CES 2024: Hirose Electric's Insight on Emerging Tech Trends

From Sensors to Smart Homes: Unveiling Key Innovations at CES 2024

With its focus on innovation, diversity, sustainability, and the future of technology, CES remains a premier event for driving industry growth, shaping consumer experiences, and displaying the digital landscape. Once again, CES showcased the industry’s latest innovations ranging, from AI-powered applications to virtual reality. From an electronics manufacturing standpoint, most consumer electronic trends have been consistent for the past decade, and CES 2024 confirmed this once again. Smaller devices with increased functionality wrapped up in a rugged and durable package. Hirose continues to support these trends with new connector solutions that enable smaller, faster, and better devices in applications such as portable/wearable, smart home, and automotive.

ITS ALL IN THE SENSOR

Innovation is not just about invention; it's about transformation—reshaping our world and how we connect within it, turning what once seemed impossible into everyday reality. Innovation at CES 2024 was all about the sensors. Sensors play a transformative role in many emerging consumer electronic device applications, including wearables, smart home, and automotive. Implementing connected (IoT) sensing technology enables new AI functionalities, improved user experiences, and greater efficiency in various domains. As sensor technology continues to evolve, we can expect further integration of connected sensors into electronic devices.

WEARABLE DEVICES

Wearables continue to evolve to meet user needs. From fitness trackers and smartwatches to medical monitoring devices, CES 2024 showcased the next generation of consumer and medical wearable devices. New medical wearable devices accelerate healthcare’s digital transformation to enable smart aging. Wearable devices demand precise engineering to integrate displays, buttons, sensors, and other core components. Size, weight, battery life, high-speed connectivity, and reliability are all key design requirements to ensure function is combined with comfort and style. In the dynamic world of wearable devices, the role of connectors cannot be understated. They play a vital role in helping OEMs overcome design challenges. 

Hirose's ultra-small, low-profile connector products incorporate high-speed transmission technology and offer design solutions for wearable devices. From USB Type-C interfaces for fast data transfer to high-power connectors for enhanced battery performance, our solutions prioritize both function and form, fitting sleek wearable designs. 

SMARTER HOME

Smart home technologies continue transitioning from passive unconnected devices to active connected devices. Smart home devices enable advanced control of IoT-connected products to simplify daily life and offer more functionality. This often leads to the need for more electronics in a small package, requiring further miniaturization and design flexibility. Whether it’s a robot vacuum cleaning the floor, a virtual reality gaming system, security systems, or pet tech, almost every gadget in the house can now be found in a smart version.

Connectors play a multifaceted role in smart home device designs, impacting interconnectivity, modularity, ease of installation, flexibility, reliability, scalability, user experience, and compatibility. Connectors provide flexibility in smart home device design, allowing manufacturers to create products with different form factors, sizes, and configurations. They enable designers to optimize the layout of internal components, maximize space utilization, and achieve desired aesthetics without compromising functionality. By carefully selecting and implementing connectors, manufacturers can create smart home devices that meet the diverse requirements of users while ensuring seamless integration and optimal performance within smart home ecosystems.

AUTOMOTIVE

Picture a highway where cars communicate like seasoned travelers, where the concept of driverless and even flying vehicles becomes the norm; in this new age, safety transforms from a mere feature into a constant, vigilant companion. This isn't a page from science fiction; it’s the future. CES 2024 once again gave us a glimpse of this reality. LIDAR and ADAS control systems are two technologies at the forefront of driverless vehicles. The demand for heightened performance in LIDAR systems calls for connectors that can keep up with the need for speed and precision. Hirose answers this call with solutions designed for the fast lane of data transfer, voltage, and current capabilities, and signal integrity – all with smaller form factors. 

And with driverless vehicles comes a complete redesign of the automotive cabin to enhance infotainment systems. This includes bigger (and more) display screens, integrated gaming systems, superior sound systems, and more all enabled by compact, high-density connector solutions designed for high-speed data.

By carefully selecting and implementing connectors, manufacturers can create smarter devices that meet the diverse requirements of users while ensuring seamless integration and optimal performance within application ecosystems.

CES 2024 | Image source Hirose Electric Americas

For more information on how Hirose Electric's connectors can transform your wearable device design, visit hirose.com or contact our team of experts today.