LAS VEGAS (AP) — Crowds flooded the freshly opened showroom floors on Day 2 of the CES and were met by thousands of robots, AI companions, assistants, health longevity tech, wearables and more.
Siemens President and CEO Roland Busch kicked off the day with a keynote detailing how its customers are harnessing artificial intelligence to transform their businesses. He was joined onstage by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang to announce an expanded partnership, saying they are launching a new AI-driven industrial revolution to reinvent all aspects of manufacturing, production and supply chain management.
Lenovo ended the day with a guest star-rich visual banquet dedicated to spotlighting how its AI platforms can help people personally (wearables), with their businesses (enterprise platforms) and the world around them. To strike home his points, its CEO Yang Yuanqing was joined by tech superstars like Nvidia’s Huang, AMD CEO Lisa Su and Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan.
The CES is a huge opportunity annually for companies large and small to parade products they plan to put on shelves this year. Here are the highlights from Day 2:
Razer leans into AI
Gaming tech company Razer is well known for bringing buzz-worthy hardware to CES, like haptic, or tactile, seat cushions and tri-screen laptops.
This year, it’s reaching beyond its standard gaming base and demonstrating two AI-powered prototypes — an over-ear gaming headset that doubles as a general-purpose assistant, and an AI desk companion that can provide gaming advice and also organize a user’s life.
The holographic companion, based on a Razor on-screen AI assistant launched last year (Project Ava), has transitioned off-screen into a small glass tube that sits near your computer. The animated sprite has built-in speakers and a camera so it can see the world around it.
Both devices are AI agnostic, so you can use your preferred model. For the demo, the headset — Project Motoko — ran on OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Project Ava worked off xAI’s Grok. Although still in development, Razer said it expects both to be released commercially later this year.
Robots on the tarmac
Imagine your plane lands and, when you look out the window you see autonomous robots guiding it to the gate and then unloading the luggage. Oshkosh Corporation is pitching that future for airports big and small.
At CES, it debuted a fleet of autonomous airport robots designed to help airlines pull off what it calls “the perfect turn” — a tightly timed process that happens after a plane lands, including fueling, cleaning, handling cargo and getting passengers off and back on.
For travelers, CEO John Pfeifer says the goal is fewer delays without compromising safety. The technology is also designed to keep those tarmac tasks moving even during severe weather, like winter storms or extreme heat, when conditions are daunting for human crews, Pfeifer said. Testing with major airlines is already underway, and the robots would likely debut at large hub airports like Atlanta or Dallas, with a goal of rolling them out over the next few years.
The vacuum that can climb stairs
Chinese robovac maker Roborock has introduced a vacuum that literally sprouts chicken-like legs to navigate stairs and clean steps along the way.
The newly introduced Saros Rover was a tad slow in its ascent and descent (but it was cleaning each step) during the demo, but Roborock says it will be able to traverse almost any style of stairwell, including spiraled. No release date was given for the Rover, which the company says is still in development.
The Body Scan scale gets an upgrade
While it may look like a typical scale you’d buy for your bathroom, Withings’ new Body Scan 2 measures much more than weight. Taking off their shoes and socks, people lined up to try out the “smart scale” that in 90 seconds measures 60 different biomarkers, including their heart age, vascular age and their metabolism using the pads of their feet and hands.
The $600 scale, which will be available for purchase in the spring, also provides a nerve health score and measures changes in someone’s electrodermal activity, or the skin’s electrical properties due to sweat gland activity. The smart scale and a corresponding app, which costs $10 a month or $100 a year, provide personalized advice and a health trajectory for its users. The French company’s goals are to help people monitor their health and reverse bad habits to promote longevity.
Fusion energy research gets a little support from Nvidia, Siemens
Commonwealth Fusion Systems, NVIDIA and Siemens announced Tuesday that they are working together to use AI to hasten making nuclear fusion a new source of carbon-free energy.
In Massachusetts, Commonwealth Fusion Systems is building a prototype fusion power plant called SPARC, which is about 70% complete. Through the new partnership, it will create a “digital twin,” or online simulation, of the physical machine.
CFS CEO Bob Mumgaard said it will ask questions of the simulation to speed up progress on the physical machine and rapidly analyze data, compressing years of manual experimentation into weeks of understanding.
SPARC is a prototype for the company’s first planned power plant, called ARC, that is meant to connect to the grid in the early 2030s. The device will use very strong magnets to create conditions for fusion to happen. Mumgaard also said CFS’s first high-temperature superconducting magnet has been installed in SPARC.