What happens in Las Vegas: CES tech-fest lifts off

Expect to see more Houdini-like demonstrations at the enormous tech-fest that swamps Las Vegas.

GoPro will release its Karma drone at CES in Las Vegas.

Driverless car technology, drones, virtual reality gaming, home automation and robotics will be front of stage when the world’s leading technology show cranks up this week.

Known as CES, the enormous tech-fest swamps Las Vegas. It’s where the tech giants not only show off products due to come to market, but also concepts of projects years away.

At the one end there are ­giants such as Samsung, Sony and LG. Innovations such as 4K TVs and OLED screens dominated previous CES events. But there are also products by often unheard-of start-ups at CES Unveiled. It and another event, ShowStoppers, are where much of the best small-scale innovation is showcased.

This year, it is likely cars will steal some innovation thunder, with driverless technology being developed at an accelerating rate. Sure, we cannot legally take our hands off the wheel yet, but newer technology will render holding the wheel almost a formality. On larger highways, at least.

It will go beyond parking assist and even lane-changing technology to gesture control of cars, such as the BMW Series 7, electric cars with a much larger range, such as the Chevy Bolt, and Toyotas that learn from each other to update their road maps, a little akin to what Google’s cars do. CES also will see the launch of the mysterious Faraday Future electric car company, slated as a Tesla rival.

That’s not to say the conventional players will be far behind. Intel, IBM and Samsung will ­deliver keynote addresses and Reed Hastings is billed to talk about his Netflix building a global TV network.

Samsung, LG and Sony are likely to highlight other innovations around TVs, such as making them a hub for lights, climate and other home-connected devices.

Samsung’s acquisition of SmartThings will see it roll out more home automation, and ­reveal more of its hub designed to control connected devices no matter their manufacturer. LG’s Smart Thinq includes voice recognition and a link-up with Nest’s climate-control system.

It is rumoured Sony will ­announce an ultra-high-definition Blu-ray player that screens 4K movies. Samsung announced such a device last year. Manufacturers are keen to get 4K movies into the marketplace.

We’ll see more Houdini-like demonstrations of bent TV screens, but much of it is already out and about. Some newer Las Vegas poker machines have bent screens, showcased two years ago, and glassless 3D displays.

The increasing accuracy of voice recognition makes it likely more of us will dictate rather than type messages in future. At CES, we’ll see more home-oriented ­robotic devices that res­pond to voice. I’ve been using Amazon’s Echo, which quickly switches lights on and off whenever I ask. Expect more at CES.

Expect, also, to see humanoid personal robots such as Jibo, ­Pepper and Intel’s Jimmy at CES and beyond as their natural language capabilities expand.

We already know 2016 will be a big year for virtual reality. Expect that, by year’s end, your children won’t be playing games while staring at a TV. They’ll be inside those games, courtesy of a VR headset. We’ve seen previews of Sony’s PlayStation VR headset and the Occulus-Facebook dev­el­­oped Rift; a headset created by HTC and PC games-developer Steam will feature early at CES.

Then there’s drones. The first drone capable of following you, AirDog, was demonstrated at CES a year ago, but nothing came to market. This year, we’ll see GoPro release its Karma with a mooted 360-degree camera that films you from the air.

AirDog estimates deliveries from next month. There’s also Lily and Hexo+. Drones will do lots of other clever things indoors and outside.

Chris Griffith is attending CES in Las Vegas courtesy of Sony and Acer