NeoMano is an everyday robotic glove for patients with paralysis

Patients with spinal cord injuries, according to assistive technology company Neofect, face three major challenges navigating their day to day lives: Opening and closing doors, brushing their teeth and picking up objects like a glass of water.

For those who may be wheelchair bound with limited use of their hands, Neofect has developed a robotic glove that wraps around the palm as well as index and middle fingers. Called NeoMano (“new hand” in a Latin/Spanish amalgamation), the glove connects to a rubber pad that can be controlled with an elbow or arm to activate grip and release motions. The mechanism itself is straightforward: two wires run down the length of each finger and triggering the grip reels them in, allowing users to pick up objects up to about 1kg.

Neofect says the lightweight glove is designed to be worn every day. Founded in 2010, the company formerly made the Rapael Smart Glove to assist hand-eye coordination in stroke rehabilitation. The prototype NeoMano we saw at CES will look “cooler” in future according to a spokesman, who also said they plan to add voice recognition and head motion to activate it. The glove should launch on Kickstarter towards the end of 2018 for less than $1,000.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2018.

A smart insole pairs with an app to track how tired you are

Two years ago, at CES 2016, we found a pair of smart shoes that can be “laced” by simply tapping a virtual button on a smartphone app. Now, the company behind those sneakers, Zhor Tech, has brought its latest creation to CES 2018: a connected shoe insole. The device is loaded with sensors that count your steps, detect your fatigue levels, analyze your posture and detect any rough vibrations around you. Zhor Tech says that its Safety insole is designed for people who work in construction or other field jobs like that, as it helps them keep better track of their work activity.

If someone slips, for instance, the insole can detect that and alert a manager or another supervisor. Of course, the whole system comes together in an app, where users can view detailed, real-time information and share it with other people. The same technology can be built into a shoe’s midsole, according to Zhor Tech, but right now there are only plans to sell the insole to companies that make safety-conscious footwear in September for $149.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2018.

They make air bags for people now

French company Helite has been selling wearable airbags in some shape or form for many years. Typically, it’s targeted bikers, horse riders, light aircraft pilots and other people with dangerous hobbies. This year at CES, it’s pitching the Hip’Air, a 2.2-pound belt that detects when an elderly person is falling and deploys an airbag.

A typical fall, a Helite spokesperson explained, takes 400 milliseconds. Using gyroscopes and accelerometers, the Hip’Air’ can detect a fall within 200 milliseconds of it beginning. The belt will then begin to deploy its built-in airbag, which takes a further 80 milliseconds.

Our managing editor Terrence O’Brien took a tumble for the greater good and the Hip’Air worked as advertised. It’ll launch this March in Europe prior to a US release in September. At approximately $790 (plus $50 for each one-use gas canister), it’s a lot of money to pay for peace of mind.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2018.

NVIDIA unveils its powerful Xavier SOC for self-driving cars

As the need for more powerful processors in the emerging self-driving and semi-autonomous car grows, NVIDIA is making sure it stays ahead of the trend. At CES, the GPU-building powerhouse unveiled the Xavier SOC for AI car systems the company announced at last year’s CES.

The Xavier has over 9 billion transistors with a custom 8-core CPU, a 512-core Volta GPU, an 8K HDR video processor, a deep-learning accelerator and new computer-vision accelerators. NVIDIA says the SOC can perform 30 trillion operations per second using only 30 watts of power. NVIDIA says that’s 15 times more efficient than the previous architecture. Important for EVs where everything that pulls from the battery reduces vehicle range.

All those huge numbers means that the Xavier can crunch more sensor and vehicle data for the AI systems that will power self-driving vehicles. That should make OEMs and ride-hailing companies working on autonomous cars very happy. Artificial intelligence is already processor intensive. Add the non-stop stream of data coming from sensors and cars are topping out the capabilities of current computers.

Two Xavier processors will sit on the recently announced Pegasus AI computing platform (which is capable of level 5 autonomy according to NVIDIA) along with two NVIDIA GPUs. Shove the whole system into a car and we’re just that much closer to self-driving vehicles.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2018.

NVIDIA unveils 65-inch 4K ‘Big Format Gaming Displays’ with G-SYNC

We’ve seen the rumors and speculation about an Apple TV, but it turns out NVIDIA beat them to the punch. At CES today, the company unveiled its “Big Format Gaming Displays” (BFGDs), monstrous 65-inch 4K HDR screens with a ton of embedded technology. That includes NVIDIA’s own G-SYNC technology, which gets rid of screen tearing, and built in Shield functionality. No, this isn’t meant for your living room — NVIDIA envisions people using them on their PC desks.

NVIDIA is partnering with ASUS, Acer and HP to build these displays — a particularly interesting group of partners, since they don’t have experience building big-screen displays. As far as other screen technology goes, they feature 120Hz refresh rates, full-array backlighting, a peak brightness of 1,000 nits, and full DCI-P3 color gamut support. And of course, since they’re targeted at gamers, NVIDIA says they also feature low latency. With their built-in SHIELD support, they’ll do everything NVIDIA’s set-top box can, and they’ll also come with the company’s remote and gaming controller.

While this might seem like an April Fool’s joke, the BFGDs do off some benefits beyond normal TVs. For one, they don’t support technologies like G-SYNC, which smooth out game performance. And TV manufacturers typically cater more to home theater enthusiasts than gamers. While there’s certainly an audience for giant PC monitors, I have practical concerns: Most desks simply can’t fit these things.

Naturally, there aren’t any pricing details yet. NVIDIA is showing off BFGDs at CES, and we plan to get a look at them soon. The company says we can expect the displays in the summer, along with more information about specs and pricing.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2018.

AMD’s Radeon Vega GPU is headed everywhere, even to machine learning

For 2018, AMD is building on its major innovations from last year: its new Ryzen CPU architecture and Radeon Vega graphics. Indeed, Vega is so versatile even its main competitor, Intel, has tapped it for its upcoming high-performance laptop chips. At CES, AMD revealed the Radeon Vega Mobile GPU, a dedicated graphics offering that’ll go toe-to-toe with NVIDIA’s GTX 10-series. Additionally, it’ll be bringing Vega graphics into upcoming Ryzen desktop chips, as well as a new machine learning product.

While we don’t know much about the Radeon Vega Mobile GPU yet, it’s not exactly a surprising announcement. Gamers have been waiting eagerly to see when AMD’s new graphics hardware would make it into high-powered laptops. In October, the company revealed that Vega was coming to its new Ryzen mobile processors. It was only a matter of time until it had a more powerful dedicated offering. AMD is also positioning it as something you’d find in ultrathin notebooks, and not just chunky gaming machines.

On the desktop side, you’ll also find Radeon Vega in AMD’s new Ryzen 5 2400G ($169) and Ryzen 3 2200G ($99) APUs. What’s really intriguing about those is the amount of performance they pack into relatively inexpensive chips. AMD claims that the 2400G’s 3D Mark Timespy benchmark score matched an Intel Core i5 8400, which retails for $199, paired together with an NVIDIA’s $80 GT 1030. It’s impressive that a $169 chip could easily compete with $280 worth of hardware from competitors — at least, according to AMD.

Looking ahead, you can also expect to see Radeon Vega in the Ryzen 3 mobile chip and a slate of Ryzen Pro APUs for enterprise and commercial users. If you’re looking for a bigger architecture upgrade, AMD says it’ll unveil the second generation of Ryzen desktop chips in April, and they’ll also be the company’s first 12nm products. Beyond that, the company revealed that its Zen 2 design is completed and expected to debut in 2019. AMD also has a followup to Radeon Vega in the works, “Navi,” which will be built on a 7nm process, and hinted that there’s a “next-gen” architecture coming on 7nm+.

Before AMD gets to those futuristic designs, though, it’s starting out with the Radeon Instinct Vega, its first 7nm chip. Like the company’s other Instinct products, it’s a GPU tuned specifically for machine learning. It’ll come with support for new software stacks and libraries that’ll make it easier for developers to build machine learning applications. You’ll also be able to port your apps developed for NVIDIA’s CUDA hardware and, with only a bit of work, optimize it for Vega. One big difference between AMD’s approach to machine learning and NVIDIA’s? It’s relying on open source solutions, whereas NVIDIA tools are proprietary.

Addressing the Meltdown and Spectre CPU vulnerabilities, AMD CTO Mark Papermaster reiterated, once again, that the company takes security seriously. While he was quick to point out Meltdown only affected Intel chips, he also said that the differences with AMD’s architecture also “means there is near zero vulnerability” with the “Branch target injection” security hole. The other issue related to Spectre, “bounds check bypass,” is mostly resolved with OS and software updates. AMD claims the performance loss from those patches is “negligible” — but of course, that could easily change with specialized use cases. While AMD is relatively safe for now, a future vulnerability is still possible.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2018.

NVIDIA and Volkswagen team up to build an AI co-pilot

Volkswagen’s been talking about its intelligent co-pilot system for upcoming vehicles since last year’s CES when it introduced Yui. So it’s no surprise that this year it announced it’s teaming up with NVIDIA to bring that plan to fruition. Both companies appeared on stage at NVIDIAs press event alongside the I.D. Buzz electric microbus for the announcement.

The two companies said they would initially work on an “Intelligent Co-Pilot” system that will gather data from both in and outside the car. Throw in some gesture and natural language voice controls and then fuse all that with what the AI has learned about the driver and you got yourself a helpful AI assistant.

So when the I.D. Buzz hits the market in 2022 expect it to ship with some sort of virtual co-pilot.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2018.

Source: NVIDIA

NVIDIA adds Instagram-like filters to your games

NVIDIA is diving into curious new territory with its next GeForce Experience update: filters. With a new beta feature called Freestyle, you can spice up your gameplay with 15 different filters. Because who wouldn’t want to play Grand Theft Auto V in sepia tones? While it doesn’t seem particularly useful, there’s likely a crowd of gamers who might actually enjoy re-experiencing their favorite titles in new ways. So far, Freestyle supports 100 games, and it’ll likely get even more come its official release.

And speaking of filters, NVIDIA has also added more to its Ansel in-game camera. You’ll also be able to combine multiple filters for even more creative screengrabs. The new features will be available in the company’s GeForce Experience software on January 9th — just be sure to enable “Experimental Features” to see them.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2018.

Source: NVIDIA

Red Honor 7X could be the perfect Valentine’s Day gift (Video)

When we reviewed the Honor 7X last month, we praised it for the incredible value that it provides. With the Honor 7X, you can get a great smartphone experience with few compromises for less than $200 in the US.

The Honor 7X’s competitive pricing makes it an undoubtedly excellent choice for first-time or young smartphone users. Those users will especially appreciate the new red color option that Honor has just unveiled here at CES 2018.

To be fair, we have seen other manufacturers offer their smartphones in similar red color options. However, virtually all of those devices have been priced at double or even triple the price of the 7X. Now, the beautiful red color option is not only accessible to a larger, more price sensitive market, but also in a package packing a serious punch.

We have already covered the Honor 7X in great detail in our comprehensive review. As you may have guessed, the red color option is identical to the others, aside from the fact that it’s, well, red.

Editor’s Pick

Honor 7X review

Buy it now!
The Honor 7X is a lot of phone for a very reasonable price. If you don’t want to join the 1K flagship club but still want to benefit from modern trends and features …

Thankfully, Honor has really paid attention to the detailed areas of the hardware. For example, the camera lenses have shiny red rings that nicely complement the rest of the phone’s matte red design. The prominent antenna lines also exhibit a red hue. When all of these elements come together, we are left with a stunningly beautiful smartphone.

The red Honor 7X will be available for sale on Valentine’s Day (February 14) in the US, Russia, India, and Western Europe. We expect it to sell out quickly, however, as Honor has produced just 20,000 units. If you would like to try your luck, Honor is also including red co-branded Honor-Monster AM15 headphones for the first 100 buyers in each country.

Buy the Honor 7X here

What do you think of this new addition to the Honor 7X family? Do you think that we will see more red smartphones in the near future, or do you suspect this to simply be a short-time fad? We would love to hear your thoughts in the comment section below.

Head here for more CES 2018 coverage!

Intel’s ‘Hades Canyon’ NUC packs gaming hardware into just 1.2 liters

On Sunday, January 7, Intel finally revealed its portfolio of modules pairing its seventh-generation “Kaby Lake” processor cores with AMD’s Radeon “Vega” graphics cores. The announcement originally made waves in November, with Intel and AMD-based customers seemingly looking up into the sky for flying pigs. But the collaboration is no joke, and one of the first products to benefit from the team-up is a new NUC (short for Next Unit of Computing) for enthusiasts, codenamed ‘Hades Canyon.’

Although Intel didn’t provide any detailed hardware specifications prior to Sunday’s reveal, what we do know is that it’s based on the Core i7-8809G. We saw this module briefly listed on Intel’s website in India earlier this week, but now we have confirmed hardware details to give us an idea of what this NUC for “enthusiasts” is all about. Here’s are the specifics:

Model:
Core i7-8809G
Intel cores:
4
Intel threads:
8
Base speed:
3.1GHz
Maximum speed:
4.2GHz
Shared Cache:
8MB
Supported memory type:
DDR4 @ 2,400MHz
Supported memory channels:
2
Integrated graphics:
HD Graphics 630
Base speed:
350MHz
Maximum speed:
1,100MHz
Discrete graphics:
Radeon RX Vega M GH
Discrete graphics architecture:
Vega M
Compute units:
24
Stream processors:
1,536
Base speed:
1,063MHz
Maximum speed:
1,190MHz
Memory bandwidth:
204.8GB/s
Memory amount:
4GB HBM2
Render output units:
64 pixels per clock

If you haven’t kept up with recent Intel-based news, your eyes aren’t playing tricks. The Core i7-8809G is a rectangular device sporting three chips on a small, enclosed circuit board: One packing Intel’s CPU and integrated GPU cores, one playing host to AMD’s Vega M cores, and one housing dedicated HBM2 memory. The Intel and AMD chips are connected by eight PCI Express lanes while AMD’s chip connects to the HBM2 memory package using Intel’s Embedded Multi-Die Interconnect Bridge technology.

Due to the module’s shape, you can’t just cram the chip into any motherboard supporting eighth-generation processors. The design saves space compared to the typical CPU/GPU/GDDR layout in notebooks and AIO PCs. The modules are also unlocked on all three levels. You can read more about Intel’s new 8th-Gen Intel Core with Radeon RX Vega M graphics in our round-up.

Between Intel’s Kaby Lake cores and AMD’s Vega M cores, the new NUC should be able to handle PC-based VR experiences, and high-resolution gaming. AMD’s Vega M is the company’s latest GPU design that made its debut in the Radeon RX Vega 64 and Vega 56 add-in cards. AMD then brought its Vega graphics cores to its new Ryzen-branded all-in-one chips (APU) packing up to a mere 640 stream processors (10 CUs). But combined with Intel’s integrated graphics, the company’s tiny new NUC 8 can handle six displays lighting up your face at one time.

How small is the NUC 8? Intel says it takes up around 1.2 liters of space despite all the horses running inside. But keep in mind that despite its size, the NUC 8 may not sport a small price tag. Intel’s NUC 7 for enthusiasts has a starting price of $899 packing 16GB of memory, a Core i7-7667U processor, 512GB of storage, and more.

Editors’ Recommendations

• Intel’s chip-packing Radeon graphics slips a brief tease just before CES 2018
• Intel promises its new CPUs will match Nvidia’ potent GTX 1060, thanks to AMD
• Leaked photo shows upcoming Intel/AMD module on a compact motherboard
• Intel and AMD’s love/hate relationship spilled in benchmarks detailing two chips
• AMD CEO shows off first laptop packing a Ryzen-branded chip at Best Buy