CES 2018
The annual Consumer Electronics Show has wrapped up in Las Vegas and a lot of exciting announcements were made. IEEE Spectrum CES2018 put together a summary. Here are some that I found particularly interesting.
5G
5G is expected to launch ahead of schedule with phone manufacturers supporting it toward the end of 2018 and carriers in 2019. It will need a lot more base stations so one of the challenges is how much equipment will be needed for field deployments, and where the workforce to do it will come from.
As an interim measure, Gigabit LTE is already coming online.
Read more at 5G News and Nuggets.
Safe Water from Air
This class of product has been speculated about for a while. So it was great to see a viable example on show. It includes a solar panel to create the energy needed to extract the water. I found it a little odd that the target market for this is the US. The greatest need is in the developing world.
The breakthrough idea is using materials that absorb water then heating them to get the water released. Electronic approaches up to now have used cooling which requires a lot more energy.
The business model idea is to decentralise water. Like all new technologies, there are a lot of ecosystem issues to be worked through. The great thing is this can be an emergency response option when disasters create a clean water crisis.
Read more at Zero Mass Clean Water From Air.
Gadgets
CES is definitely gadget central. Some are obviously great ideas. And some look a bit crazy at first, until you think about it a bit:
- HushMe stops your phone conversation being overheard by others
- Somnox is a robot that helps you sleep better
- Gemini PDA – should work commercially but it does
- Fordward CX-1 luggage that follows you around (Discworld anyone)
- Hip’Air air bags for you hips which inflate if you are falling
- FoldiMate folds clothes for you
- DroneHunter is a drone that hunts drones. Being pestered? Get a DroneHunter.
- Percept and Me.mum work out when a woman is fertile
- M1 Fetus Camera lets you take your own ultrasounds once you are pregnant
- Puffco and Oblend target the emerging legal cannabis market
- Prosthesis is a full sized exoskeleton
The complete rundown is at CES2018 Best and Craziest Gadgets.
Cars
You would think self-driving cars would get the biggest rap, but it was the first remote controlled car on public roads that got the attention. Phantom demo-ed driving from 500km away. The biggest issue here is still latency so this one probably won’t go mainstream until 5G rolls out.
This and lots more news about transportation options including new electric vehicles can be found at CES2018 Remote Controlled Car.
Robots
Were everywhere. Including serving hotel guests and doing deliveries. Delivery Robots are Full Time.
Blockchain
I’m including this one because there is a lot of hype and the computing power to use it make it unusable for many applications. But like AI, the increasing power of hand held computing devices like mobile phones means that we are approaching the point where this can be done in devices, or done in the cloud. For the latter, we need high speed data and low latency. Then the phone can offload the most difficult or memory hungry operations to a cloud service and get the results back. This will open up a lot of new opportunities.
Successful Endeavours specialise in Electronics Design and Embedded Software Development, focusing on products that are intended to be Made In Australia. Ray Keefe has developed market leading electronics products in Australia for more than 30 years. This post is Copyright © 2018 Successful Endeavours Pty Ltd.