Intel has unveiled details of its game changing products and strategies for 2013 at CES - including innovations in "perceptual computing".

Intel and its partners have plans for a wide range of new consumer hardware from smartphones and tablets based on the ATOM processor to "All-In-One" computers that have a battery built into the screen and can be picked up and easily moved around the home or office as needed.

Kirk Skaugen, Intel vice president and general manager of the PC Client Group at Intel described the hardware innovations that will be introduced with the Haswell 4th Generation Intel Core Ultrabook product line. The range of convertibles, detachables and tablets that will be introduced during 2013 will not only be stylish they will also feature thinner lighter designs, extended "All-day" battery life and have "mandatory Intel wireless display". They will incorporate anti-virus, anti-malware, anti-theft and identity protection features and will be responsive; they will interact naturally with touch and voice , turns on in a flash; and deliver "always-fresh data", that is users will have their email, Twitter feed, Facebook messages automatically updated.

An important statistic mentioned by Skaugen was that 80% of US households have a desktop PC and 88% of these are used on a daily basis. A high proportion of these PCs are four years old or more and Intel is looking to this market segment as potential customers for its All-In-One models which can be used on a table top or even on the floor. The demo showed a family of four playing Monopoly on a 27" screen All-in-One with the device responding to touch input from all the individual players.

Skaugen concluded his presentation with a detailed look at how Intel is ensuring that 2013 is the year when perceptual computing becomes a reality.

He explained how adding the human senses of vision, voice, touch and emotional context would be achieved and how it would be a game changer.

Currently voice is furthest advanced through Intel's partnership with Nuance. Using Dragon Assistant speech recognition software, users of Dell Ultrabooks can already post to Twitter and Facebook,  and  search Google and Wikipedia using voice commands in nine languages in 27 countries.

Voice and face recognition are set to replace passwords for user authentication but it is the incorporation of gesture recognition that promises the greatest advances in terms of user interface. This relies on Intel's Perceptual Computing SDK together with a USB camera from Intel's partner Creative - intended to be integrated directly into Intel Ultrabooks and All-In-One machines - and is capable of  resolving 10-finger movements in 3-dimensional space, providing a new level of immersive experience for gaming and educational experiences. The camera also supports eye tracking and opens up new possibilities for video conferencing.

Demo of a game with 10 finger articulation using the SDK

Taken together touch and voice, perceptual computing opens up a new range of challenges for developers to use natural human interaction and involve all the senses in both games and other apps.