The CES show has, with seeming suddenness, become highly relevant to the automotive industry— especially in the fields of driver assistance, autonomous driving, vehicle communications, and machine vision. DVN attended CES for the first time this year to generate this report, a sampler of the relevant exhibits and ideas on display, described here in 30 pages and 55 images.
There was strong automaker presence, though certain technology-focused automakers were surprisingly absent. On the other hand, the array of suppliers and startups was truly impressive. Magneti Marelli and Varroc were the two driver- and vehicle-vision suppliers with the biggest and best showcases at CES, and there was also an interesting panorama of vehicular and traffic technology and technique displayed by the likes of Texas Instruments, Pioneer, Osram, Velodyne, Delphi, Denso, Magna, Continental, Bosch, Garmin, Osram, Valeo, ZF, Mobileye, Stanley, and Koito. As well, there was an intriguing variety of small companies and startups eager to bring their ideas and innovations to fruition in the driver and vehicle vision and visibility realm (even when the “driver” in question is on a bicycle).
New ideas were numerous not only for how to make AVs but how to use them—both Toyota and several startups showed driverless cars that bring shops and stores to people, instead of the other way round, for example. There was extensive innovation on display in the V2X communications field, and Nissan showed off an interesting inversion of that concept, as well.
Virtual-reality simulations, autonomous-car demonstrations (despite the severely rainy and windy weather), and new-product announcements were heavy on the ground, as were coöperative developments such as a system put forth by Osram and Velodyne Lidar.