You know that feeling when you mostly get the idea, then you experience it and it clicks. When I worked in the Math Center in College and got to help other students get that aha moment, that was the best.
In my opinion, that makes a great immersive demo, and that is the criteria for which I have selected these 5 Star Demos. All of the CES companies I covered were showing top notch demos, these ones did something extra.
Written by
Sara Sargent
InCabin Principle Brand Strategist
Neumo - Impactful and Thought Provoking
In 4 years in this industry, I’ve done a lot of DMS demos, so I know the requirements for being measured as a safe driver. First of all, I was very happy to see they had a Brose branded seat – another lovely company I’ve gotten to know.
I was on my own covering this demo, so I had my phone resting in my lap so I could take photos of the demo. Niall Berkery gives me the intro of how the demo works: I am the driver of the car I see on the screen, and it keeps driving as long as I am focused on the car driving on the road. If I get distracted, the car will stop.
He hits start on the demo, and I keep my eyes straight ahead while reaching down – without looking – to hit record on my phone in my lap.
The car stops.
It clicks.
It didn’t matter that I didn’t take my eyes off the road, that’s not what “focused” means. I’ve continued to think about that a lot, all the different types of distractions, and what it really means to be focused?
So, how did it know?
Neumo is a contactless, brainwave sensing technology that comes from a background in the medical industry. I instantly thought of the possibilities of this plus a vision-based DMS.
What you see and hear in the video: I’m focusing on driving the car, and then I laugh because Niall touches my shoulder to distract me and then there’s ensuing discussion…
QNX - Disarming and Fun
QNX enables digital cockpit design on AWS cloud, which means teams can work in real time across locations. In the picture below, the parts outlined in red are by QNX, and the green is Android Auto. I appreciate how clearly this shows you who does what.
I’d gone to demos all morning, then gone through the exterior sensing demos at QNX. Now finally came the time for software defined audio.
Something to know about us at InCabin, is that we are always learning new things for the industry and last year one new thing was audio. My engineering background is in sensing, and I was very new to audio demos last CES, but this year I am prepared for what I’ll experience. I’ve also studied quite a lot about what companies, terms, and applications are important, and my brain switches into high learning gear.
I got into the passenger seat with a different attendee as the driver, and our lovely QNX hosts explained how our Hyundai Ioniq has been modified for this demo. We listen to Rocketman, a reference track for pele in the industry, so that we can hear what’s achieved with the Bose digital amplifier system. This is also the first time I’ve been made aware of a company implementing policies for audio signals on cloud for anti-distraction. I don’t know whether this is unique, or just new to me – but I like it.
The below picture shows what can be removed with their digital amplifier.
Then as he’s doing the demo he just casually puts on Sweet Caroline and calmly informs us that this is the karaoke demo, that we’ll be singing it and then a classic “do you know the words?” As if there’s some chance that we don’t…
Suddenly I’m not working at a tech show, I’m being silly with a stranger and waving at people walking by laughing. That was really nice, and a needed break from the intensity of CES. Bringing the walls down like that allows people to be themselves and ask better questions. This is the heart of what we aim to do in our events, so I have to give kudos to the team at QNX for absolutely nailing it.
SoundHoundAI - Inspiring and New
This is a situation where I got back home and beat myself up that I didn’t take more videos. Soundhound AI taught me about agents and how agentic AI works, specifically around the
in-cabin voice assistants. That was a really important concept for me to understand as it will
play a role in the business strategy of many companies in the InCabin Community.
Here’s a simple version:
The driving companion they showed was made of 28 agents. Each agent is the expert on their topics. The driving companion or voice assistant is an entity that calls on each agent as it needs it to provide the right combination of information to respond to the passenger. Different agents are responsible for navigation, vision AI (“Can I park there?”), lights, calendar, email…
The agents communicate with each other and you’re talking to all the systems at once.
Here is the only video I took of a really simple example, but they had many that were much more complex.
Now about Vision AI, with this I can say to my car, “create a route to drive me around for 30 minutes and tell me about the interesting architecture”. I could park my car and just say “Pay for parking” and it can see where I am and take care of that – that would be a very convenient feature, especially in cold Minnesota winters.
They proudly displayed a Lucid in their booth, a demo I didn’t get to this time. I assume this is because Lucid switched from Alexa to Soundhound AI, a pretty nice endorsement. Soundhound AI is part of the NVIDIA Passport Program.
TomTom - Practical and Educational
I was floored at what I saw at TomTom last year because I hadn’t been visiting the mapping companies for InCabin until then, and I will not miss them again. I’d thought of HD Maps as resources for automated and autonomous driving stacks, and I’d missed the obvious part – what can be communicated from the HD Map asset to the users.
The information that TomTom can provide to a driver is rich and fills gaps where perception systems struggle. It is valuable for conveniences and adds a really important safety layer. For instance, lets say there is a truck blocking a stop sign – the map knows a stop sign is there, the vision system can then say “the map says there’s a stop sign here but I can’t see it” then the whole system can decide to display a stop sign icon in the driver’s view to alert them to the sign they cannot see.
They showed TomTom as the HD Map agent for your next agentic AI companion system, and talked about the importance of an “agentic handover” and standardizing communication between all these different agents.
Smart Eye - Safety Focus and Personal
I did many demos at Smart Eye and my favorite was with Jay who introduced me to Sheila. The demo of Sheila, Smart Eyes driving companion, includes a physical representation in small ball form with eyes, positioned on the dash between the driver and passenger.
Sheila is meant to feel like an additional being in the car. She told me, the passenger, that the driver was falling asleep and I needed to wake him up. Her voice was very realistic in inflection and urgency. Sheila understood that Jay and I were talking to each other, and when he was looking at me and talking, she scolded him for doing so and told him to pay attention to the road.
This was a really good demo of how the interior sensing data can come to life with AI and audio technology, gathering context to be practical and not annoying, but especially not distracting. A common subject of discussion is the right balance of notification to the driver, and this demonstration answers that really well. It’s not about the amount of the alert, its about the system understanding the driver’s state and when to alert them. In the video you’ll see Sheila respond to Jay being distracted.
Smart Eye will be in Detroit at InCabin this June, so plan to see their demos in person then!
Closing Remarks
I’ve been excited to tell you about these demos from CES. I firmly believe that meeting
in person, taking part in useful demos, and having honest conversations works best for businesses in auto tech. Putting together a demo that conveys the technical capability, works flawlessly, and helps the application demand come to life is a real challenge. As always we’ll endeavor to get the best demos to the show floor at InCabin and AutoSens this year. See you in Detroit in June!
