CES Unveiled: Press Day and the NVIDIA Keynote

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

An area and segment of the IoT that is gaining interest are medical devices for use in the home. Wearable technology was expected to disrupt the way we live by connecting humans to the IoT for mobile health, and athletic training. After years of development, wearables represented by smart watches and wristbands are still considered by some as fancy pedometers, although many of us use them as an extension of our smart phones. In 2016, however, the consumer wearables market delivered a growth rate of 25%, which was below expectations.

At CES, Rotex demonstrated several of their E-tattoo prototypes including wireless electrocardiogram (ECG) monitoring chest tattoos and gesture control arm tattoos. As our largest organ, skin is not only the body's protective barrier but also the most important medium for non-invasive access to physiological signals. Skin-mounted sensors can collect vital biometrics such as electrophysiological signals, respiratory rate, temperature, hydration, blood pressure, biomarkers in sweat. In healthcare, continuous and ambulatory tracking of multimodal biometrics can provide unprecedented data for diagnosis and disease management. Electronic tattoos are multifunctional, high-fidelity, noninvasive sensing/therapeutic platforms that are hair thin and skin soft, which is considered the ultimate form factor of wearables. They are mountable on any part of human skin like a temporary transfer tattoo. 

This evening, the CES keynote was given by NVIDIA—their first. NVIDIA has made great strides in the past few years, going from being the leading developer of computer graphics processors to a world leader in the development of artificial intelligence using mini super computers. Tonight, Jen-Hsun Huang, CEO and co-founder of NVIDIA, showed a packed and cheering room several achievements for the highly successful company that has seen its stock triple in value over the last two years. Tonight, they announced a new generation of their Shield device console/streaming unit. This latest Shield will support 4K HDR TVs and by connecting to an NVIDIA supercomputer in the cloud, it will allow even those with less powerful computers such as standard notebooks or Macs to play the more demanding computer games that up to now required relatively powerful Windows based PCs. The service called GeForce now will be available as a paid subscription on the popular gaming network Steam, starting this spring.

In yet another announcement, Huang announced that NVIDIA is teaming with Google to create the first Android TV device supporting the Google Assistant service. Communicating with what will become a truly smart home will rely on a small wall-mounted microphone peripheral called the NVIDIA Spot (not yet available).

In addition, NVIDIA announced several new partnerships with the most exciting one being a partnership with Audi and a commitment by both companies to introduce a commercially available truly autonomous automobile by the year 2020.

Overall, the keynote was a very positive and convincing infomercial for NVIDIA, who rightly so had many positive successes to show off. I would not be surprised to see their stock take another jump. The only disappointment I felt was that the expected next version of their amazing series of Graphics Processing Units for high end PCs, the expected GTX 1080Ti, was not announced. I am sure that the gaming community will take notice and that this will overshadow all the amazing progress in the mind of gaming techies.

Thursday is the first day of the actual show. In addition, Thursday evening is Showstoppers, so stay tuned for much more from CES 2017 as we look at the latest in home entertainment, 3-D printing, automotive technology and even more IoT devices.

To read the recent "CES 2017: Preview and a Projection for the Future" article, click here. 

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