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Hollywood Innovations Made Real

Meet the entrepreneurs who are making Hollywood's futuristic gadgets a reality.

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We've all seen futuristic gadgets in movies and TV shows and wished we had one. These entrepreneurs have gone a step further, developing real-lifeversions of Hollywood fantasies, including James Bond's underwater car, Batman's grappling hook, and Professor John Robinson's jetpack from Lost in Space.

 

A Real-Life Jetpack

Martin Aircraft founder Glenn Martin was inspired to build a jetpack afterwatching Lost in Space as a child. Read More

Communicate Via Brainwaves

NeuroSky is developing ways for people to communicate using only their thoughts, kind of like the aliens in the upcoming sci-fi movie Battle: Los Angeles. Read More

A Computer Controlled by Hand Gestures

After serving as a science adviser on Minority Report, John Underkoffler set out to make a real version of the gesture interface he mocked up for the movie. Read More

Scale Tall Buildings

Batman served as inspiration for Nathan Ball, the creator of the Atlas Power Ascender. Read More

More Advanced Iris Scanner

The InSight VM by AOptix is much more advanced than the iris recognition device in The Simpsons Movie. Read More

Star Trek – Style Communicator Badge

Vocera is outfitting hospital workers with personal communicators like the ones used by Captain Kirk and his crew. Read More

Underwater Car

Inspired by James Bond's amphibious vehicle in The Spy Who Loved Me, Frank Rinderknecht created a car that drives underwater. Read More

 

John Brandon is a contributing editor at Inc. magazine and writes the Tech Trends column in every issue. He also writes the Tech Report column for Inc.com. @jmbrandonbb