By Douglas Weinstein
The Consumer Electronics Show (CES), presented by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), is once again taking over Las Vegas and rolling out a host of technology innovations across multiple sectors in various industries. If you find trade shows and conventions daunting, this one is a mind-blower. Spanning across the Las Vegas Convention Center, Venetian Exhibition Center, Mandalay Bay Convention Center and other properties up and down the Strip, there’s something for everyone who is involved in the world of technology.
As a judge of the prestigious CES Innovations Awards, I was privy to some amazing new innovations a few months ago and I’m excited to see the winners and the new products that will be on display during the show. And, for those products that were in my judging categories, I’m excited to meet the people who have come up with some inspiring breakthroughs and dive a little deeper into their mindset and how they were inspired to have such amazing visions of the future.
While Performance Homes aren’t represented per se at CES, there are smart home principles and underlying technologies I’m interested in seeing that support healthier interiors, energy resiliency, AI-enabled sensors, etc. Here are a few categories I’ll be focusing on:
Deep Sleep: I have a few meetings with groups from the Netherlands and the Atlanta-area Pavilions to discuss new deep sleep innovations powered by AI.
Clean Air: There are always clean air innovations each year and my schedule includes the French Pavilion and the new Element Air Purifier technology, as well as the Origin Air Purifier also on display at the Venetian.
Clean Water: From purification to conservation, water plays an integral role in any Performance Home. I’m particularly excited to see new landscape conservation technologies.
Energy: Perhaps the biggest chunk of my time is devoted to energy – there are simply so many new innovations that I’m excited to explore, I’ll probably devote an entire article post-show and recap what I see and who I talk to.
Kitchen and Bath: You might not think of CES as a kitchen and bath show, but there is a ton of AI-enabled technology being developed for our favorite living spaces. Smart cooking and smart hygiene are going to be front-and-center in 2025.
Smart Cities: I always tour the Smart City hall at the LVCC to get the big picture view about how we tie communities together. And then the vision behind harvesting that resiliency and energy and push it downstream into individual neighborhoods, and then down to each living space.
CES can be grueling and with attendance figures fully rebounded from the pandemic, it can get somewhat claustrophobic at times. But I still find interesting technologies to report on and I’ve always believed that you need to see and understand the big picture as to where our city planners are going in order to comprehend where those trends will impact every smart living space.
