David J.
Danto
Business travel
thoughts in my own, personal opinion
eMail: ddanto@IMCCA.org Follow Industry News: @NJDavidD
CES 2022 Part 2
As I detailed in my last blog I’m just
back from the annual technology conference known as CES. In part one here I covered
some of my travel logistics and some of my impressions of the controversies
surrounding the event. In this – part
two – I’ll detail some of the actual themes and tech discoveries I made.
Understanding the trends and themes
of CES is probably the most important reason to attend this event, and this
year certainly had plenty of them. The
pandemic we’ve been living through acted as an accelerant to speed-up both
enterprise and consumer use of technology and the development of new
solutions. Here are just a few to
consider:
·
Transportation –
Including the expected huge growth of electric vehicles and autonomous vehicles
– both for personal use and for shipping goods.
·
Space
Technology – Not just the well-publicized space tourists flying in
billionaire’s rockets, but an entirely new class of reusable space vehicles,
including the new Sierra
Space Dream Chaser shown at this year’s conference.
·
Sustainable Technology –
including ecologically friendly fuels for air-transportation, alternative
meats, and a smarter world where cities and the offices in them are more
productive and less wasteful.
·
Digital
Health – with the explosion of telehealth and personal monitoring
solutions that grew out of pandemic needs.
And then, in a category unto
itself, we have the up-leveling of the
home experience – also accelerated by the pandemic. Any professional that is not upgrading their
home office right now is likely missing the boat, but home offices are only a
fraction of the upgrading that is taking place.
People are willing to spend more for premium at-home experiences, across
entertainment, information devices, and smart-home devices to make daily life
easier and more automated.
These trends were evident all over
the CES expo floor, with a large amount of them dedicated to helping improve
health at home – especially during a pandemic.
Devices and technologies touted as “Virus-Busters” or “Virus-Detectors”
were all around, from a new Targus
UV disinfection light for keyboards to a whole
series of “Vira-Warn” products meant to instantly
detect COVID (and it can core-a-apple oh chef of
the future.)
Just like at all the CESs I’ve attended in the past, I chose some slightly more
obscure systems and devices for my pick-hits list. Here they are in no particular order:
· Canon has
developed a collaboration system called AMLOS (short for activate my line of sight.) They don’t
actually have the collaboration platform or engine, instead relying on
Microsoft Teams for now and
potentially others in the future, but what they do is take multiple streams from
a single camera, allow the people in the room to use hand gestures to identify
what things in the room are important (demo object, whiteboard, etc.) and
present a choice of those streams to anyone watching on the far end. They also process the video so that it always
looks best – including such tricks as adjusting the keystone on a
side-wall-mounted whiteboard, and making anyone standing in the way of that
whiteboard disappear so the far end sees only the board. This is the first public display of their
system which has a lot of potential to enhance remote collaboration. Here’s a
short video I tweeted of them describing it at CES
· One of the
smartest technologies I saw at the show this year was from Holo Industries. They have a holographic touch interface that
allows people to make selections in the air without having to actually touch anything. Here is the
video I shot of them.
· Another new
product I was impressed by was the Noveto Systems N1 personal smart speaker. This is kind of like the personal listening ‘sound-domes’ that
we used to use in AV, but without the dome.
It detects the listener and focuses ultrasound at his or her ears. It is so directional that someone standing
next to you can’t hear it. Here is the
video I shot of their CEO explaining it.
It’s not much of a demo as my microphone was not detected to be a human
listener’s ear so it didn’t get the sound – but trust me, it worked amazingly
well.
· A new company called Resonado Labs
has developed a new type of speaker driver that doesn’t use a standard circular
cone. Their technology uses “a linear
motor structure that provides an even force distribution which improves
performance while maintaining flexible packaging, regardless of the shape.”
It seems to be an interesting technology that could help with
the development of many non-traditional speakers.
· A company called Pozio has
developed a wraparound device for your smartphone and smart digital assistants
that blocks them from listening to everything in your house and sending it over
the internet until you actually want them to do something. Because smart devices are such a great
convenience, but we don’t know what privacy we’re giving up, this new device could
definitely fill a nice short-term niche.
Here
is their team discussing and demonstrating it.
To wrap-up this blog, CES was definitely a smaller, weirder event
than in years past, but it was more than worthwhile making the effort to be
there. I have nothing against streaming
video and virtual conferences to be sure, but that’s not what CES is all
about. CES is the opportunity for small
firms to show breakthroughs, for large firms to expand people’s imagination,
and for technologists like me to get a sense of what’s going on in the
industry. One can only do that in
person. Business conferences within
one’s one industry sector are generally best for socialization – something I do
really enjoy and something that is just not safely possible today. CES 2022 was the same – it had almost no
(safe) socialization, so that was never what it was all about – a point that
many tech journalists who stayed-away apparently just didn’t understand. If all journalists do is cover news events
that are “fun” then there wouldn’t be much actual news. Imagine a world where real reporters didn’t
cover events that had risks and you’ll understand my utter disdain for the tech
media and their stance this year. These
media firms essentially boycotted the event, but then disingenuously claimed to
provide coverage of it, trying to get the best of both worlds and showing the
slimier side of what they do – claim to cover “news” but instead merely act as
paid promoters of their sponsors.
If you’d really like to get a sense of what it was like to be
there, feel free to watch my AVNationTV CES Wrap-up show here.
For now, just like last week ICYMI,
I’ll leave you with my video log of what it’s like
to ride in Teslas in the new Boring Company tunnels
between the Las Vegas Convention Center Central Hall and the new West Hall. I’m sharing it again for a reason. I’m not sure if this is what our future is
meant to be, but it sure is different.
That essentially makes it a perfect metaphor for CES 2022.
This article was written by David Danto and contains solely his own, personal
opinions.
All image and links provided above as reference under
prevailing fair use statutes.
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As always, feel free to write and comment, question or
disagree. Hearing from the traveling
community is always a highlight for me. Thanks!