Looking back on our favourites from CES 2019
Although initially not at the forefront of the Consumer Electronics Show, cars are certainly making their mark on the event with the increasing amount of new car models and car technology be featured in recent years. This year we saw a lot of self-driving cars, innovative mood reading technology and new electric models amongst other bits and pieces. Here are some of our highlights from the event held in Las Vegas…
Kia demonstrated their ‘Real-time Emotion Adaptive Drive’ or ‘R.E.A.D’ technology. This new piece of tech will allow their car to read your emotions (as the name suggests) by using facial recognition and by monitoring your heart rate. Using this information, the technology will adapt mood lighting and other features inside the vehicle aiming to give the driver a more relaxing and enjoyable driving experience.
Mercedes showcased their new CLA Coupe model which is due to go on sale in the UK June 2019 as well as showing off their new car of the future the Vision Urbanetic. The Vision Urbanetic really does look like a car from a sci-fi movie, like Bladerunner or even Alien. Although just a concept at the moment, it would be big enough to fit 12 passengers with 350 cubic feet of space inside the pod and be self-driving.
Toyota showed off their new ‘Toyota Guardian’ – a piece of tech designed to help with driver safety. The example they gave was that rather than making the car fully autonomous it would assist the driver and help avoid situations such as a recent accident in California involving three cars. The idea behind this piece of technology is that it will work the same, or at least very similar, to the technology in fighter jets where as the pilot steers the plane a computer reads the data inputted and ‘fine tunes’ the pilots flying.
Byton showed off their M-Byte concept car in 2018 and returned to the CES 2019 with more from this model. They demonstrated the interior of the car boasting a 49-inch touchscreen dashboard that would connect to a tablet device located in the middle of the steering wheel. They also demonstrated the table being used on the headrests of the front seats so you can keep the kids occupied on those long car journeys although this wasn't confirmed to be a standard feature in the car from what we could see.
Nissan gave us their new technology concept ‘Invisible-to-Visible’. This piece of tech will merge real time images with virtual world overlays to help the driver predict any unseen dangers whilst driving. ‘I2V’, as it has been shortened to, will help with safer driving in difficult weather conditions and predict traffic delays or accidents that may happen – as well as helping you find a car parking space in busy car parks, finally some technology to help with that! On top of ‘I2V’ they also showed off the new Nissan Leaf Plus and the concept for the new IMx Kuro EV.
Hyundai opted for a not so conventional take on a car to show off with their ‘walking car’ concept with the Hyundai Elevate. Rather than having 4 wheels that connect the car to the ground, this concept vehicle uses smaller wheels on stilt like legs allowing the vehicle to walk up to 3 miles per hour regardless of the terrain. The car is also able to climb 5-foot walls and jump a 5-foot gap. The idea behind this rather strange looking vehicle is that it will be used in emergency situations and natural disasters to help get people to a safe location.
Although not a manufacturer of cars (as far as we know!) Bose did have some gadgetry for cars on display. They’ve developed The Bose Quiet Comfort Ride Noise Control, an in car noise cancellation system that uses microphones placed inside the cars to listen to the noise from outside the car and playback what is essentially a ‘cancelling signal’. In a test drive, it cut noise pollution from the outside of your car by half meaning you can focus more on signing along to the radio.
In the same spirit as Bose, Harman also showed off some of their new in-car tech in the form of the Harman Ignite. A cloud device that will manage all your car diagnostics, automated driving, live updates, parental control, car security and personalising content to the driver such as reading Tweets and playing your favourite podcasts.
This is obviously just the tip of the iceberg for the Consumer Electronics Show as it is a week-long event with almost every car manufacturer you’ve heard of (and maybe some you haven’t) showcasing all their latest cars and technology. We could spend the next week writing about it and most likely not even scratch the surface!
A moment of silence though for the Promobot that was on his way to the event who was sadly ran over by a self-driving Tesla and was unable to make it…