Coolest AI Tech at CES 2020

CES – The Global Stage for Innovation, is the world's centric place for all those who thrive towards technologies and innovations. It has served as the center stage for innovators and breakthrough technologies for more than 50 years. It is a global platform where next-generation innovations and implemented ideas are introduced to the marketplace. CES is owned and produced by the CTA (Consumer Technology Association).

CES 2020 took place in Las Vegas from 7th January – 10th January. Manufacturers along with their innovations from all over the globe were seen in the best gadget show. As machine learning and AI is taking over a lot of industrial sectors, it’s obviously the AI innovations that came out as eye candy for all. We’re listing down the best AI-based tech at CES 2020.

Samsung Bot Chef

Samsung’s near-future vision of personal care brings in an assistant named – Ballie. At CES, Samsung showed a yellow ball-like assistant Ballie that has built-in artificial intelligence, a mobile interface, and a camera to help take care of you and your family.

• Ballie fits well for pet owners as it can entertain them during the whole day and allow the owner to watch their pets remotely via the camera.
• The device is said to resemble the BB-8 droid character from the Star Wars franchise.
• Device Demo
  

"Of course, Samsung's vision is much more than just a cute robot. It's a vision of technology as an all-round personal life companion." said the Samsung CEO, Kim during the speech. "Intelligent robots will live by your side. They know you, support you, and take care of you so you can focus on what really matters."

Samsung Neon

Not just Bot Chef and Ballie, Samsung also introduced a humanoid artificial intelligence – Neon. It was one of the most unique projects in CES 2020.

• Neon is designed by STAR Labs (Samsung Technology and Advanced Research Labs).
• Neon is basically a human-AI avatar that looks exactly like a human and can respond to you with real expressions such as a smile or a raised eyebrow.
• It is a chat-bot built primarily to keep someone company and be there as a friend.

"They are virtual beings. They look like us. They behave like us. They are not exactly the smart AI assistants or bots," Pranav Mistry, CEO of Neon and head of STAR Labs, said – "We always want to make technology more human. The human aspect is at the core of Neon."

Toyota’s Smart City

Toyota has come up with a plan for “City of Future” and showcased this project which gave a whole new shape to IoT and AI implementation.

• The project is aimed at an average of 2000 people.
• This is primarily for testing smart technologies, autonomous vehicles, and robots.
• It will be made on the foothills of Japan's Mount Fuji, about 60 miles from Tokyo.

The project was announced at CES where Toyota's CEO Akio Toyoda talked of the new city as a "living laboratory" in a "real-life environment." He also added – "With people buildings and vehicles all connected and communicating with each other through data and sensors, we will be able to test AI technology, in both the virtual and the physical world, maximizing its potential. We want to turn artificial intelligence into intelligence amplified." Toyota official added on homes – “These smart homes will take advantage of full connectivity using sensor-based AI to do things automatically, like restocking your fridge, or taking out your trash — or even taking care of how healthy you are."

Intel AI-enhanced Tracking (3DAT)

Intel brought in the usage of artificial intelligence to drive tracking systems. The project was sports and athletes centric. They introduced how intelligence can be used to train athletes.

• It is a computer vision solution named 3D Athlete Tracking (3DAT).
• It uses AI to enhance the sight experience with near real-time visualizations.
• 3DAT uses high-scale mobile cameras to capture the exact form and motion of the athlete. Various algorithms are then applied to optimize with Intel DL Boost to analyze the movements of the athlete.

Shenoy added that 3DAT will enhance replays of the 100-meter and events at the coming Olympic Games Tokyo 2020.

Samsung’s 8K QLED TV

Samsung’s premium 8K QLED televisions offer cutting-edge AV1 codec and 7680×4320 resolution along with quantum dot enhancements. This is among the first TVs to have got AV1 decoding. It uses AI upscaling to convert video types such as High-Definition and 4K into 8K resolution. The idea of upscaling is basically maintaining the proper PPI (pixels per inch) ratio. During the conversion of HD to 4K, the processor of TV develops one HD pixel to take up four equivalent pixels on a higher resolution screen. Similarly, for the conversion of HD to 8K, it takes one HD pixel to take up to sixteen equivalent pixels on a higher resolution screen.

For compressing videos over a limited internet, websites must fill the stream with compression artifacts. This uses an AI algorithm to up sample 4K and HD content to stream into 8K. Samsung is working with YouTube to enable '8K' AI streaming in the coming months.

Mathematical Dive-in

Digitally processing real-time images require filling in the missing pixels with the use of mathematical functions. These TV processors are taught to interpolate the missing values of colors. This process is traditionally accomplished using kernels (it’s a function that assigns color priority based on pixel’s neighbors).

The most preferred kernel used in TVs is NN kernel (Nearest Neighbor). The nearest neighbor is a supervised AI and ML concept, which simply tells which pixel is nearest to the missing color’s pixel and copies the same data (color) to the missing value. It uses mathematical formulas which statistically are most likely to produce accurate visuals on TV screen. There are other variants of Super Resolution Algorithms with recent models that use Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs). We have an article on SR-GANs that you can read right over HERE.

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References

1. https://www.techradar.com/in/news/techradars-ces-2020-awards-the-best-tech-at-the-worlds-biggest-gadget-show
2. https://www.ces.tech/Topics/Robotics-Machine-Intelligence/Artificial-Intelligence.aspx
3. https://www.cnet.com/news/samsung-ballie-ai-you-may-actually-care-about/
4. https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/07/tech/samsung-ballie-ces-2020/index.html
5. https://www.dezeen.com/2020/01/08/samsung-ballie-robot-ces-2020/
6. https://www.techrepublic.com/article/ces-2020-neon-is-an-artificial-human-that-samsung-wants-to-be-your-friend/
7. https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/ces-toyota-big-smart-city/index.html
8. https://newsroom.intel.com/news-releases/intel-ces-2020/#gs.r7diuy
9. https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/intel-ces-2020-keynote-tiger-lake-dg1-ai/
10. https://news.samsung.com/global/rave-reviews-for-samsung-qled-8k-tv