Japan-based company Groove X says its Lovot robot, which comes with cartoon eyes and fuzzy arms, is designed to “nurture people’s capacity to love” by demanding the affection of its owner. This is made possible with a host of sensors that respond to human touch. When the robot wants to be cuddled, it waves its arms in the air, and will follow behind its owner on wheels. Or, it even falls asleep in the owner’s arms if offered a cuddle. A a head-mounted video camera is used to recognize the face of its owner and avoid collisions. One caveat: it’ll set you back a cool $5,500 for a pair. Read more for a video and pictures of Lovot straight from CES 2019.
Smart clocks are nothing new, but the Lenovo Smart Clock with Google Assistant just might be the coolest one we’ve seen yet, and it’s even smaller than the company’s Smart Display. Sporting a small 4-inch (800 x 480) touchscreen display, a 1.5GHz MediaTek 8167S SoC (4 x Cortex A35 cores + PowerVR GE8300 GPU), 1GB of RAM, and 8GB of integrated storage. In the back, there’s a 1.5-inch 3W speaker (6W peak), two passive radiators, a mute microphone switch, power port, and volume buttons on top. There’s an extra USB-A port that can charge your phone while you sleep. Read more for another hands-on video, pictures and additional information.
Alienware has just revealed its monstrous desktop replacement at CES 2019, the all-new Area-51m laptop. Priced from $2549, this massive 8.54-pound laptop boasts Intel’s 9th-generation desktop CPUs and “full-fat” versions of NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX GPUs. The base model comes equipped with a six-core Core i7-8700 chip and RTX 2060 with 6GB GDDR6 video memory, but can easily be upgraded to the eight-core i9-9900K and RTX 2080 with 8GB GDDR6. Other features include a 17.3-inch 1080p IPS display (NVIDIA G-Sync and Tobii eye-tracking compatible), up to 64GB of DDR4 RAM , and a triple storage configuration that includes two 1TB PCIe M.2 SSDs as well as a 1TB hybrid drive. Read more for two more videos, hands-on pictures and additional information.
Intel announced on Monday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas that it’s working together with Facebook to develop a new artificial intelligence chip set for release in the second half of this year. It aims to help with what researchers call inference, or the process of taking an artificial intelligence algorithm and putting it to use, like automatically tagging friends in photos. This comes after Amazon said it had created an inference chip this past November. Amazon’s chip is not a direct competitor to Intel and Nvidia’s business because it won’t be selling the chips, but instead sell services to its cloud customers that run atop the chips starting next year. Read more to watch Intel’s CES 2019 press conference video.
Emergency services know that the first 72 hours are the most crucial following a natural disaster, but often times it can be difficult for search-and-rescue and humanitarian aid missions to get immediate help for those in need. That’s exactly why Hyundai developed a vehicle with moveable legs, called Elevate, which is the first Ultimate Mobility Vehicle (UMV) that blends technology found in electric cars and robots. This means it’s capable of traversing terrain beyond the limitations of even the most capable off-road vehicles.
Sony officially unveiled its first 8K TV line for consumers: the Master Series Z9G / ZG9. Available in 85″ and 98″ sizes, these displays feature an updated Picture Processor X1 Ultimate image processor, X-Reality PRO technology optimized for 8K content, as well as Netflix Calibrated Mode and IMAX Enhanced. To ensure you get the best quality sound as possible, Sony equipped these sets with Sound-from-Picture Reality, which makes dialog sound as though it’s coming from the actors on-screen, thanks to four, front-firing speakers — two on top, and two along the bottom of the screen. Read more for a video and additional information.
GoSun is no stranger to solar cookers, but this year, they’ve unveiled a new model, called Fusion, which integrates an electric heating element. It keeps the familiar cylindrical cooking chamber that draws heat from two parabolic reflectors which capture heat from the sun and adds a 150-watt electric heater. Fusion can be powered either using a car’s cigarette port, a lithium ion power bank or a solar panel charger for the battery pack. Read more for another video, additional pictures and information.
LG first unveiled a prototype rollable TV at CES 2018, and now this year, they introduced a 65″ OLED TV R that will actually go on sale some time this year. It consists of a large base stand that houses a 100-watt Dolby Atmos speaker system and the actual window blind-like 65″ OLED panel that can roll up and down. The display has three modes: a full-screen “Full View” experience, a partially rolled out “Line View” mode, and then “Zero View”, in which the user only makes use of the audio system. Read more for another hands-on video, pictures and additional information.
Razer is known for their laptops and computer peripherals, but now, they’re getting into the gaming monitors realm, starting with the Raptor 27. Revealed at CES 2019, this 27-inch display features an “edge-to-edge” frame that sports 2.3mm bezels on each side, complete with a machined aluminum stand and base finished in matte-black. It may not be compatible with NVIDIA’s G-Sync, but the screen does support AMD FreeSync for smoother gameplay to go along with its 2,560 x 1,440 native resolution IPS display, 178 degree viewing angles, and 144Hz refresh rate. Read more for another hands-on video, pictures and additional information.
An all-new Acer Swift 7 has made its debut at CES 2019 sporting a 92 percent screen-to-body ratio, making the display near bezel-less. Measuring in at 9.95mm thick and weighing just 890 grams, this 14-inch laptop features an 8th Gen Intel Core i7-8500Y (1.5 GHz base frequency / 4.2 GHz boost frequency) Amber Lake processor, up to 512GB of SSD storage, up to 16GB of LPDDR3 RAM, and a pop-up camera built directly into the keyboard. The base model with a 256GB SSD storage and 8GB RAM will be priced at $1,699. Read more for a hands-on video and additional information.