Gadgetory

okay welcome to the CNET stage here at CES 2017 this is CES in depth on day one of the show this is the formal opening of the day I'm Brian Cooley dr. Scott Stein here as usual to monitor my condition in case there are any health emergencies he's ready to jump in the breech to make sure make sure the show continues on PhD comes next year we're here to talk about the biggest trends at the show so far that's what you'd imagine from a best of CES show now first up Scott we're gonna talk about adorable robots like Curie hoping the whole rise of little robots here that I until this show thought were the stupidest thing on earth and then I got a look at Curie and I'm smitten it is adorable and that's what they're trying to do dammit they're trying to win us over and they are intelligence yeah that is a trend adorable robots patted robots cute robots googly googly cuddly beeping robots and curry is a surveillance robot this should creep us out right but yeah it is actually really cute it's engaging and that's the great victory here we were talking about this yesterday computer vision artificial intelligence those have been advancing really rapidly yeah and so these robots move in the same way as before but they're doing many much more powerful points more smart and intuitive because of that like I said the democratization of machine learning and computer vision and the fact that they are going first at the adorability factor which sounds ridiculous but I think it is absolutely the way you sell not just the category but your specific entry in it because I believe the functions of these robots will all be commodity they'll all do about the same thing just like our phones just like our televisions just like everything else but who's gonna win in the end is the one that I and this is crazy to say the one that I have a relationship with and there's a stealth thing going on here we use Amazon echo we talk to things but there's they're hitting a wall so maybe things like this are exploring how those devices will start engaging next yeah they might start developing ways to try to get our attention feel like they're responding to us more so we don't feel like we have that oh I don't understand you can't respond to that query happens to me all the time on any voice device what's this thing about Curie though people look at this we're talking about echo and LexA and all that as Curie doesn't talk Curie can hear you but kiriona communicates with facial expressions head turns and little r2d2 like beeps and blurps yeah I want that that that head sitting on top of an Amazon echo I want like a little robot head so if it doesn't know we could turn its head to the side I do want the power of Alexa in this thing probably be announced any day now all right I mean if not they're insane it's out there but I don't you and I are talking yesterday I'm not sure I wanted to try too hard to be specifically human and maybe really good voice and I can't believe I'm saying this maybe really good voice is a bridge too far that it can it'll lose its specialness because in a year from now everything's gonna be talking to us in natural language that's gonna go commodity - right and it makes sense for some things not to talk because if you have one thing you're talking to in your home we already probably have this now in our homes you talk to something in the more than one thing respond right and then waves coming yeah and it's like already kind of happening and so you can't have that and one company's not gonna win your home unless you become like I mean I don't think so I think you'll still have some device that doesn't connect so you got to have some be silent and be responsive in other ways it's like kids in the household you you think we're nuts I don't blame you but when you get a chance to check this little robot out I think it's the leader in the category it's a $699 mayfield robotics is bringing it out they're taking pre-orders now you do $100 deposit like a like a very affordable Tesla and they don't deliver until a year from now it's if it slips we're into 18 so this is down the road aways but I gotta say I was taken and I don't like robots so this impressed me this is the CES of the robot this is what it is look back years from now sitting there having a cool refreshing cocktail and a smoke when served to us by robots by robots and so remember member 17 that damn robot ear and we'll be taking it to a robot remember that I do not remember that smiling or Romani language yeah all right Curie was cute cute is a cute as a button LG OLED w years and with these things I am right yeah actually when go check I checked it out and it's amazing I took a picture of it people can believe how fat it was and if your shows TVs can be damn cool is still and you know sure do you need a thin TV do you need a big TV like that that's that thin but it is amazing to look at I need a thin TV more than I need 140 inch TV which we normally see here I don't think I heard anybody roll out a TV that is the new world's biggest no.1 now for the first time and I think 10 years I have not heard that here instead I saw world's thinnest and that makes so much more sense to me than a TV that I literally can't get through a standard 8 foot door in an average home I love the idea of applying it like wallpaper or you know if you could eventually just put these up easily that's the other thing is mounting them easily pounds is nothing for b2b hire someone and and as we notice we're looking the video now it has a sound bar that is more than a sound bar that is also the breakout box if you will wear a thin flat ribbon comes off this very thin tenth of an inch screen goes to that sound bar and on the sound bar you see right there are all your ports for HDMI USB your audio connections and power as well so the power goes up through a flat ribbon nothing spoils the the illusion of floating except for a very flat ribbon cable that your you know here maybe you're gonna run it if you want to be ambitious or just put that thing down with some double sticky tape and paint it I'm sure that's sacrilege and in LG world that's what I would do I got a roller I'll paint that damn thing put some Scotch double stick behind it I'm done why is there more wire hiding paint special textured yeah it's like putty like that okay now you gotta explain this one to me the razor laptop that came out that supports multiple high performance monitors I get it but I don't get it right it's the classic CES laptop this is the this is the computer those concept ones that keep appearing and it's the most absurd or the coolest thing you've seen a user loves doing this razor is the king of CES showstopper ideas my question my question this is a single three panel articulated monitor not three monitors all stuck because the same guy on stainless yeah they pull out okay it's a makeup mirror yeah I'll pull out make make your own crazy makeup mirror of magic screens okay and there was a laptop in the past that did something like this with the second display but not this big and and you know Dan acraman showing this right now there are games that take advantage of multiple monitors there are tons of them yeah and you know you have immersive VR headsets there are reasons to connect monitors and screens you don't need them all in one laptop though you could set them up yourself I weigh more get it now that I'm seeing the packaging this is a great industrial design exercise where these all unfold from a thick lid and go out I thought it was just three monitors that kind of we're all cabling individually to ready your minds know at the right price a lot of people would go for that that's very slick industrial design it's cool and if you start developing screens that Bend more in the future maybe a future screen tech yeah would start going plans and curved screens makes sense because cursor means don't make sense for groups they don't make sense for the family TV but they do make sense for the individual user who's positioned properly for immersion at the just the right arm's length and now you have to wonder if that competes with VR it's not as immersive but close yeah I agree and I think for gamers there's a real question if if your game looks really great at high resolution do you want to put something on in VR that right now is a lower resolution but by higher immersion and a lot of people don't like that and the interfaces are different you know a lot of four-person games don't port the same way of course so you may want to agree a lot of people might prefer to add the monitors okay that's that that's cool I do get it now it was losing my step there for the monitor resolution now VR na are of course still advancing here at CES not a new topic by any stretch but Intel tried to kind of make things go and kind of kick it a little bit with a 3d video walkthrough demo of a core technology that they've got you've gotten a look at this right this I haven't seen yet okay that's video I think people at the press conference did yesterday the press conference where the media that attended actually had VR headsets on as Intel showed off what is AI I guess what you'd call it as a highly movable placement of you in the scene you can go anywhere at any time yeah this is a knitting together of a video into a 3d I think they were calling on volumetric have a render it it was tremendously high bandwidth you're not going to be gigabits per second gathering crazy amount and but the ideas that you could walk around in a 3d video or feel like that I mean the effect is somewhere between you know if it looks like somewhere between like video game and video but but but feeling like a real video you can see there are kind of yeah has a little bit of a Skyrim feel you know like a like like it's a video but or with its Witcher for I'll say this this kind of thing is if you're gonna do VR that's really the gold standard we have to work toward is giving me the ability not to be fixed in place not to hop between selectable locations I need to be able to move through this thing as if it's in the world yeah and for capturing I mean the fantasy of capturing your memories or some sort of place you've been and be able to walk around in it later yeah sure and I think everyone's trying to strive to come up with a new idea in VR all the big players in VR a lot of them are taking the show off oculus rift PlayStation VR into a use case wall hardware the technologies they're the use cases despite a lot of good minds and various communities haven't found that I don't think yet they haven't found their Pokemon well and everyone I know not everyone in a lot of people I know who use VR myself included it despite how amazed they are by if they own it don't return to it quite as often as they junk because it's a huge commitment yeah and that yet overcome that maybe it's smaller devices and you have qualcomm intel and other players in the market now all wanting to get involved too and you can see a lot of people throwing things against a wall trying to and then incorporating augmented reality which is even more not there yet that's reality conversation where we're seeing a lot of players say wait a min let's give you some of the very photorealistic imported objects and people that we bring in from the VR world but you're still seeing them placed in your real world and as you turn your head they don't move because they're placed in the scene not placed in your vision which is a very important psychological difference and then if you want to get really get ripped out by it there's another way it works merged reality or mixed reality and Intel calls it merged there's another way it does a project alloy and a couple of others capture stuff in the real world scan it and then put it into VR that's called mixed reality too but it doesn't look like things are in the real world it does the opposite so you're in VR but it also knows where your table is or your your friend is in there and why do you use that well that's what people are trying to figure out and they wonder why consumers are bewildered by AR and VR and now we're gonna introduce them to mix three hours a lot of time alright let's go to the vomitorium as I call it some companies showing off B are doing it saying hey come stand here put on our VR headset we're gonna blow you away and they typically do but Samsung went to the point of putting you in any number of almost like Victorian torture devices and then strapping on VR hears bTW this bTW in there yeah biases we're holding on site this we're chilling we're children to we're gonna launch okay alright there we go we're going down this track we're gonna launch ladies and gentlemen ladies and gentlemen we're in space right now oh this is tight there's about there's large ships or kind of like star destroyers dude okay we're going through these like little tunnel targets us though okay okay more tunnels more spaceships okay we're doing these twisty things oh there's some blue tunnel ah damn hyperspace okay there's like asteroids and more spaceships and airs blowing in my face I haven't wet myself yet I'm still holding on about lunch oh okay now I'm going through like crystals oh I'm getting rocks stay on target stay on target stay on so clearly more tunnels more spaceships I gotta try to have now famous last words boom if you can't win people over with VR make things and do it yeah forget it forget it that's that's it they put everything they could behind it anyway nothing new in the technology but something you may have never seen in terms of the lengths the technology companies will go to put you through an experience here and sell the concept there's a little thing going on here that I think is it's ending at - exactly no new tech it's gear VR but they're striving for a theme park theme park type experience probably no accident because you don't have to buy the tech necessarily and you only use it for a short period of time and you can sense there's a theme park ization feeling of arcade the arc test it don't buy it and so I think companies are actually trying to figure that out and that match to this thing we were just talking about I'll people even own VR early on or still they basically sample it there's not a frequent use case yeah and so they may be the first ones that discover you know what this belongs like I think 3d printers in the hands of vendors and service companies not in every kitchen counter and in the world I'm glad Samsung wasn't trying to sell us in a giant gyroscopic spinner for a living room family hub gyroscope dead serious tongue no tongue in cheek is like absolutely every home should have 18 why wouldn't you want this yeah it's coming Alexa Perry oh yeah all right I think we wrap up now with a concept card a lot of motive here from Bosch a big supplier of tech to many of the world's automakers that has haptic touch gestures that's not entirely new but also facial recognition your phone as a key they can't took all the greatest hits of what's come soon in cars and rolled it into one concept of how we might deal with vehicles in the future so here it is I mean we're clearly looking at a concept car nothing about this is remotely realistic but if you look at the idea of haptic facial recognition also voice recognition is being talked about in the industry a lot of this frankly is almost this is Toyota's concept it has something similar called Yui car companies right now are trying to figure out we need to have have a new relationship between you and the car as they start to become autonomous where I can just leave you to twiddle your thumbs we still want to be engaged with you as a brand even though we're not doing so by making you drive but we still want to be involved with you otherwise why are we doing this they don't really care about autonomy unless it leads to them having a more and different relationship with the driver because they're in this to sell cars or services or something not to give you a self-driving car and say go do what you want with it yeah it's finding ways to have to make it work to make it I keep thinking more toy I was talking about about making engaging with the driver and developing a relationship that makes sense responsiveness yeah lot of that was about that was it decrement of vigilance they talked about there's a great phrase like that a seminal study in the 40s Gill Pratt said that they notice that radar operators on warships back in World War two no matter how intrigued they were about making sure that they didn't have an attack coming you eventually lose interest your mind wanders you may be staring at the radar still and you stop seeing things because your eyes are bored I guess is the simple way to put it so car makers and Bosch here Toyota as well are starting to talk about how do we get cars to have a I guess a holding on loosely relationship with you they're not totally gonna have your attention because they're gonna let you stop driving still moving down the road but they want to keep you vaguely and lightly engaged like a little tap once in a while to say hey remember we're still we're still doing this together I just had a thought that goes back to the beginning what if we go full circle one of those cute could those cute robots end up at our cars I want Kari to drive me out of here right now like an adorable car interface let's go under two cars thank you and then the greatest heartbreaker of all time when you realize that that you know Curie knows the f-word when she has her first road rage moment it's like come on hurry I thought you were a darling little thing all right that's it for CES in depth for this first day of CES 2017 myself Scott Stein we're back here at both mister back here tomorrow right yeah I'll get my back on the deck tomorrow same bat-time and channel and all that and that'll be tomorrow and we'll see you when programming starts against the CNET stage at 9:00 a.m. Pacific tomorrow until then enjoy the show if you're still here have a good evening we'll see you again tomorrow on scene