With more than 3,600 exhibitors and over 150,000 attendees, CES 2016 in Las Vegas has generated plenty of headlines, with new wearable technologies, connected and autonomous cars, and gadgets aplenty. Some of the most attention-getting exhibits this year included an electric car that could give Elon Musk’s Tesla a run for its money, along with a rollable OLED screen, a person-carrying drone, a wearable translator and a 3D printer that uses lasers to create objects from almost any material.
Here are some standouts:
LG’s Rollable Display
The South Korea-based company already makes a full-size wireless keyboard — the Rolly — that rolls up, but the 18-inch prototype flexible OLED screen from LG Display delivered the real wows at CES. Demonstrations showed how a user could roll up the HD display just like a newspaper or magazine. The company envisions one day making much larger versions of the tech. K.J. Kim, vice president of marketing for LG Display, told the BBC that in the future, users could watch TV on 55-inch or larger rollable screens and then curl them up and put them away when they’re done.
Faraday Future
Some CES attendees called Faraday Future’s FFZero1 concept supercar (pictured) a Tesla killer, although — unlike Tesla — the electric car company hasn’t yet rolled out a production car. “More than a concept car — it is a car of concepts,” the company said. Able to go from 0 to 60 mph in less than three seconds, the FFZero1, which has a carbon fiber body, boasts a top speed of over 200 mph and its smart to boot, with smartphone-connected remote vehicle setup capabilities, according to the company.
“Since our electric vehicles will not require the unwieldy mechanical excess that traditional cars do — such as centralized engines, obligatory exhaust outputs, and cumbersome reservoirs for gasoline storage — we can model our new vehicles from square one with minimal physical compromises,” the company said in a statement. “This lets us design from the ground up — or rather, from the ‘inside out.'”
Logbar iLi
Japan-based startup Logbar won a CES Innovation Award for its iLi wearable translator. A rectangular pendant that can be worn like a necklace, the iLi provides automatated spoken translations when a user pushes its activation button and speak into the device. Currently offering support for translations between English, Japanese and Chinese, iLi’s capabilities will be expanded in subsequent versions to add French, Thai and Korean, and — after that — Spanish, Italian and Arabic. Unlike Google Translate or Skype, the iLi doesn’t require an Internet connection, the company said.
Glowforge 3D Laser Printer
Headquartered in Seattle, Glowforge launched its 3D laser printer with the same name at last year’s Maker Faire, and reported receiving more than $ 5 million in orders in the first week. Its wireless desktop device — which is actually a laser cutter rather than an additive 3D printing machine — lets users create objects out of a wide range of materials, including paper, wood, leather, felt and acrylic. Currently available for pre-ordering, the Glowforge Basic starts at $ 2,395 and is expected to begin shipping sometime in the second quarter of this year.
EHang 184
Chinese drone maker EHang unveiled its EHang 184 at CES this week. Billed as a solution for “medium-short distance communication and transportation,” the autonomous aerial vehicle is also the first all-electric drone that can carry a single human passenger. Weighing in at 200 kilograms (about 441 pounds), with a charging time of two to four hours, the EHang 184 can hover for up to 23 minutes and has an average speed of 100 kilometers per hour (62 mph).
Reportedly set to cost between $ 200,000 and $ 300,000, the one-passenger drone will be ready for commercialization “within three to four months,” CFO Shang Hsiao told Wired, but skeptics have pointed out that any real-world applications would first require lengthy review and approval by government agencies such as the Federal Aviation Administration.
