30/01/2016 Click - Short Edition

Next is Click and that's followed by Newswatch.

Sometimes it feels like everyone does.

No tech exhibition is complete without a drone or two these days

and over a million of them were sold last year in the US alone.

We have played with all types of drones in the last couple of years.

A new generation of drones have all sorts of tricks up their sleeves.

They can self-fly on a preplanned road, track fast-moving

objects and last week one even managed to land on a moving car.

They have become so popular that nowadays they have their own events

and this week, we are at the UK's first festival and awards ceremony

Of course, all of these things come with nice flashing lights

but more importantly, great cameras these days.

And after all, that's really the point of them, isn't it?

You can get great aerial photography and pull off some amazing shots.

I think I can get this one all the way down there.

Drones give you a whole new view of the world and it's led to

Over 600 drone-tastic shots were submitted to this year's Dronefest.

If it is too trashed the temptation may be to just chuck it away, which

you are not allowed to do because you have to dispose of e-waste

But it has to be said that e-waste is one of the fastest

We throw away an estimated 40 million tons

of technology every year, often filled with toxic chemicals, metals

It is the equivalent of dumping 800 laptops every second

and as we reported before, one answer is recycling.

But now there is another idea which admittedly sounds pretty

Dan Simmons has been to South Germany where researchers are

trying to create electronics which, once we're done with them,

We're getting suited up because inside the labs, the

Unwanted particles, such as hair or dead skin may, affect test results

and for some experiments, even the normal mix of gases in

the air would start oxidizing the organic substances being tested.

So, inside the box, it is nitrogen only.

And this light that is almost entirely biodegradable.

This is one of their most recent advancements.

Basically this can biodegrade, 99% of it can go into the ground, but it

is flexible and light for displays like advertising or night displays.

At the end of which, they can simply be thrown away.

Lighting elements for screens are tricky parts to

throw away safely so the team have been experimenting with these

As you can see, we have some materials, which are fluorescent.

We want to use them as organic semiconductors, which is the part

With these molecules, they are from nature.

Some of them come from plants, some are vitamins,

And you can work with these with the electronics so that more of what

Printing silver foil just a few nanometres thick onto

a fully biodegradable substrate, that is the plastic looking stuff

that is usually used today in food packaging, means that this

The team want to create temporary sensors that could decompose

In the future, many devices will be connected to the Internet

That only works with a lot of sensors.

We think it is key that the devices themselves are biodegradable, so you

After half a year they will be gone, and you don't harm the environment.

We are trying to adapt the architecture of our electronic

devices, so we will be able to use biodegradable materials that are

But the possibilities of organic electronics go beyond us simply

Could this be the start of a sensor that could be put

inside of our bodies to simply decompose within us?

A sensor that we don't need to touch once it is inside.

Have a look at the plastic substance.

That is largely made of cellulose and degrades much like paper.

Here on the top is coal and burnt wood mixed with a special

If you have ever had your body stitched up

for any reason, and they just left the stitches in to dissolve, that is

It all could disintegrate inside the body.

To measure how much electricity goes from one point to

the other depending on how much we bend it, and that is

down to the molecules being mixed between the carbon and that special

Doctors would be able to monitor what is going on from inside the

body without the need for a second operation to remove the sensor.

Small amounts of inert metals could also be used that pass

The main aim of this project, funded by the German government,

is to clean up the next generation of tech.

The whole process will be on row to row.

These rows go up to two km in terms of material.

And before long the fully produced device will come out like newspaper.

This is mass-produced throw-away electronics?

We can use them for lighting applications or solar panels.

Did that guy just say he can print solar cells onto a piece

Not yet but those substrates, that plastic looking stuff is actually

much more closer in behaviour to paper than it is to plastic.

It will biodegrade naturally and what they're hoping to do is to

print photovoltaic material on the top and therefore make solar panels

that you can literally print like a newspaper and that would biodegrade

in around six months after you threw it away. But it is 5-10 years away.

Anything we can look forward to the shorter-term?

In the shorter term, it is possible we could see things

like sensors that can be put anywhere and then biodegrade.

And also displays, those little lights we saw in the

film, 1000-2000 of those together could be quite beautiful for outdoor

effects like signage and eventually a screen all of itself that we could

On show back at Dronefest in London, some

of the latest drones that will let you take those award-winning shots.

That is the thing with drones, you really can get footage

I caught up with Rob Johnson, one of the Dronefest finalists

and yes, that is him on the mountain by the way, to talk to him about

I was up there working in the winter months and it was

a blue sky day, I went in and took the drone in and made a film.

You didn't have a second camera operator.

How did you pull off some of those shots, because you are

walking away from the drone as it is coming towards you?

Basically what I would do is get to where I wanted to start filming

and hand-launch the drone, set up my shot, walk through it, set up

And if you look really carefully, there are shots were you can see

my thumb on the stick as I'm walking to try to get that

So, everyone who has got a drone is, of course, now a professional drone

camera operator but maybe you could offer a few tips?

My first tip is to learn to fly a drone but something that isn't

Perhaps buy one that hasn't got a GPS,

So that you can get used to the various controls, left, right,

Yeah, actually be able to keep it in a hover and move it forwards

and backwards and perhaps do a figure eight around the kitchen,

so that you can get used to controlling it when it is pointing

So here are some of the entries that did.

The closest I could come would be, peaceful.

It is a feeling that everything is perfect at this moment.

That is it for the short person of Click this week, check out the

longer version on either player. That's an order. And feel free to

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