Do smart products enhance your life?
Turning your home into a “smart
home” may provide you with a little peace of mind because you have the
convenience of everything being automated and activated by the sound of your
voice or touch of a finger through an app.
You don’t have to be home to activate the amenities of your smart
house. You can be in another country and
turn off your lights, activate your security system and more from anywhere in
the world. CES 2017 unveiled the most innovative and
impressive smart home products that include everything from security systems,
monitoring systems, televisions, appliances, utilities, remotes, furniture,
solar panels, garage doors, water systems, air purifiers, home theaters, and
even mops and vacuums.
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| CES - Opobotics (Photo by Michael Boykin Sr.) |
These smart products are designed
to make your life easier. But what
happens if there is a natural disaster and it affects the internet? The results of this could be devastating if
your entire home is controlled by apps that use the internet to function
properly. Like what if your smart
security system shuts down during a power outage and you are locked outside
your home? Or what if you are locked
inside your home during another disaster?
Turning your house into a smart home may enhance your life for the time
being, but does this peace of mind come in handy when it’s time to sell your
home? They may reduce your monthly cost
but would it will most likely decrease the value of your home, considering your
taste may not be that of the buyer.
In a 2015 research by Coldwell
Banker Real Estate that polled 4,000 consumers on smart home technology
found that 27 percent of the people polled who do not have smart home
technology will have them by 2016.
According to the research, a smart home is determined by locks, alarms, thermostats,
fans, lighting and safety devices. The
most popular smart technology according to the research is entertainment
products.
To be a smart product, an
instrument has to communicate with other products ad service that monitors ad
tracks performance and give feedback. To
complete this process, there needs to be some sort of network or internet
connection. Considering that success
depends on who controls the customer relationship and pocketbook, retailers and
manufactures that don’t participate in smart products are vulnerable. But what if these products don’t hold up to
consumer satisfaction? What if the
company goes out of business and there are no more products in production that
you may need to replace? What would
society become if we were so dependent on smart products that we abandon
products that are operated manually?
Let’s imagine living in a world
where everything is automated or programmable.
If you could choose the ultimate smart product to make your life easier,
what would it be? There were a few
products at CES that caught my eye and had me mesmerized. One was the smart shower that blew water at
you from every direction imaginable and the other was a smart art piece that
had balls descending from the ceiling in different motions and rhythms. It’s not so appealing to me once I think
about the cost, including instillation versus if there was a malfunction and I
was locked in my shower. Not all
technology devices are equipped with manual safety latches much like those that
are installed in all garage door units and most automobile trunk.
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| CES - Smart Jewelry (Photo by Michael Boykin Sr.) |
Smart products control almost every
part of our lives. There are beauty
products that make taking care of your hair easier. The beauty product that stood out the most at
CES was the smart
hairbrush. The health benefits are
that it follows the hair elasticity and shows you how to avoid dry hair, it
measure cuticle damage to help ensure moisture retention, controls breakage by
controlling hair quality and resilience, and optimizes sebum distribution to
avoid tangles. The brushing experience
is promised to be euphoric. The user
gets insight on how to avoid damaging hair, understanding and improving
brushing habits, and gives you detail information on how stroke counts impact
hair quality.
"Beautiful, human-centric
design and an incredible user experience are the key pillars upon which our
products are built, and this year's launches at CES are no exception,"
said Cedric Hutchings, VP of Digital
Health at Nokia. "Withings Steel HR, Home Plus and the Kérastase Hair
Coach offer the same advanced sensors that deliver an unmatched level of
insight to the user to help them make better decisions - whether that's health
and fitness or home monitoring. Taking home two more CES Innovation Awards is
testament to the technology excellence we continue to bring to our
customers."
The most unusual smart products at
CES were in retail, because now people have access to smart clothes now. Growing up in the 70s I would have never
dreamed of a day when I could purchase a pair of smart
jeans that track my weight gain or loss among other things, and also smart
watches, glasses, socks, shoes, backpacks, gloves or even jewelry. The smart products at CES that raised
eyebrows were the products to enhance your pet’s life like collars, dishes, and
bowls and even doggy doors. Even when
you step into office building, developers are working on smart desks and chairs
that come with peddles that allow you to exercise and track your progress and
work. A new product that left a tattoo
in the brains of almost every attendee was the 3D printer that prints third
dimensional objects.
Other impressive smart products
were drones and Toyota ’s
Concept-I car. The drone has been out
for some time now but the sophistication of its functioning capabilities keep
growing as new technology is introduces.
Drones are defined as an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), an
unmanned aircraft system (UAS), and an aircraft without a human pilot
aboard. Drones were preferred for
military missions and doing dirty work that is usually too dangerous for
humans. Drones have become very popular
among civilians and now more civilians own drones than the military combines,
selling over a million by 2015.
The Toyota
Concept-I car is still in testing but that did not stop Toyota from unveiling
it at CES 2017 that looks like it’s in motion, even when it’s not. This is the first and only car in the world
that is designed to lean and keep getting smarter with the concept of
automobile UX. It gets to know your
needs and anticipate them for you building the bond between you and the car
beyond a natural relationship of trust and loyalty with a human. The interface, AI, guarantees that everyone
inside and outside the car can enjoy the ride.
AI even can tell if you are feeling sad and take over so you can arrive
to your destination safely. The
bio-metric sensors throughout the car can detect what you’re feeling and
executes your next action.
If products that operate manually
become extinct how would we be able to revert back to the simple life without
the use of smart products? In the event
of a natural disaster, it would be impossible for smart products to enhance
your life, so to rely on smart products to run every part of your lives and
living spaces would be very risky! To
get the maximum results from all your smart devices, these devices need to get
better at communicating on the same network.
This was a major issues addressed at CES 2017. The fact still remains, no matter how cool
you’re smart home, and car or product is there’s nothing worse than it being
easily hacked. How smart is that?
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