CES 2019 Transportation

As technology works its way into all forms of transportation, it is becoming difficult to distinguish between vehicle and electronics and tech. You saw this very much in 2019 with a splattering of vehicles across many forums, where as in the past vehicles and automobiles were very much in a specific area.

Mercedes EV Concept

This car takes the cake for coolest looking. I don’t even really know why it was at CES. Its cool and its an EV car and I suppose it looks as good as anything from a sci-fi movie. Definitely one seat gets me back and forth to work with no troubles.

Looking at it with the roof up and down, dang – ok. So this car is a sci-fi fan’s dream for on-earth transit. Those are some serious tires. That back fin is pretty cool as well.

Drones for People

There were a few drones made for people to fly on. Neither was actually demonstrated at the event, but each manufacturer assured us that they do actually fly. Unfortunately my camera work betrayed me on these since I failed to really capture the names of these things.

This guy actually did start it up and nearly took off, but this was just to show it really could lift him off. They were not permitted to really fly this thing in the building. Good thing since those propellers could chop you in half. This unit is meant for police duty.

Bell & Howell Mega-Drone

Bell & Howell had an amazing prototype for a 6-8 person capacity drone. Not convinced this was real, but it was really cool.

After-Market Tech

Emerging technology in RADAR and LIDAR systems are making their way onto the market. Blind spot detection systems on new cars are huge safety capabilities and now we are seeing these available for after-market installations. Huge!

This unit has two stick on radar sensors that fit inside the rear bumper. Then you run the cables up into the front of the car for power and the alert signals. Claims to work on any car.

Likewise 360 degree camera systems for after-marketing applications are also becoming available. This brings huge safety benefits for legacy cars and their drivers.

LIDAR is making waves in the transportation industry. Instead of using radio waves, LIDAR uses reflections of laser light to detect objects and more specifically in autonomous car performance.

It is a little hard to see what is in the picture, but you could definitely see the system detecting the movement of a soccer ball being passed back and forth in front of it.

Aftermarket parts and software are starting to appear for integration into legacy vehicles or other applications like security systems.

Furrian Vehicles

Crazy expensive vehicles that no one can afford are still cool. Furrian had a boat and an RV that everyone could drool over. Check out the pics in the gallery. Sorry the line to get on the boat was way too long, but I did get into the RV. Easy living, but parking could be an issue.

Autonomous Vehicles

There were a ton of autonomous vehicle concepts from manufactures and after-marketers. I thought Nvidia’s showcase was the most interesting given their recent revival of high performance computing hardware and processing. It is a modular platform that can be customized by manufacturers and includes the DRIVE software platform.

Data is fed from roof mounted cameras back into the CPU where it is processed and guides the vehicle. NVIDIA DRIVE AGX is the first commercially available level-2 platform. Its being licensed to a few Chinese car manufacturers.