CES 2018 Showstoppers: LaunchIt and Press Event

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes

Robomart The world’s first self-driving store that brings food, veggies, and fruit to your home so you can shop. When you’re done, you send the robot on its way. This is much less expensive than human delivery. It sounds kind of strange but remember we are living at the start of the autonomous driving era. They partnered with NVIDIA for autonomous drive technology. There are lots of options for expansion of delivered products. This was also one of my favorites, although I think it may still be some years away from more than trial use.

Solar Gaps These are Smart Solar blinds which block heat energy and create electricity. Very strong and also protects your window.

Velco This device focuses on bicycles and bike theft. Road safety and lack of infrastructure are major issues for a growing number of adult bicyclists. This is a handlebar that has tracking system, universal navigation, and light control. They already have patents. They are focusing on bike manufacturers instead of aftermarket at first. It actually looks far more interesting than my description here indicates, and this was also one of my favorites.

We.Stream Part of Mondicom, We.Stream provides reliable, secure Internet connections from anywhere. It solves the issue of using public Wi-Fi. We.stream is the secure mobile hot spot we all may have been waiting for. It is a reasonably priced pay-to-use secure streaming device. It can give the user a secure connection in any country, virtually any place on earth.

Zhor Tech This smart footwear, part of the IoT, can detect if you are drunk or have a disease, and it adjusts for comfort. If drunk, it can block your car from starting. In sports, it can detect performance while running and analyze your performance. It can help avoid injuries based on differences in performance as you get tired. If you have an injury or have just had surgery and have limitations on weight or movement, Zohr Tech can log your activities and warn you. It can be used as an insert in existing shoes, or built into new shoes. Battery life between charges is measured in weeks depending on the model. Specific models can be designed depending on the manufacturer’s goal for the specific device. This one was my choice to win it all.

It has now been announced that the winner was Velco

Tuesday was opening day of the show itself. I will cover my observations of the many interesting and amazing things I saw in my next article. Showstoppers was held Tuesday evening at the Wynn, with good food and drinks, and hundreds of exhibitors showing the latest and greatest to the press. Velco was there as the Launchit winner but there were so many more. I will be covering my choices of the best of them in the next few columns.

As someone who has been very interested in VR/AR for years, I had been looking forward to seeing the 3-D Rudder. This device allows you to sit and control your movements with your feet without having to walk around in what can be a small area while exploring your VR world. Another device that may find its way into the VR world is one that creates pleasing odors, allowing you to control the type and amount of odor you wish to smell. It just may be that this could add yet another dimension to the VR world. Making an appearance and getting a lot of attention was the friendly Aflac duck, along with some robot lookalikes running around and saying “Affflac!”

Next in the line-up will be what I saw over the next few days at the various show floors. Please remember that there are multiple buildings each with multiple exhibit halls at CES. Attendance is in the hundreds of thousands. This final photo shows the estimated attendance this year, per CES. No one can cover all of this, so if you are interested, please do some additional research or perhaps consider finding a way to attend next year.

Additional Reads:
Preview: CES 2018 UnveiledCES 2018, Augmented Reality and Much More

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