Eight Cool New Technologies From This Year’s Consumer Electronics Show. Also, live-translation eyeglasses, self-driving strollers, and more were unveiled at the annual trade show in Las Vegas.
Each year in early January, journalists, investors, startup founders, and other tech heads descend on a convention center in Las Vegas for the buzzing Consumer Electronics Show (CES). This year’s spectacle featured all the usual suspects—new electric vehicles, thinner laptops, and bigger, better screens. It also showcased some wild, the-future-is-here technologies that may or may not make it to the real world. And then there were the inventions designed to help, including health devices and technologies aimed at making the world more connected and less lonely. About 3,200 exhibitors, some of whom have multiple technologies on display, were spread across 2.2 million square feet.
Here, we’ve rounded up eight of the neatest, most promising innovations of the bunch—and it was quite a bunch this year!
A flying car—for real
The term “flying car” has become shorthand for “the future that never materialized.” But wait, because that future might finally be here. California-based company Aska has unveiled an actual working prototype of a flying card. Also, it says the vehicle could hit production lines as soon as 2026. The A5, as the prototype is known, resembles a car-helicopter-airplane mash-up, with the smooth, chunky lines of a Little Tikes toy. With a 250-mile air range, it has retractable wings and uses electrical power for takeoff and landing. If things go wrong, it’s got a parachute big enough to float the entire car down to the ground. Assuming FAA certification—co-founder Guy Kaplinsky says he expects this to happen “within a month”—the car-plane will retail for nearly $800,000 and require a pilot’s license. Is our Jetson’s future finally here? We’ll give that a solid “maybe.”
A health-tracking toilet pod
So much of CES is about the glamorous, the flashy, the cool. The Withings U-Scan is, well, a little pod you clip inside your toilet to test your pee. Not exactly a flying car. But, let’s be honest, it’s certainly a useful idea for far more people. The U-Scan comes with three cartridges, each with a different use. The first track your menstrual cycle and fertility by measuring hormonal output. Which could be incredibly helpful for those trying to achieve—or avoid—pregnancy. The second cartridge is for measuring nutritional status. Are you getting enough protein? Enough vitamin C? The third is for medical professionals, to use for home monitoring of patient conditions, for clinical trials, or for medical research.
The pod communicates data via a phone app and can allegedly even identify a user’s unique “urine stream signature” with a radar-based “Stream ID.” Withings hopes to have the U-Scan to market later this year, for about $500. “[We] look forward to announcing more cartridges on an ongoing basis as well as medical applications of the technology,” says Mathieu Letombe, the company’s CEO, in a statement.
An accident-preventing car door
Cyclists call it “dooring.” You’re riding in the bicycle lane when someone in a parked car suddenly opens their door, and you slam into it. In 2011, a study of bike accidents in Chicago found it was responsible for up to one-fifth of cyclist injuries, including fatalities. At this year’s CES, two Taiwanese companies working jointly have announced a technology that could help. A proprietary “millimeter wave radar” incorporated into the car can quickly sense fast-moving objects approaching, which allows a second technology—a sensor-packed car door—to give a warning and even lock itself shut 카지노사이트.