The Best OF CES - Robotics, Green Tech, and Zink

The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, better known as CES, was overwhelming. Over 140,000 attendees, 2,700 exhibitors, and over 20,000 products on display. It was geek heaven!

There were several highlights for me. First was the Bill Gates keynote speech and hilarious video "Bill Gates Last Day at Microsoft". The Comcast keynote and cameo appearance by "The Flight of the Conchords" was also fun.

Three Big Things jumped out for me; Robotics, Car Technology, Inkless printing from Zink.

Robotics were a big focus at CES this year. There were lots of cool gadgets but the ones that caught my attention were from Ologic, a small robotics design company. Ologic, and their technology partners NPC Robotics, NeuroSky, and TankChair, introduced some of the most innovative products I have seen in a long time.

Ologic demonstrated several robots that could balance on two wheels (similar to the Segway) and maneuver around obstacles by using cameras as eyes. They also showed a cool  reconnaissance robot with a telescopic arm and camera (pictured right) that could elevate straight up to 25 feet in the air. The whole robot was only about 12 inches tall, but the telescopic arm magically appears out of nowhere and goes 25 feet straight up. It works like a carpenters tape measure...the metal just rolls in and out from a coil hidden inside the robot. It is strong and solid because it uses three coils to form a triangular shaped arm. The three coils connect by folding together like a zipper on your jacket. Amazing!

  TankChair teamed with Ologic to build some amazing wheelchairs. One of them has cool racing wheels (pictured left) and can reach speeds of 30MPH. My guess is that they will need to get DOT safety testing certification before this wheelchair will be made available to the public. The other wheelchair (pictured below) was equipped with a tank track system to allow it to go through mud, sand, up hills, over rocks...you name it. Imagine the freedom of movement this brings to wheelchair bound people. It gives me goose-bumps just thinking about it. Ted Larson and Bob Allen are the brains behind Ologic. Smart guys having a lot of fun doing what they love to do...invent. Brad Soden is the creative force behind TankChair. Rich Reed from NPC Robotics provides the "ribbon technology" for the robotic arm, and Stanley Yang from NeuroSky provides the motion sensor technology for the amazing two wheel balancing robots. It was a pleasure meeting all of you.

GreenTech and In-Vehicle Technology - General Motors chairman Rick Wagoner gave a great keynote speech and unveiled several new "green-tech" multi fuel cars. Wagoner emphasized that GM cars today have more powerful computers on board than were generally available 15 years ago. The car business is really about consumer electronics and technology with GPS systems, ONstar security systems, amazing sound systems, and now hydrogen fuel cell technology. GM showed the Chevrolet Volt, a hybrid electric concept car that could be released in 2010.

The GM Volt features a 1.0 liter, 3-cylinder gasoline engine which is solely used to recharge the onboard lithium-ion battery pack. GM says that the Volt can travel for up to 40 miles on battery power alone. After the 40 miles, a gasoline engine kicks back in again to recharge the battery pack.

The most amazing new car concept was the Cadillac Provoq, a hydrogen fuel cell car, coupled with Lithium-Ion batteries, unveiled for the first time at CES. The Provoq can travel 300 miles with a full load of hydrogen, and another 20 miles on battery power alone. Wagoner said the Provoq will be able to go 60 MPH in just 8.5 seconds and reach a top speed of 100 MPH. What is driving all this new technology? Wagoner said, "The auto industry can no longer depend entirely on oil... It is critical as both a business necessity and as an obligation to society to develop alternative energy."

Zink - The zero ink, environmentally friendly printer. I first wrote about Zink more than two years ago. I predicted that Zink would disrupt the printer industry and be The Next Big Thing in printing. Since then Zink had a successful unveiling at DEMO 2007 and was a huge hit at CES 2008. (Picture credit SF Chronicle) See the full San Francisco Chronicle story here. Clayton Christensen, The Harvard professor who wrote "The Innovators Dilemma" is a big fan of Zink and has declared that Zink will disrupt the printing business. The San Jose Mercury News says "look out HP..." I started my technology career 25 years ago in the printer business. I lived through the dot matrix, ink jet, and laser technology curves. Zink thermal transfer is the next big printer technology curve and it is starting to hit in 2008. Zink is a company to watch.

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