Magazine: New IT solutions showcased at the beginning of the year

Las Vegas was the host of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January 2015 and featured many solutions from the field Cisco defined as ‘The Internet of Things’. One of the biggest attractions was Belty, a smart belt invented by Emiota, which is self-adjusting by tracking the user’s waistline. Toothbrushes aren’t what they used to be either: they now feature 3D sensors, acceleration sensors, rotation sensors and magnetic sensors. They can even send real-time data to our smartphone, which we can share with our dentist. An app called Pirates makes teeth brushing more fun for kids. Electric toothbrush Kolibree rewards good brushing habits and costs USD 200. Activité Pop is a (semi-) smartwatch made by French company Whithing which made its debut at CES. Its battery lasts for 8 months with just one charging, it is waterproof until 50 metres and has a sharp design, too. However, it doesn’t collect much data. We can clip the camera called Narrative on out T-shirt and it can take a photo every 30 seconds. It stores the photos in its memory and uses Wi-Fi connection to send them to our phone. Do you think babies’ life is more technology-free than adults’? You are wrong: there is a smart device available for everything. For instance there are baby bottles equipped with sensors. Smart baby bottles monitor how much milk did the baby drink and there is even a smartphone app which shows how to hold the bottle properly, so that the baby doesn’t swallow too much air. If a babysitter feeds the baby, the app sends feeding data to our smartphone. We can already buy a smart baby bottle for USD 100. At the Consumer Electronics Show industrial-use solutions were also featured. One of the smart glasses, manufactured by Atheer Labs, is equipped with sensors and is capable of displaying important information overlaid onto the real world. For instance it can be very useful to doctors examining patients as they can see the patient history at once, or to those working in a warehouse as it is enough to take a glance at the shelves to see how many products are there. It is needless to say that there were also cars showcased at CES. If we can believe what we saw there, in about five years time self-driving cars will appear on the roads. Nvidia launched the computing equivalent of self-driving cars at CES, potentially the technology that could guide autonomous cars to the mass market. It is basically a very powerful graphic card that is capable of rapidly recognising and processing the camera images transmitted by the car. LG is working on a solution that would connect all of our portable devices with the car. Hyundai Genesis can be opened and closed using a smart key. BMW developed a smartwatch-controlled self-parking car.