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It wouldn’t be a tech convention without a smattering of weird and wonderful devices.
The annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2025 in Las Vegas featured more than 4,500 exhibitors.
These booths showed off bizarre gadgets including, a spy camera for your garden, a vacuum that picks socks up from the floor and a cheese maker that makes mozzarella in two hours.
DailyMail.com chose several wacky ones such as an adorable fluffy robot that imitates a shy infant.
An animatronic pet like a shy infant
Mirumi features sensors that detect people approaching, prompting it to either look around inquisitively or seem to duck for cover.
It also has two long arms that wrap around a strap or handle of a bag or purse, clinging to it like a small child.
Being made in pink, black, white or gray, its Japanese start-up Yukai Engineering hopes to launch the robot in 2025 via crowdfunding. Models will be priced at around $70 each.
These cute little animatronic animals are called Mirumis, and are able to cling to straps or poles while shifting their heads around
This picture shows another Mirumi
The stall was packed at CES, with many stopping to stroke the adorable robots and speak to them in soft voices like those used for a pet cat or dog.
Last year, Yukai Engineering debuted an adorable circular cushion with a cat-like tail.
The cushion contains sensors that alter the movement of the cat's tail depending on how fast or slowly someone strokes it.
This product, called Qoobo, is available online, and can currently be purchased for $253.44 on Amazon or $125 on eBay.
Garden spy camera
Many have invested in doorbell cameras to check who's at the door, but what about a camera to check who's eating your vegetable patch?
That’s the idea behind Petal, a 12-megapixel 4k camera atop a like-like plastic stalk that can be positioned anywhere in the garden.
Powered by a solar ‘leaf’, the camera monitors the garden throughout the day and uses AI to identify visitors to the garden before sending details to the user's smartphone.
It can be positioned by flowers to find out what insects are visiting them, or in a vegetable patch to discover which critter is eating all the vegetables.
The above shows the Petal cam, which could reveal to avid gardeners who has been eating their prize vegetables
The camera will be available this spring and cost under $100.
It's sold under Wonder branding, which is owned by Bird Buddy, a company based in Michigan behind a solar-powered bird feeder that uses a camera to photograph birds as they visit to grab some seeds.
Make cheese at home with a cheese-maker
A cheesemaker could soon be coming to the kitchen near you.
Fromaggio — whose name is a mixture of the French word for cheese, Fromage, and Italian, Formaggio — was released late last year and has already sold out.
The machine can make at least 17 different cheeses, including family favorites like cheddar and parmesan and artisanal types like blue cheese.
The mozzarella is the fastest, taking only two hours, while it also has instructions for an aged parmesan (made in two hours, and then aged in a cupboard for a year).
Pictured above is CEO Glen Feder with two of his Fromaggio cheese making machines
Its cheeses take eight to nine hours to make on average, and many require people to return part way through to add a new ingredient.
The cheeses don’t make a home or kitchen smell like cheese, the developers said, but more than make up for that with their flavor.
DailyMail.com tried some feta made by the machine, and has to say that it is absolutely delicious.
CEO Glen Feder told DailyMail.com he had the idea of developing the machine after returning to the US following a decade living in Europe and finding the cheeses just weren’t up to the same standard.
‘Our cheeses often tend to be much more processed,’ he told DailyMail.com, ‘you also just don’t know what additives or chemicals have been put into them’.
Fromaggio has already sold 200 machines and has another 1,000 coming onto the market in February.
They are priced at $745 to $800.
The above shows the robotic turtle being sold by the pool cleaner company. It may reach market in the next two years
A robot turtle to track water quality
Pool cleaner company Beatbot has made a robot turtle to track water quality.
A spokeswoman told DailyMail.com that the robot swims like a turtle, has a camera in its head and a solar panel for a shell — allowing it to rise to the surface to recharge.
Called RoboTurtle, it has been designed for conservationists to allow them to survey a natural environment without disturbing it.
But staff said many people had stopped by asking whether they could buy one for their children to play with in the pool.
There is no information at this stage over how much the turtle may cost, but it is likely to be at least four digits.
Beatbot sells the ‘world’s best pool cleaners’ with many listed at more than $2,000 each.
The RoboTurtle is expected to be released within the next two years, after being shown at this year’s CES.
Shown above is the vacuum cleaner picking up a sock with its retractable arm
A vacuum cleaner that can pick up socks
A cleaning company has come up with an ingenious way to stop your robotic vacuum from getting stuck on discarded socks and underwear.
RoboRock debuted a new vacuum, Roborock Saros Z70 at CES which was still autonomous but also had a crane installed inside with a claw on the end.
In a demonstration, viewers were shown the machine approaching a sock, picking it up, and putting it in a waste basket.
Staff told DailyMail.com that this was just a demonstration version that had been pre-programmed.
They expect to be able to bring a version of the vacuum to market that can pick up and move socks as it finds them within five months.
The invention was feted with numerous rewards at the CES fair, including a gong for best smart home or home tech.
