This year, we had the privilege to host some of the top leaders from the associations, companies, standards, and technologies that are building the Internet of Things (IoT) in a three-panel speaking track at CES 2017. As the IoT continues to grow (and rapidly!), the fight to win the consumer is building un-scalable walls between use cases, crippling adoption, and limiting innovation. In our sessions, we focused on how to overcome these challenges by working together to put the consumer first. We wanted to know: how can we make the IoT accessible to everyone?

The Las Vegas Monorail is a great way to get around the city during the Consumer Electronics Show, assuming your current location and destination are both in reasonable proximity to its stations (i.e. those wanting to visit the exhibitors at the Venetian or Sands Convention Center are still in for a “bit” of a stroll). And the service’s multi-day passes are a great deal, assuming you’ll be riding the Monorail a lot while you’re there; considering that we’re talking about CES, that’s a reasonable assumption.

A single-ride ticket costs $5, while a four-day unlimited-ride pass, for example, is $28. Better yet, the “days” clock doesn’t start ticking until you take your first ride, regardless of when you initially purchase the pass.

This special service, as it turns out, was offered by NXP (specifically its MIFARE contactless IC brand) in partnership with Monorail, the Consumer Electronics Association, and event provider ITN International.

Kids often have their first exposure to robots in school using Lego Mindstorm kits. Now Lego is rolling out Boost — a robotic kit targeting all Lego builders from 7 years old and up. The kit is scheduled to be on the market later this year (it appeared at the recent CES) and will sell for about $160.

https://www.lego.com/en-us/boost

EXCLUSIVE: Hands on with LEGO Boost robotics prototype at CES in Las Vegas [News and Video]
http://www.brothers-brick.com/2017/01/06/exclusive-hands-lego-boost-robotics-prototype-ces-las-vegas-news-video/

The main programmable brick pairs via Bluetooth to a tablet app.

I asked Lasse and Jesper what their plans were to handle situations where numerous LEGO Boost sets and multiple apps were present in the same area. While they acknowledged that the product is being designed primarily as an entry-level LEGO robotics kit for kids to play with at home and no solution for the issue is currently available, it was clear they’re aware of this challenge (which I expect would also be an issue in a school as well).

The coding app will only be available at launch on iOS and Android tablets like iPads or Samsung Galaxy Tabs, and unfortunately, there are no current plans to support PC, Mac, or phones. With the product launch 8 months away in August, the prototype app that Jesper and Lasse demoed for me had its limitations, but they are planning to enable users to drill down into many of the grouped default behaviors to move the logic around a bit more.

Overall, the coding logic is fairly linear, without any branching logic through if/then/else conditions — just reactions to stimuli from the sensor. Condition statements are a concept at the core of nearly every programming language, so this was a bit disappointing to me, but if this helps get kids started with the basics earlier, I’m all for it.

Software developers often use LEGO bricks as a metaphor, particularly with the modularity of object-oriented programming, so it’s only fitting that LEGO creates its own modular coding system.

What comes next

LEGO is always very careful about talking about future products. And no wonder — I saw no fewer than three separate LEGO Mindstorms knockoffs (some “compatible” with LEGO bricks, some not) on the show floor at CES, and it’s understandable that LEGO doesn’t want to reveal too much about the future of LEGO Boost too far in advance.

I’m now sufficiently intrigued with Amazon Echo and Google Home. But when it comes to an actual purchase, I’m still on the fence. What about you?

Maybe it’s just me. The idea of having “machines” constantly listening to me in the privacy of my living room, bedroom, kitchen or — God forbid — the bathroom? It freaks me out.

When Nvidia’s CEO Jen-Hsun Huang introduced in his keynote at the Consumer Electronics Show something called “Nvidia Spot,” a small artificial intelligence microphone designed to “extend intelligent control throughout the house,” as he put it, I did a double-take. “Did he just say ‘Nvidia Spy?’ ”

At CES, we also learned that Alexa isn’t just for the Amazon Echo anymore. With the help of Alexa Voice Services, any developer can now add the Amazon virtual assistant to their device; Google’s letting developers do the same with Google Assistant.

In short, even if I don’t want a microphone eavesdropping on me, I may no longer have a choice.

This is the new norm the industry was trumpeting at the Consumer Electronics Show.

Hardware suppliers, software designers and service providers are enamored with the power of AI. The next big thing is AI data centers fully equipped to collect, learn and analyze data, transforming all that eavesdropped data into “information.”

Frivolity aside, though, that some of these innovations will stick to the wall, and those Internet of Things (IoT) devices will inevitably affect cable operators, requiring more bandwidth, bringing up security issues, and creating opportunities for management.

CES offered the opportunity to see some of the IoT devices operators might have to accommodate. Here are some that made us smile.

The Kerastase Hair Coach won the International CES Innovation Award for its WiFi-connected hairbrush.

The Hydrao Digital Showerhead is a Bluetooth-enabled device that changes color to alert the bather to how much water has been used.

Spinalli Design jeans buzz on different sides of the body to alert the wearer whether to turn left or right. The company also has a “smart” bikini that alerts the wearer when to apply sunscreen and a beanie that keeps the user connected while skiing.

Genican revealed a trash can sensor that scans barcodes and creates a shopping list of what to reorder.

The Ceravo Teclim is a pair of virtual reality shoes and gloves that that give the wearer the sensation of walking on different surfaces or touching different objects.

A smart All-in-One Combo washer/dryer by Whirlpool washes and dries a load in one machine.
The smart sensors determine when laundry supplies are low and order from Amazon.

In the midst of the glitzy keynotes, the media feeding frenzy and a lot of amped-up floor noise all focused on autonomous cars, it isn’t easy to discern the real news from last week’s Consumer Electronics Show.

So, here’s our recap.

What did really stand out this year in the hot robo-car segment? The “human factor” is how we’d sum it up.

The case for human and social factors was stated softly, but there it was. More companies — including Toyota and Mobileye — are scrambling to address the inconvenient truth that robo-cars pose a man-machine relationship more complicated than we care to admit.

At issue is how the human factor alters the future of self-driving designs.

Gil Pratt, CEO of Toyota Research Institute, noted, “As wonderful as AI is, AI systems are inevitably flawed…” Mobileye’s co-founder, CTO and chairman Amnon Shashua, described teaching vehicles to learn human intuition as “the last piece of the autonomous driving puzzle.”

Hardware Manufacturer Nvidia told the CES show quite the news of plans for the future. Nvidia intends to deprive the expensive graphics cards to the cloud, and thus resolve the lack of graphical power, for example, laptops plagues.

TechCrunchin according to Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said in his speech that the majority of the use of computers is not too low for the new games. The new GeForce Now subscription service allows these players to solve the problem by outsourcing design in rotating the cloud.

Huang also declares that the delay is small enough for the joy of the game.

The service works on virtually all computers, including Macs.

Source: http://www.mikrobitti.fi/2017/01/jymyuutinen-laitteistopaivitykseen-kyllastyneille-nvidia-vie-huippuluokan-naytonohjaimet-pilveen/

More:
Nvidia’s GeForce Now puts a gaming PC in the cloud
https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/04/nvidias-geforce-now-puts-a-gaming-pc-in-the-cloud/

Nvidia today announced the launch of its GeForce Now platform for PCs during its CES keynote tonight.

As the company’s CEO Jen-Hsun Huang noted during today’s keynote, the majority of PCs in use today aren’t able to play modern games simply because they can’t support modern graphics cards. GeForce Now for PCs will simply these potential gamers to access a cloud-based gaming service.

GeForce Now will be available in March for $25 dollars for 20 hours of play. “It’s basically a GeForce gaming PC on demand,” Huang said. The idea here is to give all of those who want to play PC games but simply don’t have the hardware to do so a way to easily play virtually any modern game on their computers — even if they are Macs.

That does sound awfully familiar for anybody who ever used the old OnLive platform. That platform, though, depended heavily on support from gaming companies. During today’s keynote, Huang showed the Steam store running on Nvidia’s GeForce Now platform, though, so the number of supported games shouldn’t be an issue.

To use the service, gamers will have to download a small client. Installing and starting games should only take a few seconds,

Included are, for example, support 8K-resolution image at 60 Hz refresh rate, and 4K image 120 Hz image update, VRR-player mode, in turn, supports changing the refresh rate.

Dynamic HDR allows you to define the color reproduction and contrast of the scene, or if necessary, a single image resolution.

Source: http://www.mikrobitti.fi/2017/01/mikrobitti-ces-messuilla-paiva-2-internet-porakoneita-ja-virtuaalipiparibileita/

The morning opening corresponded to my own case Bosch.

Bosch’s Executive Board Werner Struth attributable painted a morning presentation, the future of the Internet of Things. Everyone is familiar with the forecast is for example the field of IOT-projected 250 billion in revenue by 2020.

A couple of degrees more concrete figure came from Struth promised that all Bosch products are in some way connected to the network or to other devices in 2020.

For example, on top of the oven or coffee residues no longer need to stress about the evening in bed or in the morning on a business trip, but their status can be checked from the phone app.

Mayfield Kuri is one the most advanced domestic robot (manufactured by subsidiary of Bosch). It can, for example, to identify family members face, and behaves differently family with children and parents. It is possible with, for example, at their eye on the children makings of a built-in camera. The robot uses to communicate beeps little R2-D2 style.

New ways of creating the kitchen is also available. Smart speaker style Mykie can tell you recipes, and brings with it an entirely new phenomenon – “virtual social cooking”: everyone can to cook at home, and share the experience

However, most of the world-altering changes will be like motoring. Bosch’s new technologies utilizing the demo can be found in the car, for example, the contact area for providing a virtual haptic feedback.

Slightly more realistic vision is already becoming a beta-testing, together with Mercedes-Benz: Car will be installed sensors that continuously investigating streets. An empty parking space hits you want, they will indicate whether a cloud service, which information is shared on the Navigator to the goal it has set for other drivers that region.

Source: http://www.mikrobitti.fi/2017/01/mikrobitti-ces-messuilla-paiva-2-internet-porakoneita-ja-virtuaalipiparibileita/

More:
Mayfield Robotics launches $700 home robot Kuri
http://venturebeat.com/2017/01/03/mayfield-robotics-launches-699-home-robot-kuri/