Parks Associates team was at CES 2023, and research analyst, Ryan Hulla, shares his industry insights and takeaways.
Ryan recently graduated with a PhD in experimental psychology from the University of Texas at Arlington. He also holds a Master of Science in Psychology from the University of Texas at Arlington and two bachelor’s degrees from Texas A&M University – Corpus Christi. Prior to joining Parks Associates, Ryan worked as a Researcher at the University of Texas at Arlington and as a Clinical Research Coordinator at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.
Name 3 interesting things you saw at CES and the company associated with it.
- Tapo/ TP-Links smart video door lock with face recognition capabilities
Smart video door locks are just starting to hit the market, with only a few players such as Eufy, Lockly, and Revolo manufacturing them. The Tapo video door lock will be the first one to implement face recognition software in the young video door lock device market, differentiating itself from the current video door locks.
- Home Guard’s Enforcer Camera with police-style flashing lights, spotlights, and siren.
Smart cameras with tracking spotlights hit the market in 2022, with Vivint and Ring notably adding spotlight cameras to their suite of products. Home Guards Enforcer camera adds the features of police-style flashing lights and two-way audio to bolster deterrence. Only Swann Enforcer cameras currently have the same features, but the addition of a flashing police-style light may be the newest feature to start being implemented in smart cameras.
- Rings Car Cam and Peephole Cam
Rings adds new cameras for vehicle dashboards and returns the door peephole back into their product line at a cheaper price. Ring is now pushing security beyond the home with its vehicle dashboard camera. Rings Peephole Camera provides a great alternative to their video doorbell for renters since it does not require drilling or a connection to wires to be installed.
- Labrador Retriever Robot
At CES 2023 in Las Vegas, Labrador showed off their Retriever robot use in a kitchen setting. The device’s target user base is people who are aging and/or have mobility issues but and aer living independently. The device can ease the burden of daily tasks with a robot that can come to them on command, grab and move objects, and change its own height to prevent unnecessary strain/risk of falling for the users.
The coolest tech that I saw at CES was the Wagz Smart Dog Collar
The Wagz Smart Dog Collar provides a geofence border set from the user’s phone, and no physical components are required besides the user’s phone and the collar itself. The collar uses sound and vibration deterrence when the user’s dog has passed the set geofenced boundary and provides GPS of the dog’s location. In addition, the Wagz app provides data on the user’s dog activity level.
At CES, I was surprised to see the amount of OEMs producing physical robotic assistants.
Robotic assistants ranged from substitute pets, such as the WowWee’s robotic Dog-E; a lawn care robot known as Yarbo by Yarbo Inc., which is capable of mowing, and leaf and snow blowing a user’s lawn autonomously; Parky, an autonomous EV charging robot by Evar; Neubie, the urban delivery robot from Neubility which can deliver goods within a mile from its place of service in a complex urban environment; Amazons Astro, a robot designed to monitor the home why the user is away; and Labrador’s Retriever robot, which is used to assist the aging and mobility impaired population in daily tasks. It appears manufacturers are projecting that consumers will have a strong desire to have robotic assistants in many aspects of their homes.
One thing I saw that will impact the market in 2023 is face recognition capabilities for video devices. In 2022, Wyze and Nest had face recognition capabilities in their video devices, and now Tapo/TP-Link is planning to release their own smart video door lock with face recognition capabilities. Many other security device manufacturers I spoke with also mentioned that face recognition capabilities were in development for their video products.
To keep pace in the industry, and also capitalize on added reoccurring revenue models, more manufacturers will likely implement face recognition technology into their video devices.
