Best Of CES 2017: From Self-Balancing Bikes To Mixed Reality Glasses

By Mara Anton

Posted on January 10, 2017

January’s frosty beginning didn’t do anything to ease your return to work, we know. At least, amidst hot espressos and hopeful meetings, you unfroze your brain with cool tech news coming from Las Vegas. In the last couple of days, CES 2017 (International Consumer Electronics Show) took place there. Exhibitors unveiled self-balancing bikes, ingenious mixed reality glasses, robots, drones and laptops with 3, not 1, built-in monitors #objectmagic

HONDA BIKE

One of the most talked about products from CES this year was a beauty from Honda. Not the car they teased a month ago, but Riding Assist, a motorcycle that takes off the pressure of staying upright during the ride. If the idea sounds familiar, that’s because it was something worth talking about when BMW introduced Motorrad Vision Next 100.  But Honda’s bike does that without employing gyroscopes, instead using an electronic steer-by-wire system. Find more about it here.

VISTEON AR HUD

The modern driver won’t just ride bikes like a pro, without much prior training; he/she will also be able to navigate smartly through traffic thanks to augmented reality heads-up displays. Visteon demonstrated that their AR HUD can minimize driver distractions while keeping him informed. Their system overlays graphics that show obstacles, navigation data and lane departure warnings. Driver-monitoring and front-view cameras help trigger other alerts, such as sounds and lights. In other words, the moment you’re dozing off, this system will make sure you pay full attention to the road once again, without occupying your line of sight.

LENOVO VR

As you can imagine, the VR/MR/AR reality slice of our “tech pie” wasn’t neglected by exhibitors at CES. On the contrary; Lenovo unveiled their Windows VR headset. The potential project announced last year became a physical prototype in the time since. It’s lighter, boasts great resolution and might win your heart for a couple of other reasons detailed here.

ODG MIXED REALITY GLASSES

A company many of you haven’t heard about until now – ODG – surprised us at CES with two pairs of mixed reality glasses. Both of them feature the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 and support AR and VR content. Osterhout Design Group (ODG) has worked on several smart glasses before (including ones you could use to play Pokemon Go with) but these ones promise unparalleled experience thanks to the performant Snapdragon chip. Check them out here.

ASUS ZENFONE AR

The talk of the show this past week was Asus new phone, Zenfone AR. Instead of keeping the surprise for MWC, Asus preferred to grab everyone’s attention now with its Tango and Daydream-ready phone. The 5.7-inch 2560 x 1440 Super AMOLED display smartphone supports both AR and VR content, making it a badass addition to mixed reality enthusiasts. Plus, it comes with a whooping 8GB RAM, Android 7.0 Nougat and a 23MP motion-and-depth tracking camera system that clusters the array of cameras making it incredibly thin.

UVIFY DRACO

Drone racers formed a line in front of UVify’s stand where Draco awaited. The 100mph racing drone can make anyone a champion, if we’d had to guess. Here’s our article on it.

KURI ROBOT

Robots wandered the aisles of the tradeshow and we couldn’t help but notice the cuteness of Kuri. Responsive, helpful and shaped like a penguin – what’s not to love? Find out what it can do for you here.

RAZER PROJECTS VALERIE & ARIANA

Razer’s amazing prototypes stole the show this year. Project Valerie is a laptop with not one, nor two, but three 17-inch displays! The extra monitors come out and fold back from the sides of the laptop. As you can imagine, this add-ons can make a gaming experience bigger, better, bolder. As expected from Razer, the laptop features Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 graphics card. This gem, though, is pretty heavy and will probably come at a (big) price.

Project Ariana, on the other hand, is a premium projector that’s meant to augment the gaming experience. Instead of replacing the monitor, it continues the story around the player, by creating a contextual environment. Project Ariana uses an ultra-wide 155-degree fish-eye lens, 3D cameras and the Chroma lighting system.

WILLOW SMART BREAST PUMP

Finally, a device that will change mom’s lives for the better. As weird as it may look at first, these motorized breast cups/pumps are easy to place in women’s nursing bras. They allow moms to use their hands for other tasks – typing, reading, etc. With just a press of the button, the pumps begin collecting milk, which goes into replaceable attached bags. The speed of the pumps can be modified easily and the quantity of milk collected is documented on a companion app. This data can be vital for parents and their doctor. The breast pumps cost $429.

LG OLED Signature W7

It wouldn’t be a consumer electronics fair without TVs. No question about it – LG’s W7 OLED TV took the cake this year. The “wallpaper” TV was almost unbelievable at 2.5 mm thickness! To make it that thin, LG gave up the TV stand for an only wall mount. Plus, the HDMI and other inputs as well as the speaker was built separately in a horizontal bar. This device connects to the display with a super sleek proprietary cable.

LG intends to sell two models of the W7: a 65-inch one for $8000 and a 77-incher for an undisclosed price. You can’t put a price on coolness, guys.

Best Of CES 2017: From Self-Balancing Bikes To Mixed Reality Glasses