11/02/2017 Click

Few things say the future better than robots.

We seem to be in an era of massive advances at the moment.

This week, a leaked video from Boston Dynamics shows

off its latest machine, called Handle, something its founder

described as "nightmare-inducing".

Rolling on with the wheel theme, Piaggio, known for its desperate

Rolling on with the wheel theme, Piaggio, known for its vespa

motorcycles, has revealed a new robot servant called Gita.

This robo-suitcase follows its owner's every move,

using cameras in its body and in the user's belt.

But sometimes it's good to look at where we've come from.

The Robots Exhibition at London's Science Museum

is a 500-year history of humanity's attempts to create robots that

resemble us and our behaviours.

There are more than 100 robots here, including some old friends that

we've met before.

And this amazing swan, made from silver, is all the more

incredible because it was made over 200 years ago, in 1773.

It's incredibly fragile inside.

One of the issues is, how do you get a machine that

old to work.

So we've had two weeks of highly esteemed conservation colleagues

piecing things back together.

How does it work?

What's inside?

You've got a whole series of these silver rings,

almost stacked one on top of the other.

They are designed to move as it moves as well.

The earliest robots worked in a clockwork fashion.

Clocks are the earliest self-regulating devices,

so they are robots, effectively.

If you accept that these clockwork creations are indeed robots,

then you can also argue that the earliest robots were clocks.

It was these mechanical marvels that made the Industrial Revolution

possible, mobilising hundreds of workers to be at the same place

at the same time, enabling goods to be transported,

trains to run accurately, and allowing industry to become

an efficient machine.

The Industrial Revolution was also the catalyst for massive social

change across the world, bringing about the rise

of the working class, and sparking ideas like capitalism and Marxism.

Now, in the West, Cuba found itself at the epicentre of this shift.

It was the poster child for communism in the West,

right in the back garden of the US, the heart of capitalism.

Richard Taylor has been to Cuba to see how the island is now moving

with the times.

The iconic images are strikingly familiar.

Cuba today still feels in some ways otherworldly,

stuck in a 50s time warp.

Life for most of its 11 million citizens is simple.

They've been living in a state enforced digital wilderness.

A decade ago, you needed a permit just to buy a PC.

Today, if you're lucky enough to own a smartphone,

chances are it's offline.

There's no mobile data, so Cuban apps are designed to work

without a connection.

Until recently, even basic internet access could only be found

at desktop computers inside state communication centres.

Long queues persist but now people are coming to buy internet

scratchcards which can finally get them online elsewhere.

In this Havana park, small gatherings of Cubans

are all enjoying the internet.

But getting online is slow, unreliable and,

perhaps unsurprisingly, censored.

Luiz Rondon Paz is a self-proclaimed hack-tivist, and as a former

government IT administrator, he knows the system well.

Everything in Cuba is restricted, filtered, as the rest of the world.

Basically, they censor everything that might

threaten government power.

It might be porn, gay, or political things.

Basically, most political things.

But the biggest barrier for locals - the price.

A single hour of full web access costs $2,

three days' salary.

They don't have the time to see what's the internet,

really, because of the price of the internet.

And they push them to do what they need to do,

which is Facebook, communicate with their families and make

a free phone call.

The government says expanding the internet is a priority

and central Havana is now conducting trials of in-home net access

for 2000 properties.

And it boasts of a growing number of public wifi hotspots,

too, around 300 in total, and growing.

Still, not exactly blanket coverage for a country 700 miles wide.

Cuba blames its ageing communications network

on the six-decade old trade embargo with the US.

Critics say that's a convenient excuse for a communist state that

fears losing control over information.

Relations with America are now at best uncertain

in the post-Obama era.

In the aftermath of the President's historic visit here two years ago,

prospects for American companies doing digital business

on the island have improved.

Amongst them, Google, company boss Eric Schmidt inking

a deal in December that gives Cubans fast access to content from services

like YouTube and Gmail.

The thing is, when you are running an internet-based business,

the last thing you want to do is traipse across town

to find a connection.

So some Cubans who are fed up with the government strategy

on access have come up with inventive solutions.

The results are found on rooftops in towns and cities

across the nation in the form of pole-mounted antennae

which are pointed towards the local communications centre,

giving them internet access and even wifi.

The practice isn't exactly legal but as I discovered that minor

detail doesn't deter Cubans from getting their information fix.

This is the paquete semanal, literally the weekly packet.

It refers to a highly organised service in back streets and front

rooms across the country, giving locals content downloaded

often only hours earlier via satellite.

There's pirated movies, news shows, documentaries,

dramas, magazines and mobile apps.

It's hugely popular with customers who can fill their USB drives

with an entire terabyte, hundreds of hours, for the price

of a single hour online.

And the rise of the paquete is the price the Cuban regime itself

is paying, a reaction to the state dogma of keeping

its people restricted.

Cuban authorities should be less afraid of the free flow

of information because the need for information is a hunger.

People need information and people will get information,

no matter if you are going to provide it or not.

There is a political need to understand differently

what the internet means.

Progress is undoubtedly too slow for many Cubans.

But recent overtures do at least give some people

here cause for hope.

Hello and welcome to The Week In Tech.

It was the week that Samsung's Chinese factory supplying

batteries for the ill-fated Galaxy Note 7 suffered a blaze.

Luckily no one was hurt.

Twitter announced its new anti-abuse policy, which will introduce safe

search, collapse potentially troubling replies and aims

to prevent abusive accounts being reopened.

And YouTube is launching live video streaming from their mobile app

but only for channels with over 10,000 subscribers.

Uber have employed a former Nasa engineer and are working

on a flying car.

Yes, a flying car, that they say could be ready in five years.

Although there are a few obstacles to overcome,

like the authorities allowing them to actually fly.

We've seen a few ideas of how to take quad copter drones out

of the sky but here is something for heavier duty drones.

Project Sidearm has been developed by the Pentagon's research wing.

It aims to safely grab unmanned aerial vehicles from airspace

using a crane type setup.

And finally, there's a new way of finding love,

by sharing hate.

New dating app Hater matches users by the things that rile them,

with topics including bad pavement etiquette,

rent costs, and even politicians.

I'm sure that first date will be a laugh a minute.

There are plenty of friendly faces at the Robots Exhibition

at London's Science Museum.

There are some which are different enough to look

unthreatening and lovable.

And there are some, well, some really quite unnerving.

Currently, the European Commission is considering the ethical issues

that robots raise, including whether they should have a kill

switch, whether they should have rights, and whether they should be

considered as electronic persons.

And what about those ethical, or even life or death decisions?

This is a representation of an experiment in which one robot

was programmed to save one of two smaller bots from falling

down a hole.

If one was in more danger than the other, their big brother

would save it.

However, if both smaller robots were equally in danger,

big bro would often freeze with indecision.

In that split second where the robot is going,

"Oh, no, there is an equal chance of both dying,

I don't know what to do", something kicks in,

in the human brain.

We are drawing on our attachment to the things that

might need saving.

We're drawing on maybe a set of moral beliefs or values.

We're not entirely sure what is going on in there but we can

do what feels right in that moment.

So, for now, robot ethics raise more questions than they answer.

But while robots are learning how to avoid causing real harm,

some humans seem way ahead in causing virtual harm.

In video games at least.

Sword fighting game For Honour is an unusual medieval mash up

which pits knights, Vikings and samurais against one another.

This is Bodiam Castle.

What better place to come and get hands-on with a video game

all about swordplay than here?

There's just one thing preventing that from happening, though.

At 6ft nine, and weighing nearly 30st, Icelandic strongman Thor

is this closest thing the game creators could find

to a Viking warrior.

Fans of Game of Thrones will be familiar with him as Sir Gregor,

better known as the Mountain.

In order to play the game, it's going to be a case of Mark

versus the Mountain in a series of challenges.

The game allows players to assume the role of a range of different

characters, from heavy hitting, muscle-bound warriors,

to nimble lightweight assassin-type characters.

But in the real world, how important is brute strength?

Well, if a warrior can't even lift their weapon,

how are they going to fight with it?

So a test of strength against a guy who competes

in the World's Strongest Man.

Sure, I can do that. All right.

Hold on. I've got to hold it here, yeah?

Right, get into position. Fantastic.

Like this. Hold it as long as possible.

OK, I think I'm doing all right. Straighten your arm.

Straight. Oh, my word.

That is really... Straighten your arm.

Come on! Hold it.

It's gone.

Excuse me while I go and have a lie down.

I think I've pulled something.

Oh, my word. You captured zone A.

You captured zone A.

Next up, combat.

Medieval warriors didn't have to worry about health and safety.

We do, so plastic goggles are on.

Fortunately, my opponent is made of straw.

My task is to do as much damage to this dummy with this sword

as I possibly can.

En guard!

That's not bad.

No good.

I'll show you how it's done.

So the second round belongs to Thor, but I think the tide may

turn in round three.

Thor has bested me in a test of strength and in martial skills.

However, this is my arena.

Welcome to my dojo.

So we're going to have a one-on-one duel.

His character is, of course, a Viking.

Mine is a medieval knight.

The match will be best of five.

When it comes to getting hands-on with the game,

there's not a chance that the big fella is going to beat me.

Or is there?

This is not filling me with confidence here.

Game face.

Game face on.

Here we go.

This is a bit more like it.

The thing about this game is you can't just button bash.

You won't get very far at all.

It's got a very fluid combat system.

At the heart of it is matching the stance of your opponent

and countering it.

You have to think a little bit more tactically.

How do you like the taste of them apples?

Bring it.

Flipping heck.

He did me in about two hits.

I've got the upper hand, I've got the upper hand!

I actually won.

I will see you, sir, in Valhalla!

Thank you, Thor, that was a very challenging game indeed.

We are in the middle of nowhere and if I could ask you for one

favour, that would be great.

Can I get a lift back to London?

Sure, why not?

Come on, jump on.

I had thought of a slightly different sort of lift,

but there you go.

Ever wondered what cats get up to when no one's there?

Meet Roxy and Zara, who seemed agreeable to taking part

in some gadget testing.

Sorry.

If you've ever wanted to watch, talk to or even play with your cats

when you're not with them, then this could help.

Once the device is connected to your home wifi, you can

login anywhere you can get your phone online.

There's a laser game to play, snacks at the tap of an icon,

and a function to proudly make and share videos and cat snaps.

This rather unusual looking setup works in quite a similar way.

There's a camera so you can see the cats remotely.

Also the ability to give them food wherever you are.

Plus this toy, which is apparently something that cats

might like to play with.

Zara and Roxy were possibly slightly intimidated by the jolting

of the feathery thing, and the app was extremely

temperamental, making setup a rather tedious experience.

But when it came to the cat reactions, maybe us being there

was a distraction for them, so there's a chance the devices

could have fared better if they were home alone.

I think the food dispenser, if they'd been hungry,

might have attracted more interest.

They found the whole thing a little bit unsettling.

This smart collar has been around a little while now

and is available for cats and dogs.

It allows owners to keep an eye on temperature,

pulse, breathing rate, heart rate variability and even

the positions a pet is in, so could be particularly beneficial

if there are health concerns or an injury to keep an eye on.

Don't worry, it's OK.

I know my friend's cats are not willing to wear any sort of collar

and I have to say this one is pretty large.

Look how much bigger than a cat I am, and my activity

tracker is only this size, so I can see it could be

a little bit intimidating.

Meanwhile, there seems to be a game of cat and mouse

going on here, the latter played by a remote control rodent.

Although it actually consists of the cat being chased

by the mouse, which probably says it all about my day's filming.

That was Lara, and this is Maria, the first blockbuster robot

from the ground-breaking 1927 film Metropolis.

The visual effects in that movie were absolutely stunning,

given that it is actually 90 years old.

Next, we are going to continue our look at some

of the visual effects behind the latest blockbuster movies.

We have Adam Valdes, BAFTA and Oscar nominee,

to tell us more about the visual effects he used to bring back

to life The Jungle Book.

A lot of people have asked me, "Why would you do a movie

in the jungle and not just go to the jungle, or some jungle,

some set that plays for a jungle"?

And I think the real answer is, you can't find the place

in reality that we've made, you know.

We made something special.

Every time you see the world in Jungle Book, someone

has fabricated plants, trees, the dead twigs and leaves

on the floor, all of it.

And it's only really when this around around him makes him feel

present within it that the magic trick comes off, that you believe

that this is just a photograph, that we went somewhere and shot it.

So we take a shot like Mowgli saying goodbye to his mother and we say,

John really wants some sort of physical contact.

It needs to be an intimate moment, their eyes need to be

locked onto each other.

We can't have a feeling that he's acting to a tennis ball,

a stick or some marker.

We really need to feel the scene emotionally.

You can locate the positions of his hands, the puppet

for the mother wolf.

And we can track it really carefully in three dimensions

with our computer software.

That way we make sure the contact is correct,

and then we simulate the fur on the mother's neck.

And we actually replace the better part of his hand

with the digital double of his hand, so that the CG hand and the CG fur

of the mother wolf are actually in the computer together,

and when we put our lighting on that and create the final images,

they really look connected.

The magic trick is blending the hand into his arm.

It's easy to focus on the fact that we pulled off two main things,

these talking animals that people felt emotions from and this complete

3D world we had to create, and that those two things

are really major accomplishments.

Starting off, I did not know if either of them

were going to work.

The very first time I combined photography of Mowgli

with a digital background, the background was grey,

not even photo realistic.

But it was just seeing an image come together

where we had planned a shot, filmed it, brought it home, put it

together with the digital world.

The kid was walking along this curvy branch.

And he looked like he was there.

And I thought to myself, "OK, maybe this is going to work".

You know, "Maybe he's really going to look

like he's in this world".

The render power required to generate a movie like this,

I think it was 240 million renderer hours, or something like that.

Which means if it was one computer it would have taken 3000 years,

some number like that.

These individual frames that you see can be 40, 50,

60 hours on a computer just rendering one frame.

The difference between a video game and our imagery is that the video

game uses hardware on your computer to generate in real-time an image.

And they are amazing, what they are doing.

To go from there, however, to complete fool your brain,

fool your eye realism, requires quite a lot more

computation, because you're simulating the behaviour

of materials and light.

And that has come so far in the last five years.

I think we'll see more and more imagery where we really start to not

be able to tell the difference between something that's

computer-generated and real.

And that can be a little spooky in one sense,

but it's pretty fascinating for creative people.

That was Adam Valdes on the magic behind the Jungle Book.

And that's it from Robots at the London Science Museum.

I'll put a load of photos up on Twitter for you to browse

through at BBC Click.

Thanks for watching and, yeah...

We'll be back.

Hi there.