The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is always a big producer of Internet of Things news. Here’s a quick look at some of the things that came out of the CES event in January.
AT&T is teaming up with the American Center for Mobility to speed the development of self-driving vehicles to explore, create and safely test driverless technologies. AT&T will serve as the center’s exclusive cellular network provider through 2020.
In other AT&T connected car news, the company has joined forces with Delphi and Ford to enhance Vehicle-to-Anything communications. That involves a platform that helps vehicles talk with each other and with smart city infrastructure to improve safety and vehicle security, reduce traffic congestion, save money and protect the environment.
The initiative will monitor traffic conditions and notify drivers over the AT&T LTE network about events like airbag deployments, vehicle collisions, hazardous road conditions, bad weather and wrong-way driving.
AT&T is also working with American Honda Motor Co.
At CES the service provider announced it will be its bringing 4G LTE connectivity to Honda vehicles in the U.S. and Canada as part of an exclusive multi-year agreement. The AT&T 4G LTE network will connect HondaLink apps and services for vehicles, including navigation, streaming radio, diagnostics and remote lock/unlock.
Speaking of connected cars, CEVA has issued a license to ON Semiconductor for its imaging and vision platform. ON will use the platform for its automotive advanced driver assistance product lines with new image processing, embedded intelligence, and machine learning.
And speaking of AT&T, Gemalto is supplying the communications services providers with a remote subscription management solution.
That should help enable its customers to deploy new and highly secure IoT applications in the U.S. and globally. The Gemalto LinqUS On-Demand Connectivity subscription management solution and GSMA M2M 3.1 compliant Embedded SIMs aim to simplify the logistics of providing mobile services for enterprises requiring global mobile connectivity for IoT applications and provide improved life cycle support for their subscriptions.
“AT&T is an industry leader in the Internet of Things with more than 30 million connected devices on our network as of the third quarter of 2016. At the same time we are expanding our offering of connected services to include automotive telematics, infotainment, and smart safety solutions,” said Chris Penrose, President, Internet of Things Solutions at AT&T. “Gemalto’s On-Demand Connectivity and eSIM platform are ideal solutions to help AT&T sustain dynamic growth as we shift from mobile operator to mobility service provider.”
In other CES news, LG Electronics was at the event showing off its new lineup of intelligent robots. That includes a home robot that doubles as a smart home gateway and intelligent home notification center and advanced robots designed for use in airports and other public spaces.
The Hub Robot takes the concept of the smart home to the next level. By connecting to other smart appliances in the home, the Hub Robot uses Amazon Alexa’s voice recognition technology to complete household tasks such as turning on the air conditioner or changing a dryer cycle with simple verbal commands.
LG’s Airport Guide Robot, which will soon be in use at Seoul, Korea’s Incheon International Airport, is an intelligent information assistant for travelers. It can answer questions in Chinese, English, Japanese and Korean. With a scan of a passenger’s ticket, it also can provide detailed information about a flight’s boarding time, gate location, and the weather in the destination city. The airport robot offers directions to destinations inside the airport, along with estimated distances or walking times, and can even escort lost or late travelers to their gates, or any other airport location.
The LG Airport Cleaning Robot is a giant robot vacuum equipped with a large-capacity dust canister and multiple brushes and motors. It can clean tile and carpet, using smart sensors and multiple cameras to ensure good performance. Multiple light detection and ranging sensors, and sensitive bumpers, detect obstacles, and simultaneous localization and mapping technology keep the robot aware of its location. And LG’s Lawn Mowing Robot adapts the company’s long-standing vacuum technology to trim grass accurately, reliably and safely.
In other fun IoT news out of CES, RnD64 has unveiled early details of its Eggspert connected home application that is designed to integrate with smart kitchen assistant Hello Egg to fully automate users’ food-related routines.
With the help of Eggspert, Hello Egg plans weekly meals according to dietary preferences and adjusts to unpredicted events, like a visit from a vegetarian dinner guest. It supervises the pantry, organizes shopping lists, and even orders grocery deliveries. Hello Egg provides step-by-step voice-navigated video recipes and answers any cooking-related questions with the help of artificial intelligence and a 24/7 support team of cooking experts.
Edited by
Ken Briodagh
