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Presenting the Best of CES 2021 winners!
The cream of the crop in 14 categories, plus Best of the Best and the winner of our People's Choice reader poll.
Presenting the Best of CES 2021 finalists!
Here are the finalists for the official 2021 Best of CES Awards.
Omron's VitalSight is a blood pressure monitoring service for telehealth
Before the pandemic, telehealth — seeing a doctor virtually instead of in real life — was hardly used by most patients in the US. In response, we have seen more connected tools like glucose monitors that can monitor vitals at home. Omron's VitalSight aims to do the same for hypertension, or high blood pressure, which can be a precursor to a stroke or heart attack.
OMRON's redesigned ping pong robot no longer holds back
OMRON is best known for its healthcare products like thermometers and blood pressure monitors -- now in the form of a smartwatch, even. But those who have been following our CEATEC coverage over the past five years may remember the company's ambitious exhibit: the Forpheus table tennis robot. Little did I know that I would bump into this old friend here at CES. The machine is now in its fifth generation and packed with some surprising upgrades -- let's just say my parents would be disappointed in me if they were there.
HeartGuide is a discreet blood pressure monitor in a smartwatch
Omron Healthcare makes some of the most highly-rated home blood pressure monitors on the market and has now miniaturized that technology into a FDA-cleared smartwatch.
The best blood pressure monitor for home use
By Stacey Higginbotham This post was done in partnership with Wirecutter. When readers choose to buy Wirecutter's independently chosen editorial picks, it may earn affiliate commissions that support its work. Read the full article here. After spending 20 hours researching more than 50 blood pressure monitors, interviewing medical professionals, and testing 10 finalists with a group of nursing professors and students at the University of Texas Nursing School, we can say the best blood pressure monitor for most people to use at home is the Omron Series 10 with Bluetooth. Not everyone needs a blood pressure monitor, but those with high blood pressure (a third of Americans) or concerns about it will find a blood pressure monitor is a relatively inexpensive investment in one's health.
OMRON's updated ping pong robot can serve and take smashes
It's CEATEC, so I knew OMRON would once again bring out its massive table tennis robot to belittle us humans, but what I didn't expect was a significant performance jump this time. FORPHEUS, now at its fourth generation, features improved AI to boost its responsiveness -- so much that it can now predict and attempt to deal with smashes. Compared to the earlier versions which went easy on me, I found this one to be far more enjoyable with faster rallies. Better yet, there's now a companion robot arm that throws a ball up and lets FORPHEUS serve, thus making the robot a more realistic trainer or opponent.
A robot made me (marginally) better at ping pong
We're back for a rematch. The ping-pong robot has had an upgrade or two, and in Rocky-style, your rival is now your trainer. Yep, the newest demo from Omron (a company better know for its healthcare products), aims to help you play it at table tennis. The entire table has been upgraded into a display, showing the predicted path of the ball, and even where the meatsack player should be hitting it.
OMRON's Family Eye home camera is both cute and powerful
Most home security cameras these days already come with microSD storage, two-way audio, motion detection and night vision, so it's about time someone offers a more powerful package. If you happen to reside in Japan, then you may want to consider OMRON's Kazoku Mesen aka Family Eye. Hardware-wise this is just a cute 720p video camera with all of the aforementioned features, but it's the company's OKAO Vision technology that really sells it: It's able to recognize faces, hand gesture, age, gender, expressions (it can automatically take photos of a baby whenever he or she smiles) and even cats plus dogs. Offices and shops can also take advantage of the Family Eye for customer analysis and head counts. Not bad for a ¥29,800 (about $250) kit, except for one slightly unfortunate flaw: It cannot record video, just still photos, so you'll have to rely on notifications and the app's live stream feature. We still want one, anyway.
I played ping pong with a robot and it went easy on me
No, this isn't the Tokyo Game Show. OMRON, the alleged company behind Amazon Fire's face-tracking feature, exhibited its ping pong robot at CEATEC just to demonstrate its automation prowess. Well, by robot we don't mean the humanoid kind; it's more of a large silver crane that swings a bat with three arms. It even has a stationary head that looks down upon its human challenger (including this author, as shown in the video after the break); that's where all the sensors are stored in order to track the player and the ball. The brain, on the other hand, is tucked into a cabinet next to the robot. Update: We managed to get a rematch with the robot, and you can watch it in our new video after the break.
TechCrunch: Amazon's first phone uses 'Okao Vision' for 3D effects
Amazon's June 18th event is still mostly shrouded in mystery, but general consensus is that the e-commerce giant is releasing a phone of its own with an interactive 3D interface. Now, TechCrunch claims to have identified the technology behind that feature, and it's supposedly Omron's Okao Vision face-sensing system. The Amazon team reportedly customized the Japanese company's creation so that it can be used to show 3D effects on an ordinary LCD screen without special glasses. Instead of relying on accessories, the software depends on four front cameras embedded on the device's corners to track the user's face, as well as on the phone's accelerometer and gyroscope. For instance, if you tilt your face to one side, the interface shows you a hidden panel you wouldn't see if you look at the screen from another angle.
Omron MEMS thermal sensor tells you how hot your pocket is (video)
Is that tasty baked snack still too hot to eat? Omron's D6T contactless infrared thermal sensor should take the guesswork out of it and help to avoid future cases of burny-mouth. Hook it up to a phone, point it at food or drink, and it'll display heat levels on-screen. Aside from snack safety, the device is also intended as a general presence sensor. The thermal detection negates the need for motion tracking and allows for additional features, such as power saving (switching off lights etc.) when people aren't around. Want to see it in action? There's a video generating heat right after the break.
Omron releases a pair of sleep monitoring gadgets that watch you slumber
Insomnia and a love of gadgets go hand-in-hand, so it's no surprise that more companies want a piece of Zeo's sleep-monitoring action. Omron's the latest to supply an offering with a pair of sensors to work out how much shut-eye your getting. Working on the principle that you stop moving when you're deep in sleep, the devices measure your movement while in bed and count up how long you remain static. The HSL-101 uses a radio-frequency sensor that measures movement to any object within its 5-foot range. The HSL-001 is a pebble-sized kit that sits underneath your pillow and uses an accelerometer to measure your restlessness instead. The 101 will arrive in Japan in May as a standalone unit, while the 001 will need to be paired to an Android smartphone when it arrives in April.
SteelSeries Diablo III headset and mouse: demon slaying flair for your skull and desktop
Sure, there are plenty of great gaming goodies to be found on the floor at E3, but some of the best stuff is much harder to find. For example, SteelSeries' new Diablo III Mouse and headset, which were revealed to us when the prototype devices were pulled from a backpack. The headset packs the same 50mm drivers, retractable boom mic, and overhead suspension design of its Siberia V2 stablemate, but adds some sinister-looking design tweaks. These cans come murdered out in matte black with lava red accents (which can be turned off) courtesy of 18 LEDs, plus matching red external speaker grilles. There's also a braided cord that plugs into your Mac or PC via USB. %Gallery-126062% We got to see the Diablo III mouse as well, and found it sports an ambidextrous design similar to the SteelSeries Xai. Its inky exterior is cloaked in smooth, soft touch plastic sporting silvery tribal accents, and a glowing ember Diablo III logo and trim around the scroll-wheel. Given Diablo's click-happy gameplay, Steelseries gave the mouse beefy Omron switches that are good for 10 million presses (which are backed by a five year warranty). All those clicks are tracked by custom driver software that also lets users tailor the pointer's button layout by dragging and dropping character-specific commands to the button of your choosing. Now that your appetite has been whetted with the design descriptions, here are the details that matter most: the mouse will cost $69 and the headset $119 when SteelSeries starts selling 'em at BlizzCon in October. %Gallery-126063%
Giant touchscreen vending machine at CEATEC stares us down, offers us a frosty beverage
So we tracked down one of those crazy new touchscreen- and camera-enabled vending machines being deployed across Japan's mass transit stations at CEATEC today; one of their claims to fame is that they're WiMAX-enabled in order to receive ads and other high-bandwidth content, so local WiMAX provider UQ installed one of the units in its booth as a showcase of the kinds of wild and crazy things you can do with ludicrous speed. As much as we hate to admit it, we're pretty sure we'd be consuming more overpriced juice, soda, tea, coffee, and water if we had one of these near our homes -- seriously, how can you resist those cute rectangular eyes staring at you, slowly stealing your soul while asking you to "come by?" Of course, the scary part about that is that the machine really can see you -- it's got a camera right above the display that detects your presence, makes some snap judgments about you based on largely accurate stereotypes, and recommends certain beverages (though you're still free to choose whatever you like). The machine supports Suica payments -- a popular NFC system in these parts -- using either a Suica card or your appropriately-enabled phone, which makes blowing hundreds of yen on cans of Georgia Vintage coffee frighteningly simple. Follow the break for some video of the machine in action... or if you're planning a trip to Japan in the next couple years, expect to see these around town in some of the high-traffic train stations. %Gallery-104494%
iPhoto '09 uses face detection package from Omron
An intrepid tipster emailed us late yesterday, and described an interesting challenge: He figured that if Apple didn't develop iPhoto's face recognition technology themselves, who did? He disassembled the app using OTX, a developer tool based on Apple's otool, and found the areas of the software related to facial recognition. There, the string "OKAO" appeared, including in the "FaceRecognitionManager" object. OKAO Vision is a product from Japanese firm Omron Global that -- hey hey -- recognizes faces and their various features. Does the face have big eyes? Are they in trouble? What is the person looking at? The transliteration "okao" apparently means "face" in Japanese, according to their website. "OMRON is committed to raising the accuracy of face detection so that OKAO Vision can be used in many different lifestyle occasions and social settings," their website reads. iPhoto '09 must fit in with that plan. Omron has other facial recognition products, including software for mobile phones, and a camera-plus-hardware-plus-software console that can accurately tell if a person is smiling or not. The software works reasonably well, according to Gizmodo, but does pick up some false positives in patterns, or, say, Mount Rushmore.
Omron's Okao Catch measures the intensity of your smile
It was inevitable, really. Not even two months after jolly researchers at Kansai University developed a machine to calculate the quantity of a person's laughter comes a new method of measuring just how hard you're cheesing. According to Omron's Yasushi Kawamoto, the Okao Catch technology is able to closely analyze "the curves of the lips, eye movement and other facial characteristics to decide how much a person is smiling." In a recent demonstration, it threw up percentages as people moved in front of a camcorder and began to grin, and while a somber individual did net an astounding score of zero, it doesn't seem that negative numbers are doled out for frowners. Besides being incredibly novel, the creators are hoping that it can be used in the medical field for accurately judging the "emotional state of patients," in robotics for helping androids "decipher human reactions" and in dressing rooms assisting B-list celebs improve their charm.[Via Tarakash]
