Embedded Editor Report: CES Hits the Road and Drives Excitement
January 10, 2024
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It’s that time of year in Las Vegas yet again: CES. The streets are clogged, and the hotels are full, but we travelers aren’t bothered because the Convention Center is rocking and rolling with new tech and we’ve got to see as much as we can.
The leading impression to be gathered from my first day at CES is: automotive is king. Everyone was talking about ADAS, driverless, infotainment, and in at least one case, flying cars.
I had tons of great tours and meetings and here’s a little taste for those of you who didn’t make the pilgrimage to the desert this year.
Automotive Grade Linux (AGL) is leading the push for solving the software fragmentation problem in the automotive industry. AGL told me that they see every automotive OEM using a different OS and that leads to lack of standardization and poor cross-platform communication. AGL wants to solve this problem by bringing its Linux-based OS platform to as many OEMs as possible. The key advantages of AGL, as they see it, is in ease of implementation because they provide so much of the development process “out of the box,” and in customization that allows the OEMs to truly own and customize their vehicle platforms.
I also popped in on Horwin to check out the incredible, futuristic electric motorcycles (coming to market soon) that were giving TRON vibes real hard. At the Keysight booth, I saw the company’s incredible battery testing system. Of course, the booth was all about EV batteries and charging, and the testing I saw was designed to make EVs more efficient and safer.
There was lots more, but before I go, I would be remiss not to talk about John Deere. The sheer scope of what the agriculture giant was showing off was epic. From cotton farming with with advanced planting and harvesting technology to regrading asphalt and repaving using computer vision, the tech was top-end, and the back-end data management was where the magic happened.
There were customers on-site from Gallagher Asphalt, a construction and paving company, and when asked what they wanted from embedded developers, they said the most powerful points of focus for them were in UI/UX and data processing into actionable intelligence that they could use to inform decisions.
Lots more to see and tell, so watch this space!
Ken Briodagh is a writer and editor with two decades of experience under his belt. He is in love with technology and if he had his druthers, he would beta test everything from shoe phones to flying cars. In previous lives, he’s been a short order cook, telemarketer, medical supply technician, mover of the bodies at a funeral home, pirate, poet, partial alliterist, parent, partner and pretender to various thrones. Most of his exploits are either exaggerated or blatantly false.
