Six consumer tech trends coming in 2016: drones that follow you, robots, virtual reality (again) and self-driving cars
This will be the year virtual reality becomes ... well, reality, the home robot makes big strides, selfie drones take flight, the Internet of Things gathers steam, smart cars get smarter and Huawei goes mainstream, as the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas will show
With the trend-setting Consumer Electronics Show (CES) coming up in Las Vegas in the first week of the new year and the Mobile World Congress (MWC) following a month later in Barcelona, it’s time for a look at some of the new technology that will shape the way we work and play in 2016.
Virtual reality and augmented reality
Augmented reality – the blending of virtual content with a real-world environment (think Google Maps, for instance) – has very much become part of our lives, but up till now virtual reality, an immersive experience inside a completely fabricated world, has been mostly hype.
That is going to change: the technology will be prominent at the CES and is expected to go mainstream this year, especially in the world of gaming.
HTC Vive, a collaborative effort between Taiwan-based mobile phone maker HTC and digital content distribution giant Steam, is a virtual reality headset with motion controllers; the full kit includes 70 sensors, making it both position-aware and body-motion-aware.
Steam, once known just as a digital games provider, has already expanded into other content such as films, software and hardware. The Vive will be a piece of technology for the PC-based platform, rather than just a gaming device.
Next up is Sony’s Project Morpheus, which has a new name - the PlayStation VR. The device appears to be meant for stationary usage with head tracking, which may limit the number of games users can play on it, but if early demos are anything to go by, we’re on course to see the smoothest and most accurate body-motion detection.
