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The father of the laptop was there. The same was true of Huawei and a host of other Chinese tech companies. Tens of thousands of visitors also flocked to the MWC tech fair to be dazzled by the latest advances in artificial intelligence, smartphones, robotics and more. The Metaverse has drawn a lot of attention at the show, also known as Mobile World Congress, as companies take advantage of the excitement surrounding new virtual worlds for work and play. SK Telecom's virtual reality air taxi flight simulator was one of the most popular demos, with long lines to take a virtual ride. There were robot dogs for remotely inspecting infrastructure and holograms for virtual learning, as well as speeches by wireless industry executives and backstage discussions with government officials.
Some 80,000 people were expected to attend the world's largest wireless trade show, which ends Thursday in Barcelona over four days.
Here are some highlights:
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While MWC smartphone launches aren't getting as much attention as they used to because innovations have slowed, devices with slick displays have taken center stage.
Motorola added the wow factor by introducing a phone with a flip-up screen. Double-tap your fingers to the side and the screen automatically expands from 5 inches long (13 centimeters) to 6.5 inches by scrolling down from the bottom.
Lenovo, the Chinese technology brand that owns Motorola, also showed off a laptop with a roll-up screen, which took about 19 seconds to unfold to its fully extended position. The company said that these are concept devices and are unlikely to hit the market any time soon.
Other brands, including Samsung and China's Oppo and Tecno, have also released their latest foldable models.
Phones with foldable screens have caught the attention of consumers, but "whether that interest then translates into sales is another question," said Gerrit Schneemann, principal analyst at GfK Boutique. "Over the next few years, I think they will continue to be a real niche market in the general smartphone market. Growing, but still, relatively speaking, relatively small.
AI cat glasses
AI-powered chatbots like ChatGPT have taken the tech world by storm, and UK startup XRAI Glass is joining the fray with augmented reality glasses.
The company's virtual assistant app was designed to work with smart glasses to help people who are deaf or hard of hearing better understand what's going on around them. Speech is transcribed from other people nearby and captions are displayed on the glasses or on a connected smartphone.
Now, XRAI (pronounced X-Ray) has integrated OpenAI's ChatGPT technology into its application and glasses configuration.
"People can ask questions like general knowledge or recipes or whatever they want," chief executive Dan Scarfe said. “Or they can ask about your conversation. So, 'Hey XRAI, can you summarize this conversation?' Or, 'Hey, XRAI, what was the name of the city we were talking about?'
For the hard of hearing, it can be helpful to have an AI assistant recapping a conversation in which multiple people were speaking, according to the company.
digital humans
People might feel better interacting with AI chatbots if they had human faces. That's the idea of D-ID, an Israeli startup, which has released a new interface for its "digital human," essentially an online avatar that can work with AI chat systems to hold conversations.
“We had the chatbot in the past. They didn't work," CEO Gil Perry said, because they could only answer specific questions with specific answers. Now, "great language models bring great improvements to traditional chatbots."
Generative AI systems like ChatGPT can create readable text and hold conversations based on what they've learned from so-called large language models: vast databases of e-books, online writings, and other media.
Perry demonstrated this by asking a question on the chatbot's face on his laptop, the response to which was eerily realistic. He said security measures would prevent D-ID's technology from being misused.
"The idea here is not to replace anybody and convince anybody that what they see is true," Perry said. It's just that humans are "used to communicating with faces."
remote control cars
At the stand of the German mobility company Vay, a driver drove a car along a route marked with pylons. But the car was 1,800 kilometers (1,118 miles) away in Berlin.
The company's technology allows cars to be driven by remote "teledrivers." So far so standard.
The twist is in Vay's business model, which is a cross between a taxi service and a car rental. When a user requests a ride, a teledriver will drive one of their electric cars to the customer's pick-up point, who will take over the driving duties. At destination, the car will be serviced by a remote driver. There is no need to park.
The company claims it is the first in Europe to be allowed to drive cars on public roads without a human driver inside. It currently has 20 certified teledrivers and plans to launch the service in Germany and the United States in the near future.
"We're talking, you know, hopefully months," chief executive Thomas von der Ohe said.
One of the main objectives is to clear the city streets of cars that are parked and not used for most of the day.
The service will be "a big step to start creating an alternative for people not to buy the second car or maybe the third car in the near future," von der Ohe said. "Neither was the first car."
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Augmented reality experiences
Software company Amdocs has demonstrated AR technology that could be used for "immersive next-generation experiences" for fans and security personnel at major sports games.
For example, soccer fans attending an in-person game could purchase a suite of extras for their AR glasses, including exclusive video replays and live stats displayed on their glasses to "up" their gaming experience.
The same glasses could also be used as an additional tool for game security personnel, with additional security features including a security database.
During a simulation at MWC, guards were alerted to rowdy fans trying to scale the gates. A known football hooligan has been reported in the database, his face and details appear on the lenses.
Users, viewing the scene from the guard's perspective, scanned the crowd as the glasses selected faces before identifying the suspect so he could be apprehended, an unsettling display bordering on Orwellian.
