The Biggest Thing at CES Asia Was an Autonomous Rolling Suitcase

In Shanghai, the future wasn't VR, AR, drones, or wearables. The future was robot suitcases—autonomous robot suitcases. That follow you around like bewildered android puppies.

The Cowa Robot, a Shanghai startup that grew out of another local robotics company, was pretty clearly the "winner" of CES Asia. Theirs was the only exhibit that was routinely packed with rowdy, photo-snapping onlookers. It was also the only exhibit that routinely featured models doing a catwalk with smart suitcases to throbbing techno music, so.

The tactic worked. Insofar as there was a single "breakout product" of CES Asia, the Cowa was it. I repeat: The biggest thing at CES Asia was a robot suitcase.

If that sounds derogatory, it isn't. CES Asia is a lot looser and weirder than the flagship Consumer Electronics Show—that 150,000 pop. neon-lit intentional community that springs forth in Las Vegas each year—and takes place just four months after the main US event. Now in its second year, CESA is designed to showcase the maturing consumer tech in what is arguably currently the most important market for the industry.

With 30,000 attendees, it's already twice as big as it was last year, organizers say, and it was in fact fairly overwhelming. Just getting there is crazy. After sitting in dead-still traffic for almost 45 minutes under a mocking all-caps sign for "Expo Center," I abandoned my cab, along with dozens of others, to jog across the Shanghai highway and join the growing swarm of pedestrians.

I bobbed along with the pumped-up crowd, up and over the gridlock (motorcycle crash), collecting fliers written in Mandarin, passing smiling food vendors, and burnishing my half-baked thinkpiece—"CES gets compared to a carnival, but CES Asia really feels like one"—and we finally arrived at the entrance to the Shanghai New International Exposition Center, marked by a slightly dystopian-looking banner. "Welcome to the Future," it said.

Once I was inside, though, the future looked a lot like the kitchen of an Olive Garden. The booths showcased pasta-makers, condiment dispensers, cooking accessories, industrial ovens. A few panicked moments ticked by, after which I was able to convince myself I had not in fact flown to China, booked a hotel, and schlepped through its infamously snarled traffic on the wrong weekday. Nope, I was in Bakery China 2016.

CES Asia, it turns out, was taking place the same weekend as Bakery China 2016—it's just that Bakery China shared the expo center, and it was much, much bigger. Two-thirds of the SNIEC was loaded with cooking stuffs, food, and smells, and one-third was home to CES Asia.

To be fair, the SNIEC is massive. Very massive. It's the biggest convention center I've ever seen, bigger than the Las Vegas Convention Center, which has been called the biggest of all. (Shanghai's clocks in at 200,000 square meters of indoor space and 130,000 square meters of outdoor space—Vegas' LVCC is 180,000 square meters and it's all indoors.)

Throughout those massive halls, there's a bit of controlled chaos. Attendees zipped around on weird Hoverboard knockoff scooters past talking serving robots blasting "Gangnam Style." One booth featured a waterproof iPhone case—and iPhones that floated amidst goldfish in an aquarium to demonstrate—and its host encouraged me to hurl his iPhone onto the ground as hard as I could. It still worked. Another featured a crude AR device charmingly named the EyePhone.

There was a gadget that could best be described as a tarantula drone; a creepy six-legged bot that users could manipulate with an iPhone app. It was convincingly biomimetic; maybe a little too lifelike, even. And who could forget the 69SixtyNine, a knockoff VR-enabled twerking vaginal sex toy; displayed in the middle of the floor with real-to-life female anatomy, the shameless copy of Pornhub's PR ploy attracted a crowd of giggling gawkers.

There were heaps of VR goggle knockoffs and drone companies and wearable smartwatches, stuff that more experienced tech pressers grumbled about being derivative and sometimes schlocky, which, fair enough—but it's not like the standard CES is full of one-of-a-kind inventions, either.

At the end of the day, it was Cowa and its adorable droid-suitcase that embodied the spirit of the proceedings the best: a little wacky, a little buggy, but jubilant and unrestrained.

The Cowa folks let me take the bot for a spin, and it mostly worked. You have to walk slow, and hold the sensor carefully, and sometimes it will peel off in a weird direction, but sure enough, it follows you, even when you turn around sharply or zig and zag around. (The autonomous version will ship in September, Cowa's spokespeople told me.) The future doesn't have to be polished and ready-to-ship, though. First, the future should be fun.