Evolution has given us huge brains and those huge brains spend a lot of time figuring out ways to make our lives easier and more enjoyable, as evidenced by this self-making bed for those mornings when you don’t have a spare … minute. 

Folding clothes? No thanks. Give that job to the Foldimate and spend your time deciding whether or not we’re all actually in an elaborate simulation instead.  

The internet of things is making the home smarter by the day and the rise of ‘recipe’ makers like If This Then That allows users to connect devices and get them to respond. Philips Hue lets you train your lights—and, ideally, stops you from wasting your brain power telling your fingers to switch things on.  

Peeling fruit is a schlep unworthy of our advanced intelligence. Orange you glad these things exist?

Just as riding in an elevator gradually became entirely normal (after people overcame their initial fears), self-driving cars are doing the same thing with a series of incremental improvements. But if you own a Tesla, it already exists. Right now. Meaning it probably won’t be long until we can work, read, sleep, or even get rip-roaring drunk while commuting. 

We’ve all been there. You’re out jogging and you want a tomato, but you don’t want to stop. Be annoyed no more, with Tomatan. 

While technology exists to make things easier and more efficient, we’re also quite partial to the Rube Goldberg school of automation, which makes simple tasks unnecessarily complex, something Kiwi Joseph Herscher excels at. 

• Do you have an innovation worth celebrating? Check out the categories of the 2016 Innovation Awards and tell your story by clicking here.