CES day 1 round-up: Wearable tech and AI personalisation

From time-travel to voice-activated virtual assistants, the first day of CES did not disappoint.

Starting with innovations in fitness technology with a keynote from Dave Marver, Chief Executive of VICIS, the makers of ZERO1 football helmet ranked number one in NFL helmet performance tests, a panel of E-textiles experts then discussed the implications of a near-future where smart clothing enables us to charge our phones with energy harvested from our bodies.

Spending the day at Eureka Park, an entire floor of the Sands Hotel and Casino dedicated to start-ups from around the world, one trend became apparent: a future of customisable voice-activated assistants that use AI to personalise recommendations.

Wiidii is a start-up that calls itself the ‘World’s 1^st Hybrid Personal Assistant’, while Aaware is a platform that lets brands develop their own custom voice activations for in-store interaction.

PopCom is new software that collects customer demographic data and emotions, calculates conversion rates, and helps retailers gain detailed analytics from self-service retail, including vending machines and kiosks.

Meanwhile, Wintual can turn any screen into an interactive 3D display, so when people move in front of the screen, the angle of view adapts to the movement as if looking through a real window.

It was great fun to see a demo of Playground, a musical app that allows users to create music instantaneously by swiping and tapping on coloured objects on multi-touch interfaces.

The stand out of the day, though, was Timescope, a stand-alone ‘time-traveling’ unit that uses virtual or mixed reality to convey past and future landscapes of public spaces and landmarks.