5 amazing things at CES 2018

The largest technological show on the planet was just held in Las Vegas. Huge expectations are hanging on the ingenuity and the products and services of the big companies in the sector. So what did we see at the most recent CES 2018? Below are just five examples of the great advances that will mark a turning point in our way of seeing technology. Assistants, artificial intelligence, autonomous cars and improvements in quality are in the spotlight in a scene where the Internet of the Things was omnipresent.

Smart headphones

It is clear that Sony does not want to be left behind in headphone development. For this reason, at CES 2018 we were able to see up to four different models. While until now, the quality of wired headphones has been the main factor, wireless headphones are showing an interesting improvement: the native incorporation of Google Assistant.

This will be accompanied by the general update of some of their older models, so the Japanese company is turning their headphones into veritable smart listening systems capable of offering not only better sound but also a range of services thanks to the IoT.

Television is now smart and in 8K

We are still getting used to resolution of 4096 x 2160 pixels, better known as 4K. But that is no reason why technology should not continue to advance, as we have seen at CES 2018, where the first uses of 8K, or 7680 x 4320 pixels, were unveiled. But this resolution would not be worth anything in itself were it not for artificial intelligence.

Samsung’s new model, the 88-inch QLED Q9, will be able to convert video to 8K thanks to the real-time use of artificial intelligence, which processes and rescales the images. All this power is joined by the conversion of simple televisions into smart TVs, which is already a natural integration, just as being connected to the Internet is a fact.

The race for smart assistants

Although virtual assistants have been filling the show for years, in 2018 they were especially the talk of the show. Voice assistants are probably one of the best examples of an IoT application at the service of the user. They provide information, allow you to manage events and make purchases, and much more.

Probably the most striking and interesting assistant at the fair was the Lenovo Smart Display, a speaker to which Lenovo and Google have added a small touch screen and the presence of Google Assistant. With this launch, Amazon Echo Show has gained a strong opponent, while users have gained more features.

The speaker will allow users to make and receive video calls, listen to music and get information about the traffic and weather, as well as having the functions needed to control a smart home. The Lenovo Smart Display will also have access to Google Maps and YouTube, in addition to Google, making this assistant probably the most advanced to date.

The first autonomous cars are here

One of the most striking initiatives we saw at this year’s CES was the testing of several BMW 5 Series cars equipped with Aptiv autonomous driving technology. Aptiv is the parent company of nuTonomy, both of which are allied with Lyft to carry out a plan for autonomous taxis.

For many years, Aptiv has been working on mapping the streets of Las Vegas, where CES 2018 was held, so they were very familiar with the service they were offering. In addition, at CES we saw several other proposals, such as the Toyota e-Palette, which aims to combine two technologies: electric motors and autonomous cars.

With these demonstrations, the fair became yet another showcase of what the future holds for us, as visitors were finally able to see an autonomous car, probably one of the best examples of what the IoT is capable of, circulating around the city with real “clients”.

The heart of autonomy

In addition to the launch of autonomous cars, the CES was also the scene where two surprising technologies closely related to the Internet of Things and autonomous cars were unveiled. The first one comes from Nvidia. The company unveiled the finishing touches on Xavier, a chip to manage everything related to its Drive XI platform, designed to govern autonomous cars.

The joint efforts of Drive IX and Xavier will allow vehicles to have functions that until now seemed difficult to apply massively in vehicles, such as gesture control and facial recognition, as well as the installation of a native virtual assistant and the recognition of natural language, without which IoT could not be implemented in cars.

On the other hand, Mobileye REM (Road Experiment Management) technology, which was purchased by Intel, will put two million autonomous vehicles in circulation on roads around the world in order to acquire data, make more detailed maps and, ultimately, improve the autonomous driving systems that will begin to be integrated in the future, as announced at CES 2018.

With REM, Intel aims to take the lead in the expansion of autonomous cars, as it controls a huge amount of unique information for the development of these cars. Could this be the starting signal we all expected? Of course, CES has always marked the beginning of a new technological stage, a stage in which IoT has been growing in prominence for years.