Digital interactivity has top billing at the Las Vegas event. But how many people really want a toothbrush that films the inside of their mouth as they clean?

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

If this year’s CES continues to predict future tech trends, then we can soon expect to have emotional relationships with our cars, virtual reality devices so realistic you need a sick bag, and products so pricey most people won’t be able to afford them.

One of the main themes this year at the premier electronics convention, which is held annually in Vegas, is that in the future everything will have a relationship with everything.

Cars with people. Beds with thermostats. Washing machines with smarthome devices like Amazon Echo.

The Faraday Future FF 91, a family-sized electric vehicle with the acceleration of a Formula 1 car and a “brain” that will apparently be capable of learning from its driver, was unveiled at a media event on Tuesday, before Toyota and Honda took the concept of an intelligent car even further.



Toyota showed off its “Concept-i” concept car, which it described as: “More than a machine. It will become our friend”.

The Concept-i has an advanced artificial intelligence system called “Yui”. Yui is like a faithful dog, or a needy boyfriend.

“Yui learns from us, grows from us, builds a relationship that’s meaningful and emotional,” Bob Carter, Toyota’s senior vice-president of automotive operations, explained at the press conference.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The new Honda NeuV concept vehicle. Photograph: David Mcnew/AFP/Getty Images

Yui can tell when the driver is happy or sad – Carter never really explained how – and adjust the mood inside the car accordingly. It can even limit driving speed if its driver is feeling particularly melancholy.

Honda showed that it is chasing the same relationship goals by unveiling its NeuV car on Thursday. In the future Honda vehicles will “enable machines to artificially generate their own emotions”, the company said.

Executives said the race to develop emotional vehicles was important because in the future – probably a long time in the future – all cars will drive themselves. What customers will seek then, car companies believe, is which car they can have the best relationship with.

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The idea that people want to have a relationship with electronic devices is prevalent at CES this year.

There was the launch of the Oculus Rift VR headsets, for one. Intel believed that people might have such a violent correspondence with the device that they handed out sick bags to those trying the headset.

But most of the digital relationships are more sedate. The Sleep Number 360 bed reacts to a person’s sleeping position during the night, and claims to be able to prevent snoring. The LG Hub Robot – an Amazon Echo competitor – can interact with a fridge, washing machine, vacuum cleaner and oven. Interactivity is everywhere.



There are already countless electronic devices that connect and report data to smartphones – activity trackers being the most obvious example – but what is particularly interesting about this year’s CES is the way companies are looking to exploit this idea for financial gain.

It felt as though some product developers at the conference had simply wandered around their houses deciding on impulse to implant Wi-Fi into objects.

Take the Onvi Prophix toothbrush. It has a camera that streams live video to a smartphone app, enabling the user to see inside their mouth as they are brushing.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Brandon Yamawaki demonstrates the Jyro Roll at CES 2017. Photograph: Ethan Miller/Getty Images

“This allows them to see what’s going on and empowers them,” said Craig Kohler, the inventor of the Prophix.

“You wouldn’t shave in the dark,” he added, which seemed to make sense in an it’s-hard-to-argue-against-that kind of way.

The video toothbrush comes with four different heads, Kohler said. He also said that “people with crooked teeth” – this prompted this British reporter to clamp his mouth shut – can buy special crooked-teeth brush heads.

The Prophix is due to go on sale in the fall, priced at $399 (£322), which is a lot of money for a toothbrush.

In a similar vein, CES saw the launch of the “world’s first smart hairbrush”. The “Kérastase hair coach powered by Withings” has a microphone that listens as you brush your hair, “providing insights into manageability, frizziness, dryness, split-ends and breakage”. It goes on sale in mid-2017 and will cost $200.

In fact, another theme of CES might well be the cost of the products.

That reactive bed is likely to cost around $7,000. To get LG’s Hub Robot to engage with your home appliances you would have to purchase those LG appliances, costing thousands of dollars. The Faraday Future is likely to cost at least $130,000.

It doesn’t stop there. Jyro, a one-wheeled gyroscopic skateboard that a Guardian reporter fell off, will retail at $1,299. Infinity – “the world’s most advanced massage chair” – costs $7,744.

It was hard to avoid the thought that given the massive income inequality in the US – which the tech industry has at least in part contributed to – most of these products will be well beyond the reach of most.

On the bright side, many of the products at CES don’t really seem worth having anyway.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The PowerRay on Powervision booth during CES. The underwater drone will detect and take footage of fish, and can be controlled by VR goggles. Photograph: John Locher/AP

The PowerVision PowerRay – an underwater drone which on Thursday was being displayed by a woman dressed as a mermaid – is one of those. It’s a little remote control submarine that a fisherman can hang bait on and then, using a live video feed that streams to a smart device, quietly direct the bait towards a shoal of fish.

The PowerRay costs $2,000, meaning that one would not only have to be extremely cynical, but also extremely rich to buy it.

Indeed at times CES, for all its digital bluster, felt like a 19th-century marketplace, with people hawking dubious products at scandalous prices from their hastily assembled stalls.

A black rubber wrist band called “Proof”, for example, had attracted quite a crowd on Thursday afternoon. The band was being displayed next to an empty wine bottle.

“It measures blood alcohol level through your skin,” said Rashad Hamid, a chemical engineer at Milo Sensors, the company which has developed Proof.

The Guardian asked Hamid how accurate Proof was.

“We’re not exactly sure,” he said. “We’re trying to get the calibration correct.”

Hamid was also uncertain as to when Proof would launch – but he said it would cost around $150. Whether the public will be buying any of it remains to be seen.