Japan Special Click - Short Edition

What is your favourite animal?

ROBOTIC VOICE: Sponge Bob is the best.

I thought he was a cheese at first though.

Samurai Chatbot?

Welcome to Tokyo.

It's a place that loves tech.

It's my kind of place.

An odd kind of place.

Where ancient traditions blend with ambitious visions.

Where legends are born.

And brought to life.

Where a little space is really rare.

And friends can take all shapes and sizes.

This is Joji, he's a biologist.

And this is Akane, he's a dog.

He's 11 and ever since he was a puppy, he's

been a nervous little corgi.

I'm getting the sense now that he slightly stressed?

But all that barking doesn't necessarily mean he stressed.

In this case, he just wants to say hello.

Joji wanted to find out what Akane was actually feeling,

so he invented a collar which monitors the dog's heart

rhythms and changes colour, depending on whether he's calm,

excited or alarmed.

It can be used by owners to hear beyond the barks and learn how

to manage stressful environments.

His barking to other dogs is completely from aggression.

But I found out it's different, comparing two cats

and dogs, the reaction.

With cats, it's pure hatred, is it?

Yes, it goes purely red.

But with dog, it doesn't go so up.

There's a different attitude to technology here,

to that in the West.

Our believe that it's a force for good and can you

used by all, for all.

I have the idea that technology is not only for humans, we kind

of use the resource of the world.

The technology that we make from that is not just for us.

It should be used for animals and maybe plants

and the whole global system.

Some stuff here is decidedly Japanese.

But increasingly, this country is also pursuing the same tech goals

as the rest of the world.

For example, it too is getting in on the autonomous driving scene.

Nissan plans to have ten vehicles with some level of autonomy

in showrooms by 2020.

The Nissan I'm in today has similar driver assist functions to the cars

currently on the road.

It's a pro-pilot technology keeps its distance from the car

in front and stays in lane.

What's quite funny is, when it took over it put me

in the proper position in the lane, rather than where I was.

Over by the white line.

This particular car demands that I keep my hands

lightly on the wheel.

So though it does look as though I'm doing the driving,

trust me, the car really is doing its own thing.

Which is slightly unnerving.

What's unusual about this car compared to other autonomous cars

we've seen, is this doesn't have an array of sensors all the way

round, it doesn't have lidar or radar, or anything like that.

It just has one camera.

That's it.

That lack of expensive sensors makes the car very affordable,

although the self-driving software therefore has to be

very, very smart.

I get the feeling that this technology is almost there, we can

almost just have autonomous driving.

But maybe we need just one more thing, one more innovation to really

carry it across the line.

Well, Japanese car-makers think that thing could be detailed 3-D maps

of the entire road system.

Autonomous cars ultimately have to work in any conditions.

But how do you self drive safely when the road looks like this?

When even the most advanced sensors are going to

struggle to see the road.

The thought is, rather than just reacting to what their senses see,

cars should already have information about what the roads

should look like.

All the major Japanese manufacturers have now teamed up to form

a new company to make these maps.

A fleet of cars will gather point cloud data using lidar,

precise GPS position and video.

The information is then processed to create vector maps of the roads

which is said to be accurate down to centimetres.

The mapping work is already underway.

The 30,000 or so kilometres of Japan's highways are the first

target and is seen as an easy win because the road conditions

there are less complicated than in urban areas.

Mitsubishi Electric hopes to shrink the mapping gear even smaller

than this and then mount it on highway patrol cars,

so maps can be regularly updated with little outlay.

In the meantime, this being Japan, autonomous driving technology has

already been installed in that other essential method

of transport, the chair.

Now, once every year Japan puts a whole load of its innovations,

crazy and otherwise, on show for the world to see.

It is an exhibition called C-Tech and it takes place in the eastern

outskirts of Tokyo in Shiba and Dan Simmons is there.

I've just arrived in Honda's 3D-printed car.

It's made from the same ABS plastics as the mass produce models.

The idea is we would design our own car, at least the shell,

that's the bit that's 3-D printed.

Hopefully, just for a little bit of extra cost, they can put

in a few more seats.

Now, what if you could speak with your finger and draw

what you are saying?

That would raise a smile, right?

Well, only if you draw a smile, it seems.

This playful app has a few uses.

As well as talking to those who can't hear, the voice

recognition makes it much quicker than typing things out.

Now, where this app really comes in useful is when you meet somebody

for the first time and you don't speak the same language,

because it has a translate function.

It's quite fun, let me show you how.

What's your name?

Tsuyoshi?

OK, where is the best restaurant?

Here is delicious sushi.

Perfect.

And I'm in the know.

Thanks.

Fed up with carrying your cards?

Fujitsu reckon they've got our hands down better alternative.

This palm reader may not know your future,

but it knows all your credit cards you've registered on its database.

You did that, didn't you?

It recognises you by looking at the veins through your hand.

It's more secure than a fingerprint, which being 2-D, can

more easily be copied.

Now, when it comes in next year, you'll still need to use a PIN,

but we know they are not palming us with a secure system

because it's already being used at some of Japan's cash machines.

More ways to identify us from from researchers,

with these earbuds that listen to the wearer.

They emit a beam and then using a tiny integrated microphone,

they listen for the echo.

What they've discovered is apparently our ear canals

reflect sound uniquely.

That means they could be used as ID without the need for us

to do anything really.

The Japanese are known for their quirky tech ideas,

but this one could transform some people's lives.

This hair clip allows wearers to feel the sounds around them.

It's quite an unusual feeling to have this particularly experience

through your head onto your skull, even when you are talking,

because these can pick up when I'm talking,

as well as anybody else.

The new version, still in prototype, detects pitch of sound as well

and could be used to teach deaf people how to play

an instrument, possibly.

The mikes inside which control the vibes are directional,

so wearing two means you can tell where a sound is coming

from as well.

That is crazy.

That's just bouncing up and down on my head.

I can't wait for the presenter of another version of Click

to have a go himself.

Why don't you put that on your hair?

Next week, we have another very special show for you.

We're in Zurich for the world's first Cybathlon.

It is an athletics event for people with robotic limbs and robot

wheelchairs and it promises to be a brilliant event.

A competition for the athletes and also for the tech teams

who devised the devices they'll be using.

Earlier this year I met up with some of the participants.

This is a taster of what happens when I tried an early version

of a self-balancing, stair-climbing wheelchair.

The full account is on YouTube.

Now I press...I pressed the wrong button.

It shut down.

Whoa!

Does this look as terrifying to you as it does to me?

No, it doesn't work and I think I have to stop.

Have you thought this through?

You haven't even got a name for the safe position thingy.

You realise I am hanging on the edge of a cliff here.

Do you want to ask me some questions?