Computing devices are getting smaller by the day, and today at CES in Las Vegas Intel’s CEO Brian Krzanich announced new details about one of its big (little?) efforts in the space. Curie, Intel’s button-sized wearable hardware module that was first unveiled a year ago, will begin shipping this quarter and will cost less than $10, he said.
Amidst flashy demonstrations involving BMX and free riding, Intel also announced partnerships with a wave of third parties to boost its reach. They include ESPN, Red Bull Media and several others to integrate the chip to track athletes’ performance, as well as other partnerships with high profile figures like Lady Gaga to advance its role in the next generation of computing.
“We believe it will change how athletes are judged, how they train,” Krzanich said.
The collaboration with ESPN will kick off with the X Games in Aspen in 2016, where the low power Intel Curie module will be integrated into the Men’s Snowboard Slopestyle and Men’s Snowboard Big Air competitions, where it will help to provide real-time data on athlete performance on in-air rotations, jump height, jump distance, speed, and force on landing.
The Red Bull partnership meanwhile is a global deal that will cover “multiple genres and platforms,” Intel says.
Intel has in the past announced other Curie collaborations with hardware makers to complement these deals with content companies announced today. They include the Arduino 101.
Other areas where these light, small computing devices are likely to make an appearance are drones, where Intel works with companies like Yuneec as well as Ascending Technologies, which it just announced yesterday that it acquired.
Intel has made something of a tradition of opening the CES show with its keynote and it makes a big effort to place in a lot of news to show off its pole position slot. Other Curie announcements included a partnership with New Balance to develop new technology for runners and other athletes, including a running-focused smartwatch, and a partnership with Oakley on a smart eyewear product called “Radar Pace”, which includes a voice-activated, real-time coaching system
The Lady Gaga collaboration, meanwhile, will a “project that will showcase technology through creativity at the highest level” that will be shown off during the Grammy Awards in February 2016 (yes, she was that vague in her description). “You will all literally be blown away,” Krzanich said.
Red Bull, ESPN and “Haus of Gaga” are not the only media partnerships announced today. Intel is also working with the MGM Television Group who will be producing a new TV program to show off Intel tech. “America’s Greatest Makers” will be broadcast on TBS this spring.
Further into the enterprise space, Intel also showed off a “smart helmet” with Daqri, shipping form today, that looked pretty amazing. Part VR headset, and part safety device to protect a worker’s head, the helmet lets an engineer working in a complicated environment use thermal vision and augmented reality to guide how the engineer navigates through and does his or her job in the workplace.