VISIONS: Futurists Review the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show

By Patrick Tucker and Thomas Frey

Two Futurist editors rate the gadgets that may soon make a big difference in our lives.

In January, the future descended on the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas for the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES). FUTURIST magazine deputy editor Patrick Tucker and Innovation editor Thomas Frey took a look at the most interesting, future-relevant innovations on the floor. In the following dispatch, they share some of their favorite picks from the event and cast an eye toward what the future of the Consumer Electronics Show could hold.

Smart Clothing and Wearable Sensors

Patrick Tucker’s pick, the Zomm Lifestyle Connect: This is a light, Bluetooth-enabled fob that dialogues wirelessly and transfers data from (also enabled) heart monitors, glucose monitors, and other devices. In the event of signal disruption, the heart monitor calls a “personal safety concierge,” who then calls the wearer, the wearer’s loved ones, doctors, etc., via the Lifestyle Connect.

Creator Henry Penix gave a great live demonstration. He strapped the heart monitor to a wristband and disconnected it to simulate a signal block. Suddenly, a voice rose up from the Connect device (amplified through a speaker). It was a concierge calling from Tulsa inquiring about his health and offering to ring his family. The Lifestyle Connect also allows you to call your personal safety concierge by pressing a button. ZOMM publicist Kiersten Moffatt calls this the device’s “intended usage.”

Tom Frey’s pick, AIQ Smart Clothing with soft padding that stiffens upon impact, monitors heart rate and blood pressure: CES has a few examples of smart clothing companies like AIQ, but for most exhibitors their so-called smart clothing has little more than pockets for smartphones or space for video nametags. As part of our ongoing effort to monitor our own biological functions, it may be possible to design a fabric that serves as an optical lens into our inner selves. Think of this as a wearable CAT scan system with variable-adjust focal point settings, zoom powers down to a near-nano scale, and flexible built-in data-capture sensors. The fashion options here will be incredible.

Robots and Drones

Tucker’s pick, TOSY SketRobo: The TOSY SketRobo will take your picture and draw you a sketch of yourself (for release in September). I love this because it represents a real step forward in visual recognition capability for consumer robotics. Getting bots to make sense of what they see has long been one of the biggest challenges in the field and one of the main obstacles to more common use of robots. Most AI cars see with the aid of big SICK LMS-200 laser range finders. This robot’s eyes (though still infrared sensors) are far smaller, and the picture it draws isn’t bad, either. Nice actuator control.

Frey’s pick, AR Drone: I happen to be a big fan of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and already own an AR Drone. Unveiled at CES, the new Drone 2.0 features a 720p front-facing camera so that you can capture your flights in HD. There’s also a whole raft of new sensors, including an on-board magnetometer, so that it can always tell where the pilot is in relation to its flight path, and a new air-pressure sensor that allows it to be more stable when hovering.

That said, these drones have very short battery life (10 minutes, maximum), and so far have little application outside of the hobbyist community. That will change when drones can take on more responsibilities.

Interfaces

Tucker’s pick, SoftKinetic: This was supposed to be the year of the interface at CES. We’re going to find ourselves interacting with computers in a lot of different ways in the next decade, well beyond thumb texting. The Microsoft Kinect, part of the Xbox 360 game system (released last year), uses three infrared sensors to measure movement, allowing users to operate the computer via gesture and voice. The European group SoftKinetic had a similar device at CES that uses just one infrared sensor.

Frey’s pick, the Leonar3Do 3: A 3-D modeling system developed by Hungarian company, Leonar3Do, the Leonar3Do 3 is the easiest way I’ve seen for you to create and visualize 3-D objects in space while sitting at your desktop. This integrated software and hardware platform offers a unique, truly immersive virtual-reality experience, in that you are able to see and interact with your virtual objects as you create them.

The idea of “smart” contact lenses, the kind that can superimpose information on the wearer’s field of view, has been around for a while. But contact lenses are also being developed that use embedded sensors and electronics to monitor diseases and to dispense drugs. Such devices may eventually be able to measure the level of cholesterol or alcohol in your blood and flash up an appropriate warning. The first iteration of smart contact lenses are already on the market, but they were not seen at CES.

Cars

Tucker’s pick, Ford Evos: For motorists who subscribe to an Italian aesthetic when it comes to cars, the Ford Evos is breathtaking. The Evos is full of cutting-edge software and connects the driver to his or her “personal cloud.” Like some sort of KITT (the talking car from TV’s Knight Rider) made real, the car learns about your life, where you live and work, and then adjusts performance on an ongoing basis to better accommodate and serve thee. The lithium-ion battery has a 500-mile range when charged. The seat monitors your cardiac activity while you drive, and the Evos watches the road and reads the position of other cars while in traffic, acting as its own co-pilot.

Thomas Frey’s pick, holding out for future drones: Ford jumped on the cloud-computing bandwagon with the new Evos concept car. But behind the flashy surfaces, chrome wheels, and tech trimming lies some far bigger opportunities.

The next revolution in transportation will be self-driving cars, and the adoption of this technology will change virtually everything in the field of transportation and urban planning. Google’s self-driving-car project has already racked up more than 200,000 driverless miles on highways. Before we have driverless passenger cars sold in any sizable quantities, we will see ground-based delivery drones hauling point-to-point cargo. Better to practice without passengers onboard to perfect the technology. Railroads and trucking companies should be worried, as this will displace much of their industry.

Genome Sequencing

Tucker’s pick, the Life Technologies Ion Proton™ Sequencer: This device can read your genome (all 3 billion base pairs) in one day for $1,000, according to Mel Davey, software group leader for Ion East. Human genome sequencing isn’t new, but that time frame and price point is.

“A genome sequence for $1,000 was a pipe-dream just a few years ago,” said Richard Gibbs, director of the Human Genome Sequencing Center at the Baylor College of Medicine (in a press release on the Life Technologies Web site). “A $1,000 genome in less than one day was not even on the radar, but will transform the clinical applications of sequencing.”

The Ion Proton looks toward a very near future where a lot more people will be able to have the nuances of their genomes revealed, which further portends a health boom for consumers. More importantly, the amount of available information on genetics and congenital illness is about to increase exponentially, as more people get their genome read and thus contribute to the knowledge base on genetic disorders. That will further accelerate the development of new and perhaps genetically specific cures.

That’s why this was my favorite invention at CES this year. In the next two decades, most of us won’t remember the gadgets and iPhone accessories that Samsung or Nokia tried to push on us in 2012. But if the human race is living a lot longer and healthier, it may be because of this device.

Frey’s pick, Qualcomm Tricorder (not present): On the first day of CES, the X Prize Foundation announced the Qualcomm Tricorder challenge to build a tool capable of capturing key health metrics and diagnosing a set of 15 different diseases. The $10 million prize will go to the first person that can create a Star Trek-like medical tricorder. Sequencing is the first step. Once we have this information, can the StarTrek tricorder be far off?

Final Thoughts

Tucker: The products that most impressed me were the ones that epitomize the biggest technology trend of the next 10 years—devices that make use of the data you provide, even when you don’t know you’re providing data. A lot of the publicity about CES this year focused on the fact that Apple would not be debuting any new products, and even Microsoft won’t be attending next year. Big companies are finding the expo less valuable than they did in the past. But there are still a lot of small companies here doing great and innovative work, much of it far more relevant to the future.

Frey: After spending the past three days scouring the showroom floors at CES, watching people become overwhelmed by what they saw, I tended to be more underwhelmed by what I didn’t see.

About the Authors

Patrick Tucker is deputy editor of THE FUTURIST and director of communications for the World Future Society.

Thomas Frey is THE FUTURIST’s contributing editor for Innovation. He is the senior futurist and executive director of the DaVinci Institute, www.davinciinstitute.com.