CES show highlights: Robo-dogs, self-sailing boat and brain tech
>>LAS VEGAS: The CES tech show in Las Vegas closed another successful edition on Friday despite industry behemoths like Amazon and Google staying away due to the virus risk, with over 2,200 firms pitching their hopes for the next big thing.
French startup Wisear is working on technology that detects the signals that zip between the brain and certain muscles, in order to use them to operate connected devices.
“Over the past 30 years we have significantly improved the digital power around us but we still use the same tools — keyboards, mouses, touchscreens” to interact with machines, said Wisear co-founder Yacine Achiakh.
“Voice control is coming, but it’s slow, and it doesn’t always work. So we want to create an interface that is inclusive and easy to use,” he added.
His team has paired the system with earphones that can recognise the movements of their user’s jaw. The user can pause the music playing on their phone and then restart it by moving their jaw in chewing-like movements.
The idea came to them by observing the progress of Neuralink, a firm that belongs to Tesla chief Elon Musk, and which is conceiving implants to be able to communicate with machines by thought.
Tech giants will be able to integrate it into headphones but also augmented reality glasses, allowing users to control the display without taking out their smartphone.
Boston Dynamics robot dogs are back and this time they are going to the metaverse. The yellow-bodied four-legged tech did a choreographed routine at the booth of Hyundai, which snapped up the robot maker last year. The performance also included an animation of a vision for using the robots as the eyes and ears on Mars for people who could then experience the Red Planet in the metaverse.
“The idea behind metamobility is that space, time and distance will all become irrelevant,” said Chang Song, president of Hyundai Motor Group.
Hyundai also presented what it called the first “self-driving” boat, equipped with cameras, depth sensors and artificial intelligence systems.
“By applying autonomous navigating technology to leisure boats, users can greatly reduce the time required for berthing and docking as well as the risk of accidents during operation,” the company said.