Author: Jason Fitzpatrick / Source: How-To Geek
It’s a Herculean effort to see everything at CES. It’s an equal challenge to pick a favorite thing among the fantastic (and not so fantastic) things on the floor, but here are our personal favorites from CES 2019.
I sat down with each of our editors and writers at CES and—after our days in press briefings, meetings, and walking the infinite-feeling convention floors—asked them what their favorite CES find was with an emphasis on something that truly caught their eye.
Below, paired with who we are and what we do, you’ll find what we loved.Jason Fitzpatrick, Review Geek Editor: Doppel
You’re not really experiencing CES unless you’re running into everyone and their brother (and their sister and cousins too) with some sort of device that claims to calm you, soothe you, help you sleep. When I saw the Doppel folks and the information at their booth about how Doppel was a device designed to be worn on your wrist to both calm and energize you, well let me tell you: I only stuck out my wrist to try it out because I’m an easy going sort of guy that’s willing to try something new and not because I expected anything at all out of the experience.
Georgina, who also appeared to be the easygoing sort, strapped the Doppel on the inside of my wrist while explaining the entire concept: the tiny weighted motor inside flutters like a heartbeat with a familiar lub-dub beat and that humans just naturally respond to the rhythm. You can tune and customize the Doppel via a companion mobile app and it just happened to be that the Doppel I tried was about as finely tuned to my heartbeat at that moment as you could ask for. The effect was incredible.
When I stuck my wrist out to try it out I had a “maybe my wife will like this” take on it, but within a few moments, I was smiling at how soothing and pleasant the experience was. Prior to putting it on I felt like it probably wouldn’t have much effect (and might even be annoying) and now I’m planning on ordering one—I certainly didn’t want to give the demo model back. Of all the devices I came across in this category, the Doppel had the most immediate and impressive effect.
The Doppel is available now for $219, direct from the company.
Chris Hoffman, Features Editor: Luka, Picture Book Reading Robot
Luka is a little owl shaped robot that reads picture books to your kids. Literally, it reads the book—you place a picture book in front of Luka and it reads the title. You turn the page and it starts reading the words on the open pages. Turn to any page in the book and Luka immediately recognizes the page you’re on and starts reading it. You don’t have to purchase special books for this—it works with the books you already have. Kids can read picture books on their own with a little owl robot, even when you’re busy.
The tech behind this is surprisingly clever. Ling Technology Inc, the company behind Luka, scans tens of thousands of picture books and extracts the text—around 60,000 books are already in their database. When you open to a page in a picture book, Luka sees the page with its camera, quickly recognizes the page, and starts reading the words. That makes it fast and ensures it’s accurate as the device doesn’t have to process the text on the fly with local hardware.
Luka comes with a built-in speaker and battery. It even responds to various…
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