Mercedes presented a luxury car full of sensors at CES.
Automotive sensor technology has registered a significant leap towards the cars of the future, meanwhile for the most prestigious of them, a car that will be part driver, part hospitality lounge and part entertainment hall.
At the Consumer Electronics Show CES held in early January in Las Vegas, Mercedes presented the first head-turning vehicle technology known as the F 015. Although it is slated to be released around 2030, the F 015 attracted many visitors to the show, thanks to its exterior shape and the experience of the interior of the vehicle and being embedded in many consumer electronics technologies.
The concept of the vehicle places the passenger's social experience at the top of the agenda. Thanks to the autonomous driving, the F 015 allows passengers to sit in lounge chairs face to face, when the person sitting in the place where the driver apparently sits turns his back to the road, if he wishes.
Autonomy - the self-driving of the vehicle - is made possible thanks to external sensors that look forward, backward and to the sides. A total of six radar sensors are installed in the vehicle - long-range radars in the front and rear, and short-range radars in each of the corners of the vehicle. A stereoscopic camera also examines the road ahead and measures the distance to objects that may stand in the car's path.
Unlike the autonomous vehicles seen in the DARPA Grand Challenge competitions, the F 015 does not have Lidar sensors (light + radar) on its roof. Engineers at Mercedes concluded that the cost of the lidar might have been too high and it looked ugly.
Dr. Ralph Hartwich, director of the autonomous car division at Mercedes says that the lidar sensors are good but also pose some challenges. Our designers won't allow us to install them on a nice car." However, even without lidar, Mercedes' computer vision technology has proven its capabilities in the previous generations of the company's autonomous cars, including the autonomous S-Class vehicles that are used throughout Germany, sometimes even in traffic jams.
Bush's smart home
"Disrupt or be disrupted" and "embrace the Internet of Things or die" may be the main theme at CES, analysts say.
In any case, this leaping graph is suitable for companies that are on the front line of the IOT, such as manufacturers of white goods such as Bosch.
Bosch board member Werner Stoth says that Bosch is putting all the pieces of the puzzle together to disrupt the smart, connected, green and secure home sensor, manufacturing and service industries. "Just like smart phones have changed the way we communicate and do business."
Marvel's home cloud
The Marvel company came to the CES exhibition to announce a home server/home network/gateway to the Internet of Things called the "Smart Home Cloud Center".
The unit consisting of several parts and integration between them is small enough that it can be held with one hand. It allows consumers to manage wired and wireless network connectivity, store home media, and centralize control over smart home devices (eg a smart lighting system) as well as access the digital entertainment systems.
Wiley Dye, president and founder of Marvel called it "a sensible IOT solution for homes". The system will organize the many evenings created as a result of the "religious wars" between the various standards in the market. “We seek to bring IOT to the masses through our smart translator.”
Intel announced a computer the size of a button
Intel CEO Brian Krzanich presented a tiny computer the size of a shirt button at the CES conference. The new processor, which includes Bluetooth and Wi-Fi processing and communication capabilities, will be used to create wearable computing devices smaller than before.
This is a new system on a chip called Curie. The system is based on the Quark processor that Intel introduced about six months ago and the company is designating it for integration into tiny wearable products, especially those that require extremely long battery times. This refers, among other things, to rings, bracelets and buttons for clothes.
Curie also includes a Bluetooth connection device, a series of sensors, a rechargeable battery, 80 kilobytes of SRAM memory and 384 kilobytes of flash-based storage memory. According to Intel, it would be available for marketing already in the second half of the year.
Intel has signed a cooperation agreement with the fashion brand Oakley, with the aim of launching later this year smart glasses that will improve the performance achieved by users during sports activities.
All these data were collected from reports of reporters who were at CES and which were published around the web. A follow-up article - soon.
3 תגובות
Naturally, technology takes a long time to mature, but when it does - it replaces the existing technology with surprising speed. For decades it seemed as if digital photography technology had no chance against film photography. Back in 2000 digital photography was inferior to elephants, but in 2005 no one bought elephant cameras anymore. And today? Let's see you go out with such an analog pocket camera and ask someone to take a picture of you against the background of the fountain of a lake...
A little patience and before you know it "Johnny Cub" will take you from place to place - just dare to tell the nice robot that you don't pay...
Delayed message. Why ?
Lots of promises and little action.
I have been waiting for several years for all the cheap tablets to be equipped with writing pens on the screen (and for the writing pens to be really comfortable). In the meantime, what is available is too expensive, or is not developed at all. This is despite the fact that such development is not too complicated.
But grandiose promises of the "bazooka bubblegum" type are endless. Bazooka Gum: Within 20 years you will visit the moon (a promise from 40 or more years ago).