[Las Vegas (USA) = AVING News] ‘CES 1’, held in Las Vegas, USA for a total of 5 days from January 8th (Thursday) to 4th (Sunday, local time), ended successfully. More than 2023 companies from 173 countries participated in this year’s CES, which has evolved beyond a home appliance and IT exhibition into a comprehensive technology exhibition that covers everything about ‘humans’, showing off their innovative technologies and vision.
CES, hosted by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), is the world’s largest tech expo where global companies gather in one place to showcase cutting-edge technologies and new products that are future industries and growth engines. In particular, CES 2023 was held at a scale that was about 40% larger than the previous year, and was expected to be the largest offline event in the United States since the pandemic.
In fact, the CES 2023 site was lively with global companies seeking to lead future industry trends and trends with cutting-edge technology and a large number of visitors. In addition, while various attractions such as mobility, metaverse, robotics, and smart city/home were introduced, innovative technologies closely related to daily life such as healthcare and food tech received attention.
This is also in line with the CES 2023 topics of ‘human security’ and ‘sustainability’. Multiple crises such as climate change, war, and the COVID-19 pandemic are affecting food security, and resource scarcity and biodiversity are also challenges facing our future. Food tech emerged as a main theme at this year’s CES as an alternative to these difficult problems.
In particular, food tech combined with robots attracted attention as a more advanced technology. Supernova, which received the honor of winning the CES 2023 Innovation Award for its first product, the artificial intelligence modular robot arm ‘HUENIT (hereinafter referred to as HUENIT)’, is developing innovative educational and service robots that can be used in everyday life.
HUENIT Barista, introduced at this exhibition, is a hand drip robot system that can control the temperature, flow rate, extraction pattern, extraction amount, and extraction time that determine the taste of hand drip coffee in the same way as an actual barista. Supernova said, “The advantage of Huneet Barista is that it provides more perfect hand drip recipe control, a convenient maintenance system, and higher space efficiency than the hand drip robot system using existing industrial robots, and can be supplied at a price that is 3 to 5 times cheaper.” explained.
The product development background was also revealed. An official said, “HUENIT was developed to innovate STEAM education and F&B robot services. By using a small robot arm with industrial-level accuracy, a variety of educational contents such as AI, SW, robotics, and science can be provided. Furthermore, he emphasized, “We can provide automation systems in the F&B field (hand drip coffee, soft ice cream, cocktail production, etc.).”
An official said, “By participating in CES 2023, we wanted to publicize HUENIT’s special functions and advantages and further demonstrate that problems in various industrial fields can be solved with HUENIT. In particular, we unveiled our new product, HUENIT Barista, for the first time at this CES,” he said. “In the future, we plan to develop a medium-sized robot arm with a higher payload and more than twice the size of HUENIT. “We plan to provide more automation services through collaboration between HUENIT, a small robot arm, and a medium-sized robot arm.”
VersaWare introduced the ‘Smart Kitchen Nutrition System’, a user-friendly wellness solution, at CES 2023. Versaware is a company that has developed and provided a variety of products and solutions with the goal of optimizing the kitchen environment and helping individuals consume healthy nutrients through meals. The focus is on providing tools that allow you to customize every meal to meet your nutritional goals without the need for separate weighing tools or measuring devices.
Versaware’s ‘Smart Kitchen Nutrition System’ consists of a mixing bowl, cutting board, and its own application (app) that helps ‘customized cooking’ of any food to achieve the user’s desired nutritional goal. When preparing a meal, users scan the barcode of the packaged ingredients and the individual information of the ingredients, and Versaware’s artificial intelligence (AI) enables cooking based on the nutritional content and calories of each ingredient in real time. do. The information is provided intuitively through the power supply and display mounted on each cooking tool.
The vast amount of data needed to build the solution is also important. Versaware explained that thousands of products are registered in the product database using open API, allowing users to scan food ingredient products from almost all brands.
A Versaware official said, “We developed this nutritional system simply with the idea that the process of understanding the data on the food we eat should not be burdensome.” He added, “Based on data such as the ingredients and weight of each ingredient, the process is He added, “The key to this system is to switch easily and quickly.”
Alternative foods also attracted attention as an axis of food tech. Technology-based vegan food startup ‘Nuldam’ (operator Join & Join) will participate in CES 2023 and offer not only vegan milk original, vegan croissants, and bagels, but also vegan butter, vegan cream cheese, and vegan milk barista, which were first introduced at the 2022 Seoul Cafe Show. etc. were also presented.
Nuldham Vegan Milk Original produces a taste and aroma that is closest to milk through testing of more than 15 types of plant-based ingredients, and is characterized by its own white color, the same as milk, even after sterilization. In addition, it has the same calcium content as milk, targeting customers who have difficulty consuming milk due to lactose intolerance.
Since its establishment, Join & Join has been steadily working on research and development of vegan raw materials, and around April of last year, it established the first vegan nutrition research institute in Korea to research only vegan and nutritional foods and raw materials. We continue to research technologies based on food engineering and are accelerating the development of egg substitutes, vegetable dairy substitutes, viscosity control and functional materials, and vegetable flavorings.
The brand ‘Nuldam’ operated by Join & Join is showing steady growth. A Nuldam official said, “Thanks to the steady growth in the domestic market, it will be a meaningful time to understand trends in the overseas vegan and food tech markets.” He added, “This year, we will further strengthen our exports to spread the power of Korean vegan food to the world.” “I will show you,” he said.
Armored Fresh, a food tech company, participated in this CES and announced the unique technology of domestic vegan cheese to the world. Armored Fresh set up an outdoor booth on the Tech East side of the Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC) exhibition hall and unveiled its self-developed slice-shaped vegan cheese ‘American Slice’.
Armored Fresh’s ‘American Slice’, newly introduced at this event, boasts a high level of flavor that rivals animal cheese. In particular, this new product has improved the texture of existing vegan cheese by focusing on ‘melting property’, which refers to the degree to which it melts in heat. To more effectively introduce a new product that is very similar to regular animal cheese, we also introduced grilled cheese toast using vegan cheese slices.
The official explained that the Armored Fresh event booth was crowded with numerous visitors to taste the product during the CES 4 event, which lasted for four days. At the sampling event, which was held with the goal of receiving a total of 2023 visitors, the response on site was enthusiastic, with the daily supply of 1 being sold out early in the morning.
Armored Fresh is currently located in about 200 large supermarkets in New York and is planning to expand stores throughout the United States and supply American Slice. Hyemin Cho, head of Armored Fresh’s overseas business team, said, “We are meaningful in being able to participate in ‘CES’ for the second year in a row and promote the excellence of our vegan cheese using domestic technology. We have received a lot of interest in our newly introduced American Slice targeting the North American market. “Thanks to this, we will continue to dominate the market by introducing a lineup of more diverse flavors and forms through continuous research and development,” he said.
Additionally, at CES 2023, devices that can produce plant-based beverages could also be seen. GROW UP introduced a plant-based beverage maker under its name at CES 2023. Since its founding in 2020, it is the result of two years of research into solutions for making nutritious plant-based beverages at home.
This machine is capable of making plant-based drinks using Brazil nuts, cashews, hazelnuts, coconuts, hemp seeds, pistachios, macadamia nuts, walnuts, and oats, in addition to products commonly seen in grocery stores such as almond milk and soy milk.
Users can select one of the above options using the touch screen or press the Milk Blend option to mix multiple ingredients to produce the desired plant-based beverage. After making your selection, follow the instructions on the screen and put the plant-based beverage ingredients and water into the machine with a measuring cup and run it. A freshly drawn plant-based beverage will be extracted within 6 minutes.
At the GrowUp booth set up at this CES, the developers said, “This product can quickly provide plant-based beverages with a soft texture while preserving the vitamins and minerals of the ingredients as much as possible.” It also appealed to reduce dependence on plant-based beverage products sold in disposable packaging and prevent the generation of waste. He added, “It has an automatic cleaning function and can be used to wash dishes by detaching parts,” and expressed expectations, saying, “I hope it will be used for commercial purposes not only at home but also in cafes and restaurants.”
Meanwhile, ‘CES’, the world’s largest IT exhibition, is an exhibition where you can understand the trends of the global home appliance industry at a glance. Hosted by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), it is held every January in Las Vegas, USA. AVING News, which has covered CES for 1 consecutive years, has reported CES news around the world every year since 17, and has been selected as the ‘BEST OF CES’, which selects the best innovative products and technologies, and the ‘BEST OF’, which selects domestic innovative companies. ‘MADE IN KOREA’ was held. In addition, CES on-site issues were vividly conveyed through ‘AVING LIVE’.
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