A quick look at the tech gifts and gadgets that will make life easier for Mom and just make her smile. Most moms I know "live in service and sacrifice to their children" 24/7. So it never hurts to go the extra mile to make her feel loved and appreciated. And she'd cry a few happy tears if you clean the bathroom without being asked. But if you – like more than 8 out of every 10 Americans – plan to spend a record amount of money on Mom this Mother's Day, starting with this list is a genius move.

Let's get this out of the way: I am sleeping with a robot. I hold it in my arms each night and feel its chest rise and fall against mine. Without arms to hold me back, it is forever my little spoon. Without a voice to bid me sweet dreams, it simply sits there, purring against me. The robot with which I sleep is called the Somnox.

The chest rises and falls rhythmically, hypnotically. We guess it's the chest. Nobody's marketed a sleep robot before, and we're not even sure it's a robot. It looks like a pillowy four-pound kidney bean, about the size of a novelty prize at a carnival game. "Spooning the sleep robot during the night, you will be soothed to sleep," the sales literature claims, with "thousands of years of Buddhist breathing techniques."

But many technologies that later came to be considered essential parts of modern life began their life as unnecessary technical baubles. For example, in 1970, the first consumer VCR prototype was unveiled at CES, a technology previously only needed by television studios. Even when a technology goes nowhere--3D TV glasses anyone?--looking at widgets, gizmos, and novelties can still provide a unique window into larger technological and cultural trends. So I defend the gadget as a worthy object of inquiry, and consequently have spent the last week at CES scouring the halls looking for interesting examples, particularly from smaller companies and startups. CES is so big that no such survey could hope to be comprehensive.

Are you ready to talk to your toilet? Those are just a few of the ideas we've seen at CES 2018, the annual consumer technology confab here at the Las Vegas Convention Center and other venues. Sure, there are tech titans here battling to control our computers, TVs and smart homes. But our favorite part is the thousands of other companies that gather to launch something new. While these ideas sometimes catch on, like fitness trackers and wireless ear buds, many go nowhere.

We're all having trouble sleeping, and at least one group of researchers in the Netherlands believes it's because we're not cuddling enough. That's the thinking behind Somnox, a breathing robot that's designed to nestle in your arms and make you think that you've got a special friend over. At the same time, the unit will offer up soothing sounds, like a heartbeat, lullabies or nature sounds, depending on your preferences. The device is also stuffed full with sensors that, as yet, have yet to be activated, but it's thought that the system will eventually offer sleep tracking as well. When that information is crunched by the Somnox servers, it's plausible that you'll be given insights on how to sleep better than you would otherwise.

Are you ready to talk to your toilet? Those are just a few of the ideas we've seen at CES 2018, the annual consumer technology confab here at the Las Vegas Convention Center and other venues. Sure, there are tech titans here battling to control our computers, TVs and smart homes. But our favorite part is the thousands of other companies that gather to launch something new. While these ideas sometimes catch on, like fitness trackers and wireless ear buds, many go nowhere.

There are so many things that could go wrong when you're sleeping with a robot. Or you could accidentally push the robot off the edge of the bed and smash it into a million pieces. In my case, the robot woke me up at 5AM saying "goodnight" in Dutch and started breathing. I'm talking about Somnox, "the world's first sleep robot," as it's been touted in pretty successful Kickstarter and Indiegogo campaigns. It's actually more of a peanut-shaped pillow than a humanoid robot that can perform backflips a la Boston Dynamics. But for a machine with no arms, legs, or even a face, it actually feels pretty human.

The latest insomnia cure comes in the form of a robot who you can curl up with to help you sleep through the night. Dubbed Somnox, the peanut-shaped pillow measures your rate of breathing and then creates its own steady breathing rhythm in response. Your body automatically picks up this breathing rhythm, helping you relax and drift off into a peaceful night's sleep. Somnox is the brainwave of a group of robotics and engineering students from Delft University of Technology. The device is still in the prototype phase, but the entrepreneurial engineers behind its creation hope to obtain enough funding to take it to market.