CES 2016: Samsung's unveils three experimental C-Lab projects
Samsung’s secretive Creative Labs (C-Lab) will show off three new, experimental wearable prototypes at the tech expo CES – a hand motion controller for its Gear VR headset, a health tracking smart belt and a smartwatch strap that improves call and sound quality.
Samsung has unveiled images and some details of the devices, developed by engineers in their free time, and we’ll be there next week in Las Vegas to get hands on time with each of them.
Samsung is clear that these are concepts, not fully fledged products, and the idea is to get useful feedback from CES 2016 to “assess their market potential”.
We’ve seen experimental smart clothing come out of Korea before, including a Samsung Smart Suit revealed in 2014, but nothing as promising as these.
rink
This is the most likely of the three to actually go on sale in 2016. It’s a motion controller for the Gear VR that appears to slip over one of your hands.
Samsung describes rink as an “advanced hand-motion controller for mobile VR devices” and promises a nuanced way to interact with objects in virtual worlds. In other words, it’s making its own version of Oculus Touch for its affordable headset which is damn exciting.
Since the first announcement, we’ve also got a glimpse at how rink will work with Gear VR thanks to a short YouTube clip showing a bunch of games and apps controlled by the motion controllers. You can wear one on each hand for positional tracking of each hand and finger poses can be used as controls too.
TipTalk
TipTalk is a bit out there but it is the one concept here to have actually spun out of Samsung’s C-Lab into its own external startup, Innomdle Lab, in August 2015.
All we know is that it is a smartwatch strap which allows the user to hear sound from, say, a Gear S2 by pressing their finger to their ear – no headphones needed. Samsung says it will enhance the clarity of calls taken on a smartwatch as well as add text-to-speech for smartphone messages when wearing an analog watch.
Welt
Given the amount of attention Emiota’s Belty got at last year’s CES, it’s no surprise Samsung is bringing its own health tracking smart belt to the 2016 show.
It measures the wearer’s waist size, steps, time spent sitting down, eating habits (we’re not sure how on this one) and sends the data to an app that includes health and weight management plans. Plus it looks like a regular belt, at least from the pics that Samsung has supplied so far.
