Must-see AI innovations at Asia's top smart home expo in Shanghai

The Appliance and Electronics World Expo 2024 (AWE2024), Asia's top and one of world's three top tech events of household appliances and consumer electronics industry, opened on Thursday in east China's Shanghai Municipality with artificial intelligence (AI) in the spotlight.

Under the theme of "Smartize the Future," AWE2024 attracted over 1,000 leading global industry players to unveil high-end, customized and integrated smart living solutions of smart home appliances, home automation, consumer electronics, 3C digital, smart displays, smart entertainment, smart health and smart travel.

This year's expo will run through Sunday, spanning 13 halls at the Shanghai New International Expo Center.

"China is promoting the technological innovation and high-quality development of the home appliance and consumer electronics industry, and creating a smart, healthy, low-carbon, comfortable and better life for consumers around the world," said Jiang Feng, executive president of China Household Electrical Appliances Association.

"As China is a home appliance manufacturing power now, the AWE displays the world's most advanced products, especially for smart home appliances. We can see through the expo that innovation has become the main driving force for industrial development," Jiang told China Media Group (CMG).

China's home appliance market has shown a gradual recovery trend since the second half of 2023, Jiang said. "From January to February, according to data, China's mechanical and electrical foreign trade exports volume reached $311.97 billion, with a year-on-year increase of 8.5 percent. The volume of home appliances, which accounts for 4.6 percent of exports of mechanical and electrical products, reached $14.35 billion, up 20.8 percent year on year."

AI visual feast

At the expo, exhibitors from home and abroad offer a visual feast showcasing innovation across the sector and a glimpse of intelligent lifestyle trends in the AI era. Products on display range from AI phones and 8K ultra-high-definition TVs to refrigerators blending seamlessly into interior design, air conditioners enabling personalized comfort and innovative kitchen appliances.

Wei Wenhao, a Chinese exhibitor of an 8K ultra-high-definition TV told CMG that "it uses a MICRO OLED (8K display) screen, which takes the lead in integrating gesture recognition, speech recognition, and related large-space multi-person interaction technologies into the MR (Mixed Reality) headset."

Chinese electronic brands such as TCL, Hisense and Ecovacs are showcasing their gadgets, from new-technology TVs and AI-powered clean robots to wireless connected smart home systems.

Jiang Long, a Chinese exhibitor of a Hisense foldable laser TV, told CMG that "our product adopts self-developed technologies of composite support structure and dual-axis synchronous control, to achieve a flatness index of less than five thousandths when the screen is unfolded. With the same screen size, its power consumption is only about a third of that of an ordinary LCD (liquid crystal display)."

Top global firms have also underscored the event's importance, with U.S. water heater firm A.O. Smith returning after a four-year absence and South Korean tech firm Samsung Electronics bringing its full line-up for the first time.

Another South Korean tech firm, LG Electronics, not only boasts its biggest show presence to date but also sent top executives, highlighting the growing Chinese market priorities for consumer and industrial leaders worldwide.