The IFA fair in Berlin is one of the world’s largest electronics fairs. Almost 2,000 exhibitors come here, spread over 159,000 square meters of exhibition floor, with everything you can think of with electronic products. The fair is a ball of miracles one can see into, to see what is coming in the near or distant future .
What does the future really look like for you and your electronic products?
The machines take over
First, the future will be smart. This means that the product – whether it is a robot vacuum cleaner or maybe a heat pump – will be connected and can be controlled via the network. Very many products already have this feature – but now the producers are aiming even higher: the products will learn new tricks.
In short, the producers are now chasing the holy grail – artificial intelligence. It’s not quite as scary as it sounds. Vacuum cleaners will not take over the world for a while.
But on the other hand, it will be able to learn where you are most often crumpled (under the chair’s chair, perhaps?), Or when it is best that it runs its round. The floor fan will learn to remember your movement patterns so that it can have the best spot on the sofa perfectly heated until you get home. And already, LG has washing machines that can automatically detect what it is washing and adapt programs to it.
Genuine knowledge
The goal is for the products to learn about you, not the other way around. You can compare it to toddlers who discover new contexts and learn something new every day. The products will also do this.
Therefore, in the future, you will not need to read a single instruction manual. It will just turn on the product, and it will discover for yourself what you want it to do. This will also improve the service life of the products.
When you buy an electronic product today, the vast majority of products will be at their “freshest” and most updated at the time of purchase. Then they will gradually become out of fashion. While knowledge-driven products only get better over time.
Task of designing such products is so great that it cannot be done by a company. Therefore, they have opened up so that other manufacturers can also use the Web OS, the operating system LG has for the smart products. It will provide more opportunities for developing the smart product universe, but it will also make it more user-friendly, making it easier to find products that work well together.
Time for robots
It’s not just your appliances that LG wants to make smart. They also showed prototypes on a whole series of robots to make life easier, both privately and for companies. CLOi is the concept that offers everything from signage robots and laundry robots, to action robots and robots that carry your luggage. All with friendly digital faces.
The CLO series most interesting addition is definitely SuitBOT. This is a robot you put on, so you get extra strength and stability in the lower body. Each step is controlled by a computer that has the ability to learn and recognize movement patterns.
SuiBOT will be able to revolutionize the everyday life of warehouse workers who work in places where forklifts are not suitable. It not only reduces load weight but also decreases the risk of accidents. In addition, there is a high probability that such a technology will provide a whole new life for people who for various reasons do not have complete mobility in the lower body, such as, for example, stroke patients.
So we move away from smart products as practical, perhaps even a little strange, to the fact that in the years to come smart products will improve everyday life to a great many. And after all, that’s exactly what technology is all about. To make everyday life easier and better.