CES marks the beginning of a land grab by three of the leading virtual assistants: Amazon's Alexa, Microsoft's Cortana and the Google Assistant. The headphones specialist OnVocal will be showing off wireless earphones that link up to Alexa, and GE has also preannounced a table lamp that doubles as a speaker powered by Amazon's voice service. We know Microsoft is working with Harman Kardon on a "premium audio" speaker, and the firm has teased adding Cortana to other types of products, including toasters.
Dunno, can't really see the point of announcing every little thing I'm doing to the world at large. If I wanted to do that I'd be on twitter.
The French start-up Bixi will be making the case for gesture controls. It will be demoing the final design of a gizmo that lets you control smartphones and tablets with a wave of a hand.
Again, I can't see many situations where waving at a phone would be preferable to touching it.
More groundbreaking perhaps is the Blitab, a tactile tablet described as the iPad for the blind. The Austrian innovation produces small physical bubbles in an area above its touchscreen which delivers refresh double lines of dynamic Braille.
We're still decades away from having the type of androids seen on TV shows such as Westworld or Humans. But CES is still an opportunity to see how far along more specialised kit has become. Examples will include... Unibot, a robotic vacuum cleaner that trebles up as a mobile home security camera and an air purifier/humidifier.
Meanwhile, OAPs can look forward to Cutii, a robot that resembles an iPad on wheels, which will supposedly become their "companion". And there will also be bots that zoom round tennis courts picking up balls, remove droppings from cat litter, and even move physical chess pieces around a board.
Keep an eye out for Laundroid, too. The Japanese clothes-folding machine raised $60m from Panasonic and others for its giant clothes-folding droid following an appearance at last year's CES. Some have described the idea as ridiculous.
It's certainly a lot less ridiculous than the hoover/camera/humidifier. Specialist robots are all well and good, and maybe if you have enough of them in a smart home some of them might even be useful. But wouldn't a single, generic humanoid robot be so much better ? One that quietly goes about the daily chores with minimal intervention, doing the hoovering properly cos it can pick up the dirty clothes on the floor and chuck 'em in the washing machine later, then hang them out to dry when they're done and iron them too, then mow the lawn, wash the dishes and make everyone a nice cup of tea... that's the robot that people will actually buy.
We're also promised the world's first vibrating tight cut jeans that offer their wearers directions without having to look at a screen.
Wait... what ??
It's now relatively cheap and power-efficient to add sensors and wireless data links to products. That's led to an explosion of ideas - some more sensible than others. Its debateable how many of us really need Genican, for example, a device that scans rubbish's barcodes as it is thrown away in order to build up a shopping list of replacement items. Likewise, it's not clear whether an aromatherapy diffuser needs to be smartphone-controlled, even if its scents really boost memory and clean lungs, as claimed.
Plus there's room for oddities, such as a device that claims to be able to record smells.
Well, at least it's not just about the latest slightly faster smartphone any more. I'd take a smellometer and vibrating jeans any day of the week.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-38403944
Re: gesture control:
ReplyDelete"A loud clatter of gunk music flooded through the Heart of Gold cabin as Zaphod searched the sub-etha radio wave bands for news of himself. The machine was rather difficult to operate. For years radios had been operated by means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then as the technology became more sophisticated the controls were made touch-sensitive--you merely had to brush the panels with your fingers; now all you had to do was wave your hand in the general direction of the components and hope. It saved a lot of muscular expenditure, of course, but meant that you had to sit infuriatingly still if you wanted to keep listening to the same program."