Hardware Roundup: Special CES Edition

Dave here, co-founder and CEO of Fictiv. I’ve decided to hijack the first hardware roundup of the year and make it a special edition! I’m here at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Vegas and wanted to share some of the products I’ve seen that have me really excited. This roundup is going to take a look at top trends in robotics and AI and the latest in wearable technology.

Top Tech at CES

• Most Impactful: Eargo hearing aid. According to Eargo, 50M people have hearing loss, but only 10M people use hearing aids, because many people don’t like how they look. Eargo’s device is incredibly comfortable and invisible.
• Best Designed: The second generation Willow breastfeeding pump, which is cord-free and bag-free, with an innovative magnetic snap to create alignment. Willow’s second generation design shows their maturity and design advancement.
• The Up & Comer: There are a lot of robots at CES, but Temi has both functionality and personality. Think of it as a mashup of a Roomba, Portal, and Alexa. Ask Temi to “make it funky,” and it plays music and follows you around to dance.
• Personal Favorite: Hykso Fightcamp—it’s inspiring to see a great company bring a new product to market. The Fightcamp package comes with boxing gear that tracks activity—think of it as Peloton for boxing. Hysko challenged their community to throw over 1M punches the first week of January, and they blew past their goal to 1.5M.

Industry News

• Samsara is raising $100 million in funding to grow its internet-connected sensor technology. + Autodesk is working hard towards its goal of digitizing and automating construction workflows with its recent acquisitions of BuildingConnected and PlanGrid.
• Apple’s Qualcomm dispute affected the sale of certain iPhone models in China and Germany. + Apple is considering strategic pivots to navigate industry challenges.
• 2018 saw AI impacting multiple industries, from business, to government, to education and national defense. We also saw human labor automation technology taking a big lunge forward. + Chipmakers are using innovative new techniques to build the super-fast CPUs of tomorrow.

Hardware Knowledge

• Rocket Lab successfully launched a 3D printed rocket for NASA. MIT researchers are reverse-engineering objects to create 3D models. + 3D printing a brushless motor.
• A new organic plastic allows electronics to function at high temperatures, without decreasing performance. Inexpensively shrinking objects to nanoscale has huge potential applications in optics and robotics. + This foldable drone shrinks to fit.
• Take a tour of China’s only pinball machine factory, where they’re rapidly prototyping and making large volumes of custom parts. The technology inside Glitterex’s glitter-making factory is some of the most advanced in the world. + Factory assembly of the Tesla 3.

Events + Community

Jobs:

• Check out open product, engineering, and manufacturing roles at Oculus and Molekule.
• BioQ Pharma has a new opening for a Mechanical Engineering/Product Development position.
• Y Combinator’s Hacker News site also features a job board.

Events:

• Our next Friends of Fictiv Happy Hour is coming up on Jan 24 at our office in Portland! Come join other professionals and makers for an in-person hardware teardown with the Fictiv team.
• Autodesk is hosting a hands-on space-themed design night in Boston.
• Check out this hardware meetup at NYU on Jan 14. Hardware Happy Hour is hosting its first meetup of the year on Jan 22!

For the Love of Engineering

Happy New Year! To welcome 2019, take a look at this assembly line of tops being attached to champagne bottles.

Want to share an interesting article, job posting, or event in Hardware Roundup? Submit your link here, and we’ll do our best to include it in an upcoming issue with credit to you!

Happy 2019!

Dave