CES 2020: There are robots to get you toilet paper

If you thought CES was all about the phones, laptops and TVs - you are wrong. The Consumer Electronics Show, or CES, is a platform all tech companies use to unveil fresh innovative products for the coming year.

While some of the gadgets that get showcased as CES do hit store shelves, most of the innovations seen here are prototypes and works in progress and might never be available for purchase to the general public.

So, what's the point?

The point is to showcase future tech that will in turn inspire more innovations in the future.

Besides the flying cars, the massive TVs that rotate to show mobile videos, foldable PCs there are also trash cans that change their own bags and robots that fetch you toilet paper.

You heard that right.

Imagine being on the toilet and you look over to see that you are out of toilet paper. What can you do? Yell for someone to hand you some or get out yourself and see if you can salvage that situation or you can summon the Charmin RollBot via Bluetooth on your smartphone.

"So you're on the commode, you look over, oh no, somebody didn't change the roll. Hello? Nobody home," explained Gregg Weaver, who works in research and development at Charmin-maker Procter & Gamble.

The Charmin RollBot is a small robot with whweels that carries a roll of toilet paper on top of itself. When you take out your smartphone and summon the RollBot via Bluetooth, it "delivers a fresh roll of Charmin, saves the day," Weaver says.

That might sound a bit dramatic, but this single-task robot could save you a few uncomfortable steps to retrieve a spare roll. Of course, you need to have your phone with you for that. But given that most of us go the loo with our phones, it's not too hard.

And speaking of toilet needs, Charmin also has a the Charmin SmellSense that will let you know if it is safe to enter the bathroom once someone else is "done with it". So you don't have to randomly wait for the air to clear, you'll know exactly when it is done.