Tech UPTechnologyCES 2020 Tech News

CES 2020 Tech News

I’m going to commit a sacrilege, one more year. Without having been to the Consumer Electronic Show (CES) in Las Vegas, I will try to talk about some of the products that have been shown there, and that there is no doubt that this edition has had artificial intelligence (AI) as the protagonist.

Be it smart TVs, cars that are steadily approaching full automation, or whatever we can imagine. Nothing resists being smarter, and whoever does not want it, will have no choice but to adapt to it.

At Amazon, for example, they believe that voice is the easiest and most natural way to interact with technology , and at CES there were many examples of how the smart voice assistant Alexa can make life easier and more convenient for users. customers, such as in the car. At CES, the American company announced new partners and integrations of its Alexa experiences. Such as Lamborghini, which is bringing Alexa to the Huracán Evo range, and Rivian, integrating the voice assistant in its first two fully electric vehicles , the R1S and R1T.

Later this year, Amazon customers will be able to say, “Alexa, pay for fuel” to easily buy fuel at 11,500 Exxon and Mobil stations. Transactions for this new Alexa feature will go through Amazon Pay and work with Fiserv, a global provider of financial services technology.

Amazon will also bring Fire TV to the car to add the entertainment capacity in cars. BMW and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles will be among the first automakers to offer this new Fire TV experience in their future vehicles.

If we move on to the field of smart TVs, although there have been more players, the two manufacturers that have dominated the international market, LG and Samsung, engaged in an ad battle at CES to show the intelligent capabilities of their new additions .

LG introduced 14 new OLED TV models, with artificial intelligence to give content such as movies, sports and video games a realism never before seen on a television. The latest 8K and 4K LG OLED and 8K LG NanoCell TVs feature a host of technologies such as the new α (Alpha) 9 Gen 3 AI processor. This advanced processor takes advantage of its powerful performance and artificial intelligence algorithms to further enhance performance. image quality and enable specific features for various types of content, including movies, games, and sports.

Also LG Electronics, and has been seen at CES, has started working with Microsoft to build new formulas for entertainment inside cars and improve building management systems.

LG will offer, through its Building Energy Control System (BECON), greater control and management of HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) systems more efficiently with the support of Microsoft Azure. At the same time, by expanding its BECON system that is being carried out around the world with the support of Microsoft, the company plans to soon develop a version of these processes through Microsoft Azure big data and the capabilities of your hybrid cloud.

Samsung Electronics, for its part, announced during the event the beginning of the “Age of Experience”, a new decade of human-centered innovation that combines hardware and software and aims to create personalized experiences that make life more comfortable. , nice and remarkable. This Age of Experience, they say in the Korean manufacturer, will change the way we take care of ourselves, both ourselves and our family, and will mean customizing homes to meet individual needs and create safer and more sustainable smart cities. With the latest advancements in intelligent robotics, AI, 5G and Edge-Computing, Samsung has shown a not too distant future in which these technologies will come together to offer more complete and adapted experiences to consumers.

Samsung showed its vision of robots as “life companions” last week in Las Vegas, and presented Ballie, a small rolling robot prepared to understand and help with the daily needs of the home. Its artificial intelligence capabilities will allow it to be an assistant for physical exercise and a mobile interface that will seek solutions for the changing needs of people. All this, while maintaining strict data protection and privacy standards.

The Korean Samsung also spoke about what the home of the future will be like , with unique and immersive experiences thanks to AI, sensors and data analysis. And it was possible to see how people can make use of AR augmented reality glasses to carry out virtual training, climb a mountain or walk underwater, from the living room of their house, while the data was analyzed to give fully recommendations. personalized. And it also showed how a room can be transformed with a MicroLED screen, a convergence of software, AI, IoT and hardware to see and experience practically anything, through the screen.

And to spoil the party for its competitor LG, Samsung Electronics unveiled the next generation of its QLED 8K TV lineup at CES 2020 bringing a vision of the future in display technology, harnessing the power of artificial intelligence technology to enhance performance. audio and video , among other features.

Plus, it offers a host of smart features developed by Tizen, making it much easier to use voice commands and access new features like Tap View, Digital Butler, and Samsung Health. The ultimate expression of all these innovations is the new Q950TS QLED 8K, the first television on the market to offer immersive sound and true 8K resolution in a very fine format.

In 2020, Bixby, Samsung’s artificial intelligence assistant, will be even smarter , according to Korean officials in Las Vegas. Consumers can use their television to change the style of a room.

For example, if Bixby is told to create a calm atmosphere, the TV will display a relaxing background on the screen. In addition, Samsung will offer multiple voice assistant options to provide consumers with the option to integrate Amazon Alexa and the Google Assistant into the QLED 8K 2020 line. Thus, users will have easier access to the content they like, with more TV control options in a smart home.

Moving on to the field of smartphones, and although most brands are suspicious of their news to present them at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February, OnePlus dared to present at CES 2020 a conceptual mobile phone, the first to use the Electrochromic glass , a glass that changes its appearance from transparent to translucent, giving the phone an “invisible camera” feel. This device represents a breakthrough in the CMF design experience (color, material, finish) and lays the foundation for future smartphones with radically renewed design and features.

Its invisible camera is presented as a new form of design, which avoids the user all the inconveniences that current camera designs entail. Thus, the rear camera lenses appear hidden behind electrochromic glass and only become visible when the camera is in use. This solution is what OnePlus calls “electrochromic CMF”.

During the Consumer Electronics Show 2020 Farmer Connect, a platform that uses Blockchain technology, and IBM announced a new mobile application called “Thank My Farmer”, which will allow consumers to track the route of their coffee to know its quality, discover its origin, and even support the farmer who has grown the coffee beans.

Today, it is estimated that coffee lovers consume more than half a billion cups a year. If we analyze the group of consumers between 19 and 24 years old, two thirds say that they prefer to buy a coffee that is grown sustainably and that is obtained in a responsible way. But despite the fact that the sustainability certification processes developed by international organizations have come a long way, there is still work to be done to understand the needs and context of coffee growers.

 

Due to the size and complexity of the global coffee supply chain, knowing exactly traceability is very difficult. From the moment the beans are grown to the point where the consumer enjoys their cup of coffee, the product makes many stops: cooperatives, exporters, importers, roasters, distributors, retailers … Each participant of this chain so complex records only your part of the trip and usually using its own data recording system. This fragmentation causes the information on the traceability of the product to be often incomplete.

Thanks to IBM’s blockchain technology, consumers will be able to close this information gap between the coffee they drink at their table and the farmer who grew it in the country of origin. The “Thank My Farmer” application allows the consumer to connect with farmers, traders, roasters and brands. The information is presented on an interactive map that provides the history of the different places where coffee passes in a simple and scalable way. Likewise, “Thank My Farmer” also presents information on the different sustainability projects that are being carried out in the coffee communities, so that consumers can support them if they wish.

Although we have already talked about Bosch here at CES, the German company also showed in Las Vegas an application for predictive maintenance of the International Space Station, a system for monitoring the interior of vehicles and an intelligent platform for medical diagnosis. And as a world first, it announced Virtual Visor, a transparent, intelligent digital sun visor , which is actually a transparent LCD screen connected to the interior monitoring camera, and which detects the position of the driver’s eyes. Using smart algorithms, Virtual Visor analyzes this information and darkens only the part of the windshield through which the sun would dazzle the driver. The Virtual Visor has obtained the highest score in its category in the ‘CES Best of Innovation Awards’.

Another Bosch innovator at CES was Vivascope, an intelligent pathology platform that aids in medical diagnosis. Vivascope magnifies samples such as blood and other body fluids, digitizes microscopic findings, and analyzes them with the help of algorithms powered by artificial intelligence. It is able to quickly and accurately identify cellular abnormalities and provide clinicians with helpful assessment and diagnostic support.

Intel was another of the busiest companies at CES in Las Vegas this year. Leaving some of its novelties in the pipeline, highlights the announcement with Netflix to use the latest video compression technology, AV1, improve its streaming services and offer more realistic content around the world, including a compression efficiency greater than 60% compared to previous compression technology (AVC). The joint work of Intel and Netflix has continued through the development of a high performance open source encoder (SVT-AV1), optimized for 2nd Generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors, which offers significant quality and performance improvements to make viable commercial deployment.

Also very spectacular will be the enhanced experiences for athletes and spectators at Tokyo 2020 thanks to the 3D Athlete Tracking solution shown in Las Vegas. It is the first machine vision solution of its kind, 3D Athlete Tracking (3DAT), which uses AI to enhance the viewer experience through near real-time information and visualizations. 3DAT uses highly mobile cameras to capture athletes’ shapes and movements and then applies algorithms optimized by Intel DL Boost and powered by Intel Xeon Scalable processors to analyze the biomechanical characteristics of those movements. This technology will enhance the 100M run replays and other sprint events during the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

Intel and the sports industry are changing the audience’s experience of sporting events using volumetric video , a major step forward on the path to seamless sports broadcasting. Intel® True View ™ Technology synthesizes the full volume of a stadium’s playing field to provide infinite viewing angles that allow fans to choose any point of view or player perspective and stream the video.

+ Intel and the NFL demonstrated in Ces 2020 the capacity of volumetric video streaming through a play of the game between Cleveland Browns and Arizona Cardinals corresponding to the 15th day of the NFL. The amount of data generated during the first quarter of an NFL game alone exceeds 3TB per minute; an exponential increase that requires enormous computing capacity.

In closing, while I left many innovations in the pipeline, Lenovo continued at CES with its talk of delivering innovations capable of transforming lives , advancing entire industries, and revealing the new possibilities presented by the fast-paced age of connectivity.

With the global vision of creating a smarter technology for all, the Chinese company spoke of the future with 5G, which will continue to revolutionize the technological landscape and allow the development of cities, infrastructures and smart connected objects, and presented the world’s first 5G PC – The Yoga 5G, a 2-in-1 ultraportable computer and the first PC equipped with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx 5G Computing Platform. This model offers high-speed 5G network connectivity, up to 10 times faster than 4G.

And Lenovo also introduced the world’s first folding PC, the ThinkPad X1 Fold, built from a combination of light alloys and carbon fiber, and covered by a leather case. With a foldable 13.3-inch OLED screen and a weight of less than 1 kg, it will be available in mid-2020.

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