At this year’s CES, countless products on display promoted their assisted capabilities. Last year’s show delivered us the first glimpses of virtual assistants embedded into everyday devices, but 2019 previewed the phenomenon’s mainstreaming—Google Assistant in a mirror, Amazon’s Alexa taking queries from inside your toilet and more. There is valid skepticism about the possibility of all of your devices listening in on you. Letting the Google or …
Category: Tech
Testing ZF’s Autonomous Ride-Hailing Taxi
We try out a robo-taxi at CES, and learn where the industry really is at on the road to autonomous lifts
As Silicon Valley and the car industry continue to converge, we’re seeing an increasing presence of autonomous cars at the Consumer Electronics Show, including an autonomous robo-taxi that we caught a ride in this year. The ZF Autonomous Ride-Hailing Taxi is a prototype that’s meant to preview the experience of a new form of urban mobility, but that technology will actually be put to use this …
URWERK’s AMC Tabletop Atomic Clock + Wristwatch
New technology provides unprecedented accuracy, for a price of $2.7 million, from the independent Swiss horology brand
For all the time-telling pieces on hand during Geneva’s Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie Genève (SIHH), nothing comes close to independent Swiss watch brand URWERK‘s 55-pound desk clock, the AMC (Atomic Master Clock). This portable atomic clock cradles its partner—a mechanical wristwatch—which it then pairs with, adjusts, winds and regulates the balance rate (taking into account humidity and air pressure). The utmost accuracy, of course, is the goal. URWERK co-founders Felix …