An Internet which can deliver smells, a mobile phone battery that lasts two months and micro-robot surgeons are only a decade away, according to a South Korean government report released on February 28.
The Information and Communication Ministry, in the report based on interviews with 3,500 local technology experts, forecasts that Internet users will be able to deliver and sense smells by 2015.
Each scent will be defined as digital data concerning aromatic compounds and how to combine them. The data will travel through the Internet and activate a fragrance cartridge, it predicted. The report also predicts mobile handsets that can work for two months without recharging by 2012 and surgeon robots by 2018.
It says the micro robots, small enough to travel through human blood vessels, could discover, analyse or heal health problems.
The report also forecasts that by 2015, soldiers will be offered bullet-proof and waterproof uniforms which, chameleon-like, will change camouflage patterns according to the environment.
The report was aimed at helping find out "future customer needs for technology development," Ryoo Pill-Gye, director general of the ministry's information and technology policy team, said in a statement.
South Korea, one of the world's most technology-savvy nations, has 34.1 million people or 70 percent of its population using the Internet.