The third annual Hardware Battlefield at CES 2016 is nearly complete. Fourteen companies took to the TechCrunch stage at the Sands Expo with six minutes to prove their viability in the market.
And it wasn’t just the audience that they were trying to impress. We had expert judges including Fitbit’s James Park, FirstMark Capital’s Matt Turck, and GV’s Lo Toney waiting in the wings during presentations to put these hardware startups through the ringer.
But now, it’s finally time to announce the four finalists who will battle it out tomorrow for the Hardware Battlefield trophy and the $50,000 prize.
The finalists are:
6SensorLabs has developed a product called the Nima, which lets you take a small sample of food and test it for gluten traces through a portable sensor and disposable pods.
Carbon built a robotic arm called Katia (short for “Kick Ass Trainable Intelligent Arm”, which is just $2,000 and can be trained to do a wide variety of tasks by just about anyone, whether or not they have expert knowledge.
The IdentiLock is a smart trigger lock for firearms that uses ultra-fast fingerprint reading technology to let you unlock your weapon the instant you need it and keep it 100 percent secure when you don’t.
Wiivv is a fully custom insole for your shoes that can be ordered by simply taking a few pictures of your feet, with the potential to steal market share from both high-end orthotics and low-end store-bought insoles.
Judges for the Hardware Battlefield finals include TC Senior Editor Matt Burns, CyPhy Works CEO and Founder Helen Greiner, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich and Highway1 VP Brady Forrest.
You can catch the Hardware Battlefield Finals at 2pm PT tomorrow.

