25 Crazy Ideas for CES 2026: Waist Massagers, Hair Clippers, Lollipop Speakers, AI is "Stealing Jobs"

At CES 2026 in Las Vegas, when you see a robot walking into an automobile factory to start working, a smart wooden board monitoring your breathing wirelessly from your bedside, or a lollipop capable of playing music in your teeth, that blend of amazement and absurdity is the most authentic reflection of the technological world in 2026.

This time, AI has finally stepped out of the screen.

CES 2026 features over 4,100 exhibitors, with expected attendance surpassing 150,000 visitors. But behind these numbers, the most eye-catching change is a silent transformation: an increasing variety of hardware categories are subtly embedding AI into daily human life in a gentle, even mischievous way.

Our team has focused on four key tracks—robots and embodied intelligence, AI hardware, smart mobility, and those innovative products with wild ideas. Among over 4,000 exhibits, we have selected 25 of the most representative innovations. These products no longer showcase just “parameter updates”; instead, they herald a revolution in how humans work, relax, travel, and maintain health—ushering in the most brilliant wave of innovation since the invention of electricity.

From “Show-off” to “Work”: The Turning Point for Robots

A Decade of Internet Fame Turning into Office Work: Boston Dynamics Atlas’s True Debut

Remember those hilarious Boston Dynamics parkour videos? Now, their star is no longer just for videos.

On the CES 2026 stage, the new generation Boston Dynamics Atlas walks out with a light, lively gait, full of “human touch.” That moment’s visual impact announced a new era. From the stumbling metallic prototype to today’s sleek industrial product, the visual evolution over the past decade speaks volumes.

The new Atlas’s product definition is very clear: it’s no longer a device made for filming but a “super worker bee” for factory floors. With 56 degrees of freedom and fully rotating joints, it surpasses human movement range; its human-scale perception-enabled hands are designed for complex sorting and assembly tasks. Most importantly, it no longer executes rigid code but continuously learns and adapts through AI.

The most exciting part is its “work notification”: it will directly enter a modern automotive factory in Georgia, taking on manufacturing tasks on real production lines. When robots move from labs to factories to perform dull, repetitive, or even dangerous jobs, it marks a true milestone from demo to product for humanoid robots.

The Year of Consumer Embodied Intelligence: Vita Dynamics Vbot’s “Free-Range” Era

What’s most amusing at CES 2026 isn’t how fast a robot can run, but how Vita Dynamics’ Vbot, the super-capable robotic dog, has completely ditched the remote control.

Previously, robotic dogs were essentially advanced remote-controlled cars. But Vbot, with its self-developed body, spatial, and agent-level intelligent architecture, demonstrates what embodied intelligence should look like: in the crowded CES environment, it can autonomously follow, navigate, even carry items and take photos. Its autonomous decision-making after “letting go,” combined with smooth English voice interaction, makes it no longer a cold execution machine but a super-capable partner with judgment.

Market enthusiasm proves this point. In pre-sales at the end of 2025, Vbot sold 1,000 units in just 52 minutes—an astonishing speed for a high-end embodied intelligence hardware. It’s expected that by Q2 2026, the global version of Vbot will be available in North America, Europe, and the Middle East.

Relaxing in Bed: How Massage Products Become AI’s “Health Managers”

Automatic Massage Therapist: RheoFit A1’s “Lazy Revolution”

If there’s a product in 2026 that hits workers’ pain points most directly, it’s definitely RheoFit’s A1.

Anyone who has used fascia rollers knows that traditional foam rolling is physically demanding—supporting your weight to roll, often before fully relaxing, your arms get tired. But A1 automates this process. It’s not just a roller; it’s like a personal massage robot costing $380.

Its most interesting feature is “autonomy.” Using AI algorithms to plan paths, when you lie down to relax, it acts like a compliant physiotherapist, automatically sliding underneath, smoothly rolling from shoulders to waist to toes. For office workers with daily back pain from computer work, this lumbar massager is a savior—you don’t need to find painful spots; it finds them for you.

And the coolest part: it simplifies complex full-body massage into a single button, truly freeing your hands. This approach of bringing robotic technology into everyday recovery scenes is much more practical than lofty concepts, genuinely enhancing quality of life.

Weight Scales with “Deep Scanning”: Withings Body Scan 2’s Medical-Grade Monitoring

If AI is invading every detail of life, then Withings’ Body Scan 2 announced at CES 2026 is the best example.

This scale has a ceremonial appearance: a tempered glass panel topped with a pull-up bar-like rod. When you stand on it and pull the bar to your hips, holding for about 90 seconds, the eight electrodes in the base and four stainless steel electrodes on the handles work simultaneously. It’s not just for measuring weight but captures over 60 biomarkers.

It can even assess hypertension risk without a blood pressure cuff, similar to medical devices, and detect early signs of blood sugar regulation issues. Medical-grade technology once confined to clinical labs is now available at home.

What makes Withings clever is that it cares not just about your current weight but about your vascular elasticity and cellular metabolic efficiency. The app charts a long-term “health trajectory” for you, providing early guidance to modify lifestyle before chronic diseases strike. Although priced at $600, compared to the huge costs of illness, this device that predicts future health is becoming an essential “life insurance” tool.

The 30-Second Magic of Longevity Mirror: Using AI to Predict Your 20-Year Future

NuraLogix’s “Longevity Mirror” at CES 2026 is arguably the most sci-fi health product.

All you need to do is stand still in front of the mirror for 30 seconds. Using “transdermal optical imaging” technology, it captures subtle facial blood flow patterns. Trained on hundreds of thousands of patient records, its AI model instantly analyzes cardiovascular risk, metabolic index, and even your biological age. It even claims to predict health risks 20 years in advance.

This mirror signifies a shift from “passive healthcare” to “active prevention.” Previously, health awareness lagged behind check-up reports; now, monitoring is embedded into daily routines like washing up. No more waiting to “patch the holes” after falling ill—real-time adjustments are made every day as you age.

Though priced at $899 with subsequent subscription fees, when the whole family can “divine” health with this mirror, AI not only extends lifespan but truly improves quality of life.

The Hidden Art of AI Hardware: From Invisible Applications to Daily Companions

The “Thought Capsule” of Recording Pins: How Plaud NotePin S Captures Inspiration

Plaud’s NotePin S, showcased this year, looks like a minimalistic capsule but can record every word you hear.

Its key innovation is the physical button. During recording, when you hear something truly important—like a deadline set by your boss or a sudden brilliant idea—press the button, and the built-in AI tags that segment as “key.” It supports transcription in 112 languages, can automatically distinguish speakers, and helps generate mind maps or meeting summaries using over 10,000 templates.

But Plaud’s boldest move this year is launching a desktop app. With one click, you can record and summarize without disturbing anyone. Past AI tools sought “presence,” eager to tell everyone “I’m helping you”; Plaud aims for “stealth.” It seamlessly switches between face-to-face, phone, and screen meetings, and has passed strict certifications like GDPR and ISO27001, trying to eliminate privacy concerns.

Breathing AI Pet: Sweekar’s “Cyber Nurturing” New Generation

For Gen Z, electronic pets are evolving. TakwayAI’s Sweekar embeds a digital pet, once only on screens, into a breathing, temperature-sensitive physical shell.

This tiny gadget, weighing only 89 grams, simulates gentle breathing and body temperature. Its growth is designed in four stages—egg, hatchling, juvenile, adult—not as a preset sequence but based on experience points: feeding, cleaning, and interaction frequency determine its development.

AI introduces uncertainty into nurturing. It connects to multimodal models like GeminiFlash, incorporating MBTI-based personality systems. As it evolves from a simple-sounding juvenile to a conversational adult, it develops a unique personality based on your daily interactions. It has “long-term memory,” recalling your past emotions and conversations, and even when ignored, it explores and learns in the background.

This $150 cyber life form essentially uses modern AI to fill the emotional feedback gap of electronic pets. For players nostalgic for 90s nurturing games and wanting smarter AI, it’s a fun experiment.

The “Veterinarian Dream” of Smart Feeders: How AI-Tails Reads Cats’ Pain

If you own a cat, you know they are natural “pain hide-and-seek” experts. By the time they show signs of illness, it’s often too late for effective treatment.

Swiss AI-Tails introduces a $499 smart feeding and watering station aiming to address this long-neglected issue. Using cameras and complex pattern recognition, it can detect micro-expressions and behavioral signals in seconds while your cat eats. It precisely measures intake and hydration, and can even remotely scan body temperature.

Founder Angelica, who lost her beloved cat to sudden illness, hopes to give pets the same health monitoring as humans. Priced at $499 plus $421 for the app, this nearly $1,000 combo targets owners willing to do everything for their cats.

AI is evolving from “understanding humans” to “understanding life.” When cameras no longer just monitor security but start interpreting a cat’s facial pain and distress, the warmth of technology truly shines.

The List of Wild Ideas: “Absurd” but Real Innovations

LEGO “Powered Up”: The Magic Moment When Blocks Come Alive

Among the many “cyber” booths at CES 2026, LEGO’s intelligent play system stands out as a breath of fresh air. Most excitingly, LEGO didn’t consider adding screens to bricks but kept the core tactile feel.

This system consists of smart bricks, smart minifigs, and digital ID-tagged bricks. When your minifig approaches a tagged brick, it “suddenly gains eyes,” instantly recognizing the other and starting interaction. If you insert smart bricks into a helicopter build, the sound of rotors changing during dives or flips, and LED effects syncing with movements, make it seem alive.

Familiar plastic bricks, but at this moment, they seem truly alive. LEGO’s approach is achieved by embedding a tiny ASIC chip inside each brick. This method of integrating cutting-edge tech into traditional toys reflects LEGO’s thinking about AI: true intelligence shouldn’t strip away human perception but should enhance the tactile, real-world experience.

The Nostalgic Revolution of Full-Keyboard Phone Cases: Clicks’ “BlackBerry Dream” Returns

At the Clicks booth, you can feel a nostalgic wave. The brand offers not just concept designs but a real Power Keyboard case. For $79, attach it magnetically to your phone, and instantly your ordinary phone gains a BlackBerry-style physical keyboard.

It features a slide-out design, compatible with various phone sizes, allowing typing in landscape or portrait. The tactile feedback of physical keys can’t be matched by haptic motors, and many users deeply miss this feeling.

From Clicks, we see those once-abandoned designs returning in a smarter, more valuable way. Nostalgia for “old friends” also means reclaiming the sense of control lost to screens.

Ultrasonic Kitchen Knife’s Physical Enhancement: How C-200 Makes Cutting Effortless

Seattle Ultrasonics’ C-200 ultrasonic kitchen knife makes any home cook a “top chef” instantly.

This knife looks like a standard 8-inch chef’s knife, made of Japanese AUS-10 steel. But when you press the orange button on the handle, the blade doesn’t move or make noise; thanks to embedded piezoelectric ceramics, the blade vibrates over 30,000 times per second, turning it into a “cutting beast” at a microscopic level.

Cutting tomatoes, you feel almost no resistance—the blade slices through air-like effortlessly, with a mirror-smooth cut surface. It claims to save 50% of effort, and the high-frequency vibration prevents food from sticking.

When technology makes slicing so smooth, do we love cooking or just the ultra-sonic “cutting sensation”? Watching the old kitchen knives at home now feels like relics from the last century.

The “Autonomous” Era of Electric Shaving: GLYDE’s Anxiety for Tony

At CES, a smart razor called GLYDE drew attention for making barbers anxious. Its most impressive feature is turning the most mystical “layered hairstyle” into something as easy as applying a selfie filter.

Shaving by hand is nerve-wracking—one slip can turn a “stylish guy” into “bald.” But GLYDE is like having a “collision avoidance system” in the trimmer: sensors track your movements and angles in real time. The blade “drives itself”—if you push faster, it retracts; if your angle is off, it reduces trimming.

Choose your hairstyle, strap on the guide, and just glide with your eyes closed. In 10 minutes, you save the hassle of appointments, queues, and dozens of dollars each time. GLYDE violently dismantles the “traditional skill barrier,” returning shaving freedom to users.

The “Invisible Speaker” of Ultrasonic Lollipops: LollipopStar’s Sweet Tech

If you see a crowd at CES with people licking lollipops and showing “pupil-shaking” expressions, don’t doubt—they’re not just enjoying sweets but being “shocked” by LollipopStar.

It embeds bone conduction tech into a colorful candy. After unwrapping, place the lollipop in your mouth, bite gently. Instantly, the subtle vibrations on the handle turn into music echoing around your head. Though hard to hear amid the crowd, the sensation of audio vibrations passing through teeth and skull directly to inner ear is truly magical.

People seem just quietly licking candy, but their brains are secretly “playing” a private speaker. LollipopStar also assigns “flavor logic” with strong Gen Z flavor—three flavors correspond to three artists’ works, each containing three songs. The candy itself is delicious—peach flavor is perfect.

This is the funniest “useless” gadget at CES this year. It playfully shows that technology can not only change the world but also make ordinary acts like “eating candy” full of vitality.

When the Future Leaves the Exhibition Hall

Walking out of the Las Vegas Convention Center, images of the breathing AI pet, the stealthy recording pin, and the self-circling massage robot keep flashing in your mind. These seemingly scattered, even “absurd” fragments compose the most authentic picture of the 2026 tech scene.

We are witnessing a large-scale “species migration”: AI technology descending from the cloud into the soil, reshaping everything like electricity. Industrial, medical, and laboratory-grade products are entering the consumer market with unprecedented softness. The cat health monitor bowl, the compliant medical-grade recording pin, the lumbar massage system—these are essentially “dimensionality reduction” of industrial-grade precision.

The evolution of AI companionship is the most impressive change at CES this year. If last year’s companion products still sold “novelty,” this year, companionship has fully evolved into a “specialized service.” Technology no longer seeks to give everyone a universal answer but learns how to be a good old friend and a thoughtful assistant.

As AI becomes the “jack of all trades,” product homogeneity follows. But the clear industry trend from CES 2026 is: the second half of tech isn’t just about model capabilities but about how to seamlessly embed these intelligent “invisible” features into daily life.

This draft of the future is now complete. The rest depends on how these wild ideas step out of the exhibition halls to truly change our tomorrow. If CES 2025 was the inaugural year of generative AI, then CES 2026 marks the stage where AI hardware enters explosive growth—this time, it’s set to take over every detail of your life.