The weirdest smart appliances announced at CES 2019

Each year, CES plays host to the latest and greatest that the world of technology has to offer. But it also hosts some of the weirdest and most idiosyncratic tech you're likely to see all year. This year has been no different, with everything from smart pet dryers, wine robots, to a tiny, tiny dishwasher.

Here are some of the weirdest smart appliances from this year's CES.

Bob might be a personal favorite of mine. Made by French company Daan Technologies, Bob is a tiny dishwasher with enough space for the daily dishes of up to two people. Using only three liters of water per cycle, Bob operates using a water tank rather than being plugged into your home's water system. Bob also uses a magnetic aperture system for drying dishes, and an ultrasonic cleaning method for silverware.

This dishwasher is also equipped with Wi-Fi. This allows for connectivity with the corresponding Bob app, which lets you create your own dishwashing cycles away from Bob. It's also got a small screen with readouts for water temperature, water level, a button to enable/disable Wi-Fi, and more. Importantly, Bob also features a wide variety of color options for the door.

Bob is available for pre-order now for €299 (about $344), and will start shipping in November.

See at Daan

If you want idiosyncratic tech, we need to talk about Edgar. Coming in at about the size of a mini-fridge, Edgar is built for bettering a single type of drinking experience: serving wine by the glass. A smart wine dispenser, Edgar is built around precisely serving three types of wine using a custom dispensary system.

Rather than serving from bottles, Edgar serves wine from specialized internal bags. These replaceable bags are tagged with RFID chips, which tell Edgar which type of wine that's in each bag. These tags also provide sourcing information about each wine.

It should be noted that Edgar isn't exactly meant for standard consumers. Instead, the machine is being marketed towards restaurants, bars, hotels, and other businesses.

Drying off a wet dog can be a chore. Towels are often less effective than we'd like, while getting a dog to stand still while using a hair dryer can be its own special endurance trial. That's where Korean company PePe comes in. PePe's pet dryer is meant for small pets and can dry them in about 25 minutes.

To use the pet dryer, you put your wet pet inside, close the door, and set the temperature. Warm air will slowly move around inside the dryer to slowly dry your pet.

Currently unavailable in the U.S., PePe's pet dryer can be purchased in Korea, China, and Singapore for about $660.

The brainchild of the Wilkinson Baking Company, BreadBot is a fully-automated bread-making solution. Another piece of tech aimed at businesses rather than consumers, BreadBot bakes bread itself once it's filled with all of the necessary ingredients, then dispenses it in an attached bread vendor. According to the Wilkinson Baking Company, BreadBot is meant to sit in your local grocery store, and lets customers know exactly when, where, and how their bread was made.

BreadBot is built to produce 10 loaves of bread per hour, which the company says is based on a survey of the needs of grocery stores. It has options for automatically starting and stopping the bread baking process, and stores can also set the machine to produce the desired number of bread loaves for up to the next three months. BreadBot is also smart enough to send messages to store employees, including sending requests to empty the bread cabinet, asking for more mix, or announcing that it's done baking for the day.

BreadBot will be available to stores with a five-year lease that should cost about $100,000 over that period of time.

Cleaning out the litter box as always been one of the most unappealing aspects of cat ownership. Enter LavvieBot, a smart litter box that cleans itself. Self-scooping, self-filling, and equipped with smart alerts, this litter box takes the hassle out of a big part of owning a cat.

LavvieBot features sensors that detect when your cat has entered and left. The Wi-Fi-connected litter box can send you notifications when your cat uses it, and when your cat has left, LavvieBot gets to scooping, dropping everything down a chute to a waste receptacle at the bottom of the device. The box will then automatically refill itself from the built-in litter storage container.

When the receptacle is full, LavvieBot will notify you so you can change out its bag. You'll also get an alert when you're low on litter so you can order more.

LavvieBot will launch an Indegogo campaign this May, with a starting price of $379.

Your favorites?

Have you seen a weird appliance from this year's show that's not on our list? Tell us about it in the comments.