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LAS VEGAS – Wipro focused on three key areas at the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show (CES): the automotive sector, media and the Internet of Things (IoT) including artificial intelligence (AI), providing demonstrations of solutions for each of them. It was in line with what Wipro said ahead of the show would be a focus on driving convergence in the connected world, according to its website.

In automotive, the company remains focused on the “infotainment” space and it’s seeing “significant interest from our customers” in voice recognition solutions including Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant integration, Srikant Godavarti, GM and sales head-product engineering, told the Media & Entertainment Services Alliance (MESA) at the show. He noted that the company was showing solutions offering that integration for the first time at CES.

Although voice recognition has already been in vehicles for a while, consumers are now able to use the same familiar platforms they’ve already been using in home devices including speakers in their cars as well, Godavarti said, adding: “It’s a continuation of that ecosystem,” offering “the same power of the Internet.”

In media, the new ATSC 3.0 broadcast standard has “evolved very well” and Wipro has been “working for more than a year – close to around 15-16 months – on developing the [protocol] stack” for it, Godavarti told MESA at CES. Wipro demonstrated a working version of the ATSC 3.0 stack at CES, he noted. “We know that it’s going to take some time for the first events” to be broadcast using ATSC 3.0, but “we expect the first events to come out hopefully by next CES, and we are working with” the chipset providers and OEMs to integrate the stack into the next designs, he said.

In IoT, he pointed to the huge number of devices in that category that were unveiled at CES. Wipro showcased its solution for IoT devices that incorporates its Holmes AI technology, he said, but added Wipro also uses other companies’ AI technologies in certain use cases as well. The company’s goal is to solve “unique problems” when employing AI, and Holmes is “not the broadest” AI platform on the market, he conceded, adding: “We are not positioning it as competition to what” the large companies are doing with AI.

Also at CES:

Adobe

Adobe is upbeat about the potential for augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), according to David Helmly Sr., senior manager-professional video for the company’s Creative Cloud Enterprise business.

During the past two CES shows, Adobe has been “investigating VR and AR,” conducting meetings and looking at headsets on the show floor, and has also “spent a lot of time with the camera makers,” he told MESA at the show. Insta360 in particular “seems to be coming up in the world,” he said, pointing to the expanded line of products that maker of 360-degree cameras was touting at its CES booth this time.

Adobe was trying to get an idea “how fast the space is actually moving,” he explained, adding that, as it turned out, “it’s moving surprisingly fast.” Adobe was “a bit shy at first” to jump aggressively into VR based on “what we saw with stereo 3D, which was a big thing at CES a number of years ago,” he said. Initially, Adobe opted to partner with a developer that made a plug-in for Adobe’s Premiere video editing software because “we weren’t exactly sure where VR was going” initially, he told us.

However, “it’s just had a steady pace upward” since two years ago, so, in mid-2017, Adobe introduced its “first set of real VR tools” and then bought SkyBox technology and assets from Mettle, a global developer of best-in-class 360-degree and VR software, he noted.

At the time, Adobe said the acquisition came “at a time when increasing numbers of creators, global brands and media and entertainment companies are embracing 360/VR and are looking for seamless, end-to-end workflows for this new, immersive medium.” A SkyBox toolset was designed exclusively for post-production in Adobe Premiere Pro CC and Adobe After Effects CC and complemented Adobe Creative Cloud’s existing 360/VR cinematic production technology, Adobe said, adding it would integrate SkyBox plugin functionality natively into future releases of Premiere Pro and After Effects.)

At least some of the VR content demonstrated at the 2018 CES was created using Premiere and After Effects, Helmly said, pointing to Intel’s booth as one example. He and Chris Bobotis, director of immersive at Adobe and a Mettle founding partner, also spoke at the VR Fest that was held in Las Vegas the same week as CES, Helmly noted.

One of the remaining “challenges” of producing VR content remains dealing with spatial audio, he said, adding audio is “almost more important than video” in VR. Another challenge remains convincing many consumers to wear a headset to participate in VR, he conceded, but predicted the size and pricing of those devices will keep shrinking, which should help, along with an untethering from the wires. The price cuts seen on PlayStation VR and Oculus Rift in recent months seemed to significantly help sales, he noted.

Adobe, meanwhile, is also turning its attention to AR, he said, calling VR a “stepping stone” to AR. “I’m not sure we know all the areas” that AR will be used for, he said, telling MESA: “We’re listening to lots of customers tell us that they’re definitely interested in AR. So, I think that’s an area we’re going to investigate more.”

The future of the entire space, however, could lie in mixed reality (MR), he conceded. One likely challenge for MR, however, is “going to be battery life” on the wearable devices used for that technology, he predicted.