one of the interesting products I saw at CES this year was this Japanese therapy "toy". The concept on paper isn't breakthrough, but the execution of the movement and the overall experience with the product was great.
The robot was 12 years in the making at National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, where robots are widely used as aides and pets. Its inventor, Takanori Shibata, thought Paro would be useful in engaging children in pediatric wards and alleviating the behavioral disturbances of adults with dementia.
JESS3 attended CES this year as guests of the Consumer Electronics Association, and also on duty for our client Intel. We launched social.cesweb.org for CEA, and we helped Intel with the social media portion of their amazing interactive Cube display, which was the most popular booth at CES this year.
On a note of trends at CES this year, 3d tv was the big thing. I am not sold on 3d tv, it requires you to wear the glasses (and they had lots to choose from) and it makes me a bit dizzy. In general thin televisions with social media widgets on screen seemed to be popular with the big guys. I find the smaller companies is where you are going to find the more interesting products, I rode a skateboard that was powered by a hand remote, and it went really fast. I saw a Japanese therapy toy called Paro (link jess3blog) the thing costs 6k, but its really nicely done. I was inspired by that product because I had seen the technology before but not the intended use. We have all seen animatronics at theme parks, and museums, but this product does animatronics in a way that I had not seen.
