Sure, Expo 2025 is packed with futuristic robots and flashy tech, but some of the real standouts are the ones you’d never expect. From hydrogen-powered vending machines to everyday gadgets with a twist, here are three surprises that totally caught me off guard.
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.
World Expos have been happening since 1851, and they’ve basically been the launchpad for many of the appliances we now take for granted—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 artificial hearts to quadruped personal vehicles.
Honestly? 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
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, pushing the idea of personal air travel from fantasy into the near future. Standing there, it felt less like looking at a prototype and more like catching a glimpse of 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 destination 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 designed to be simple, intuitive, and empowering.
Under the hood, the suitcase uses LiDAR sensors (basically lasers that “see” walls and obstacles), depth cameras, and image-recognition AI to map the environment and detect moving pedestrians. Outdoors, where there are fewer walls to bounce signals off of, it adds satellite-based real-time positioning for accuracy. In other words, it’s combining some of the most advanced navigation tech available and putting it in the handle of a suitcase. The result is a life-changing 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 pavilions and into the everyday details around the park. Case in point: the vending machines in 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, producing electricity that’s stored in an internal battery. The setup means the machines are self-sufficient and clean, with only water as a byproduct. Coca-Cola is rolling out 58 of these at the Expo, and each one even comes with a display panel breaking down the science for visitors. It’s a small but significant example of how sustainable tech can reshape the most familiar parts of daily life.
Last Thoughts
Walking through Expo 2025 in Osaka today, what struck me most wasn’t just the big, futuristic showpieces—the flying cars, the AI-driven robots, etc.—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!