Pursuits

Star Trek’s Tricorders Are Almost Here

Trying to make Star Trek’s tricorders a reality

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By Barrett W. Sheridan and Mark Milian

July 3, 2014 at 10:10 PM UTC

This article is for subscribers only.

This article is part of the July 7, 2014 issue of businessweek.

Star Trek???s Tricorders Are Almost Here — CBS

Stardate: 2014. As Star Trek nears its 50th anniversary, most of its imagined technologies remain light years away. But several startups and research projects claim they can approximate the functions of the tricorder, that handheld device used to instantly diagnose a disease or analyze the atmosphere of an alien world. Just how close are they?