These are the weirdest products at CES – CNET

On a brighter note, there’s My Special Aflac Duck — a cute robotic stuffed animal meant to comfort kids with cancer. Its touch sensors, light-reactive sensors and microphone work together to adapt to different environments and adjust the duck’s behavior. When you hold it, it’s incredibly lifelike as it dances, nuzzles, and seems to breathe. Hands-down, the cuddliest robot at CES this year.

Each duck costs approximately $200 (around £150, AU$255), but Aflac will donate these robot companions at no cost to any children newly diagnosed with cancer.

And here’s another robot you might want to sleep with. This pillow-looking creature comes equipped with everything you want in a bedmate: an accelerometer, an audio sensor and a carbon dioxide sensor. Hold it to your chest and you’ll actually feel Somnox pulse as if it’s breathing, which is meant to help you relax and fall asleep.

The Somnox is due out this fall for $550 (roughly £400 or AU$700).

If you don’t already have a homebody roommate, you might be interested in Kevin. This smart speaker simulates the lights and noise of a populated house — whether that’s the flickering blue light and noise of an action movie playing late at night, a conversation in the kitchen or the shadows of someone walking around the living room doing the vacuuming. 

Mitipi will launch Kevin on Kickstarter in the coming weeks for $150 (that’s roughly £110 or AU$190). When it launches officially, that price will go up to $300 (£220, AU$385).

Spartan claims its boxer briefs block 99 percent of phone and Wi-Fi radiation. As the company puts it, the boxer briefs are a Faraday Cage for your private parts. ‘Nuff said.

The Spartan boxer briefs are available now and cost 42 euros (roughly $50, £40 or AU$55).

Finally, after years of inconvenience, we can now charge our smart underwear wirelessly! Myant’s Skiin underwear, for women and men, which uses sensors to monitor pulse and breathing rate, now supports Energous wireless charging technology.

Pricing an availability were not announced.

The Modius headband is designed to help support your weight loss efforts. Two electrodes attached to the headband stimulate the parts of your brain that affect homeostasis in order to reduce your appetite, increase your metabolism and adjust your body fat set point. 

Pricing and availability has not been announced.

Searching for that perfect hallucinogenic accent for your home? Just touch Nanoleaf’s panels to turn them on and off, dim them up and down, or change their color. The integrated music sync microphone and motion sensors will make sure your panels light up whenever you walk by. Very trippy. 

Name, price and availability all remain unannounced.

YaDoggie is like a Blue Apron for dogs: It delivers its brand of dog food and treats to your door so you’ll always have your pooch’s food on deck. If that’s not enough, the company has developed a Bluetooth-connected food scoop and app that keeps track of who fed the dog. 

You’ll have to sign up for a subscription plan before you can get the smart scoop, which will be available in the spring.

In the future, your pizza and mail may be delivered by Toyota’s newest and  strangest vehicle, which takes its aesthetic cues from both the shipping container and the toaster. With a boxy, modular design, the e-Palette comes in a variety of sizes and is highly reconfigurable. Partners on the project include Amazon, Pizza Hut, Uber and others.

Pricing and availability is not currently available.

Solo travel need not be lonely. ForwardX’s hands-free, autonomous carry-on suitcase will dutifully follow you anywhere.

The company plans to launch the luggage sometime later this year, but hasn’t announced pricing. 

This glove helps people with a spinal cord injury perform everyday tasks like holding a cup or brushing their teeth. It has titanium wires that can move the thumb and index and middle fingers and a controller that can set or release a grip.

The NeoMano will seek funding through a Kickstarter campaign in the spring and is expected to be available later this year.

The company: Ingenious Things. The device: the Myteepi Woody. (They’re French, obviously.) The Woody offers all-in-one monitoring for temperature, humidity and motion, and it’ll keep an ear out for alarms, too.

The Woody is scheduled to launch in Europe and the US following a Kickstarter campaign in the coming months. At retail, it’ll sell for 199 euros, with US pricing yet to be finalized (that European price tag comes out to about $240, £175 or AU$305, converted roughly).

Vuzix has embedded a camera, microphone and side-mounted touchpad in this pair of chunky, black shades, which takes phone calls and puts Alexa’s giant brain between your ears. 

Pricing and availability have not yet been announced.

Try this on for size: airbags for your hips. The Hip’Air looks like a fanny pack, but is filled with sensors, a battery, airbags and an air cartridge. When a sensor detects a fall, the airbags deploy to break a person’s fall.

The Hip’Air will be available in Europe this spring for 600 euros, which converts to $720, £530 and AU$920. It will be available in the US starting in the fall.

This represents some of the best out-of-the-box thinking we’ve seen at CES this year. Heatworks and Frog Design has partnered up on the Tetra, a connected countertop dishwasher that uses just a half gallon of water per cycle. Very cool.

Tetra plugs into any household electrical outlet and is slated to cost $299, which converts roughly to £220 or AU$380. It’s expected to go on sale in late 2018.

Would you wear these? The Rokid Glass projects a single image using a 1080p embedded OLED with roughly a 40-degree field of view and features a voice assistant for all of those visuals. 

Pricing and availability has not yet been announced.

If you no longer live with your parents, L’Oreal’s battery-free wearable, will be more than happy to take their place nagging you about sun exposure. At only 2mm thick and 9mm in diameter, the tiny electronic UV sensor can be worn on a fingernail or pair of sunglasses.

It’s available exclusively through dermatologists in 2018 with a global launch planned for 2019. Estimated pricing is $40 or less (roughly converting to £30 or AU$50).

The Gemini hopes to ride the ’90s wave with its retro clamshell design. But the inside is pure 2018: 10-core processor, 64GB of storage and 4G, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity. 

It’s not yet in stores but you can preorder via Indiegogo. The 4G LTE model sells for $599 (about £440 or AU$765) and the Wi-Fi-only model sells for $499 (around £370 or AU$635).

Brush teeth, kill monsters, prevent cavities. Hang on, what was the middle one again? The Magik smart toothbrush uses computer vision technology, motion tracking and your phone’s front-facing camera to power an augmented reality gaming app. Sounds like fun.

Availability and pricing unknown.

Smart toilets have invaded CES this year and Kohler’s new top-of-the-line model delivers hands-free flushing, bidet cleansing, feet warming, air drying, odor control, music, a night light and automatic seat temperature management. Plus, you can ask Alexa to flush. 

Availability and pricing unknown.

Gather up all of your scented candles and oils and throw them in the garbage. Feel better? If not, you may be interested in Moodo’s Wi-Fi-connected, Alexa-supported scent machine that can make your home smell like an ashram spa or beach party. 

Pricing starts at $189 (about £140 or AU$240 converted), available now at moodo.co.

The brilliant teams at Volkswagen and Nvidia teamed up and decided to name this thing the I.D. Buzz. The graphics card maker’s just-announced Drive IX platform will help this odd vehicle recognize and unlock the door for the owner and tailor the in-car experience through personalization.

The I.D. Buzz concept will become a reality, but when, and for how much, is not yet known.

This Amazon Alexa-powered shower covers every basic self-care necessity: It plays surround sound music and can lather you in essential oils. Everything else is unimportant.

Elmer’s Smart Shower range starts at $1,500 (about £1,100 or AU$1,900).

On a serious note, we’ve never seen something quite like Yevo’s Bluetooth headphones at CES before. The Swedish company manufactures the headphones out of recycled gun parts and hopes to bring more awareness to the issue of gun violence. Pretty cool.

Yevo plans to sell the headphones for $499 (about £370 or AU$640) when they’re released in the next few months.

The Foreo UFO is the “first smart mask treatment.” The device offers 90-second facial treatments that combine LED light therapy, thermotherapy and T-Sonic pulsations. How divine!

The Foreo UFO will sell for $279 and a smaller version, the UFO Mini, will retail for $179 (those prices convert to AU$355 or £205 and AU$230 or £130). For the time being, it’s on Kickstarter and customers can pick one up for a little less.

The show is in full gear and we’re still coming across new oddities. Check back here often to see the weirdest stuff we find at one of the year’s biggest tech events.

Check out all of CNET’s CES 2018 coverage.