It’s the post-smartphone era. Sensors and antennas are dirt cheap and we have the technology to put them in the smallest imaginable objects. Combine these with the fact that over two billion people have super computers in their pockets and billions more are joining them every day, and we have the perfect recipe for the most connected world in which everything gets smart. Everything. Toothbrushes, shoes, thermometers, even pregnancy tests talk to our phones. And when everything gets smart and connected, we have a world in which our pets have to play games to get food. A world in which our personal drones follow us. Our toilets are smart enough to track our bowel movement patterns. Twenty years from now, when we look back, we will fondly remember 2016 as the year when our jackets started giving us massages and our refrigerators started ordering our groceries for us. So get ready for the madness with this list of gadgets that you can grab off the shelves in the new year.
Personal Mobility
EHang184 Octocopter
The cut-throat consumer electronics market and industry in Shenzen, China, is always trying to come up with the next big thing. So after drones proved popular for one year, the Chinese went ahead and took the next logical step. A drone that is autonomous. Oh! And it can carry people. They are calling it the EHang184 Octocopter. The idea is simple. You get into the cockpit provided where you will have access to a tablet computer. You point out on a map where you want to go and the EHang184 will supposedly fly you all by itself covering a distance of up to 10 miles on a single charge. It is also supposedly very safe, as the octocopter is programmed to land at the first sign of trouble. What can be safer than flying in a Chinese drone that flies by itself and costs around $2,000,000? Right?
Sensorwake
Waking up to the sounds of your alarm clock is so old-fashioned. This year, you can let your favourite smell wake you up. Whether it is the smell of fresh coffee or of cut grass that wakes you up, the people at Sensorwake have got you covered. Sensorwake is described as the world’s first ‘Olfactory alarm clock’. This sleek French alarm clock comes with its own scent capsules, which range from chocolate, espresso and croissants to peppermint, seaside and even lush jungle. And if at all a cold or nose-related emergency makes you incapable of waking up to smell, you can go back to waking with sound like barbarians.
Cota Transmitter
2015 was deceptive. The so-called hoverboards don’t hover in the air. The so-called wireless chargers are anything but wireless. They come with small charging pads on which our phones need to be placed to get charged. This year that could finally change with the Cota Transmitter. Just like a WiFi transmitter lets devices in a room connect wirelessly to the Internet, the Cota Transmitter wirelessly charges any device that is within a 30-foot radius. To be able to charge using this transmitter, a phone or an electric toothbrush needs to have a custom-made chip embedded in it. Until those chips get embedded, Cota will also be selling a custom-made case for phones, so all you need to do to charge your phone is enter the room in which the transmitter is placed.
Segway Ninebot Mini Pro
2015 was the year of cheap hoverboard. Even if we forgive it for the crime of calling it a ‘hover’ board when it does not hover in the air, hoverboards are horrible. They come out of cheap Chinese factories, which means they are prone to blowing up. They are not well-designed, which makes balancing on them and trying to actually travel on them a cumbersome task. Segway, the maker of the original personal mobility vehicle, has brought out a new vehicle to show the kids how it is done. The Ninebot Mini Pro does away with the balance problem by providing the riders with a handle, using which you can control the direction. Instead of normal tyres, you get big 10.5-inch vacuum tyres so that you get a smooth ride over even the bumpiest pavement. With capability to handle 15-degree inclines, this waterproof and dustproof scooter that goes 30 kilometres on a single charge and syncs with your smartphone does not come cheap at $1,500 when it ships later this year.
Samsung Family Hub Refrigerator
Samsung will be bringing to market its Family Hub refrigerator, this year. The main thing you will notice about this chiller is the massive 21.5-inch Tizen operating system running touchscreen on its door. Using the screen you can do everything that you’d normally do on your Tizen phone, like checking mails, keeping up with the weather, ordering groceries, leaving notes for family members and even streaming a movie on Netflix. But this screen is not the most important part of the refrigerator. That is the collection of cameras inside the appliance that makes photos every time you close the door and sends them to your Android or iOS device so that you can check, from anywhere in the world, how much milk you’re left with.
CleverPet
We have the Xbox, the PlayStation, even the Apple TV. But what about our lovely dogs? Should they go without any modern entertainment forever? Should they still be playing fetch? In 2016? Not to worry. The world’s first games console for dogs is here and it is called CleverPet. This cute little feeding bowl has apparently been designed by PhDs in computational neuroscience and is designed to ‘fulfil your dog’s cognitive needs’. The bowl has three touch pads that light up with dog-friendly colours while emitting dog-friendly sounds, so with a number of in-built games like ‘catch the squirrel’ and ‘pattern play’, the dogs can be entertained, can be taught simple words and best of all, can be fed while doing all of it. And with a corresponding iPhone and Android app, you can even monitor your dog’s progress from anywhere in the world.
Withings Go
Fitness trackers have a problem. Either they come with a bright screen like the Apple Watch which means they need to be charged daily. Or they come without a screen at all like the Mi band, which solves the charging problem but there is no way you can track your workout in real time without pulling out your phone. Withings, the French fitness accessories company that makes beautiful trackers, thinks it solved the problem, by putting an e-ink display on its latest fitness tracker, the Go. Keeping up with Withings reputation, the Go will come in some snazzy colours and can be either worn like a watch or can just be clipped on. Obviously it will track all your activity, sync it with an iPhone app and is even clever enough to know when you go swimming so it can start tracking that activity. And the best part: the battery easily lasts a whopping eight months.
Virtual Reality
Oculus Rift
Virtual Reality headsets transport you to different places and experiences without ever having to get out of your couch if you can keep down your lunch and fight motion sickness that is. Ten years from now when virtual reality headsets are everywhere and we are climbing the Egyptian pyramids while sitting in our living room, we will probably remember 2016 as the year when it all started. Yes, the virtual reality concepts, the technology and even some devices have been around for a few years but this year we will see the launch of one of the most anticipated VR headsets. Come this June, Oculus will be shipping its first consumer model of the Oculus Rift and if reviews are to be believed, it is going to be amazing. But one thing is it is not going to be cheap. For the Rift pack, which includes a headset, sensor, remote, cables and an XBox controller, you will be paying $599 and will also need a powerful Windows PC to run your games off it.
Immersit
It is July. The new Star Wars film is available on iTunes. You managed to get it onto your VR headset. You are waiting for your mind to be blown, but all that is being blown is the star ships that the Empire is turning into rubble around you. What is missing is a truly 4D, immersive experience. But hey, this is 2016 and you can get whatever you want. Like Immersit. When you buy it, you get some smart stilts for your sofa. It does not matter what sofa you have, you can place those stilts underneath it and it will take over. And when Immersit starts moving during the film according to the scene, it won’t be just Han Solo that is being thrown around. To be used with both movies and video games and VR headsets, Immersit shows that non-moving sofas are so 2015.
Wearables
Bragi Wireless Earbuds
Ever since the movie Her came out with Joaquin Phoenix roaming around a futuristic Los Angeles while murmuring sweet nothings to his AI assistant inside his wireless earbuds, the clamour for wireless earbuds have only grew louder. While there have been attempts before, this year we may have the answer finally with the Bragi earbuds. These beautiful earbuds come in black and white, have touch control. They come with different-sized sleeves so that they fit any ear with ease. They are also clever enough to carry an in-built, independent music player with 4GB of storage, have sensors in them to act as fitness trackers, and are a perfect smartphone companion. While they can be controlled using a companion app, one of the best features is the three-hour battery usage and the companion recharge case that gives you five recharges on the go. If they prove popular enough and if companies like Apple jump into the game, it won’t be long before we will all be going around talking to Siri in our ear without having to bother with tangling wires.
Digitsole Smartshoe
We have a smart everything. Why not a smart shoe seems to be the guiding reason behind the people at Digitsole, which wants to bring the world’s first smart shoe to the market this year. And the company is promising the full works for the shoe. Automatic tightening, because shoe laces are so 18th century, a pedometer, a calorie tracker, shock absorption and best of all a sole that can warm your feet. And obviously like any smart shoe worth its sole, this shoe will sync with an iPhone or Android app, so you can control the temperature of the sole among other things. And if the $400 shoe is too much for your taste, Digitsole will also sell you just the sole which should keep your feet warm.
AiraWear
Now that humanity went ahead and made shoes smart, the next logical step surely is making jackets smart. So we have Airawear which gives you massages on the go. No, it is not a joke. The makers behind AiraWear are promising point pressure massage, healthy posture reinforcement, body compression, and biodata feedback, making it a very smart jacket. And needless to say, it comes with its own Android and iPhone apps so you can control your massages and check your biodata. It seems there is nothing that 2016 can’t make smart.
Daqri Smart Helmet
Virtual Reality transports you to new worlds. Augmented Reality (AR) overlays the virtual world over the world around you. Before AR can come to our living rooms, it is proving popular for industrial usage and this year Daqri’s Smart Helmet seems to be one of the smartest AR headsets around. The simple helmet has a futuristic looking visor and has enough processing power to overlay labels, illuminate paths and highlight machine paths on the environment around you. When it becomes available later this year and proves popular for industrial usage, it won’t be long before we will be wearing these sleek helmets on our heads to overlay Netflix videos onto our living room walls.
Kids
Lego Classroom Robotics Kit
It is 2016, and we were all supposed to have our own personal robots at home but it did not pan out like that. But at the least our kids can play with robots at school and prepare to become robot-building scientists in the future so they can finally give us a robot that can iron and fold clothes. The Lego robotics kit comes with 280 blocks that are packed with all kinds of modern antennas and sensors like Bluetooth, motion sensors and tilt sensors. Using corresponding apps on their iPads, Android phones, Macs and PCs, the kids can build robots, have loads of fun and hopefully learn something about robotics. The kit will also contain custom-made lessons so that the teachers don’t get lost in the complexity of kids’ projects.
Fisher-Price Code-a-Pillar
All kids need to know at least the basics of computer programming languages because the world they are going to live and work in is very digital. But the way to teach them those concepts is not through ubiquitous ‘techno’ and ‘IIT preparation’ schools. Toy-maker Fisher-Price came up with a easy and fun way to teach those concepts even to three-year-olds through play. Using the Think & Learn Code-a-Pillar, which comes with eight segments labelled with different symbols and colours, kids can learn skills like sequencing and programming. Depending on how the segments are attached, the caterpillar moves in different ways, and there will be a companion app for iPhone and Android phones.