TORONTO – Every year the International Consumer Electronics Show gives us a sneak peak at the year’s latest and greatest tech gadgets; some awesome and others outrageous.
These are the gadgets that take fad dieting to a new high-tech level and turn the most mundane household appliances into flashy super machines. And whether we would really invest our money in these inventions or not, these devices showcase just how pervasive tech has become.
Here is a look at some of the weirdest gadgets unveiled at this year’s event:
Self-adjusting smart belt
Where was this gadget during Christmas dinner?
One of the strangest fitness-related items making its debut at CES this year is a smart belt – creatively named “Belty” – that automatically adjusts itself throughout the day to fit your waist. So if you over indulge at dinner, there’s no need to undo your belt.
Belty, created by French startup Emiota, is equipped with a series of sensors, an accelerometer and a gyroscope in order to track the wearer’s movement throughout the day. The belt even nudges users when they have been sitting too long.
Like most fitness trackers, the belt has a dedicated app to display the data it collects as an alternative to a fitness band.
But before you get your credit cards out – Emiota has not yet announced any pricing details or a release date for the device.
Smarter caffeine jolts
What if your coffee maker could tell if you needed an extra jolt of caffeine in the morning? Enter Smarter’s “WiFi Coffee Machine” – an Internet-connected coffee maker that allows users to program their morning cup through an app.
Users can program the machine to brew enough for however many cups they want to drink and how strong they want the brew, all without being in the kitchen. The company eventually plans on integrating third party features – like the ability to read data from sleep trackers, so if the user had a poor sleep the machine brews a stronger batch.
Electronic roller skates
The electric car movement has everyone thinking about how we can make travel more efficient and better for the environment. But one company is taking it one step further by creating faster pedestrians.
The device – dubbed “Rollkers” – straps onto the bottom of the user’s shoe and act as a kind of motorized roller skate. According to its creators, the device has the ability to increase the user’s average walking speed up to 11 kilometres per hour.
Rollkers are even designed to automatically balance, so the user doesn’t need to be an expert skater.
Smart baby bottles
In 2013, one of the most talked about gadgets at CES was the HAPIfork – a smart fork built for the fad dieter that dumps food off your next mouthful by vibrating.
This year the company behind the fork is unveiling a new device aimed at parents – a baby bottle that helps mom and dad keep track of how much food their baby is eating. Through an app, parents can track how fast their infant is eating and even receive alerts if there are lumps in the formula.
The smart bottle also alerts parents to what angle they are holding the bottle so the baby doesn’t swallow too much air.
De-stress with tech
While most experts are urging us to put down our tech in order to de-stress, one of the more high-tech health inventions debuting at CES this year is a piece of tech designed to help manage stress.
Melomind is a headset that connects with a smartphone app to provide users with a real-time reading of their brainwaves. The user puts on the headset and a pair of earphones to listen to music designed to relax the mind.
According to Melomind’s website, all it takes is 15 minutes a day to de-stress (if the idea of wearing a Star Trek-like headset in front of colleagues during your coffee break doesn’t stress you out to begin with).
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