Transport Technobabble

What time is it?

Ooh, it's Technobabble time!

HE YAWNS

Think I'll just hit the snooze button.

I'm not quite ready yet.

Here's what's coming up on today's get-out-of-bed show...

Young Samuel is back

and he's gone all arty farty.

Let's talk about some arty apps.

Lucy gets in a spin behind the wheel of a self-driving car.

It's blowing my mind.

Plus Niki and Sammy are here and they're talking internet slang!

-YOLO.

-You only live once.

What. A. Show.

But first, it's my favourite little Irish helper.

It's Aoife and she's gaming!

Games are great for letting you play

in all kinds of fantastical settings.

But some games called sims, or simulation games,

are all about simpler pleasures.

Euro Truck Simulator 2 doesn't sound all that exciting at first -

you take on the role as a truck driver

and transport your cargo, wherever it needs to go.

But there's something quite satisfying about it all,

driving around all the European cities, eventually,

you expand your business enough hire new drivers to work for you.

Now, Elite Dangerous is very much like Euro Truck Simulator 2.

You're transporting goods from one location to the other.

The only difference is, you're in space,

so the view is much more impressive than the M25.

You can choose how you want your space business to operate,

whether you want to abide by the law or do things your own way.

The huge open world galaxy that you fly around is based on

a realistic 1:1 scale representation of the real Milky Way,

so good luck trying to explore it all!

How about a nice quiet game where you experience what it's like to

live as a piece of bread instead?

Yep, you heard that right.

I Am Bread answers every burning question you've ever had

about what it's like to loaf around the house as a slice of bread.

Your quest is to reach the toaster while remaining delicious

and edible - a task easier said than done.

You'll never look at your sandwiches the same way again.

Thanks, Aoife! Some great games there.

ALARM RINGS Oh, what time is it now?! Oh, no!

It's even worse than last week.

Vlogstergram. Urgh.

How will transport change in the future?

Oooh. Good one.

But, if you're not all travelling around in wormholes like me,

I don't want to know.

I'll send Lucy today, this one's right up her street.

Where is this bus?

It's behind you!

Hey, Vlogster, no, it's not.

Made you look! Hee-hee! Gosh, I'm good!

What are you bothering me with today?

One of our Babblers would like to know how transport will

-change in the future.

-But I'm on my way to work.

You're driving me up the wall now! Get it?! Hee-hee! Come on, let's go!

All right, don't get your knickers in a twist.

Let me just get changed.

I'm sending Lucy to visit a carmaker who has developed

one of the first self-driving cars to be allowed on UK roads.

She's meeting techspert Laura Hardy who is going to teach her

all there is to know about this impressive vehicle!

So, Laura, I believe you're going to show me a car that drives itself.

I'm assuming this good-looking machine is it.

It's a little normal looking though. I'm not going to lie, I was

expecting something a little bit more futuristic looking.

Yeah, it does look pretty normal, but if you take a look around,

I think you'll notice some major differences.

Let's take a look.

OK, it's empty. Where is the engine, Laura?

Where is the engine?

Well, why don't you take a look at the back.

OK, let's go to the boot.

OK, now I'm really confused.

All I can see are car seats. Still no engine!

Laura, how on earth does this car work?

If you want to press the button to shut the boot, I'll explain.

And this is the chassis. And here is motor.

-Oh, my gosh! It's tiny.

-Yeah.

It doesn't need much, just a rotor.

And it's powered by the batteries in the floor of the car.

So this thing is 100% electric and is powered by batteries.

That's right. Thousands of these little cells.

Amazing! So how do you charge one of these?

You can charge them anywhere.

There's thousands of charging points all over the country

and you can also charge it in your house overnight.

That's amazing! So I can park this in my garage

and have the comfort of charging it in my own home.

Yeah, and 300 miles ready to go the next day.

-That's a pretty long journey.

-Yep.

-OK.

I'm ready to see one of these things drive themselves. Should we do it?

Let's do it.

Whoa! That is a whopping great display on the dashboard.

This thing is huge.

Oooh, I likey!

Now this is the sort of screen I could get used to!

Er, jog on, Vlogster. I'm about to look at some serious hi tech.

I'm going to need that screen. So I'm ready to drive.

Let's get going.

So we're just coming onto the motorway now

and you can set the speed now.

So the top speed that you want to be going at.

It's not going to go any faster than that.

Then we can activate the auto-steer and that means that the car is

now braking, accelerating and steering for you.

Does this car actually drive on its own?

No. You still need to be behind the wheel.

-So no naps in the back?

-No. Definitely not. Definitely not.

I am so impressed with the self-steering.

I like the fact that I can just quickly scratch my ear

and then the other one and the car is looking after me.

It's smooth as well.

As I'm driving, I can feel it altering the speed.

How is it able to do that?

Now we're slowing down, now we're speeding up.

-It's blowing my mind!

-THEY LAUGH

So it's keeping track of the car in front.

If that car slows down, you'll slow down and

if that car speeds up, it will speed up to your

top speed that you've set.

Obviously we're staying within the lane,

how is it able to do that, is it via sensors?

Yes. So the car has got 12 sensors around it,

so it's able to sense vehicles around you, objects around you,

and also it's looking at the white lines.

It's keeping us within the white lines in a safe distance.

So talk to me about the tech inside this thing. What else can it do?

The technology is updatable all the time.

We can change the user interface,

people can download new functionality overnight

on their driveways.

So, in a way, this car is a bit like a smartphone.

I think that is really cool.

-Do you see cars being completely driverless in the future?

-Yeah.

At the moment, the safest combination is you

and the driver assistance system.

As soon as the car is safer than the driver,

then we've more chance of tipping it the other way.

That's insane. I think my mind has actually just been blown.

What do you think about that then, Vlog?

Well, I'm a very good driver!

But how about one for the road?

This isn't Transformers, but it is Motobot.

A robot that can ride a motorbike all on its own.

Designed to perform better than a world champion racer,

this robo-rider will one day race around the track

at more than 125mph.

Talk about putting you in the driving seat, Vlogs.

What else you got for me?

Ever wanted to float in thin air, a bit like yours truly?

Then this future concept hover car could be for you!

Using electromagnetic road networks,

the car travels a couple of feet in the air.

It has a series of onboard sensors

and a computer to help you safely from A to B.

Time to put the brakes on, Lucy, consider yourself parked!

Now I was talking to my mate Simon

down the swimming pool the other day, and I was saying,

"Simon, we don't have enough arty apps on this show."

And he said, "Well, why don't you put some on?"

And I said, "OK then, I might just do that."

And he said, "OK, do that then." So I am.

True story. Here's Sam!

Let's talk about some arty apps.

The first app we're going to be talking about today is Animate It.

You can use your phone camera to make animations

and time lapses out of very simple objects.

As a little tip, the smaller the motion between each frame,

the smoother the video will be.

The next app is Photo Sketch and is based on a very simple idea.

The app allows you to take or choose a picture

and turn it into a sketch for you.

It's a really good app to help you draw cos you can print

out one of the sketches and trace over it and it should help you.

This one is for keen drawers.

Sketch is kind of like drawing, but without all the fuss and mess.

It's a sketch pad but on your phone, and it has loads of

different kinds of features. The best part about this app

is that there is no clearing up to do afterwards. If you make a mistake

you can use the eraser and rub something out easily.

The last app today is Kid Colouring Book.

It's a great app for filling in the gaps in the day.

Whether it be waiting for your friends,

on your school break, or just relaxing in the evening.

This app has so many photos for you to colour in.

That's all we have time for today. I hope you've enjoyed these arty

apps. Make sure you go check them out!

Oh, I'm such a great painter. Van Gogh's rubbish.

Ta-da!

Better than I could have imagined.

This guy. He knows the right thing to say.

Come on then, Vlogstergram - do your worst!

Vlogster, could you turn off the internet?

Whoa! What's the internet ever done to you, Cemahl?!

Apart from show you how to bite Charlie's finger.

Oww, Charlieeeee!

The internet is very robust

because it doesn't rely on just one super-computer or giant cable.

It's a network of other computer networks, all working together -

crossing over continents, under oceans and even through space.

When you connect to the internet,

data follows one of millions of pathways.

And, if a particular connection is damaged,

the data finds a different route to your device.

Trying to turn off all these pathways

would be a bit like herding a million cows.

Come back!

It's a messy business, I can tell you!

The internet was first switched on in 1990, and since then some

nations have intentionally switched it off in their own countries.

There can be lots of reasons for this, but it's usually

in times of crisis, like a threat to national security or during conflict.

But clever people can find quick fixes.

Landline phones could still make international calls to

log on to dial-up internet in the outside world.

And voicemail services might be used to turn spoken messages

into texts and tweets on social media.

Something that could turn off the internet,

with disastrous consequences, is an electromagnetic pulse or EMP.

A large enough EMP could make all electronic equipment useless.

And giant pulses happen during solar storms created by the sun.

The last one struck in 1859 when a mega-flare hurled

around a trillion kilograms of charged particles towards the Earth.

Thankfully, it's unlikely a solar pulse would cover the entire planet,

and the countries that weren't affected would send supplies

to areas that were, and rush to repair communication networks.

So the internet would be back quicker than The Terminator!

And there you have it.

Right, I need a challenge! I need Niki and Sammy.

I need a Niki and Sammy Challenge!

Hey, guys, what we thought we'd do today

is a good old-fashioned vlogger challenge.

The challenge we want to do is the internet slang challenge!

What we have to do is take it in turns to see

who knows their internet slang the best.

The first word for you is OTP.

One true pairing.

Yep. IDC.

I don't care.

I think you could try.

I don't care.

I think you could at least put your heart in it.

I DON'T CARE!

That is it - I don't care!

That's really rude. I can't work with you.

This one took the internet by storm last year, it's YOLO.

You only live once.

SMH.

-Well, I know what this means.

-Well, what is it?

When someone told me what it meant, they told me it meant suck my hair.

Well, no, it doesn't mean that.

Shake my head.

It means, shaking my head. But, yeah.

No, shake my head.

B-A-E. BAE.

Before anyone else.

As everybody knows on the interwebs.

On fleek.

And again, used it in a sentence. Niki's hair is on fleek.

Or Sammy's eyebrows are on fleek.

They're not.

I won!

I think if I'm being entirely honest, I let you win.

Thank you, boys! You know you're my favourite twins on this show.

Sure, you're the only twins here so you kind of win by default -

but still, I like you guys!

Something tells me it's Babblebuster time!

E is for emoji.

Which is not the noise a robot makes when it sneezes.

Emoji are sets of fonts where the letters and symbols have been

replaced with pictures.

They were invented in Japan - by Shigetaka Kurita -

to take the hassle out of making sideways faces from colons,

brackets and letters.

Emoji means picture and character

and the first ones were based on the symbols used in weather forecasts.

It's about time someone created emoji that look like me.

Happy Vlogster, sassy Vlogster. poo-face Vlogster.

Actually, right, I'm done! See you soon!

Next time on Technobabble...

Marcus is getting smart to improve his senses.

I find it a little bit scary, actually.

Chai's back and he's talking Minecraft.

You know how we all find endermen terrifying, right, guys?

And Jana's here and she's hungry!

Food is amazing and we all love eating it!