21/05/2016 Click - Short Edition

in the operation.

In a moment, we'll have Newswatch.

But first, here's Click.

Another day, another tight, black suit.

Torso is live...

Torso is live.

Stretch your arm behind you as far as it goes.

I'm having my motion captured, but not like that, nurse.

This is a prototype of a system that doctors may one day to assess

patients who have limited mobility, who can't use their limbs fully.

And that's with a view to building them their own own robotic arm!

Im' at The Human Assistive Robotic Technology Lab, that's the

Heart Lab, at the University of Berkley near San Francisco.

Oh, an interesting side note about this motion capture suit,

it doesn't use those reflective balls we're so used to seeing.

It uses LEDs which pulse at different speeds

so they can be uniquely identified by tracking cameras.

It makes tracking all the points in a 3D space easier, and it also makes

me look like a Christmas tree.

By doing this test they are not just measuring the motion of my limbs

but also my centre of mass.

They can see how my balance compensates

as I move my arm, for example.

And this doesn't have to be done at the doctors'.

also be able to do this at home.

The result is a sphere showing where the patient

can reach and where they can't.

And that will help design their own personal robotic limb.

The most common loss of mobility is in the upper range.

So you lose the ability to feed yourself, you lose

the ability to brush your teeth.

The main objective of this device is to move the shoulder, raise it up,

to give you some assistance.

This will assist your shoulder, give you increased range of motion.

All right.

Oh...

LAUGHTER.

It should be easier to move your shoulder up.

This is to help those who can still move their limbs but need a bit

of help to do it.

But there are those that cannot use their limbs at all.

For that we need the kind of suit we are looking at across campus.

Being in a wheelchair, it is like being in a bubble.

'Cause, I can come up to you, I don't care, but you might not

want to be next to me.

It is like, "I don't want to touch them or get in their way."

Stephen broke his back in a BMX accident in 2004 when he was 17.

He was instantly paralysed from the waist down and has been

using a wheelchair ever since.

But over the last three years he has been able to get up and walk

for short periods of time.

Working with Suit X, he has been a test pilot for what this company

hopes will be the world's lightest and most affordable exoskeleton.

When I am wearing the suit nobody cares.

You can walk right up to me and hug me and there is no bubble.

There is no, like, "Oh, I might hurt you!"

The first time I used this suit my parents came

and I was able to hug them for the first time in who knows how long.

Yeah...

Suit X was borne out of this robotics laboratory.

They recognised many people could not afford to access exoskeletons

for physical therapy and set about designing one with a comparatively

cheap price tag, $40,000 US.

It only weighs 27 lbs.

12-13 kg.

It has a battery pack that only weighs two lbs and allows you to

use it all day, 4-8 hours.

We have an active knee.

That means when I stand up my knee doesn't bend and I fall.

It has other properties that allows the knee to bend when I am walking

so it makes it look natural.

As you might have seen when he was walking, the terrain,

there is debris, rocks, cracks in the sidewalk.

What is cool about our system is it can naturally

handle things like that.

Fall prevention.

The system is commanded through a wireless crutch.

What is neat about this system is it can be attached to anything.

So, if you had a walker it can be connected to the walker.

This allows you to communicate to your device.

If you wanna make a step you can make one.

And we can also talk to a tablet at the same time in real-time.

So we can get somebody up in the device quickly, tune the parameters

to where their natural posture is supposed to look like, and then see

how they are progressing.

The other devices make me feel like I'm riding the robot.

But with this device I can move certain aspects of the machine

around without it trying to do something that I don't want to.

While the device is giving Stephen and others testing it freedom,

it will not replace wheelchairs for its users yet.

But it could be critical in physical therapy sessions and allow people

with paralysis to experience the sensation of walking.

In my world, what I would be using this device for is every day

in my life I would keep them on and then probably every couple

of hours also put on the device, get up, stand up, walk around for

ten minutes, that is all I want.

That relief right there will give me ten years of my life back.

LAUGHTER.

Pending FDA approval, Suit X is hoping to have 30 suits

ready by this summer.

MUSIC.

Do you ever get the feeling that tech billionaires

are getting younger?

Hmm...

The developer world descended on the massive Googleplex in California to

hear about their latest products.

But before that, a day for children to learn how to code with robots.

But once the adults had arrived, it was time to get

down to the new stuff.

This is a slightly Cockney-inspired app called Allo that has

a chat box which is claimed by Google to be intelligent enough

to predict what you might say based on what it knows about you.

You can also ask Google specific questions or make it do things

like book a table or order food.

Does that sound familiar?

It is!

Facebook has something very similar.

You can talk to Allo through the new Google Home Device you can

put in your kitchen and shout instructions at.

If that sounds familiar, it is because it is.

Amazon already has Echo.

Google also announced Daydream, a new VR system powered by Google

smartphones.

If that sounds familiar...

Well, you're right.

They are late and both of those areas represent threats to

their business.

It is crucial they come back.

That said, if Google I/O is useful for one

thing, it is showing just how many huge ideas this company has.

In case you thought Google was just a search engine,

let's look at what we have today/ Machine learning, artificial

intelligence, self driving cars, virtual reality, and of course, they

are sending balloons up into space.

This is their effort to send an Internet-enabling ballon

into near-space.

This one, which I think looks like a massive peeled orange,

is a miniature version of the real one, which is four times as big.

It is designed to provide wireless Internet to four billion people

around the world and make them last longer than our average of 72 days.

What is more interesting is Project Tango.

Devices with Project Tango are aware of their surroundings

so it can scan what is around it and offer useful ways of interacting.

You can get your hands on Project Tango-enabled devices later

this year.

Google designers will be excited to work with it...

After a nap.

In last week's programme, we had entries in the first

Robotic Art Competition.

A challenge to find the best robotic artist,

Meanwhile, back at Berkeley, in California, it is time to get back

to the people who are trying to bring about the rise of the robots.

Meanwhile, back at UC Berkeley, Dr Sven is in the house

and attempting to sew up a patient.

Here it comes.

So good, grab this needle with this...oh,

for goodness sake.

Sorry, I will make another hole.

I'm using a da Vinci robot.

Something which surgeons now routinely use to perform

surgical tasks like suturing.

Sometimes remote controlling it from another location

but more often, it is used just steady the hand movements

in the more delicate of procedures.

This is a computer sewing up a wound all on its own.

How hard is this?

You have to manipulate a needle that is a very small and we

have a thread that is deformable.

All of this is being operated in a tissue that we have no model about.

We have no touch feedback.

So think of it like this, it is equal to performing very

complex tasks when your hands are really numb and you can barely see.

It is a combunation of a computer-vision system

which tracks the needle - bright yellow to make that bit

easier - and advanced computer modelling which tries to predict the

behaviour of that twizeerly thread and the flippy-floppy tissue - both

technical terms, trust me.

Suturing is a fairly repetitive and simple low-skill task that

happens very often and you want to give a surgeon a break

so that the surgeon can perform or focus his attention on more

important things in the surgery.

While the low-level things can be done automatically.

The term low level is, of course, relative.

Not many of us have what it takes to do this with their own hands,

let alone what feels like a pair of remote boxing gloves.

It is totally the wrong way!

Am I putting the blunt end in?

Yes.

LAUGHTER.

Oh, my gosh, I am so sorry.

What a thoroughly beautiful place this is to study, isn't it?

I have a feeling we will be coming back

here in the not-too-distant future.

I hope you enjoyed our look around UC Berkeley, all the backstage fun

and photos are available on Twitter.

We will see you soon.