World's Biggest High-Tech Trade Fair Presents Latest Gadgets And Technology

But the little machine can do far more than that. Developed by a team based at the University of Zurich, "Roboy" will one day help doctors and scientists to better understand how brain and body interact. "Roboy is a little more humanoid than most humanoids," Rafael Hostettler, head of the "Roboy" project tells Reuters. "Not only did we imitate shape and look of a human but also the functionality. We especially tried to build muscles and sinews into the joints instead of motors. We want to understand how it works." The humanoid seems unfazed by all the attention he is receiving, greeting all curious onlookers with a wave and a modest smile and probably unaware that he might be set to change the face of medicine. "Roboy is supposed to become a platform for doctors to train. They are supposed to diagnose illnesses that Roboy will simulate," says Hostettler.A few stalls down the hall another strange creature draws crowds: "Charlie", the first robot with sensitive feet and a flexible spine is slowly drawing himself from a four-legged position into an erect one. "Intelligent Structures for Mobile Robots" or short "iStruct" is the name of the project at the German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI). The engineers are trying to incorporate patterns of movements as for example seen in primates and humans and thus creating a new kind of robot that is much more flexible in rough terrain as "Charlie", the chimp-inspired robot, demonstrates so impressively. "With the Istruct robot we have put special focus on the sensor-feet, where we have integrated more than 60 sensors whose data we pre-process right there so that just the results are sent to the main computer," explains Daniel Kuehn, head of the project. "And secondly, our focus is on the spine. The spine is flexible and can move in all directions and has the same movement range as us humans."

Apart from robots exhibitors at CeBIT also present products that can be used in every day life, such as "Clicc", a small device powered by solar energy that can be used for a multitude of practical purposes asAndreas Guba, CEO of "Sonnenrepublik" (Sun Republic" corporation explains: "The Clicc-system is a solar system and consists of two components: One, the clicc which is a small solar module which can be put together with other modules in many ways. The more modules you put together the more electricity can be produced. This electricity is then being routed to small base devices." Those devices can then in turn be used to charge a smart phone, for example. They produce enough energy to charge an iPhone to up to 20 percent, which is enough power to keep the phone in power use for one hour or on stand-by for four hours.

Another important issue at CeBIT is big data security and devices that provide maximum security regarding authorisation. Tento Technologies LTD are a British company that demonstrates impressively why Great Britain is this year's partner country at the fair. On their website, Tento offer "strong authentication at ultra low cost".

At the fair, Tento managing director Howard Yates produces a small plastic card he introduces as the key to the authentication of the future: "We have come up with the idea of the tento-card which uses actual visual pictography. It takes an images and splits it into two. One of the images we print on the card here and the other image we put on your PC screen. So when you are logging in you use your tento-card to overlay on the image on the screen and it reveals a four of five character password that is then like a second factor of authentication."

Following the Edward Snowden snooping revelations, there is growing interest in a range of mobile devices with one central selling point: privacy. Snowden set off a global furore when he told newspapers last year the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) was mining the personal data of users of firms such as Google , Facebook and Skype in a secret programme codenamed Prism.

Further leaks from the former NSA contractor, who faces espionage charges at home and has temporary asylum in Russia, suggested the United States had monitored phone conversations of some 35 world leaders, including Germany's Angela Merkel.

The market for so-called mobile security management (MSM) products was estimated at $560 million in 2013 and is expected to nearly double in size to $1 billion a year by 2015, according to ABI Research.

The CeBIT officially opened its doors to a professional audience on Monday. The fair has grown by an estimated five percent since 2013. Around 3400 exhibitors from 70 countries are taking part in this year's edition according to the organisers. More than 230.000 visitors are expected at the CeBIT which runs until Friday, March 14.