CES in Las Vegas is arguably the best way to showcase new technology. Unfortunately, most of it never usually makes it into production though. However, some cool stuff was seen at this year’s event and we could be seeing some of this in the next few years. Many of the new things shown were about the US advancing the development of self-driving cars.
Here are our coolest picks from this year’s event:
Russian robot taxi
Just a few weeks before CES opened, the engineers over at Yandex bought a Toyota Prius from a dealer in the US and fitted it with the company’s self-driving system, which has been in commercial operation in Russia since last summer. This was total wild card because normally the development is announced at CES many weeks in advance.
Flying taxi
Many mobility developments involve the e-bikes and scooters in 2018. But this is a whole different level. This stood out to CESA was revealing of the flying taxi. It will be powered by a hybrid-electric system and can carry four passengers and a human pilot. The company Bell is a potential partner with Uber. However, the helicopter company is looking for further partnerships with cities and others that are all for the aspect of the air-taxi services. Whilst also Bell are exploring test sites.
Back-seat driving
There are people that get called back-seat drivers, well now this could become reality. The veoneers test car called LIV, can be driven anywhere in the car by simply using your smartphone.
You can steer the car, and accelerate with the phone. We did this from the backseat. It had a green dot on the screen which you can use to accelerates and decelerates the car. There is a circle on the screen that controls the steering. It was a lot like a video game. The company used CES to show all the features of the whole car system. One of them being facial recognition to identify the driver so their preferences were ready for them just to go. It could also park by itself. The driver can get out wherever the wanted and they could send the vehicle to find them a parking space
ZF gets moving
ZF Friedrichshafen’s self-driving, the electric shuttle will be already in the making this year. The joint venture of ZF and German electric vehicle maker, aim for a five-digit output figure in the next few years for the “e-go mover”. One of the first company with a contract is the French mobility provider called Transdev, they are wanting the vehicle ready for deployment in France and Germany as soon as 2020.