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Intel hosted a Future Showcase event this week to celebrate 50 years of Moore’s Law (doubling the number of transistors on a chip every two years) – here’s what it had on show.
5 future devices
Smart Clip
Every year children die accidentally after being left in cars, often from heatstroke. The Smart Clip, a prototype shown off at this year’s CES and developed by an Intel engineer, is a device that replaces the clip on your child’s safety belt that will alert a parent via Bluetooth to a key fob if they’ve forgotten to take Junior with them.
Intel Home Gateway
Home Gateway is based on the Intel Galileo development board and allows makers to come up with their own home automation system, by providing a cross-platform central hub that can talk to any of the smart devices already on the market. So if you’ve got a Nest thermostat and Philips Hue lightbulbs, for example, the Home Gateway will provide the link between the two.
The system is based on NFC tags that track where you are in the home and adjust devices accordingly as you move about. For example, if you’re watching a movie on the sofa, and you get up and move into the kitchen, the Home Gateway will automatically stream the movie to the tablet in your kitchen.
Intel RealSense Technology
Intel RealSense technology is already in use today in devices like the HP Sprout. RealSense technology means that you’ll be able to control your device with gestures.
Having this tech available in 2-in-1s, tablets and (later) smartphones will also make 3D scanning more widely available. For example, 3DMe takes photography allows you to animate or 3D print yourself.
Self-navigating Drones
Flying drones are being developed further with integrated Intel RealSense cameras, which allows them to avoid objects as they sense the 3D space around them.
Context-sensing
This enables a device to work out where it is by taking its context into account. Context-awareness means devices can respond accordingly, and that could be managed across a range of devices and platforms. For example, when managing an organisation’s smartphones, the context-aware platform can provide a dashboard that lists all those devices, and tells those phones when they’re at a location it’s safe to unlock automatically, such as the office.
Once it leaves the office, its GPS tells the device that it is out of the safe zone and it automatically switches into a more secure mode.
Other devices
Intel also showed off devices out now including the HP Sprout all-in-one, Asus ZenFone 2, Intel NUC and Intel Compute Stick, NFC and Intel WiDi (Wireless Display) tech, Intel Galileo and Intel Edison, and wearables including the MICA bracelet, Basis Peak fitness and sleep tracker, and SMS Audio BioSport earbuds.
"The exponential growth in processing power and efficiency has driven an amazing explosion in technology over the past 50 years. We’ve gone from computers the size of rooms to routinely carrying a range of devices whose capabilities are beyond the wildest dreams of Moore and his computing pioneers," said Intel in a statement.
"The technology we’ve shown you today is just a taste of what’s around the corner. Who knows what the next half-century will bring?"
