THE MOST INNOVATIVE FUTURE TECH AT CES 2017
Every year, the Consumer Electronics Show held in the first
week of January in Las Vegas, USA showcases gadgetry and technologies that
boast of outstanding design and engineering.
OAKLEY RADAR
PACE
What do you get when Oakley collaborates with Intel? A pair of
super-smart stylish glasses, that's what. The Radar Pace is designed for
runners and bicyclists to help them keep track of their training and fitness.
The Bluetooth-enabled shades pack in an accelerometer, gyroscope and sensors
for pressure, humidity and proximity . Using these, it collects and analyses
performance data, including heart rate, power output, speed, cadence, distance
and time, which it then displays on its AndroidiOS app.
Its microphone array works in tandem with Intel's Real Speech
technology to allow for natural-language voice commands, and it also comes with
earbuds that allow you to answer handsfree calls or hear music wirelessly from
your smartphone.
Its voice-activated coaching system monitors athletic
performance to create customised training programmes that adapt to the wearer's
abilities to help them improve fitness and prepare for upcoming competitions.
The Radar Pace carries an IPX5 rating for water resistance,
sport Prizm Road lens for sharp visual acuity , boast of high-velocity impact
resistance, and could be yours for $449.
CLEO &
HOVER PASSPORT
Drones continue to be the “IN“ thing. The Cleo, for instance,
fits inside your pocket, while its hidden propellers make it safe to be used
indoors and around people. It weighs just 65gms; can fly for around 20 minutes
on a single charge, and comes with a 14MP camera that can live stream HD videos
at 30fps, or record Full HD clips at 60fps. Cleo can be controlled via its
mobile app and operate on its own so you can focus on capturing the moment.
The Hover Camera Passport, on the other hand, is an autonomous
`carbon fibre' drone with a 13MP camera that's capable of shooting 4K videos,
with face-recognition and bodytracking intelligence. So the Hover, with a
flight time of around 10 minutes on a full charge, can follow you while you
jog, bike and even dance.The 242gm device has an Orbit mode where it circles
around you to record, and a 360 Spin mode for panoramic footage of your
vicinity .The Cleo's pricing has not been disclosed yet, but the Hover Passport
will retail at $599.
SMARTYPANS
It looks like any cooking pan, but SmartyPans connects to its
AndroidiOS app via Bluetooth to help you make perfect meals. It comprises a t t
removable cooktop, a solid aluminium body, weight and temperature sensors, and
an 800mAH rechargeable lithium-polymer battery .
When you select from the 1000+ recipes in its app, you get
step-by-step cooking instructions.The app recognises voice commands, so you can
tell it what ingredients you are adding, while the pan monitors the weight and
temperature of each, ensuring that you never overcook your dish.
The app computes nutritional information so you can integrate
the calorific data with your fitness apps. It is dishwasher safe and you can
switch the cooking surface if you want to use the same pan for a different
recipe. SmartyPans will begin retailing at $299, but pre-order prices are
listed on its website.
SGNL
The Sgnl smart strap allows users to make phone calls through
their fingertip, without any earphones or headsets. After you connect the wrist
band to your smartphone via Bluetooth, the voice signals received from the
handset are converted by Signl's patented Body Conduction Unit (BCU) into
vibrations, which in turn are transmitted through a user's hand to the
fingertip.
When users touch their ear with their finger, the vibrations are
converted to coherent sound, and they can complete their calls by speaking
through the microphone embedded in the strap. Since, Sgnl uses vibrations, even
folk near the user cannot hear what's being said at the other end.
The device comes out of Innomdle Lab, an official Samsung
Electronics spin off. The strap can be attached to a traditional or a smart watch
and when used with its app users can expect extra func its app users can
expect extra functions, including call reminders, fitness tracking (with a
built-in pedometer) and smart alerts. The strap will begin shipping in Feb
2017, at an introductory price of $149.
FUSE
The Fuse are cordless earbuds that “fuse“ together via a
connector to form a capsule-shaped module for easy storage. Its ceramic body
not only provides a shiny , waterproof finish, but also improves Blue tooth
connectivity and sound quality . A 15-minute charge of the earbuds promises up
to an hour of music and talk time. When not in use, they can be worn as a
pendant or hidden in a stylish wristband.
Other accessories include a standard charging case and a
bracelet that also charges the Fuse when it's stored snugly on your wrist.
Early adopters of this tech can preorder a pair for $199, with shipping slated
for the second half of this year.
FOLDIMATE
Doing laundry is an absolute drudgery , and folding finished
loads makes it more so. Enter FoldiMate, a device that does the job for you. It
weighs about 30kgs and has a capacity of 15 to 20 pieces shirts, pants and
towels at a time.
Simply attach the clothes you need folded onto its patented
robotic system, and FoldiMate takes over. Using nozzles and sprays, it also
perfumes, softens and de wrinkles your clothing, so you get a neat pile of
fresh laundry at the end. The robot, which will begin shipping this year, will
cost anything between $700 and $850, but you can register on its website to in
dicate your interest.
SMART REMOTE BY
SEVENHUGS
Imagine a single remote that lets you control each and every
device in your home. The Smart Remote works with more than 25,000 appliances,
including TVs, media players, speakers, lights and air conditioners. Just point
at what you want to control and its touchscreen instantly displays an intuitive
interface for that specific electronic gadget.
If you want to control a device that is located near other ones
like the media player below your TV the Smart Remote lets you select which
one you want to control via a device-selection carousel at the top of its
display .
This remote, which works on Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Infrared, comes
with three sensors that you need to place at different places in your home. It
uses these sensors in triangulation for accurate positioning in a 3D space.
This means you can also point the remote at your door to request an Uber cab or
at the window for the weather. You can even use it to control Wi-Fi connected
devices on the same network, even if they are located in other rooms.For
instance, you could set up Smart Remote to control the Wi-Fi enabled lighting
in your bedroom whenever you point at a chair in your living room.
And if you misplace the Smart Remote, just press the button on
its charging dock to make it ring. For those interested, this one can be picked
up at a pre-order price of $229.
INTEL PROJECT
ALLOY
Virtual Reality (VR) headsets need tremendous processing power
and require to be tethered to a computer to render the resourceintensive
virtual spaces you see in front of your eyes. Enter Project Alloy: A standalone
headset that packs in Intel's 7th-gen core processor, Intel RealSense 3D cameras,
a vision processor (that brings humanlike intelligent vision to machines to
make sense of what the cameras capture) and a removable battery .
Among its myriad applications in sports viewing and
entertainment, Alloy can combine what you see in the real world with virtual
objects to create a “merged reality“. For instance, it can convert the
furniture around you into objects in a game world. So if you were, say, playing
a first-person shooter game with Alloy , its cameras and vision processor would
recognise the furniture around you, and convert them into game-world props such
as boxes and crates, which you could hide behind for cover. It would also
render fellow players in the same room as game characters, allowing for better
interactions. Intel plans to ship the Project Alloy in the second half of 2017.
GOTENNA MESH
This pen-like device pairs with your smartphone via Bluetooth to
allow you to communicate with other users through text messages without
cellular towers, routers and satellites. Its built-in antenna each with a
range of around 4.8km uses other GoTenna within the vicinity to create a 100
percent off-grid, long-range mesh network. This means the text messages you
send to recipients who also use this device are relayed privately through
other users without accessing your service provider's infrastructure.
These weatherproof devices are sold in pairs at an
introductory price of $149 so you can send encrypt ed 1-to-1 texts, group
chats or broadcast messages ed 1-to-1 texts, group chats or broadcast messages
to anyone nearby . Of course, as the number of peo ple using the GoTenna
increases, the spread of the network also expands.
Users can download GoTenna offline maps for any place in the
world and use its GPS service for location data even without cellular service.
This technology can be employed among groups of people who are attending music
festivals, holidaying together, or even trekking in locations where mobile
signals are weak or almost non-existent.
Savio D'Souza TNN
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