CES has once again returned in 2022, albeit many companies opting to go virtual due to the coronavirus, including the likes of Meta, Amazon and Google.
Nonetheless, the event showed off its usual fascinating, innovative and sometimes wacky technology.
With the event unfortunately already over, let’s look back at the 5 impressive technologies that caught my attention.
5. Meet Ameca
Ameca, a humanoid robot, was a star attraction at CES 2022 because of its never before seen likeness to a human.
The robot was created by Engineered Arts, and it’s the first time that Ameca has been seen in real life. Late last year though, a video of the robot surfaced online and went viral, especially after Elon Musk responded ‘Yikes’ to the video.
Just like a human, Ameca can look around, talk, create gestures with its arms and make extraordinarily detailed facial expressions.
The robot uses several different sensors in order to react to stimuli in the environment.
For example, it has cameras built into the eyes with face detection. It also has microphones in each ear, allowing it to discern where any sound is coming from.
A speaker is fitted into the chest of the robot, so that it can converse and answer questions.
Let’s check out an example of how these features would be used. Let’s say we ask Ameca a question, like, ‘How was your day?’. Ameca would use its microphones in its ears to listen to where the sound came from, and turn its head. Using the cameras fitted into its eyes, the robot can then lock onto the face of the person who asked the question, and then, using the speaker, Ameca can finally respond.
It works quite similarly to how a human would. Engineered Arts is now working to make the robot walk, which it hasn’t quite mastered yet.
Anyways, fascination aside, could this robot actually be of use? Well, it depends. In my opinion, making a robot that just acts like a human is pointless, when you could make it perform tasks that humans can’t do, rather than what they can already do.
Engineered Arts believes it could be used to do boring, repetitive tasks, like at a shopping centre or airport to help with directions.
In my opinion it is a symbol of how far technology has come and the potentiality to combine sensors and AI with machines.
For example, Waymo, owned by tech giant Alphabet, combines ground-breaking AI technology with sensors to create fully-autonomous vehicles.
4. Laptops are getting flashy
Laptop reveals at CES 2022 stepped up another gear this year with many companies opting to take innovative risks to lure the attention of consumers.
I like that many companies are looking to change things up a bit.
For several years, the trend was to make laptops thinner and thinner, but that’s gotten a bit boring, and companies have realised.
Now the trend is more like, adding touchpads, extra screens… and even folding screens.
The biggest attention-getter was the all new Dell XPS 13 Plus. Its predecessor, the Dell XPS 13, was considered to be the gold standard of small laptops, with its slim, seamless design, tiny bezel and powerful performance, and an enticingly cheaper than reasonable price tag.
Consequently, many were looking forward to Dell’s new XPS 13 Plus. The laptop got the usual performance boosters, with Intel’s new 12th gen core processors.
But what really caused a stir was the touch bar, and the touchpad, which is, yeah, invisible…
To be honest, I really love it, it makes the laptop look more stylish and seamless than ever. The keyboard which extends across the whole width of the chassis also adds to this ultra-modern look.
Asus launched a much bolder design, a 17-inch folding OLED laptop! When unfolded, the device has a single 2560×1920 display. When folded, it sports a pair of 12.5-inch 1920×1280 displays.
Asus says the laptop, called Zenbook 17 Fold OLED UX9702, can withstand at least 30,000 folding cycles.
The Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 3 squeezed an 8-inch second display beside the keyboard.
The second display could be useful to have one important window constantly open beside your keyboard. You could use it as a calculator or to view your files or however creative way you could have to just use it… because you bought it.
3. The (nearly) fully-autonomous robot vacuum
I have a robot vacuum at home, and it works, but it’s not perfect.
From my experience, the robot vacuum isn’t powerful enough and often I rely on a hand-held vacuum cleaner to clean up some bits that weren’t cleaned up by the robot.
The capacity to hold dust is also a huge issue, and often I have to clean out the robot vacuum after one room.
The new Roborock S7 MaxV Ultra (quite an extravagant name) fixes these issues with a bunch of new technologies, allowing for minimal intervention.
It will be available from Amazon in the 2nd quarter of 2022 for an MSRP of US$1,399.99, which is quite pricey, but fair for its new capabilities.
The S7 MaxV Ultra includes an Empty Wash Fill dock that scrubs the mop, cleans the dock, and holds up to seven weeks of dust collected by the vacuum.
Another convenient new innovation is the all new 3D mapping support and LiDAR navigation, allowing for better navigation and obstacle avoidance.
You can even make video calls to the thing! Check out the cool video of the Roborock S7 MaxV Ultra below:
2. A remote that eats wi-fi
Last year Samsung attempted to kill off the AAA battery market by creating a solar-powered remote, which can charge while resting under the Sun on an armchair or wherever.
Their new Eco Remote launched at CES 2022, uses a new technology that allows the remote to charge even when it isn’t under the Sun.
It’s a new and peculiar technology. It uses a tiny antennae that can harvest radio frequency signals emitted by wi-fi routers from a distance of up to 40m (131ft).
Gus Cheng Zhang at the University of Manchester, UK, told NewScientist that ‘the vast majority of the signals from Wi-Fi routers that aren’t intercepted by laptops and other devices are normally wasted.’
Therefore, this new technology can lead to less energy waste, and Samsung said last year that it could prevent 99 million AAA batteries going to landfill over the next seven years.
This certainly seems promising and it would be interesting whether other companies decide to use this technology on their products.
1. BMW’s ‘Chameleon’ Car
BMW’s new prototype car that can change colours with the press of a button is being labelled as the ‘chameleon’ car.
BMW uses ‘E Ink’ technology to change the car’s exterior colour. Just how does it work though?
It’s quite complicated, but to put it simply, the car has a special wrap that brings different colour pigmentations via electrical stimulation. It is actually the same electronic paper technology we see in e-readers such as Amazon’s Kindle. E Ink does not consume power when it stays the same colour as well, which is obviously great for energy conservation.
Right now the car can only take two different colours, black and white, but BMW plans to extend the colour options and one day put it on the market.
This is not only great if you’re willing to change your car’s look from time to time, but also for increased efficiency.
For example, on hotter days a white exterior can reflect heat, keeping the car cool. While on cooler days, a black exterior can absorb heat. BMW believes that this means less heating or cooling is needed to condition the car on hot or cold days.
It’s a very minor difference in efficiency, but overall I feel it’s the ability to change the colour at will which makes the car most attractive.
And there we have it, those were the 5 technologies that really caught my eye in CES 2022.
Sources:
- CES 2022: The humanoid robot, Ameca, revealed at CES show – CBBC Newsround. (2022). Retrieved 10 January 2022, from https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/59909789
- Cheng, R. (2022). The CES 2022 trends we’ll all be talking about this year. Retrieved 10 January 2022, from https://www.cnet.com/tech/the-ces-2022-trends-well-all-be-talking-about-this-year/
- Duckett, C. (2022). CES 2022: Asus launches 17-inch folding OLED laptop and space-themed Zenbook | ZDNet. Retrieved 10 January 2022, from https://www.zdnet.com/article/ces-2022-asus-launches-17-inch-folding-oled-laptop-and-space-themed-zenbook/
- Sparkes, M. (2022). Samsung Eco Remote: TV remote control charges itself with Wi-Fi signals | New Scientist. Retrieved 10 January 2022, from https://www.newscientist.com/article/2303382-samsung-tv-remote-control-charges-itself-by-harvesting-wi-fi-signals/