2026 Edison Awards | Consumer Solutions — Human-Centric Domestic Solutions, Smart & Adaptive Textiles, and Wearables for Safety & Resilience

The consumer technology of tomorrow is no longer arriving in the form of sleeker screens or faster processors. It is woven into the fabric of your clothing, embedded in the padding of your helmet, and quietly works on your behalf by adapting to your body, your environment, and your risk profile without asking you to do a thing. The most consequential innovations reaching consumers today are not louder. They are smarter, more intimate, and more human-centered than any generation of products that came before them.

The numbers tell a vivid story of where this is heading. The global smart home devices market — already valued at $163 billion in 2025 — is projected to reach $278 billion by 2034. The global wearable technology market, estimated at $92.9 billion in 2025, is on track to reach $230 billion by 2033 at a compound annual growth rate of 12.1%. And the smart textiles sector — perhaps the most transformative frontier of all — is growing even faster, with the market valued at $8.92 billion in 2025 and projected to reach $208 billion by 2035 at a staggering CAGR of 37%. These are not niche technologies finding their footing. They are mainstream markets accelerating through a period of foundational change.

At the 2026 Edison Awards, the Consumer Solutions category captured exactly this moment by honoring innovations across three subcategories that together define the near future of how humans interact with the objects, garments, and protective gear that surround them every day. Among the year’s most recognized organizations was the Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute (ASTRI), which took home two Gold and three Silver awards (more than any other Hong Kong organization at the 2026 competition) and the Hong Kong Research Institute of Textiles and Apparel (HKRITA), whose Gold-winning iAdapt platform represents one of the most ambitious garment intelligence projects in the world today. Their innovations, taken together, sketch a portrait of where consumer technology is going — and why it matters.

The Clothing That Breathes With You

Of all the frontiers in consumer innovation, smart textiles may be the one most likely to surprise mainstream consumers with its scope. The idea of a garment that responds to your body — that knows when you are hot, cold, or physically exerting yourself and adjusts accordingly — sounds like science fiction. It is, in fact, already here.

HKRITA’s iAdapt: Intelligent Soft Robotic Clothing, a 2026 Edison Awards Gold Winner in the Smart & Adaptive Textiles subcategory, is the result of a collaboration with The Hong Kong Polytechnic University and represents one of the most technically sophisticated wearable systems to reach market readiness. The soft robotic clothing automatically tunes and optimizes heat and moisture transport properties based on a programmable inflation-deflation process of embedded soft robotic skeletons. The garment maintains consistently high breathability throughout, regardless of external temperature.

This is not a novelty product. iAdapt can be used by citizens under different thermal climates for enhanced comfort and reduced HVAC energy consumption, as well as by professionals including medical personnel, outdoor workers, firefighters, and winter athletes who routinely wear thick functional uniforms across varying temperatures and activity levels — with practical applications spanning everything from emergency response to everyday commuting.

Meanwhile, ASTRI’s Oscillaware Fiber, a Silver Award winner also in Smart & Adaptive Textiles, approaches the challenge from a different angle. Oscillaware Fiber represents a breakthrough in eco-friendly elastic textiles, offering adaptive muscle support that provides over three times the support of traditional fibres during intense physical activity, significantly reducing injury risks. Produced via sustainable melt spinning processes, the fibre combines exceptional comfort, breathability, and design freedom, revolutionising textile performance across sporting and everyday applications. In a market where athletic and performance apparel is among the fastest-growing consumer segments, a fiber that actively supports muscle function — sustainably produced and indistinguishable in feel from conventional textiles — is a significant commercial and functional leap.

Wearables That Protect What Matters Most

The wearables conversation in 2026 has expanded well beyond fitness tracking and notification management. A new generation of safety-oriented wearables is addressing some of the most costly and consequential physical risks in human life, from concussions in sports to hip fractures among the elderly.

Concussion science has fundamentally reshaped how we think about helmet design over the past decade. The growing body of research on chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) and sub-concussive impact accumulation has made clear that conventional helmets — engineered primarily to prevent skull fractures — are inadequate protection against the rotational forces that cause the most damaging brain injuries. ASTRI’s DXP Helmet Pad, a Gold Award winner in Wearables for Safety & Resilience, was purpose-built to close that gap. The dxp® All-Directional Impact Management System tackles the limitations of conventional helmets, which provide inadequate protection against all-directional rotational impacts — a major cause of concussions. The innovative impact management system can be retrofitted to a wide range of helmets without compromising comfort or breathability. Co-developed with Dacy Pro Limited, DXP’s retrofit-first design is particularly significant: it means the technology can reach existing helmet users without requiring them to replace equipment entirely, dramatically accelerating the potential for widespread adoption across cycling, skiing, construction, and contact sports.

The stakes for elderly fall protection are even more acute. Falls are the second leading cause of unintentional injury-related deaths worldwide, according to the WHO, with 37.3 million severe falls requiring medical attention annually and approximately 684,000 deaths. Among adults 65 and older, roughly one in three falls each year. For those over 80, it is one in two. Hip fractures are the most catastrophic outcome — annual fall-related healthcare expenditures in the United States alone exceed $80 billion, with global hip fracture incidence having risen by 168% between 1990 and 2021. And the trend is only worsening as populations age.

ASTRI’s NuHip, a Silver Award winner in the same subcategory, addresses this directly. NuHip is the world’s first shower-friendly hip protector designed for the highest fall-risk scenario. Its innovative one-size-fits-all design adapts to various body shapes whilst providing Level 2 impact protection (EN1621-1 certified), reducing impact forces from 10,000 Newtons to under 2,500 Newtons to prevent fractures. Being both skin-friendly and soft, NuHip promotes daily wear, enabling safer and more independent living for elderly users. The shower-safe design is not a small detail — it eliminates the most common behavioral barrier to consistent hip protector use, which is the inconvenience of removal during bathing. A protection device only works if it is worn. NuHip is designed to be worn all the time.

What the Home of the Future Actually Looks Like

Taken together, this year’s Consumer Solutions winners illuminate a set of principles that will define the best consumer innovations of the coming decade.

The future home and the future wardrobe are not more complicated, they are more intelligent. The devices and garments that will earn lasting adoption are those that solve real, consequential problems (falls, concussions, counterfeiting, thermal discomfort) in ways that require nothing from the user beyond simply using the product as designed. 22% of aging adults over 65 already live in homes equipped with health-monitoring smart technology, and 7.5 million households use smart wearables linked to in-home monitoring systems — numbers that will grow rapidly as the population ages and as products like NuHip, iAdapt, and the DXP Helmet Pad become the baseline expectation rather than the premium exception.

The institutions behind this year’s Consumer Solutions winners deserve particular recognition for demonstrating that breakthrough consumer innovation is genuinely global. ASTRI’s achievement positions them as Hong Kong’s most awarded organization at the 2026 Edison Awards, demonstrating exceptional R&D excellence and enhanced capabilities following the strategic integration of information and communications technology with advanced materials science. ASTRI CEO Ir Dr. Ted Suen noted that the recognition “affirms ASTRI’s world-class innovation capabilities and our successes in translating applied research into commercially viable solutions.” As Thomas Edison understood, the translation from laboratory research into products that a real person can buy, wear, and depend on is the hardest part of innovation. It is also the part that matters most.

The Edison Awards exist to recognize exactly this: not ideas, but solutions. Not prototypes, but market-ready innovations with measurable human impact. In the Consumer Solutions category, the 2026 winners have delivered on all three dimensions: conceptual originality, technical delivery, and real-world impact that scales. The clothing thinks. The helmet pad adapts. The hip protector holds. The future of consumer technology isn’t coming. It’s already being worn.

Explore the full 2026 Edison Awards winners at edisonawards.com. Learn more about ASTRI at astri.org and HKRITA at hkrita.com.

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References

1. Edison Awards — 2026 Consumer Solutions Winners
   Full list of 2026 winners including iAdapt, DXP Helmet Pad, NIR Secure, NuHip, and Oscillaware Fiber
   https://edisonawards.com/winners-2026/
2. “ASTRI Tops Hong Kong Organisations with Five Awards at the 2026 Edison Awards”
   PR Newswire / Yahoo Finance, April 17, 2026
   Source for all ASTRI product descriptions and CEO quote
   https://sg.finance.yahoo.com/news/astri-tops-hong-kong-organisations-063000338.html
3. iAdapt: Intelligent Soft Robotic Clothing — HKRITA Project Overview
   Hong Kong Research Institute of Textiles and Apparel
   https://www.hkrita.com/en/our-innovation-tech/projects/soft-robotic-clothing-for-adaptive-thermal
4. Smart Textiles Market Size, Share & Forecast (2026–2035)
   Global Growth Insights, March 2026
   Market valued at $8.92 billion in 2025; projected to reach $208.39 billion by 2035 at 37.04% CAGR
   https://www.globalgrowthinsights.com/market-reports/smart-textiles-market-123892
5. Wearable Technology Market Size & Growth
   Grand View Research, 2025
   Market valued at $92.9 billion in 2025; projected to reach $229.97 billion by 2033 at 12.1% CAGR
   https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/wearable-technology-market
6. Smart Home Devices Market Size, Share & Forecast (2026–2034)
   Fortune Business Insights, 2025
   Market valued at $163.30 billion in 2025; projected to reach $278.32 billion by 2034 at 5.62% CAGR
   https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/smart-home-devices-market-112792
7. “Global, regional, and national burden of hip fractures attributable to falls in older adults: changes from 1990–2021 and 2036 projections”
   Frontiers in Public Health, March 2026
   Falls are second leading cause of unintentional injury deaths globally; 37.3 million severe falls annually; 684,000 deaths; 1 in 3 adults 65+ falls yearly; U.S. fall-related healthcare costs exceed $80 billion/year; hip fracture incidence rose 168.71% from 1990–2021
   https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/public-health/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2025.1674881/full
8. Smart Home Statistics 2025–2026
   SQ Magazine, 2025
   7.5 million households use smart wearables linked to in-home monitoring; 22% of aging adults (65+) live in homes with health-monitoring smart tech; 13% of homes have fall detection sensors
   https://sqmagazine.co.uk/smart-home-statistics/
9. 2026 Edison Award Winners: Where Global Culture Meets World-Changing Innovation
   PR Newswire, April 17, 2026
   https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/2026-edison-award-winners-where-global-culture-meets-world-changing-innovation-302745467.html

Seeing the Future: How Alcon’s UNITY® VCS System Is Redefining Eye Surgery

2026 Edison Award Winner | Health, Medical & Biotech — Surgical Robotics & Precision Therapy

As of 2026, cataracts are responsible for almost 45% of global blindness.¹ Behind that statistic is a quieter, more hopeful fact: the majority of cases are preventable or treatable with the right technology in the right hands. For the nearly 28 million people who undergo cataract surgery globally each year — roughly 75,000 every single day — and the millions more who require vitreoretinal procedures to preserve sight threatened by diabetic retinopathy, retinal detachment, or macular disease, the quality of the surgical platform matters enormously.¹ Alcon, the global leader in eye care, is advancing vitreoretinal and cataract surgery with the UNITY® Vitreoretinal Cataract System (VCS) and UNITY® Cataract System (CS), the 2026 Edison Award Silver winner in Surgical Robotics & Precision Therapy.

A Convergence That Changes Everything

The premise behind UNITY® VCS is elegantly bold: rather than requiring separate surgical systems for vitreoretinal and cataract procedures, Alcon has unified its best-in-class capabilities for both disciplines into a single, modular platform. The UNITY® VCS handles both anterior segment (cataract) and posterior segment (vitreoretinal) procedures. The UNITY® CS focuses on cataract surgery alone. Together, they represent what Alcon describes as “unprecedented innovation” which is not incremental improvement, but a wholesale rethinking of how ophthalmic surgical systems are designed and deployed.^2-6,*

This matters far beyond the operating room. Cataracts remain the leading cause of blindness globally, responsible for an estimated 45% of all blindness cases worldwide and affecting roughly 94 million people.⁷ The retinal surgery market is growing just as urgently: the global diabetic population surpassed 537 million in 2024, and diabetic retinopathy — a leading cause of blindness among working-age adults — affects an estimated 93 million people worldwide.^8,9 Age-related macular degeneration is projected to affect 288 million people by 2040, up from 196 million in 2020.¹⁰ The demand for skilled, efficient surgical intervention has never been greater, and the tools surgeons use have never mattered more.

Engineering Breakthroughs at Every Level

What distinguishes UNITY® VCS isn’t any single feature, it’s the magnitude and integration of first-to-market innovations working together across a unified platform.

The World’s Fastest Vitrectomy Probe. At the heart of the UNITY® VCS vitreoretinal system is HyperVit® 30K, which is the world’s fastest vitrectomy probe^** that has the capacity to operate at 30,000 cuts per minute (cpm).^6,11,** That’s a 50% increase over its predecessor, Alcon’s own CONSTELLATION® HyperVit® 20K.^6,11 Speed matters because faster cutting reduces the tractional forces applied to the fragile retina during surgery, mitigating the risk of iatrogenic retinal tears and enabling surgeons to work with greater confidence on complex cases.

4D Phacoemulsification: A Leap Forward for Cataract Surgery. The UNITY® 4D Phaco modality is the first and only volumetric phacoemulsification technology of its kind on the market.^{3,±,†,††} Bench data shows it delivers up to 2x faster lens removal than Alcon’s previous OZil® Torsional Phaco^±, while simultaneously depositing 41% less energy^† into the eye.³ This is notable as greater energy introduction during phacoemulsification may be associated with risk of inflammation and cell loss in the inner layer of the cornea.^12,13 Accompanying UNITY® 4D Phaco is Thermal Sentry — a first-of-its-kind energy modulation technology that continuously monitors incision site temperature and automatically adjusts ultrasound power to prevent corneal burns.⁶ It’s the kind of real-time intelligence that transforms a skilled surgeon’s judgment into a system-wide safeguard.

Intelligent Fluidics: Stability You Can Measure. One of the most consequential advances in UNITY® VCS|CS is its Intelligent Fluidics system, which provides proprietary, real-time control of intraocular pressure (IOP), infusion flow, and aspiration flow simultaneously.⁶ For both cataract and vitreoretinal surgery, the system maintains IOP within physiologic variations of the surgeon’s desired setpoint. This level of precision helps create less disruptive surgical conditions and can reduce the stress placed on delicate retinal tissue and the eye overall.^14-16 In cataract surgery, the Intelligent Sentry component demonstrated nearly two times lower occlusion break surge volumes compared to Alcon’s previous CENTURION® system with Active Sentry®, based on bench testing.¹⁷ Surge during occlusion breaks is a key risk factor for anterior chamber instability that can lead to complications like a posterior capsule rupture; reducing it meaningfully can improve surgical safety margins.^15,18

27+ DS Dynamic Stiffener. Micro-incision vitreoretinal surgery (MIVS) has pushed instrumentation to ever-smaller gauge sizes, but smaller probes traditionally sacrifice stiffness and control. Alcon’s UNITY® 27+ DS technology solves this with a Dynamic Stiffener that delivers the performance of 25+ gauge instruments in the smaller 27-gauge footprint.^{4,^} The result is optimized surgical control and reach in a less invasive form factor.

TetraSpot Laser. Completing the platform’s vitreoretinal toolkit, UNITY® TetraSpot is the first and only multi-spot, illuminated laser probe — capable of delivering 1, 2, or 4 laser spots simultaneously, reducing laser application time by up to 3.1 times compared to single-spot delivery.^2,Δ

Designed for the Way Surgeons Actually Work

Innovation in the operating room is only meaningful if surgeons can actually use it. UNITY® VCS|CS was engineered with clinical workflow in mind from the ground up. System setup and teardown time is 25% faster than the CONSTELLATION® Vision System, reducing OR turnover time by approximately 1.5 minutes per posterior segment surgery — a meaningful efficiency gain in high-volume surgical centers.^{19,‡,§,§§} The interface features graphical guided setup, integrated RFID instrument identification, and intuitive controls designed to reduce cognitive load during complex procedures. The platform also connects seamlessly with Alcon’s existing and future surgical equipment ecosystem — positioning UNITY® VCS|CS as the connective tissue of a fully integrated surgical suite.⁶

Alcon’s Commitment to Ending Preventable Blindness

UNITY® VCS doesn’t exist in isolation. It is the latest expression of a decades-long commitment by Alcon to pursue technologies that give surgeons the tools they need to treat and prevent vision loss at scale. The scale of unmet need is sobering: despite approximately 28 million cataract surgeries performed annually, surgical coverage in many countries remains at or below 50%, and in some low-income regions the cataract surgical rate is fewer than 500 procedures per million people per year, compared to over 5,000 in high-income countries.¹ The economic burden of vision impairment is estimated by the World Health Organization at $411 billion annually in lost productivity.²⁰ Technology that supports safety and efficiency doesn’t just benefit individual patients — it expands the capacity of healthcare systems to serve more people with the surgeons and facilities they already have.

The 25% reduction in OR setup time,^‡,§,§§ the improved platform uptime through Alcon Intelligent Services and remote serviceability, the streamlined inventory management through Custom Pak® — each of these operational efficiencies compounds across thousands of surgical centers worldwide, multiplying the platform’s real-world impact.^19,21

Recognized for What It Is: A New Benchmark

The Edison Awards, presented annually since 1987, honor innovations that demonstrate the transformational potential of human ingenuity. Named for Thomas Edison — whose own career was defined by relentless iteration in service of making life better — the awards recognize not just technological achievement, but market-ready solutions that reshape industries and improve lives. Selecting UNITY® VCS in the Surgical Robotics & Precision Therapy category reflects what the platform represents: not an incremental refinement of existing tools, but the establishment of a new benchmark for what ophthalmic surgery can be.

For the surgeons who use it, UNITY® VCS|CS offers capabilities that were simply not available before. For their patients — a 70-year-old grandmother recovering her ability to read, a 50-year-old diabetic patient whose retinal detachment is repaired before permanent damage sets in — the platform represents something more fundamental: support for surgeons treating vision-threatening conditions.

That is the kind of innovation that deserves recognition. And it is the kind of innovation that Alcon has spent decades working to make real.

Learn more about the UNITY® VCS and UNITY® CS at myalcon.com, and explore the full 2026 Edison Awards finalist gallery at edisonawards.com.

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© 2026 Alcon Inc. GLB/IMG-UVC-2600018

^* Compared to CENTURION and CONSTELLATION Vision Systems. Based on bench data.
^** Compared to Constellation HYPERVIT 20k vitrectomy probe.
^± Trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
^† Based on bench data.
^†† Based on N=10 HPs, Artificial cataract lens IOP 55mmhg vacuum of 450 mmHg.
^{^} Versus Alcon’s Non-Dynamic Stiffener 27+ technology.
^Δ MSLP(4) is 3 times faster than SSLP.
^‡ For posterior segment surgeries/posterior cassette pack.
^§ (P < 0.001).
^§§ ~1.5 minutes faster.

References

1. Dreyer, J. (2026, January 9). Cataract stats. Contact Lenses Plus. https://www.contactlensesplus.com/education/cataract-stats.
2. Alcon data on file, 2024. [REF-24615].
3. Alcon data on file, 2024. [REF-24379].
4. Alcon data on file, 2024. [REF-24576].
5. Alcon data on file, 2024. [REF-24498].
6. UNITY® VCS and CS User Manual, 2024.
7. O’Brart D. The future of cataract surgery. Eye (Lond). 2025 Jun;39(8):1451-1456. doi: 10.1038/s41433-025-03745-x
8. Magliano DJ, Boyko EJ; IDF Diabetes Atlas 10th edition scientific committee . IDF DIABETES ATLAS [Internet]. 10th edition. Brussels: International Diabetes Federation; 2021. Chapter 3, Global picture. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK581940/.
9. Global Growth Insights. (2026, March 9). Retinal surgery devices market size, share, growth, and industry analysis. https://www.globalgrowthinsights.com/market-reports/retinal-surgery-devices-market-110241.
10. Renub Research. (n.d.). Retinal surgery device market: Global forecast by product, application, end user, countries and company analysis 2026–2034. https://www.renub.com/retinal-surgery-device-market-global-forecast-p.php.
11. Alcon data on file, 2024. [REF-24644].
12. Jiang L et al. BMC Ophthalmol. 2020.
13. Malik PK et al. Eye Vis (Lond). 2017.
14. Alcon data on file, 2025. [REF-24899].
15. Vasavada V et al. J Refract Surg. 2014.
16. Vasavada AR et al. J Cataract Refract Surg. 2010.
17. Alcon data on file, 2025. [REF-25562].
18. Zhao Z et al. Int Ophthalmol. 2020.
19. Alcon data on file, 2024. [REF-25374].
20. World Health Organization. (2026, February 10). Blindness and vision impairment. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/blindness-and-visual-impairment.
21. Ayres BD et al. Clinicoecon Outcomes Res. 2022.

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UNITY® VCS and CS Important Product Information

Caution: Federal (USA) law restricts this device to sale by, or on the order of, a physician.

INDICATIONS / INTENDED USE:

UNITY® VCS:
The UNITY® VCS console, when used with compatible devices, is indicated for use during anterior segment (i.e. phacoemulsification and removal of cataracts) and posterior segment (i.e., vitreoretinal) ophthalmic surgery.

In addition, with the optional laser this system is indicated for photocoagulation (i.e., vitreoretinal and macular pathologies), iridotomy and trabeculoplasty procedures.

UNITY® CS:
The UNITY® CS console, when used with compatible devices, is indicated for use during anterior segment (i.e., phacoemulsification and removal of cataracts) ophthalmic surgery.

Warnings:
Appropriate use of UNITY® VCS and CS parameters and accessories is important for successful procedures. The console supports various accessories to perform various surgical procedures.

Accessories include handpieces and probes, as well as tips and sleeves when necessary. Different accessories are required for different procedures and operating modes.

Test for adequate irrigation and aspiration flow, reflux, and operation of each accessory prior to entering the eye.

The consumables used in conjunction with ALCON® instrument products constitute a complete surgical system. To avoid the risk of a patient hazard, do not mismatch consumable components or use settings not specifically adjusted for particular consumable component combinations.

AEs/Complications:
Inadvertent activation of functions that are intended for priming or tuning accessories while the accessory is in the eye can create a hazardous situation that could result in patient injury.

During any ultrasonic procedure, metal particles may result from inadvertent touching of the ultrasonic tip with a second instrument. Another potential source of metal particles resulting from any ultrasonic handpiece may be the result of ultrasonic energy causing micro abrasion of the ultrasonic tip.

ATTENTION: Refer to the Directions for Use for the accessories/consumables and User Manual for a complete listing of indications, warnings, cautions and notes.

© 2026 Alcon Inc. GLB/IMG-UVC-2600018