CES Gadget Show: Pizza from robots, underwater scooters

Robots were front and center at the CES gadget show in Las Vegas. One even made pizza.

The annual CES technology conference in Las Vegas runs through Friday and offers a forum for companies to unveil their products and services for the coming year.

Here are some highlights:

Picnic's pizza-making robot makes a pizza at a food vendor's booth during the CES tech show, Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2020, in Las Vegas. (AP PhotoJohn Locher)

PIZZA ROBOT

Tucked away behind a concession stand, one robot was busy making overpriced pizzas for the hungry crowds.

“It’s not bad,” said McCord Fitzsimmons, who paid $7.50 for a pepperoni slice while the robot worked behind the register. “It’s kind of neat watching the thing do it’s thing.”

Picnic's pizza-making robot pours sauce on a crust at the CES tech show, Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2020, in Las Vegas. (AP PhotoJohn Locher)

The robot, which resembles an assembly line, can churn out 300 12-inch pies in an hour. (The high price, though, has nothing to do with the robot's costs, but the captive audience at CES' sprawling venues.)

Humans are still needed to make lunch. A worker with an iPad tells the robot what type of pizza to make and then slides a frozen crust on the conveyor belt. As the crust goes down the line, sauce, cheese, sausage and other toppings fall from above and onto the crust. A worker then needs to put the pie in the oven, take it out when it’s done and slice it up.

Picnic, the startup behind the robot, said it's also assembling pizzas at T-Mobile Park in Seattle, where the company is based.

A Sublue diver moves around with the Sublue WhiteShark Mix outfitted with dual propellers for power and balance shown at their water tank booth during the CES tech show Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2020, in Las Vegas. (AP PhotoRoss D. Franklin)

Pizza shop owners can customize the machine and add whatever crusts or ingredients they want.

Besides pizzas, Picnic said the robot could be reconfigured to make wraps or salads for restaurants.

CRUISIN’ UNDER THE SEA

Hendrick Tran test the Sublue Seabow in a water tank at the Sublue booth during the CES tech show Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2020, in Las Vegas. (AP PhotoRoss D. Franklin)

Need a faster way to travel underwater? Sublue has your back.

The company makes handheld scooters for underwater use. Just press two buttons for the battery-powered motors to start, and you’re on your way.

Sublue’s scooters are mostly made for professional use — for divers or other underwater explorers. But the company is working on a less expensive model for casual water adventurers, one it expects will cost $500 to $600.

The new Sublue prototype Nano underwater photography robot moves around in a tank of water during the CES tech show Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2020, in Las Vegas. (AP PhotoRoss D. Franklin)

On the CES floor, Sublue had a huge glass tank pool where onlookers gawked at a professional diver showing off the scooters.

The scooter comes with a strap so you don’t lose it. There's also a mount for your phone, hopefully encased in a waterproof covering.

Land scooters have gained popularity in urban areas in recent years, garnering both praise for their small size and ease of use and pushback for crowding sidewalks and streets.

A Sublue diver moves around with the Sublue WhiteShark Mix outfitted with dual propellers for power and balance shown at their water tank booth during the CES tech show Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2020, in Las Vegas. (AP PhotoRoss D. Franklin)

At least underwater, there’s a smaller chance of traffic accidents — for now.

USE THE FORCE ...

How focused are you, really?

At BrainCo’s booth, people wearing headbands equipped with EEG sensors move toy cars around a racetrack using only their minds.

Yuwei Gu, right, of Ampligence, helps Ammad Khan, left, with the BrainCo brainwave-sensing headband before linking with its software platforms, used for education, cognitive performance, and fitness spaces, during the CES tech show Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2020, in Las Vegas. (AP PhotoRoss D. Franklin)

The company, which was incubated at Harvard Innovation Lab, uses the headband to convert electro signals into a numeric scale of 0 to 100 to tell how hard someone is focusing. The cars moved faster as people hit higher numbers.

BrainCo makes the headbands for athletes, including the USA Weightlifting team, to test their focus levels and get them in the right headspace for training. The company says that using mind games before workouts — and meditation afterward — can make athletes more effective, without altering their training.

Traditionally, EEG measurements are used medically — but BrainCo says it collects more than 1,000 data points from the headband, which it uses to measure the person's mental state.

The BrainCo brainwave-sensing headband, left, and the software platform, used for education, cognitive performance, and fitness spaces, shown here at the BrainCo booth during the CES tech show Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2020, in Las Vegas. (AP PhotoRoss D. Franklin)

BrainCo also sells the headbands to schools so teachers can get a real-time look at how students are responding to lessons. But it's not currently on sale for individual consumers.

https://apnews.com/ConsumerElectronicsShow

Yapei Li, of BrainCo, demonstrates their latest model of the AI-powered prosthetic hand, which works with an amputee's brain and muscle signals, during the CES tech show Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2020, in Las Vegas. (AP PhotoRoss D. Franklin)

WASHINGTON (AP) — A U.S. service member who has been missing since Iran shot down a fighter jet has been rescued, President Donald Trump wrote in a social media post early Sunday.

A frantic U.S. search-and-rescue operation unfolded after the crash of the F-15E Strike Eagle on Friday, as Iran also promised a reward for anyone who turned in the “enemy pilot.”

A second crew member was rescued earlier.

“This brave Warrior was behind enemy lines in the treacherous mountains of Iran, being hunted down by our enemies, who were getting closer and closer by the hour,” Trump wrote.

Trump said that the aviator is injured but “will be just fine,” adding that the rescue involved “dozens of aircraft” and that the U.S. had been monitoring his location “24 hours a day, and diligently planning for his rescue.”

The fighter jet was the first U.S. aircraft to have crashed in Iranian territory since the conflict in late February.

Trump said last week that the U.S. had “decimated” Iran and would finish the war “very fast.” Two days later, Iran shot down two U.S. military planes, showing the ongoing perils of the bombing campaign and the ability of a degraded Iranian military to continue to hit back.

In Kuwait, an Iranian drone attack caused significant damage to two power plants and put a water desalination station out of service, according to the Ministry of Electricity. No injuries were reported from the attack, the ministry said.

In Bahrain, the national oil company said that a drone attack caused a fire at one of its storage facilities, which was extinguished. It said the damage was still being assessed and no injuries had been reported.

In the United Arab Emirates, authorities responded to multiple fires at the Borouge petrochemicals plant, a joint venture of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. and Borealis of Austria. They say the fires were caused by falling debris following successful interceptions by air defense systems, but production at the plant in Ruwais, near the UAE’s western border with Saudi Arabia, has halted.

The strike came a day after Israel struck a petrochemical plant in Iran that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said generated revenue that it had used to fund the war.

The war began with joint U.S.-Israel strikes on Feb. 28 and has killed thousands, shaken global markets, cut off key shipping routes and spiked fuel prices. Both sides have threatened and hit civilian targets, bringing warnings of possible war crimes.

The other jet to go down was a U.S. A-10 attack aircraft. Neither the status of the crew nor exactly where it crashed was immediately known.

Trump renewed his threats for Iran to open up the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial waterway for global energy shipments that has been choked off by Tehran, by Monday or face devastating consequences, writing Saturday in a social media post: “Remember when I gave Iran ten days to MAKE A DEAL or OPEN UP THE HORMUZ STRAIT. Time is running out — 48 hours before all Hell will reign down on them.”

“The doors of hell will be opened to you” if Iran’s infrastructure is attacked, Gen. Ali Abdollahi Aliabadi with the country’s joint military command said late Saturday in response to Trump’s renewed threat, state media reported. In turn, the general threatened all infrastructure used by the U.S. military in the region.

But Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Tahir Andrabi, told The Associated Press that his government’s efforts to broker a ceasefire are “right on track” after Islamabad last week said that it would soon host talks between the U.S. and Iran.

Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said that Iranian officials “have never refused to go to Islamabad.”

Mediators from Pakistan, Turkey and Egypt were working to bring the U.S. and Iran to the negotiating table, according to two regional officials.

The proposed compromise includes a cessation of hostilities to allow a diplomatic settlement, according to a regional official involved in the efforts and a Gulf diplomat briefed on the matter. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss closed-door diplomacy.

Iran’s parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, issued a veiled threat late Friday to disrupt traffic through a second strategic waterway in the region, the Bab el-Mandeb.

The strait, 32 kilometers (20 miles) wide, links the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean. More than a tenth of seaborne global oil and a quarter of container ships pass through it.

“Which countries and companies account for the highest transit volumes through the strait?” Qalibaf wrote.

More than 1,900 people have been killed in Iran since the war began.

In Gulf Arab states and the occupied West Bank, more than two dozen people have died, while 19 have been reported dead in Israel and 13 U.S. service members have been killed. In Lebanon, more than 1,400 people have been killed and more than 1 million people have been displaced. Ten Israeli soldiers have died there.

This report has been corrected to show that Borealis is an Austrian company and not Australian.

Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates; Samy Magdy in Cairo; Munir Ahmed in Islamabad; Dasha Litvinova in Tallinn, Estonia; and Seung Min Kim, Will Weissert, Michelle L. Price, Lisa Mascaro and Ben Finley in Washington, contributed to this report.

Followers of Iraq's Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr chant slogans as they wave national Iraqi flag during a protest against U.S. and Israeli attacks on multiple cities across Iran, in Tahrir Square, Baghdad, Baghdad, Iraq, Saturday, April 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)

A bedroom is damaged in a building struck in an Israeli airstrike in the southern port city of Tyre, Lebanon, Saturday, April 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)

Pedetrians walk by a destroyed building within the Grand Hosseiniyeh, with the mosque visible in the background, which officials at the site say was hit by U.S.-Israeli airstrikes Tuesday, in Zanjan, Iran, Saturday, April 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

Police officers and their horses take cover in an underground parking garage as sirens warn of an incoming missile fired from Yemen in Tel Aviv, Israel, Saturday, April 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Maya Levin)

A man looks at a destroyed building within the Grand Hosseiniyeh complex that officials say was hit by U.S.-Israeli airstrikes Tuesday in Zanjan, Iran, Saturday, April 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)