The Babyark uses sensor-laden anticrash materials to keep your kids safe in auto wrecks

Nothing on the road is more important than the safety of your loved ones but you wouldn’t think it from the state of child safety technology these days. “While safety features for adults in vehicles have evolved dramatically over the past 10 years, child passenger safety technology has remained stagnant,” notes Babyark founder and CEO Shy Mindel stated in a release Wednesday. Their startup, Babyark, aims to significantly advance the quality of vehicular child protection with the self-referential Babyark car set. 

“I was surprised to learn that the most important people in our lives, our children, sit in safety seats primarily made out of plastic and styrofoam,” Mandel noted. “Babyark is approaching safety through the hardware, the actual seat, and the software, including the safety sensors that communicate with the app. The result is a car seat that takes a holistic approach to safety.”

Rather than styrofoam and plastic, the Babyark is constructed of anticrash materials and relies on a novel shock-absorbing SafeCoil that absorbs forward momentum during a crash. Should the worst case occur and the seat is involved in an accident, a set of IoT sensors will record the crash telemetry and relay it to first responders so that they can better and more quickly treat the child. 

An associated smartphone app for both Android and iOS will remind forgetful parents that happen to leave their children behind. Additionally, the ark itself will not engage with its base unit (which secures using the standard seat anchor points) if it is improperly seated upon it — a handy LED light ring will switch from red to green once everything is correctly set. The seat is rated to accommodate up infants and toddlers from four to a 65 pounds (front facing) and up to 55 pounds for rear facing. The Babyark is currently available for pre-order at $990 and will increase to $1,190 when it is officially released later this summer.

BMW’s i Vision Dee concept digitizes the driving experience with a full-width heads-up display

BMW is once again ready to give the world a glimpse of the futuristic tech it has in the works as p[art of its i Vision concept vehicle program. Following 2017’s iVision Dynamics, 2018’s iNext SAV, and last year’s iVision Circular, the German automaker revealed at CES 2023 on Thursday the i Vision Dee (“Digital Emotional Experience”), a pared-down concept vehicle with a HUD running the full width of the front windshield.

And like the previous iVision iterations, many features from the Dee are expected to make their way into production models — specifically BMW’s new NEUE KLASSE EV platform beginning in 2025. Per the company, the Dee will feature BMW’s Mixed Reality Slider which leverages the company’s “shy tech” sensors to control how much digital content is displayed on the heads-up display. It will slide from fully analog up four additional steps — driving-related information, to infotainment information, to AR — and (eventually) full VR. Fingers crossed that only happens after BMW masters Level 5 driver assist.

the i Vision Dee in the style of Andy Warhol
ENES KUCEVIC

“With BMW i Vision Dee, we are showing how the car can be seamlessly integrated into your digital life and become a trusty companion. The vehicle itself becomes your portal to the digital world – with the driver always in control,” Adrian van Hooydonk, head of BMW Group Design, said in a press release. “Implemented the right way, technology will create worthwhile experiences, make you a better driver and simply bring humans and machines closer together.”

The vehicle will also greet their drivers as they approach with a “personalised welcome scenario that combines graphical elements, light and sound effects.” You’ll even be able to communicate directly with the vehicle through verbal commands while it will respond using its headlights and kidney-shaped grille to “form a common phygital (fusion of physical and digital) icon on a uniform surface, allowing the vehicle to produce different facial expressions,” according to Wednesday’s release. The Dee will reportedly be capable of conveying joy, astonishment and approval, all visually. There’s no word on what happens if you manage to anger it, but it can’t be good.

Sony Honda Mobility officially unveils its Afeela EV concept at CES 2023

In March of 2022, Honda and Sony shocked the world by announcing that not only were the venerable electronics and automotive manufacturers were teaming up, they were doing so to build a battery electric SUV. By June, the project had been spun of into its own company and less than a year after being announced, Sony Honda Mobility took to the CES 2023 stage to officially unveil its first prototype. The Vision-S 02 is now the Afeela. 

Afeela sensors
Sony Honda Mobility

Sony executives shared a few details about the upcoming vehicle including that it has 14 exterior cameras — 45 of them in total! — as well as a grille-mounted “Media Bar” that will display pertinent charging and vehicle information, “which allows intelligent mobility to express itself to surrounding people using light, enabling interactive communication between mobility and people,” according to Wednesday’s release. SHM also noted that online pre-orders will begin in mid-2025 ahead of deliveries scheduled for spring of 2026. We’ll have a hands-on from the show floor on Thursday, stay tuned!

ZF’s exothermic seat belts could help EVs go 15 percent further

EV’s are notorious for losing range in cold weather in part because energy that would otherwise be used to propel the vehicle forward is instead diverted to warm the vehicle cabin. Prototype “heat belts” (oh I get it, a pun) from ZF could help eliminate that thermal waste by using the same principle as an electric blanket.

Essentially, instead of trying to warm all of the air in the cabin, ZF’s 70W heat belts warm up just the front of the driver’s torso and pelvis. “In combination with heated seats, the heated seat belt has the potential to provide occupant comfort quickly,” wrote ZF’s Andreas Neemann on Wednesday. “Reducing the amount of battery current used to heat the interior of the vehicle, may enable a range gain of up to 15 percent.”

The seatbelts conduct heat because they also conduct electricity through tiny heating elements woven into the belt’s fabric. The company asserts that these elements will not impact the seat belt’s crash performance, and both feel and look identical to existing belts. Unfortunately, details are scarce beyond that. The company has not revealed how warm they get, when they’ll be available or on what vehicles. 

Goodyear shows off 90 percent sustainable tires and traction-tracking treads at CES 2023

Last CES, Goodyear dazzled the assembled crowds with a protype tire that derived some 70 percent of its recipe from sustainable sources. This CES, Goodyear is back with an impressive iterative improvement — 90 percent sustainable materials will go into this one! A full 20 percent more sustainment, huzzah! 

Goodyear reports that the 90-percent blend has already undergone — and passed — DoT testing, making it approved for road use. The company is still working with its supply chain partners to secure sufficient precursor materials to produce them at commercial scale and hopes to devise a fully sustainable blend by 2030. 

In addition to their diminished carbon footprint, the 90 percent tires reportedly offer a lower rolling resistance than the company’s test reference tires, which translates into better gas mileage and longer EV ranges. The new materials include four different types of carbon black produced from both organic and inorganic sources, soybean oil and rice husk silica, post-consumer polyester and bio-renewable pine tar resins.

“Last January, we announced a 70% sustainable-material tire, and while we celebrated this accomplishment, we knew it set the foundation for us to continue to push forward,” said Chris Helsel, senior vice president, global operations and chief technology officer. “Over the past year, we researched new technologies, identified opportunities for further collaboration and utilized our team’s ingenuity and tenacity to achieve this tremendous accomplishment, increasing the sustainable-material content used in a tire by 20 percentage points.”

Thanks to a partnership with Gatik, the Goodyear tires of tomorrow will be a bit intelligent as well. The tiremaker announced its coordination with the B2B logistics company to develop a proof-of-concept technology, dubbed SightLine, that “can accurately estimate tire-road friction potential and provide real-time information to Gatik’s automated driving system (ADS),” according to a company release Wednesday.

The two companies recently, successfully trialed the grip-sensing system in Toronto. Data from the tire sensors is combined with that from other vehicle systems — such as tire wear state, load, inflation pressure and temperature — and fed into “Goodyear’s cloud-based proprietary algorithms” where they jiggle and cajole the information into friction estimates that help the onboard systems detect “low grip” conditions. Those estimates can then be shared with the rest of the local Gatik autonomous vehicle fleet. Whether this technology, either the sensing system or sustainable tires, moves forward remains to be seen.

Finally, a fruit scanner that will tell you if your avocados are ripe

We’ve all been there. It’s late, you’re tired from a long day’s labor and all you want to do is go home to relax with your loved ones. But you’re not at home, are you? No, you’re at the supermarket with a hankering for homemade guac and that pile of fresh, treacherous avocados is staring you in the face, mocking you with their inscrutable knobby skins and their likely rockhard insides. Who’s got three days to let them sit in a bag after you go full Last Crusade and choose unwisely? That’s where OneThird’s “freshness scanners” come in.

The company notes that up to 40 percent of the perishable food brought to market annually (~$1 trillion-worth) is eventually discarded before it reaches our kitchen tables. What’s more, the current generation of produce scanners can only inform on lab-specific tests (like sugar content and acidity) rather than freshness or potential shelf life. The touch points from OneThird do and, according to the manufacturer, can reduce food waste in these situations by as much as 25 percent on average.

its a black box with a cradle for either strawberries or avocados that blasts a little red light at them and tells you if they're sufficiently squishy.
OneThird

“The astronomical volume of food that goes to waste each year is heartbreaking, particularly since so much is wasted in affluent countries. We’ve worked hard to create technology that helps to address this persistent, global challenge which directly impacts food scarcity,” said Marco Snikkers, CEO and founder of OneThird. “We are proud to have built the first product that accurately and objectively predicts the shelf life of fresh produce. The interest has been overwhelming and we aim to accelerate the deployment of our technology globally.”

Using propriety algorithms to interpret returns from a near-infrared laser, the OneThird devices can determine an avocado’s shelf life in real time. The company makes two variants of the system, one for the end user in the produce aisle, and another for the growers in the supply chain.

Volkswagen unveils its upcoming ID.7 EV sedan at CES 2023

Volkswagen’s ID family of electric vehicles, which already includes the highly-anticipated ID.Buzz and more sedate ID.4, grew by one on Tuesday. The German automaker unveiled its ID.7 electric sedan ahead of CES 2023, in a eye-crossing orange and black camo scheme that hides an illuminating surprise. Yes, it lights up. 

That camo is is not randomly generated, each aspect is specifically designed to “create light effects on parts of the vehicle,” VW stated in a recent press release. “This is an interactive feature and symbolizes the next step in the digitalization of the future flagship model of Volkswagen’s EV family.” In all, some 22 sections of paint, all of which are comprised of more than 40 individual layers of paint and electronics, will light up at the driver’s command, or in time to the sound system’s beats. The QR codes painted on the hood and doors will allow authorized users to control the paint job (that’s so weird to write) through their smartphones.

ID.7 in full digital camo. looks like if you took a picture of it, it'd trigger the qr code scanner on your phone.
Volkswagen

The ID.7 is based on the Aero3 concept sedan that we first saw revealed earlier this year and is expected to achieve an all-electric range of 700 km. “With the new ID.7, we are extending our electric model range into the upper segments. The sedan will offer top-class technology and quality. The ID.7 is one of 10 new electric models that we are planning to launch by 2026,” Thomas Schäfer, CEO of Volkswagen Passenger Cars, said in a statement.

ID.7 in full digital camo. looks like if you took a picture of it, it'd trigger the qr code scanner on your phone.
Volkswagen

Details are still scarce regarding hard performance numbers but the company plans to release the ID.7 with an augmented reality head-up display, 15-inch central infotainment screen, digitally controlled air vents — which can be personalized to each passenger and which respond to voice commands — and illuminated touch sliders. The company has not stated when production will begin but did confirm that when the ID.7 does go on sale, it will do so in the Chinese, European and North American markets. 

German Bionic debuts its lightest powered exosuit to date at CES 2023

German Bionic, the robotic exoskeleton startup behind the Cray X, will be showing off two new posture-protecting products at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada this week. The Apogee is the company’s latest and lightest powered exosuit built for commercial and industrial use while the Smart SafetyVest will “bring ergonomic monitoring and protection to every worker,” per a Monday release.

German Bionic Apogee and/or SafetyVest. The brace one has a woman wearing it while picking a large box out of a wire bin, the vest one is just a guy wearing it and looking directly into camera and there are a bunch more of the cgi line graphs and bar charts and stuff. I don't get this aesthetic at all. The equipment's cool though.
German Bionic

The Apogee builds from the lessons learned in developing the Cray X, resulting in German Bionic’s lightest exosuit to date. Despite the litheness, it can offset up to 66 pounds of load to the user’s lower back per lifting motion and offers active walking assistance to reduce fatigue. The SafetyVest, on the other hand, doesn’t actively help the user pick up heavy stuff but it does monitor their movements and body positioning as they work and offers “data-based, personalized ergonomic insights, as well as assessments and recommended actions.”

Both the Apogee and SafetyVest rely on the German Bionic IO architecture to collect, monitor, analyze and report the user’s ergonomic data back to them. This is done typically either through the onboard display or via audible alerts when the user is actively making unsafe movements.   

German Bionic Apogee and/or SafetyVest. The brace one has a woman wearing it while picking a large box out of a wire bin, the vest one is just a guy wearing it and looking directly into camera and there are a bunch more of the cgi line graphs and bar charts and stuff. I don't get this aesthetic at all. The equipment's cool though.
German Bionic

“With our new wearables, we are empowering hard-working people with the tools they need to do their jobs more safely and sustainably,” Norma Steller, CPO of German Bionic, said in the release. “Both our new ergonomic wearables – Apogee and Smart SafetyVest – as well as our award-winning Cray X exoskeleton enable us to provide the right support for just about any company or work environment where manual work is performed. And with the German Bionic IO data platform, we also deliver a powerful analytics tool for workplace ergonomics and processes.”

Details are still sparse ahead of the show but German Bionic will be exhibiting its wares at CES, booth #7141 in the West Hall if you’re attending in person. If not, no worries, Engadget will have full coverage of the show floor with hands-on reviews, videos and news throughout the week — stay tuned!

The EV revolution became an eventuality in 2022

It’s been a decade since the first Tesla EV made its commercial debut and the electrification of American automotive society began in earnest. Acceptance at the newfangled technology was slow at first but, over the past ten years as battery capacities …

Tesla thinks I will drop $300 on this wireless phone charger

This is a wireless phone charger that holds not one, not two, but three entire phones! And charges them wirelessly! Tesla makes it! For just $300! Shut up and take my money! Are you kidding me?! This is phenomenal! 

Janet! Hey Janet, get my wallet! It’s on the nightstand!

Oooo, it’s “inspired by the angular design and metallic styling of Cybertruck,” and delivers 15W of power. That sounds like a lot. (Ed note: It’s not. It’s standard fast charging.) I should see what my normal charger does, bet it’s not half as much as this thing. Stupid normal charger, not even modeled after a truck that’s not even in production yet. 

And look at this build quality. It’s got everything: aluminum housing, an Alcantara surface (who doesn’t love the feel of a suede-like microfiber?) and a detachable magnetic stand that both lays flat and sits at an angle. This way I can never not be looking at my three phones, even when they’re charging. This is going to be so awesome. Best three hundred dollars plus tax I’ll probably ever spend. 

Janet, where are we with that wallet?!?

Hell yeah, it uses FreePower technology, that means I’ll be able to just throw a few grand worth of Qi-compatible earbuds, mobile devices, smart watches and accessories on this thing all willy-nilly. Won’t have to line them up or anything because that’s how I do it. I’m the type who moves fast and breaks things.

Aw, whaddya mean it’s not coming out until February? In Tesla time that could be decades from now!

Janet! Ix-nay on the allet-way!