Innovation Signals of Tomorrow’s Tech at CES 2025
Image 1: Fyve Labs’ process for Innovation Signal development: identification from novelty trends, analysis for development and ROI focused development, and prediction and protection with IP. (Assistance from GenAI✧)
In this article, we analyze CES 2025 media coverage to identify key innovation signals shaping tomorrow's technology landscape. Through Fyve's Product Design lens, the following categories are examined for market relevance, potential opportunities for novel IP, and technology development.
Robots & Automation examines both companionship and humanoid task-focused robotics.
Interactions & Guidance highlights innovations in indirect interfaces, earbuds, and glasses.
Electronics covers breakthroughs in displays, automotive immersive, and everyday experiences.
AI Potpourri summarizes a few guided co-pilots but - spoiler - the common perception is that the solutions aren’t quite grounded for broad consumer adoption yet.
TLDR: For those seeking a high-level overview, a summary section at the bottom of the page provides a strategic summary—but don't miss the detailed analysis and compelling examples in each section that demonstrate these innovations in practice.
Innovation Signals
One tenet of creating new technology is understanding what exists today and what's coming tomorrow. In this five-part innovation series from Fyve Labs, we begin with emerging technologies shaping tomorrow's business landscape. We identify "innovation signals" as early indicators as a combination of technological or market evolution, that suggest future opportunities through the following methodology.
Convergence of existing technologies in novel applications
Solutions to persistent user problems gaining market traction, like incorporating Complex Adaptive Systems.
Emergence of new interaction patterns or user behaviors
One of the more practical and grounded forums for consumer innovation is the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) held annually in Las Vegas. With roots as far back as 1967 in NYC with pocket radios and transistors, the event has showcased VCRs, Basic, ever growing display technology, and now microprocessors and AI. Basically, a lot of cool tech is shown here that’s less than three years away from consumers.
We offer deep gratitude to the media journalists at TechCrunch, CNet, TheVerge, Forbes, Tom’s Hardware, and anyone we may have missed in editorial review. Thank you. Fyve’s recommendations for Innovation Signals are human-derived and augment original content from these authors with links to articles for rich media and opinions.
Robots & Automation
This category focuses on consumer level automation and creating semi-automated creature comforts.
Fun Interactions & Companionship
What makes this a signal is the resurrection of a brief trend in the consumer space for robots and animatronics that faces, voices, and fun follow interactions had in 2017. This year saw new ways to provide comfort; think your beloved cat or dog at your side, not deep and probing psychiatric care.
Mi-mo (Jizazi) is a Pixar lamp-like form factor and developer kit with locomotion.
Ballie (Samsung) is a projector, camera, AI hybrid of the androids from sci-fi fanfare.
A furry Mirmuri (Yukai Engineering) is a passive observer in rooms and Mirmuri’s a big fan not letting go (check the link for the pun).
Ami (TCL) is a bot with it’s own go-cart for kid-based engagement, chat, and customized outfits. It’s a doll or action figure that talks back and can still be dressed up
This signal matters because these robots bring back the “simpler” times where companionship and basic interactions are back to dazzle and engage users. They don’t require a lot of connectivity, may aim at simple tasks, but are really there to tag along and make you smile.
Growth and innovation signals in this area focus on how these robots create engagement. This engagement spans both entertainment and practical assistance (aligned with AI’s best fit today and Fyve's core vision). While digital tasks like email, calendar management, and data retrieval will likely come first, physical comfort and manipulation capabilities may follow soon after — as we'll explore below.
Image 2: Not too distant companionship and interaction signals for consumer robotics. (Assistance from GenAI✧)
Humanoid Task Replication
What makes this a signal as a category comes closer to task automation, be it with hydraulic motors and precision movements for industry or with multi-step processes evaluation and conditional execution.
Apollo (Apptronik) is a more human factory worker. Right now most operations for these types of robots are dictated by heavy guidance or “learning by demonstration”, where limited intelligence goes into its training.
A safe delivery box (DoorBox) is a noteworthy mention to thwart the trend of “porch pirates” (more than 1.7M packages and $25M in lost goods in 2019)
The Dreame X50 (Dreame) is a stair-climber vacuum that can lift over small obstacles. It didn’t meet consumer hype in 2025, but marks significant investment for a problem that didn’t exist (robotic vacuums) ten years ago. The SarosZ80 (Roborock) gets an honorable mention for literally picking up dirty socks (or towels or paper) along with its vacuum services.
The AI Laundry Robot (Tenet) is a compact laundry robot that optimizes resource usage through smart cycle and temperature control based on load conditions (though folding isn't included… yet). This mirrors how 2012's Nest revolutionized consumer thermostats with intelligent timing.
This signal matters because robots in a home or business provide tools for task automation or security — and not personal interaction. Until every physical task is a low-cost automation, companies will search for the highest volume pain point and innovate there.
Growth and innovation signals will be the assembly of programmed tasks (tools/functions). Agents are a trend (below) in software that combine several complex tasks that may grow in the robots space as well — with companionship or not. A critical need before mass adoption may not be price and instead will be doing a task well to earn human trust. As a teaser, our next article in this series will focus on when agent-based approaches may be the right or wrong solution.
Interactions & Guidance
This category gloms everyday interactions and contextual enhancements from technology with a strong lean into physical interactions and devices.
Indirect Interactions
What makes this a signal is the merge of two or more operating devices or methods like computer vision, inertial motion, network, or location beacons.
Wowmouse (DoublePoint) uses gestures from a hand or arm as a remote control. The innovation came after abandoning their own hardware leveraging Apple watch series gestures (turning, tapping, mouse).
The Afference Ring (Afference) offers a haptic feedback ring to feel like you are touching virtual items when using your hands so that you know you’ve pressed something.
The Mudura Link wristband (Wearable Devices) captures rotations, some gestures, but also pushes into macro actions like jumping and squatting. Anyone else still feel the burn from life-saving squats in the time-freezing hit Superhot VR?
This signal matters because intuitive controls can be added in context to an existing functionality like turning lights on, controlling volume, or pointing to a speaker to activate. If everything can eventually be controlled, what’s the most natural input to do so?
Growth and innovation signals manifest as a critical push back to making everything speech or “AI” driven. Our tactile and visual senses require far less attention and focus than speech and including actions like a hand wave or finger tap can give precision on interactions as minimum viable product additions.
Earbuds
What makes this a signal is the growing acceptance of an ever-present listening device. With bots on video conversations and sales calls, are we heading to helpful assistants as more practical than dazzle like last year’s Rabbit and Pin?
Buddie is a set of earbuds with a focus on contextual assistants backed by published patents from an academic environment. This quote embodies the relevance of this signal “We believe that earbuds will become the dominant interface for natural language AI”.
OSO AI Earbuds (Oso) highlights a mash-up of listening, meeting notes, reminders as critical functionality. Extra points (for engagement, not innovation) for their interactive charging case.
HumanPods (Natura Humana) with an AI OS that is focused on development of assistants that users have a lot more control over (and they evolve over time).
This signal matters because earbuds have become widely accepted in nearly every setting, proving that the form factor and interaction patterns work. The next step is integrating use-specific AI assistants, with current text-based GPT interactions laying a strong foundation. For comparison, the Omi — a quarter-sized device that attaches to your temple — offers similar capabilities but falls outside this innovation signal due to its unconventional form factor.
Growth and innovation signals will be most pronounced when the value add — taking notes, reminding you of meetings, recalling forgotten names — becomes either effortless or highly reliable. While privacy and data ownership present challenges, most consumers haven't yet felt the serious consequences of unrestricted data sharing such as identity theft, deep fake scams, or biometric exploitation.
Image 4: Interaction and guidance innovation signals complement the evolution of contextual information and conversations as the ubiquitous adoption of technology is normalized from desktop to glasses. (Assistance from GenAI✧)
Glasses
What makes this a signal is the convergence of style and function for digital assistants, contextual observations, and some AI feedback as something that people are comfortable already wearing all the time.
Simple and stylish glasses (Nuance Audio, Chameleo) that are often for Brand looks, grab a higher price tag but maybe worth mention because of options like hearing augmentation or a simple tactile button set.
Complex face screens (Xreal) with heavy AR hooks but it doesn’t call itself an AR device.
Hybrids (Loomos.AI with Kickstarter, X3, Haliday) with light AR or projection onto a lens or part of your eye.
This signal matters because the separation of these functionalities is blurring, along with price-tags. Complementing the sentiment in this review, an adoption pattern may occur similar to smart watches which saw a meteoric rise from 2018 to 2022 (from fitness to smartwatch to IoT) to an estimated $50B in 2025 (+1 to Forbes for spotting the trend very early).
Growth and innovation signals depend more on practical factors than technology—successful products must balance functionality with price. The key verticals are contextual information (who/what/where) and augmentation (data overlays), and consumers are becoming more comfortable with having a constant visual display in their field of view. Like earbuds (see above), once people widely accept these "observant" glasses as normal, the market will likely expand rapidly.
Electronics
Although “electronics” are in the name of the event (CES), this category pools prolific devices and interactions observed in the consumer space — just one or two AI items coincidentally in the mix!
Displays
What makes this a signal is the traditional items that have surfaced with new life. There will always be a new victor of CES with the largest TV visual diagonal (Samsung’s Wall at 143” in 2025), but some of the technologies below didn’t exist 20 years ago.
Max Ink (TCL) brings a low power adaptation mode using e-ink displays that previously existed on things like Kindles for a crisp monochrome. Save energy? Faster refresh? Yes, please.
InkPoster (PocketBook and Sharp) has up to 31” with 16 colors and wireless connectivity.
Rollable laptop screen (Lenovo) as a follow-up to TVs, show extra tall documents without bringing your road warrior rig.
The stretchable Micro LED display (Samsung) uses physical screen manipulation correlated to depth in visuals. It will be a sleeper technology like backlighting without video coding to utilize the feature, but content enhancement may catch up to bring your favorite movie to life.
Beam–formed audio (Dell) with directional audio based on head placement. Tracking a user without markers and dynamically beam-forming a signal is a cornerstone of cellular antennas, but now it may enhance a gamer’s home experience.
This signal matters because display technologies are evolving beyond traditional form factors, combining low-power efficiency with physical engagement through haptics. While mainstream adoption focuses on practical computer displays, these innovations lay groundwork for future immersive consumer experiences.
Growth and innovation signals hinge on delivering novel experiences through fundamental improvements rather than feature accumulation. The key driver will be reaching either mass market acceptance through practical utility or specialized market saturation that transforms passive consumption into active engagement.
Automotive Immersion
Automotive immersion represents a significant shift in how information and interactive experiences are integrated into vehicles. The key development is the evolution from traditional dashboard displays to sophisticated windshield-based information systems, with major automotive manufacturers introducing advanced AR and holographic display technologies. These systems aim to enhance driver awareness and passenger experience while maintaining safety considerations.
What makes this a signal is the entrant of immersion in transportation. Information came out of the dash and into the windshield with some strong brands.
iDrive (BMW) is a holographic windshield that has three levels of AR displays for different focal intents and interaction capabilities (glance, read, and touch).
Mobis Holographic Windshield (Hyundai) has projected HUDs for different people in the car, allowing non-interfering visuals in gaming to be projected adjacent to weather reports.
This signal matters because displays in consumer transportation are utilizing the previously unused visual landscape of the windshield, with a focus on information display and emergency alerts. This immersion signal overshadows novel transportation from CES ‘25: e-boats (Arc Sport), robotaxis (Zoox), SUVs (Honda), another roadster (Sony) and eVOTL or electric vertical take off and landing (Xpeng Aero). Cost and volume for these vehicles must be answered before an alternate consumer innovation signal is apparent.
Growth and innovation signals here can spike or crash. If the industry is able to focus on opportunistic items (e.g. those that are critical only to a situation) instead of a constant, “always on” stream of distractors (like ads, social feeds, etc.) then we may see a new green field for the creation of visual situational intelligence. This restraint strongly contradicts capitalism and consumer-driven product growth, but it's a necessary one.
Everyday Convenience
What makes this a signal is the ubiquity of the device category — you’ll see.
Satellite texting is now available for everyone with this plug-in adapter modem.
Sleepbuds (Ozlo) sleep enhancing earbuds with health tracking and noise obliteration.
Hyperice (Nike) shoes have heat and compression massage for warm-up and recovery.
Soda Top (Roam) is a flask-based carbonator for carbonation in your common water bottle.
Paper batteries (Flint) and a swappable phone battery (Swippit) create flexible power forms and a warranty-pleasing convenience for power swaps.
Electric salt spoon (Kirin) has been in development for a while, but with a data-driven electrical stimulation of tastebuds that makes food taste more salty, it reduces the need to use salt on food.
This signal matters because these tech solutions solve a specific problem with in-situ actions for users. Commodity technology isn’t always convenience, but you’re not faulted if you saw each product and thought “of course they did” to yourself.
Growth and innovation signals from the marketing and product mantra, KISS (the principle not the band), will always launch solutions for everyday pain-points into an instant hit. Traditional marketing will help these products thrive, so signals for innovation will likely come from copy-cats and picking up the experiential pieces that the first product missed (like built-in gait and stance analysis for those Nike shoes?).
AI Potpourri
Although this is the category of the decade, all of the AI-first technologies showcased at CES ‘25 were received with a lukewarm shrug from a consumer perspective, but that’s still a signal worth analyzing.
Guidance & Co-pilots
What makes this a signal is the novel situational integration that co-pilots and guides provide versus a conversational focus or doing a single activity (e.g. laundry or vacuuming) with data-driven tweaks.
Project Ava (Razer) runs screen-capture to offer advice for gamers as over-the-shoulder gaming coach. Some early concerns surfaced around slow/lagging predictions (even with local GPU) and a lack of transparency for training data like which gamer or strategy was influential and deserves credit.
Vision AI (Samsung) brings dynamic interface updates for remote-control buttons to content processing like audio enhancement, food recognition, and hooks into a home’s smart cameras.
This signal matters because focused products for specific problems are the only way to “get to a no” and move on to the next innovative iteration. The most frequent AI projects are “offline”: coding, Q&A/search, and summaries. Human-in-the-loop solutions and guidance as solutions instead of full automation or replacement are core to the Fyve Labs’ Values.
Growth and innovation signals to watch are the progression of co-pilot products (do they multiply or change verticals) and the improvement rate of scenario-specific metrics (gaming has latency, content recommendation has precision, coding and prototyping has usability). Secondary signals around data transparency may surface but will likely be ignored, giving favor to the “best of” solutions instead.
Un-materialized AI Hype
What makes this a signal is the collective sigh and complacent shrug at the neither here-nor-there solutions that start with hype but lack the typical prototype or early demo required by categories. Two examples are AI-based air friers and spice racks with custom and unsustainable packaging. The media coverage was full of candor and unanimously unimpressed: weird, meh, slop, and quiet evolution. As a stark contrast to these vacant and mediocre offerings, Liz Pelly released Mood Machine as an insider biography and critique for Spotify as it now “ruins music”.
This signal matters because hype and a talented C-suite may be able to get amazing VC funding and a decent runway but in a space that is looking for “tomorrow” and not “in the next three years”, words without practice will be rejected. Long vision plays are better suited for adaptation to the problems each new technology creates.
Growth and innovation signals are hard to fund when the greater community underperforms. Instead, smaller booths or people demoing items from their backpack on the floor may be what to look for but they infrequently survive the vicious scrutiny of a consumer prototype. It is refreshing to see attendance costs for CES remain low even though its legacy is over 50 years old.
TLDR: Consumer Innovation Signals in CES ‘25
Here’s a quick summary across the above categories into overall trends from CES ‘25 aggregating the signals, why the signal matters, and what will trigger significant innovative growth.
Task-Focused Automation & Practical Utility
Sources & Examples
Task-Oriented Automation (factory worker, door delivery)
In-Situ Problem Solving (vacuum, laundry)
Dynamic Displays (e-ink posters)
Why It Matters
Clear task effectiveness
Single-task mastery
Reliability as priority
Focused solution value
Growth Indicators
Performance consistency
Trust building metrics
Core functionality adoption
Practical utility validation
Natural Interface & Adaptive Interaction
Sources & Examples
Intuitive Control (wrist gestures, haptic ring)
Experiential Tech (beam-formed audio)
Natural Information Display (windshield, immersive HUD)
Why It Matters
Reduced explicit commands
Context-aware responses
Natural behavior recognition
Interaction flow matches function
Growth Indicators
Core response accuracy
Behavior adaptation rate
Interface simplification
Contextual success metrics
Purpose-Driven Innovation
Sources & Examples
Transportation Evolution (holographic windshields)
Grounded Guidance (in-game coaching)
Resource-Conscious Solutions (paper batteries, e-ink displays)
Why It Matters
Answers a problem of today
Natural solution fit (no new habit to learn)
IP development potential
Future-ready, preemptive adaptation
Growth Indicators
User-need alignment
Early limitation management
Core tech advancement
Market readiness indicators
Connected Experiences & Personalized Interaction
Sources & Examples
Personalized Companionship (desk companion, robot projector)
Augmented Experiences (AI agents in ear pods)
Smart Integration (furry AI observer, child engagement with stories)
Why It Matters
Natural daily integration (ear pods)
Reduced interaction barriers (task adjacent)
Personalized responsiveness
Ecosystem connection (one action within platform)
Growth Indicators
Engagement quality metrics
Adoption friction reduction
Feature utilization rates
Companionship-utility balance
Image 5: One hypothetical future for innovation signals that combine guided companionship, targeted connected experiences, and natural interfaces for the task at hand. (Assistance from GenAI✧)
Keep Innovating!
While CES showcases possibilities, successful implementation requires understanding where AI and traditional solutions each excel. Look for our next Fyve Insights article exploring when to embrace AI agents and when established approaches deliver better ROI.
Part 1: Innovation Signals of Tomorrow’s Tech (CES 2025). Congrats, you just read it!
Part 2: Beyond the AI Agent: When Traditional Solutions Win. Agents are everywhere but often there are cheaper, simpler, or better tested systems that can also work for better ROI.
Part 3: Serverless & Multimodal Generation: Accommodating New Infrastructure. We test some principles in action through real-world serverless architecture and examine a hybrid cloud audio processing implementation.
Part 4: Startup Mortality: Learning from 3 Years of Tech Failures. We'll analyze three years of startup data to surface any trends in technology strategies.
Part 5: SXSW 2025: Innovation Landscape Update. Join us at SXSW as we explore emerging technology trends where we come back to another venue focused on innovation.
Still want more? Consider checking out the CES Innovation Awards, a list of what peers and organizers at the event thought were standouts. Alternatively, if you’re ready to leverage a trends analysis in your business, reach out to Fyve Labs directly. We’ll help to develop an innovation strategy, create a technical Implementation that includes full customer research and ROI with emergent technologies, and secure your innovation advantage through strategic patents.
