3 Things I didn’t expect to see at Expo 2025 in Osaka
Expo 2025 is well underway in Osaka, Japan and it's serving up plenty of surprises. Here are the three that stopped me in my tracks.
Gadget Flow readers, I’ve traded my toy-and-book-strewn home office for somewhere far more exotic (for me, anyway): Osaka, Japan! It’s hot, it’s sticky… and it’s almost unnervingly clean. So why am I here instead of glued to my desktop? To cover the futuristic tech on display at Expo 2025 Osaka.
World Expos have been happening since 1851, and they’ve been the launchpad for many of the appliances we use every day—think TVs, washing machines, even ketchup. Yep, life-changing stuff.
What’s on at Expo 2025 Osaka?
Osaka last hosted back in 1970, and this year the city is taking on the challenge again. Since opening in April, Expo 2025 has already pulled in over 15 million visitors. The event runs for six months with an ambitious theme: Designing Future Societies for Our Lives. More than 150 countries are showcasing their visions of tomorrow, everything from an IPS heart to quadruped personal vehicles.
Walking around feels like stepping into 2050. Imagine lighting your home with algae-powered lamps or zipping to work on a ride that walks instead of rolls. The ideas are bold, sometimes pretty out there, but isn’t that what makes expos fun? So, here are the coolest things I didn’t expect to see today at Expo 2025.
SkyDrive: A Flying Taxi
To me, flying cars always felt like something out of The Jetsons, but Japan’s SkyDrive is proving they’re closer than we think. At Expo 2025, I came face-to-face with the SD-05, a compact, futuristic vehicle about the size of a helicopter—but quieter, sleeker, and powered entirely by electricity. With space for one pilot and two passengers, it looked like sci-fi made real.
What really impressed me was SkyDrive’s vision for what’s next. They’re already planning to expand seating to three passengers and add fully autonomous piloting. It has the potential to push the idea of personal air travel from fantasy to possibility. Standing there, it felt less like looking at a prototype and more like seeing how we’ll commute in the decades ahead. I’m all for it; city traffic is a nightmare!
The company says this one will be ready in 2028!
The AI Suitcase: A Navigation Robot for Visually Impaired People
I’m always impressed by tech that helps people with disabilities live more independently, so I was excited to come across the AI Suitcase at the Expo 2025 Robotics Pavilion. At first glance, it looks like a sleek titanium carry-on, but inside it’s packed with robotics and AI that guide visually impaired users safely to their destination. Just set your address with a voice command, and the suitcase finds the safest route. Tactile buttons let you pause, turn left or right, or get a quick spoken description of your surroundings; it’s simple and intuitive.
Under the hood, the suitcase uses LiDAR sensors (lasers that “see” walls and obstacles), depth cameras, and image-recognition AI. Outdoors, where there are fewer walls to bounce signals off of, it adds satellite-based real-time positioning. In other words, some of the most advanced navigation tech can be put into the handle of a suitcase. The result is a powerful mobility tool, and I love it!
A Hydrogen-Powered Vending Machine, by Coca-Cola
The exhibits I saw today were truly cool, but what really surprised me was how the Expo’s theme, Designing Future Society of Our Lives, stretched beyond the pavilion walls and into the park itself. Case in point: the vending machines around the Expo’s Grand Ring weren’t your standard beverage dispensers. They were hydrogen-powered and designed by Coca-Cola.
Here’s how they work: instead of plugging into a power outlet, each vending machine runs on replaceable hydrogen cartridges. Those cartridges fuel a chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen inside a side generator module. This produces electricity that’s stored in an internal battery, allowing the machines to power themselves, with only water as a byproduct. Coca-Cola is rolling out 58 of these at the Expo, and each one comes with a display that explains the science for visitors.
Last Thoughts
Walking through Expo 2025 in Osaka today, what struck me most wasn’t just the big, futuristic showpieces, but how these ideas are woven into an everyday context. If the past World Expos gave us TVs, washing machines, and even ketchup, maybe the gadgets and concepts here in Osaka will become just as ordinary in 20 or 30 years. That gives me a lot of hope for the future.
But that’s not all! I’m still in Japan for the Expo, so stay tuned for more cool, future-facing tech!
