CES 2019: Setting the Stage For This Year’s Trends in Tech

The tech world is kicking the new year off right with the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. Here, the curtain was pulled back on some of the major trends that are expected to emerge this year, including AI, improved self-driving cars, gaming, 5G technology and more. The four-day event also hosted many keynotes from speakers from Verizon, IBM, AT&T among others.

These were some of the top picks for new tech at CES this year

Sphero Specdrums

Apps and toys to teach children, or even adults to code, are not new, but Sphero has developed a way that may be irresistible for anyone. The Sphero Specdrums work like this: use the app to assign sounds to each color. These sounds can be beats, loops, musical notes, or even just a sound. Then with the silicone ring tap on the colored playpad or record your own sounds and capture your own colors to play on the world around you.  

FenSens

Make your car an intelligent, autonomous car with the FenSens rear-mounted easy to install sensor and app that can warn you if there’s something too close to your vehicle.

KitchenAid Smart Display

This isn’t the first Google Assistant enabled display, but this might be the first one you aren’t worried about having in your kitchen. The KitchenAid Smart Display has a 10–inch screen and the specs you’d expect to find in a smart speaker, but also is IPX5 water and dust resistant, so you can spill near in, drop food on it, anything you’d expect to happen while cooking. The company even suggests that you can wash it in your sink if the need arises.

Samsung GEMS-H

The Gait Enhancing Motivational System (or GEMS) is Samsung’s line of assistive wearable concepts. The GEMS-H is a lightweight lower-body exoskeleton that helps aid in mobility and can even add resistance for injury rehabilitation

FenSens

Make your car an intelligent, autonomous car with the FenSens rear-mounted easy to install sensor and app that can warn you if there’s something too close to your vehicle.

Bell Nexus

Uber and Bell Helicopter partnered with other parties to develop the Bell Nexus, which is essentially an air taxi. The concept goes along with Uber’s goal of launching and on-demand air service by 2023.

BotBoxer

For the techie that is also into fitness, BotBoxer is the answer to the Peloton trend of smart exercise. A punching bag on a stick that is loaded with motion and pressure sensors as well as analytics that can determine your body position and predict where your hits will be so it can react to your movements.

Otter+ Pop Symmetry Series

The convenience of a Popsocket with the safety of an Otterbox case. The Otter + Pop symmetry series lets you maximize your phone with easy swapping of Pop Sockets for personalization.

Royale FlexPai

The first genuine foldable smartphone isn’t really a smartphone at all, it’s a compact tablet with a 7.8 inch display that when doubled over and folded is a fully functional smartphone. It’s not perfected yet, but it is a glance at things to come on the innovation front.

Samsung 75-inch MicroLED TV “The Wall”

Samsung’s first MicroLED TV was introduced last year at CES, but that was mostly to show what was coming. Now, the technology is something that you can have in your own home. The 75 inch TV is going to be massively expensive but will have all the near-perfect picture quality as OLED without the feared durability issues.

BreadBot

While kitchen devices are nothing new to CES, but the enormous BreadBot may be more for bakery usage. The huge appliance says it can make 10 loaves of bread every hour.

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Tech Radar: Self-Driving Cars

Just like home automation, cars are getting smarter as well.  From Google to Tesla, Uber to Nissan, self-driving cars are becoming autonomous with the future as much as anything else. In fact, CES 2017 was full of companies showcasing their autonomous driving plans, with BMW announcing their plan for a fleet of fully autonomous vehicles to hit roads for testing before the end of the year.

But despite the excitement, the advent of these vehicles is marked by legal trouble, public distaste and distrust, and even location based prohibitions. This is what you need to know about self-driving cars and the future of transportation.

Tesla

Tesla is perhaps the self-driving technology with the most public knowledge due to some less than desirable past driving results. Tesla’s automation combined with the electric cars they create makes them a huge player in both the environmental and driverless car future. Run by an incredibly powerful computer, and enabling cameras, radars, sensors, and ultrasonics to provide the driverless experience, this car is equipped with a huge amount of groundbreaking technology. However their proclivity to bend traffic rules (mostly speed limits) has been the cause of headlines recently, and the fatal accident last June involving a self-driving Tesla and a semi truck was news for many weeks as the safety of driverless cars and the technology behind them was scrutinized.

Google’s WAYMO

Google has been working on automated driving for years, and now in its current inception, the internet giant’s movement is called Waymo. Google’s software and built-in-house hardware allow a completely driverless experience, with sensors that detect any possible obstacles and predict behavior, allowing the vehicle to execute the best navigation and defensive driving possible.  Road tests have put the Waymo enabled vehicles to the test going through complex situations and real driving conditions, even giving the cars the ability to react to any unexpected situations. Many experts have speculated that if Tesla’s cars utilized the same technology as Google’s cars, June’s accident between the semi and the autonomous car would not have happened.

Nissan

Japanese car manufacturer Nissan has announced that its autonomous vehicles should be out testing the roads in England come February. The cars are manufactured in Sunderland, so it is easy to see why the location is set as it is. Government clearance is still awaiting approval, but once the plan is approved, testing will begin. Equipped with radar, laser and camera systems the Nissan Intelligent Mobility Suite is aboard the company’s electric car (Nissan Leaf), putting this manufacturer in direct competition with Tesla.

The driverless car is still relatively new, but you can expect to see more of them as the year progresses and more companies jump on board. Rules and regulations will change, as will technology and the sheer amount of options open to those that are interested in automated driving technology. There’s no doubt that these cars could change the face of transportation for just about everybody, whether these advancements are good or bad remains to be seen.

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