My CES 2017 Highlight: BMW car of the future (BMW Sculpture car tech concept)

​It was tough to pull together a blog post on CES 2017. In previous years, it’s usually pretty easy to find a common theme among the range of technologies on show and go from there – be it VR, smartphones, drones, 3D TVs etc. This year was definitely different in that regard. The theme just didn’t jump out at me. There were lots of gorgeous 4K TVs, some clever drones, more smartphones and even a gaming laptop with x3 4K screens (dubbed the Razer Project Valerie, which was made even more famous after it was stolen at the show – no such thing as bad PR eh?).

Isn’t this exciting!
I find the lack of an obvious theme really exciting. It doesn’t mean there weren’t great innovations. There really were. It just means everyone was trying their own thing, so it was even more interesting.

I had started to make a list of my standout tech at the show. But then I stumbled across one thing that really stood out from the crowd. That was BMW’s Sculpture car tech concept.

Car concepts are always good for a laugh, and BMW is certainly not innocent of going a bit nuts in its concepts. This one is nuts too (just look at it – it’s got fake grass under the rear seats and a library of leather bound books), but there’s an element of brilliance in the technology thinking behind it.

Popular YouTuber Austin Evans got a great demo of the tech in this concept, and it’s mind blowing. Here’s some of the highlights that made my brain explode:

• It has a holographic display that you can’t touch (obviously), BUT here’s the clever part. It uses an ultrasonic array to give you the feeling that you’re touching something. Incredible
• It can pick a route dependent on your mood. So if you’re in a relaxed mood you can take the scenic route. Not sure if it has a rage route though.
• It has biometric sensors in the car seat. Presumably it reads your heart rate through your bum cheeks. That’s the future right there.
• It can transcribe and then intelligently interpret the content of video calls. The scenario in the demo had the driver’s wife call him to say his daughter needed shoe laces for a game that evening. The car understood this and placed an order with Amazon for new shoe laces which would be delivered directly to the game via Amazon Air (Amazon’s future drone delivery service). WHAT??????

​Check out Austin’s full video for even more amazement:

Honourable mentions
While I said there was no theme. I didn’t say there was no tech. Here are some other cool things that caught my eye at CES this year:

• Sony Xperia Mobile Projector – apparently this was still a concept, but it’s amazing. It’s a portable projector that can also interpret touch gestures, effectively turning any surface into a giant touchscreen.
• Razer Project Ariana – While Razer’s Project Valerie “stole” more of the headlines (pun totally intended), I was more impressed with Project Ariana, a screen that expands the picture onto the room itself (much like Microsoft’s Illumiroom concept from a few years back). When are we going to see this stuff out in the wild???
• Sony’s OLED 4KTV with built in speaker – No, it’s not what you think. A TV with a built in speaker is hardly new is it? Well it is when the TV itself is the speaker. The TV vibrates to create the audio. Wow. Clever. Sony calls it Acoustic Surface sound technology. You got my thumbs up.

 
I’m sure there were many other gadgets that I missed but these are the ones that got my attention. Maybe next year I’ll be organised enough to go myself for a Spartan PR reconnaissance trip. You know, for all that B2B tech that CES is known for…