CES 2024
Our Top picks from the annual CES conference. Waterstons Innovation: The Dots #21
CES 2024
Is the hype around AI overshadowing the growth of other emerging technologies that could have great benefits to communities and society as a whole? The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is an annual conference held in Las Vegas, Nevada. This year seems to be dominated by the AI trend. This week, Katie picks out the most notable technological advancements presented in online panel discussions at CES 2024 that aren’t AI.
What is this? This is The Dots, our newsletter about exciting things we find in the world of innovation. We imagine innovation as connecting the dots; putting together a jigsaw. Our puzzle pieces are the pieces of interesting information we absorb in the world, our partners and their products. This newsletter is about these dots we find and connect.
All aboard the AI hype train
There has been a lot of discussion this year at CES around AI, including:
The Rabbit R1 is a walkie-talkie-like device that works as an AI digital assistant and hopes to replace your phone.
An AI mirror that tells you when you are jetlagged and gives you a beauty regime to fix it.
An AI vacuum cleaner that knows the layout of your home and will hoover the living room when asked.
While these are really exciting, AI seems to be overhyped. People are jumping on the AI bandwagon, claiming that their product uses AI when it does not use machine learning at all. Instead, I wanted to listen to the discussions that did not involve AI. While it seems it was in small supply at the conference this year, there were some exciting discussions around other emerging technologies, one being the use of Drones.
The Wide World of Drones
This discussion focused on the use of Drones in two areas: The police force and drones as a delivery service.
Residential drone delivery
When thinking of drones most people imagine a person standing with a remote control manually flying these drones from house to house, following the drone as it goes. This is just simply not the case. The company Wing uses autonomous drones to make these deliveries - meaning they fly beyond the visible line of sight. This means that many people in Texas can receive their deliveries within 30 minutes of ordering. These drones allow people within the community to access services or products they usually could not. In fact, the customers who have made the most orders through Wing’s drone delivery service are a couple in their 80s who can no longer drive and use drones to order hot meals from local restaurants or blueberry muffins from a local café. Wing has recently partnered with Walmart and hopes to expand their delivery service wider. They are also using their drones in Ireland to deliver prescriptions. You might be surprised to hear the most popular item to be delivered by drone is coffee.Â
The police force
The Chief of Police for Chula Vista, in southern California, uses drones to provide information about emergency calls within 90 seconds to police on the ground. This can then determine the appropriate response, and how many officers should be deployed to the scene. A big challenge they found is by the time they purchase a new drone, an even better model will be released. Keeping up with this technology is a challenge costing upwards of $100,000 dollars as they legally need to have someone watching the sky in each area they deploy drones, as well as the cost of the equipment.
So What?
Clients at Waterstons may benefit from using drones in their businesses. Across all sectors, drones may be used for keeping an eye on buildings and equipment and checking for damage without the need to pay for expensive scaffolding. However, I think the most interesting aspect of this talk was that drones can be used as a way to reach remote or restricted communities, and this should be investigated in other ways. For example, could drones be used in Social Housing to provide services in rural areas? Could architects or engineers deliver small-scale materials or equipment to those areas? Could this be used to scale up these areas? Or be used to provide services for those who can't travel?
Ignoring the legal side of using drones to take live video streams, I think the chief of Police brought up some interesting points about the costs required to keep up to date with the newest technologies, and in fact you don't always need the shiniest newest model to achieve your intended purpose, an older less expensive drone, or other technology might still meet your needs.
5G, Fad or Future?
The fifth generation of cellular broadband technology, known as 5G, will provide significant advancements over our current 4G. To get a better understanding of 5G and its potential use cases, read Dani's blog. 5G causes similar debates to AI. Many people question whether this will be another fad or if it is indeed the future. To most people it means faster remote internet but the potential capabilities of this technology have not been fully imagined yet. 5G is a work in progress, which is continuously evolving. However, while major networks are switching to 5G and new phones provide 5G capabilities it will take time to migrate current networks from 4G to 5G.
IoT devices
While mobile devices require higher data rates and lower latency, IoT devices, such as those used in the medical field for example, require ultra-low power consumption and network connection. Later this year 5G-Redcap will be released, which aims to bring down the complexity and expense of 5G, achieving a smaller form factor and lower power consumption. However, this is still not low enough to support IoT devices, and there are further steps to reach before this technology is a greater match for IoT. This is hoped to be achievable by 2028.
Autonomous Vehicles
There is a similar slowdown in the use of 5G for autonomous vehicles. 5G feels like a perfect fit for autonomous vehicles but the technology used within the cars needs more legal and regulatory standardising before it becomes ubiquitous.
Another challenge up to this point has been that 5G has been designed by experts with little consideration for how the service will actually work for the majority of users. They’ve been concentrating on big large scale use-cases at a high level, but one of the CES panels made up of 5G experts has turned this on its head. They have looked at the market end-to-end, starting with finding the pain-points of enterprise customers first and relaying this back to service providers, who can then make changes and considerations. This suggests that maybe it will become easier for small businesses to adopt 5G in their products in the future, but there is question as to whether customers are ready to adopt this change?
So What?
While businesses should consider the possible use cases of 5G and how this could benefit them, it is not something that will be here tomorrow so you have time to prepare and start thinking of how this might impact your business for the better.
I will leave you with this video of a smart plant pot that gurgles at you when your plant needs watering!
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