Innovation unbound

Innovation unbound     

By Waqas Hassan Sharif    

Published [16th January 2015]

The CES is the biggest International Consumer Electronics Show that’s held in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA every year. It is considered as the biggest platform for the launch of consumer electronics with more than 3,600 exhibitors which include manufacturers, developers and suppliers. The conference and the exhibition comprise more than 250 sessions and attract a whopping 160,000 visitors from 140 countries.       

The CES exhibits products from all major categories of consumer electronics which includes Mobile, Computing, Automotive, Robotics, Photography, Health & Bio-Technology, Smart Homes, Communications, Wearables and Home Appliances etc.     

The CES was held from the 6th to the 9th January this year.

Quick facts:

First launched in 1967 in New York, USA

More than 20,000 product launches

10 products are launched per minute

It takes 18 days to setup and take down the CES

It covers an area of 28 football fields

It is closed to public

It started with 17,000 attendees to 160,000 in 2015

Apple has never participated in the event 

Highlights of CES - 2015

Here are some highlights from the show.

The Nikon D5500

Nikon launched its latest entry level DSLR calling it the D5500 looking very similar to the previous D5300. It’s lighter and incorporates a 24.2 mega pixel APS-C sensor. It has 39 autofocus points and is capable of shooting at 5fps. It comes with a 3.2 inch touch screen. GPS has been done away with in this model, so geotagging won’t be possible. But, it comes with Wi-Fi for easy connectivity to other devices.

DELL XPS 13 - 2015 Series

Dell announced the new range of Dell XPS 13 series which, according to industry experts, is here to give MacBook Air a run for its money.  The XPS 13 entry level comes with a 2.1 GHz Core i-3 processor which can be upgraded to the next level Intel’s i-7 processors 3.0 Ghz with turbo boost. 

This laptop comes with very fine thin bezels which give it a very slick look. It comes with IPS Quad HD 13” displays with aspects ratios at 1000:1.

Dell is calling the Ultra sharp Quad HD Infinity display which gives a resolution of 3200 x 1800 pixels which is also available in touch screen. Dell has fitted these laptops with high performance batteries which can last up to an astonishing 22 hours depending on hardware configurations.  The laptop is small and compact; it weighs just 2.6 pounds and is 0.33 inches thick. 

BMW Remote Valet Parking Assistant

BMW has introduced what it calls the Remote Valet Parking Assistance System. It’s a laser guided automatic parking assistant specially designed by keeping in mind multi story car parks. It is connected to a smart watch and can be triggered by simple voice commands. The idea is to drop off the driver and then allowing the car to search for a parking spot and park itself.

This new technology also uses the BMW’s 360 degree collision avoidance technology. This system scans the entire parking via laser scanners and identifies empty parking spots. It also detects obstacles and even other cars that are parked incorrectly. When ready the driver can just recall the vehicle via the smart watch and pick up the driver from the desired location. BMW introduced this system by installing it first on its i3 Electric car at the CES 2015.

Garmin Vivo Active - The GPS Smart Watch

Garmin, one of the world leaders in GPS and Satellite Navigation technology, introduced the Vivo Active GPS smart watch which is being termed as one of the best wearable tech this year at the CES.

The smart watch is loaded with health and fitness apps and uses GPS technology to keep track of you and your vitals.  It uses GPS to record swimming, running, cycling, golfing, counting down your calories and, of course, also tells time.  It gives up to three weeks of battery time and connects to your smart phone for calls and messages, email and calendar alerts. 

IO Hawk

IO Hawk is the personal mobility device. It’s 24.65 inches long and weighs a mere 22 pounds. It can do a top speed of 6mph. It’s not like your regular skateboard but can go upto 12 miles on a single charge. Its movement is based to pressure weight direction from your feet and body. It responds accordingly to your balance and leans forward or backward as you desire.

Monster Super Star

Floating Speakers

Monster unveiled its new floating water proof speakers called the Super Star Back Float. The speakers are capable of floating in pools or in a lake and can be connected to an audio source via Bluetooth and also a 3.5 aux connection. It is also capable of receiving calls if connected to a phone. It comes with two built-in speakers that provide high quality monster sound.

Mercedes F105 Luxury in Motion

The Mercedes F105 Luxury car is a concept that Mercedes introduced at the show. The car drove itself to the stage and impressed the audience with its futuristic and slick look. According to Mercedes, they have been working on a driverless automatic car for 30 years. Mercedes wants it customers to think that the F105 will be the third place to be after work and home. A place where people can sleep, relax, socialise and spend quality time with friends and family.     

The car is a four-seater salon with luxury written all over it. An engineering masterpiece and a technical marvel, it showcased itself on stage with its fancy blue LED lights and its saloon doors.

It communicates with pedestrians by telling them when it’s safe to cross the road and can also project a replica of a street zebra crossing on the road. 

The internal cabin is designed as a lounge where people can just relax whilst the car drive itself. The interior has less buttons than a mobile phone and the windows are used to display emails, messages and for video conferencing. The seats also swivel around so people can face each other and interact.   

The engine is electrically powered so it makes no noise and also doesn’t involve a big engine with heavy transmission. 

The Lenovo LaVie Z Laptops

The Lenovo Z are super portable laptops that are jointly produced by Lenovo and NEC. They claim to be the lightest convertible hybrid laptops weighing around just 1.72 pounds and not thicker than an Apple Ipad 2. They use magnesium lithium as the body-build and come with fifth generation Intel Core i7 processors. They come with a 13 inch screen size, with a resolution of 2560 x 1440 and an on-board storage of 128 GB.

Sony 4K Action Cam

The Sony FDR-X1000V is Sony’s answer to Go Pro cams. It comes with top specs and superior video quality. It shoots at 3840 x 2160 4K video at 30fps, 1920 x 1080 full HD at 120fps and 1280 x 720 standard HD at 240fps. It can record at 100Mbps with a UHS-1 Class 3 card or 60Mbps and is also capable of saving clean, uncompressed video to an external recorder. The FDR-X1000V is splash-proof, comes with Sony’s SPK-X1 Waterproof Case and is waterproof to a depth of 10m. Like other POV (point of view) action cams, the FDR-1000V uses a fixed focal length super-wide-angle lens - in this case, a 170-degree Zeiss Tessar.

“I’ve been lucky enough to test out the new 4K Action Cam on my skateboard, snowboard and surfboard, and have been blown away by the video quality”, said Tony Hawk, professional skateboarder and official Team Action Cam member. “The camera excelled in every shooting environment; producing stunning 4K footage unlike anything I’ve ever seen before out of a POV camera.”

The HP Sprout

The HP Sprout is the new revolution in desktop computing offered by HP. The new PC from HP is a powerful machine boasting Intel i7 processor range, 8 GB of RAM,  graphics card which has a dedicated 2 GB DDR 3 memory and  a combination of 1 TB hybrid drive and a 8GB Solid state memory for maximum performance. But the story here doesn’t end with the high end machine. It is also equipped with a projector, scanner and multiple cameras.   

HP calls it the illuminator column which is positioned over the display and consists of the built-in projector, scanner and different types of cameras. These capture images, infrared, depth, motion and more. The HP Sprout combines the above hardware with Intel`s Real Sense, a 3D photography tool used for designing, illustrations and much more thanks to custom optics and purpose built software.   

The projected image from the projector is projected onto a specialist integrated touch mat. This touch mat provides capacitive touch with the projected image. The projected screen is designed to diffuse light in a uniform manner so that visibility and accessibility is guaranteed from all angles under all light conditions. The image serves as a second image and projected onto touch pad which tracks the motion of the fingers via 20 point tracking modules.    

The touch mat is also used for scanning images, documents and most interestingly objects. The scanner offers high resolution scanning . This is a particularly intriguing tool that uses the RealSense depth-sensing cameras and Structured Light 3D scanning. The same process used in the Ortery 3D MFP to get a fully rendered 3D scan of any small object that can fit on the 20-inch Touch Mat. The matrix of sensors built into the device helps it to capture these scans in full colour, with high precision and accuracy. The 3D Snapshot software also allows you to take multiple scans of an object from several sides, combining them into a seamless virtual object.