.

Entrepreneur Led Inventions Of 2015

In 2015, Google launched a game-changing project called Project Fi. Unlike many others, Fi SIM is a sim card that allows a user to jump between wifi, Sprint, or a T-Moblie smoothly and automatically.

This depends on whichever has the strongest signal from above, and it gave the user optimum connectivity no matter where they were. Let's dive into some of the entrepreneur led inventions from the year 2015.

The Copenhagen Wheel was invented by a mass-based start-up from Cambridge, called the Superpedestrian. It is a rechargeable wheel attachment that has a battery-powered motor.

There were enormous start-ups that invented brilliant solutions to solve many different problems in 2015.

Aarav Unmanned Systems, an entrepreneurial company that provides high-tech autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) which can be customized according to various applications, was launched in 2015. The core team of this company comes from top institutes like IIT-Bombay and IIT-Kanpur, bringing significant intelligence and innovative thinking to the team.

Toyota led the fuel-cell technology sector in this same year. Tesla brought an entrepreneurial vision to push the limits of affordable battery power and made it happen in 2015.

Stripe became the go-to payments provider and was used all around the globe by small and large businesses. India's eight start-ups joined the unicorn club in 2015. The companies were Flipkart, MuSigma, Ola, Paytm, InMobi, Zomato, Quikr, and Snapdeal. 

There were many advancements in technology and innovation made during the year of 2015, along with a large variety of smartphone app targeted at a whole range of different age groups.