This week, the Consumer Electronics Show, more commonly referred to as CES, swapped the potentially super-spreading convention halls of Las Vegas for its first all-virtual event. The format change did not appear to impede the huge-screen televisions, handheld devices, and drones that steadily flow from the world’s largest tech trade show. Soon enough, everyone will be talking about the transparent TVs, rollable smartphones, and personal air taxis that took years of research and development. Yet the 2021 edition of CES was simultaneously of-the-moment, as exhibitors unveiled a slew of high-tech home products adapted for the COVID-19 era.
In many cases, such as an algorithm for indoor air monitors that predicts the risk of virus transmission, presented by Airthings, coronavirus vigilance assumed overt forms. Overall, the home arena mostly grappled with contagion concerns by taking broader aim at cleanliness. Indeed, CES 2021 offered an array of indoor air monitors, from an inconspicuous puck like AerHome by Aernos and Luftqi’s smart-speaker-adjacent Luft Duo to a new offering from CleanAirZone that resembles a small watercooler. These devices did not necessarily promise to detect coronavirus per se, but they tap into growing collective awareness of the microscopic bad actors traveling through the air.