CES 2016: robots, copters and cars of the future

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Want to know what our future will be like? We recommend reading an overview of the most important technologies and achievements following the international exhibition in Las Vegas - CES 2016.

CES 2016 showed that all the really important developments in consumer electronics are happening in the field of robotics, AI systems and the design of self-driving cars. It is they who will determine the direction of technology development in the future.

Robots and everything-everything-everything

As the results of the exhibition showed, large corporations are seriously thinking about the problem of personnel - there has been stagnation in technology, which can only be dealt with through the accumulation of more knowledge. So, it’s time to train engineers. A significant part of the exhibition was taken by a variety of educational projects dedicated to teaching programming and the basics of robotics.

LEGO stood out, which has its own educational project for an elementary school - a set of a microcontroller and 280 parts of everyone's favorite constructor. The set will also help students learn the basics of microcontroller programming and other engineering mysteries, including mechanics and robotics. The set comes with a mobile application that significantly expands its capabilities in comparison with any other educational constructors.

But Cerevo at CES 2016 is one of the devices whose usefulness looks rather dubious. A robot equipped with speakers and a projector will allow you to view video content anywhere in the house, controlling it through a mobile application. Built-in sensors and a camera allow the robot to dodge obstacles and find the ideal position for work, and the projector is capable of projecting an 80-inch image from a three-meter distance. True, the charge of the built-in batteries will only last for two hours of battery life.

On the other hand, the exhibition showed that the most amazing robots are no longer as relevant as they were a few years ago. Today, no one is surprised by talking or singing projects. Humanity has played enough: it is the turn of robots that bring benefit. And there are very, very few of them on the market. Artificial intelligence is also very firmly entrenched in our lives and has ceased to amaze, because today it can be found even in the videos of indie groups, not to mention data processing.

Unmanned and manned … copters

Copters are another matter. A great variety of them were presented: small and large, for entertainment and even for use as personal transport.

of all turned out to be. This giant with eight propellers is marketed as a personal vehicle! The octocopter (this is the name for the scheme of an aircraft with eight propellers) is propelled and has a full-size passenger cabin. The device is fully automatic: you need to set your destination on a special tablet and calmly enjoy the flight. The battery of a strange vehicle will last for 20 minutes or 35 kilometers at an altitude of 3.5 km.

An interesting concept was presented by the UAV developers. Their Fleye drone has become the safest drone ever. And it is not surprising, because the blades of its propellers are fully protected by a plastic case. Unfortunately, this reduces flight performance, and the drone can fly and shoot video with an installed HD camera for only 10 minutes. But the gadget is equipped with a radar and sensors for fully automatic flight programmed from a computer or smartphone.

Another drone concept is the French company Parrot., built according to the flying wing scheme. Thanks to such a solution, Disco has become a real "longevity": the duration of its standard flight reaches half an hour, which is an unattainable parameter for most commercial drones.

Another CES achievement is Lily. The copter shoots without the participation of the operator in the tracking mode, is not afraid of water, has a small size and can move at a speed of up to 40 km / h at an altitude of 15 meters for 20 minutes. To launch the drone, just throw it in the air. An excellent replacement for an action camera.

The Hexo + drone is somewhat similar to it, which is able to take off, land and fly on its own using a huge set of ready-made algorithms: you just need to build a flight map and control the built-in camera.

But the main event in the world of unmanned aerial vehicles is the demonstration of the joint development of Qualcomm, Tencent and Zero Tech - the YING commercial drone on the Qualcomm Snapdragon Flight platform. Strictly speaking, in this case, it is not so much the copter itself that is interesting (it records stabilized video with a resolution of 1,080p, broadcasts through popular video services, controlled from a smartphone), but the processor on which it is built. The Snapdragon Flight platform is designed with the Snapdragon 801 processor specifically for consumer drones and robotic applications. The emergence of such a solution from such a large manufacturer is a real breakthrough in robotics. And soon you can expect a real barrage of devices from a variety of compatible developers, which is important, at least in software.

Cars of the future

Chevrolet Bolt, Faraday Future FFZERO1, BMW i Vision Future Interaction, Volkswagen BUDD-e …

Despite the existence of specialized auto exhibitions, this year CES has become a platform for a mass of automakers. And most of them presented truly unique designs.

The main and most beautiful present for the visitors of the exhibition was a hypercar from Faraday Future. FFZERO1 has an electric motor with a capacity of about 1,000 horsepower. And it's not just beauty: the electrical systems installed in the car are scalable and can be applied to any other project. Interestingly, the company intends to manufacture, but not sell, electric vehicles in the future. Yes exactly. Not selling, but offering a subscription to use the car. Cheap, angry, but also from the very future that we did not manage to achieve by 2015.

Slightly more mundane, but no less significant, was the General Motors release. The company is a crossover Chevrolet Bolt EV, which is capable of traveling 200 miles on a single battery charge. Of course, this is not enough in comparison with Etos … But Bolt should be available for sale soon!

Electric vehicles are the future. And it has already arrived. But at CES 2016, the other side of the future of the automotive industry was presented - self-driving cars for every taste, color and size. So, Rinspeed presented the universal concept car Etos: it is not afraid of the restrictions that the legislation of different countries imposes on unmanned vehicles today. This car is equipped with a steering wheel, unlike the drone from Google, and allows you to use it like a regular car. The autopilot works like this: the automatic retracts the steering wheel and completely controls the movement.

Slightly less beautiful, but much more significant were the presentations of the largest electronics manufacturers. About the intention to start development Qualcomm, which acquired Cambridge Silicon Radio, thanks to which it was able to expand its portfolio with new solutions in the field of Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GNSS and audio systems. This suggests a real opportunity to see a Chinese drone this year.

In addition, the exhibition hosted a presentation of the onboard supercomputer NVIDIA Drive PX 2 with an autopilot function. With its help, it is possible to implement artificial intelligence functions in vehicles. The platform is based on two of the latest Tegra processors and two Pascal graphics chips to achieve "24 trillion deep learning operations per second" (150 MacBook Pros). The platform already includes computer vision algorithms to track objects on the road and train the vehicle. 12 all-round cameras, lidar, radar and ultrasonic sensors allow you to accurately assess the environment around the car. Volvo has already announced its intention to use Drive PX 2.

Audio giant Harman at CES 2016 is an interesting cloud system for integration with navigation. According to the manufacturer itself, this connected platform combines navigation data with other data: driving instructions are supplemented with current traffic information received from built-in tools and from the cloud. The system is customizable and can analyze data from a wide variety of sensors in the car: GPS, gyroscope, accelerometer, lidar, cameras and others. Information is transmitted to a cloud server, where all information received from different machines is analyzed using deep learning technology. Then, a part that is significant for a particular car at a particular moment is separated from them and transmitted to the on-board computer, which allows the driver to notify the driver about possible obstacles, accidents, speed limits, traffic signals, difficult road conditions and even risky behavior of other cars in real time. Also, this data can be communicated to the components of the driver assistance system (ADASIS).

But Kia is a sub-brand for the production of cars equipped with an autopilot Drive Wise. Representatives of the corporation, however, made a statement that there are no fully self-driving cars in their plans, at least until 2030. But the first automation solutions in four Kia models will appear in the summer of 2016, and it will start with the electric Soul EV.

Against the background of these presentations, news about new faceless fitness trackers, smartphones, wireless technologies fades. But still, most of the media did not pay attention to the breakthrough in robotics presented at CES 2016: they were much more remembered.