17/09/2016 Click

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This week, Zumbaing zombies, TV ball and inside Bjork's mouth.

Now, we all know Uber as the app that let's you hail a ride

at the push of a button.

But what if your car arrived without a driver?

This week, the company has finally released its first self-driving cars

onto the streets of America in Pittsburgh which people

will actually be able to hail via the app.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, rival company nuTonomy

began its first public trials in Singapore a few weeks ago.

For now you may be relieved to find out that all these driverless cars

will come complete with a human backup driver.

Just as well for those of us who still like our dose of idle

taxi chit chat.

But it's not just ride sharing that Uber's putting its money on when it

comes to autonomous vehicles, as Dave Lee has been finding out

in San Francisco.

Many companies are desperate to make self-driving vehicles a reality

on our roads.

We've all seen Google's car of course, and Tesla

has its autopilot mode.

But the team here at Otto is thinking bigger.

Much bigger.

There are millions of trucks driving across America.

It's long, tiring work.

So why not have a computer do it?

This monster is the work of a bunch of ex-Google engineers who broke

away from the search company to start their own self-driving

project.

The way Otto see it, trucks are very much bigger

than cars but their driving is quite literally far more straightforward,

going straight in one lane for mile after mile after mile.

Solving a problem on a highway is very feasible because highways,

thinking about what it takes for us as human beings to drive

on a highway versus city streets, we need to exert less mental energy,

there are very defined rules of the way, it's wide,

it is easy to navigate.

In August, Otto's entire 90-person team was bought by ride sharing

service Uber for $680 million.

So now the real work begins on getting the technology out

on the road.

Otto has developed its own lidar sensors that can be retrofitted

to most of the trucks out on the roads today.

We went for a little test drive on the freeways of San Francisco.

But on this particular afternoon the team wasn't too happy

to put its latest software update to the test with some particularly

awful bumpy roads.

You need to deal with whatever road conditions you have,

whether it's bumpy roads or no marking lanes or potholes

or what not.

The autonomous life has to work under all those conditions,

so it's a given that we have to actually solve.

The good news is the vast majority of road ware today is actually

being caused by trucks.

If we can autonomously drive those trucks in a more efficient and safe

and planned way, we can actually minimise the road ware basically

by driving the truck better.

But the thing is, if they truly pull it off they will disrupt

an occupation that in America alone keeps more than 3 million employed.

And with a good wage and enough to support a family.

Isn't what you're doing going to put people out of a job and hit

unemployment in America?

It's a great question and the answer is not any time soon.

We are focused on the foreseeable future having a driver in the cabin,

so none of those jobs are going away.

On the contrary, those jobs are going to become safer

because the best technology will be there as a superpower helping

the truck driver drive the same routes that he needs to in a much

safer way, without stretching his hours of service,

without stretching the long miles that he needs to do very tired

without seeing his family for days and days in a row.

I think for the foreseeable future it's really something great

for those guys, and we're seeing a lot of great feedback

from individual truck drivers and from fleets that are really

yearning and hoping for the technology to come

as fast as possible.

London, London, London!

Busy, innit?

If you're driving, and especially if you're parking, it's not

difficult to put a wheel wrong and end up with a parking ticket.

Now, it is possible to appeal a ticket and many appeals

are successful, but you've got to know what your rights are and how

to write a good, solid legal letter.

Now, personally I don't, but this chap does.

The DoNotPay robot lawyer is a chat bot that can write you an appeal

letter in the time it takes you to answer its questions.

Were you or someone you know driving?

You can say yes.

It starts by asking about the circumstances

of the claim.

It is like a game of 20 questions.

No, I'm not the Queen.

Was it hard to understand the signs?

In this case you can say, "Yes, it was."

Then it immediately understands the problem with your ticket

and the great thing is it will actually get evidence

from Google StreetView if it's relevant to support your claim.

The appeals letter it produces is based on actual successful claim

letters that covered the same criteria, be they confusing signage

or incorrectly completed tickets.

What was your inspiration then for creating this?

Well, it was quite embarrassing actually.

I got a large number of parking tickets myself

and after about the fourth ticket my parents said you're

on your own, you have to pay for your own tickets.

Right.

Out of necessity I had to become a local parking guru and it wasn't

long before I was helping my family and friends with their tickets.

It doesn't stop at parking tickets.

It can also help you claim compensation for delayed flights,

apply for council housing in the UK and fight landlords

for property repairs.

And Joshua has decided not to charge for its services.

I promised

from the beginning it would be free and I intend to keep that promise.

I think people who need free legal help are some of the most vulnerable

in society and it would be morally wrong to charge them,

so I'm not making money and it's a pure public service.

Thanks for your time.

Thank you.

And best of luck with it all.

Now we're off to Amsterdam to the International Broadcasting

Convention, IBC.

If you're a content creator, and, let's face it, aren't we all these

days, if you make videos, upload stuff or broadcast stuff,

this is the place to see the latest high-end kit that's available.

Dan Simmons is there at IBC and this is what he has found.

Fancy an all-terrain 4x4 with 240-degree rotating camera

and lightning fast tracking built by former Russian engineers?

Yours for just $500,000.

And that's the cost without the car, just an arm.

And some would say a leg.

And how about an electric copter with 4K camera

and five-point gimbal?

Released only last month, it's a quarter of the price

of a standard chopper, but it does look to be

about a quarter of the size.

Surely with drones everywhere a ?400,000 chopper isn't

needed any more?

The big problem with drones is they are very restricted in terms

of the airspace they can operate in.

If you're in the right air space then a drone is fantastic.

But if you need to cross a road or get near to people or buildings

or things you don't have control over then you start running

into lots of regulatory problems with drones.

This is Amsterdam's IBC expo and is where the TV and film

industry meet to show off the next building blocks

for blockbuster content.

360 video is on many executives' minds here,

but not necessarily their heads.

The Globe is live streaming the feed from the six GoPro cameras that make

up the 360-degree image.

That offers viewers the chance to peer into and explore the content

without the dizziness sometimes experienced through a VR headset.

The clever bit is that it is stitching all of this on the fly,

but also it is putting it onto a piece of hardware.

Something that could become the TV of the future.

Postproduction for films shot in 360 is challenging because of the way

the multiple camera shots are stitched together.

Straight lines start to bend and warp as you pan around,

so touchups to specific areas need to do the same.

I'm creating shapes all around select parts of the image and now

if I select that shape and move it around the image,

you can see it warps and automatically transforms to fit

that VR view, including going off the side and wrapping around

the other side to ensure that when you're grading in VR,

it grades exactly seamlessly as normal TV content.

Grading is big business and even more so with the new high-dynamic

range TVs we saw in Berlin last week.

This ?150,000 suite can grade live 8K footage in real-time.

Six top-end GPUs can cope with 12-bit colour up to 240

frames a second.

It's got a enough geek under its bonnet to deal with live

output from any of the best cameras shooting.

The final bit of future TV that caught my eye was this

from Auntie Beeb, which is cutting up its own shows so you can pick

the best bits that suit you.

It could mean cookery programmes that avoid ingredients

you're allergic to.

Comedy shows that cut out the kind of jokes you don't want to hear.

Or Click without, say, pieces on the future of TV.

A public trial starts next year.

So before I get swept up its back to the electric chopper

to make my escape.

This prototype may only have 15 minutes of flight time but that's

enough to get to Schipol Airport in my very own Lamborghini

in the sky.

Just one small problem that shouldn't be left to postproduction.

Keith...

How do you close the doors?

Hello and welcome to the Week in Tech.

It was the week Tesla boss Elon Musk announced safety updates

to the driver assistance autopilot function on its cars.

It said it would make greater use of the on-board radar

to detect obstacles ahead.

A Tesla driver died in a collision earlier this year

when the technology missed a lorry.

It was also the week that the director of the FBI advised

that we should all cover our webcams like he does to protect yourselves

from unwanted prying eyes.

Amazon announced its virtual assistant speakers are coming

to the UK, complete with a British accent.

Great, ready to help.

It was also the week where the most amazing and also kind of creepiest

thing ever happened.

Researchers at MIT Media Lab at Georgia Tech adapted radiation

technology that could one day mean we could be able to read a book

through its cover.

The system works by firing radiation pulses from a special camera

and measuring just how long it takes for them to bounce back.

At the moment, though, it can only see one hand-written

letter through each of nine pages.

And finally, our eyes almost fell out of our heads when we saw

the most terrifying looking drone yet.

Japan's latest Pro Drone comes with six spinning blades

and a dextrous duo of very sinnister-looking robotic claws.

The manufacturer says it can be useful in collecting dangerous

materials.

Or chairs.

Lots and lots of chairs.

This is Bjork Digital, and inside these rooms

at Somerset House are 100 Gear VR headsets and 20 HTC Vibes,

between them showing four different music videos from Bjork's album,

Vulnicura.

The show has been touring the world and the promise is eventually

to make a VR experience for each of the nine album tracks.

Visitors to this location will be the first to see Quicksand,

featuring Bjork in her specially made facially tracked

projection mapped mask.

Yes, not for the first time Iceland's enigmatic imp has been

dazzling and baffling us with her intriguing

music tech fusions.

One of the people that helped deliver her vision is Andrew

Melchior.

What was her motivation for trying VR?

I think she has always been interested in technology,

she was a bit of a geek, which we love.

So I think virtual reality is the latest weapon in the arsenal

with which to try and convey and have an intimate relationship

with her listeners and people who like her work.

In fact, Bjork is so keen on VR that she even appeared

at her own press launch as a virtual avatar.

There's something about when you put those goggles on your face,

that you are just immediately in this kind of very theatrical world.

It certainly is theatrical.

But because you're the lone viewer in this VR world

it is also very intimate.

On a beach with Bjork.

Hello, there's two Bjorks now.

Oh, right, three now, now you're just driving me insane!

The experience on the beach, tell me about the thinking behind that?

Bjork's a bit of an old punk, she's a lot of an old punk,

the approach of making do with what you've got and getting it

out there is the thing she did for did for Stonemilker.

It's a very honest, sort of, what you see is what you get.

We will see what I get soon enough because if I know Bjork,

which I now feel like I do, things are about to get weird.

Eugh!

I'm pretty sure I'm in someone's mouth.

Either that or I'm being attacked by a huge strawberry.

So the original aspiration was to do something in her actual mouth,

but unfortunately, that was a bit risky.

It might have muffled the words as well.

Exactly.

So we ended up making this animatronic head,

which the camera was specially created for to be able to film

from the inside looking out.

But it is Bjork's mouth.

It is like 3-D scans.

And it is not just the visuals that are important here.

All of these experiences feature dynamic binaural audio.

You remember that technology we looked at recently that makes

sure the sounds stay in the right place in space

as you turn your head.

The audio side of it, it didn't even exist,

so we basically had to sit down and not sleep very much and write

the codes for the audio.

And that is what will be most exciting for me,

maybe, expressly for my next project.

Just go totally 360 with the audio.

All of this is of course pretty typical behaviour for one

of the most atypical people in the music industry.

Unnerving and uncomfortable, which is probably exactly as Bjork

would want it described.

Oh, and moist.

Whoa, that was...dental.

That is one original artist.

Of course, a lot of things in this game are accused

of being exactly the opposite.

Movie studios pump out sequel after sequel.

Video games houses do the same.

Every year we are treated to a slightly better version

of last year's hit game.

So how long can they continue to profit just from sequels?

A question Mark flew all the way to LA to answer.

Over three days, 10,000 first person shooter fans gathered at the LA

Forum for the XP event, a Call Of Duty-themed extravaganza,

which includes such unusual activities as paintball

in recreations of famous maps from the game.

There is, of course, a zombie disco.

Which is actually laser tag paying homage to the COD zombies game mode.

Visiting movie stars like Michelle Rodriguez...

She's filming the Fast And The Furious movie at the moment.

Taking the afternoon for a bit of multiplayer, perhaps.

And, of course, what videogames event

doesn't have its own zip tower?

HE LAUGHS

There is even a massive professional gaming tournament

going on inside the huge Los Angeles Forum.

After partaking in all of those events, it would be easy to forget

I am actually here to get my grubby mitts on the latest version

of this videogame.

Let's get to the tower!

Go, go, go!

So this is what we have been waiting for, Call Of Duty:

Infinite Warfare, a multiplayer.

We are pretty much the first people in the world to get our hands on it.

The series has been inching into the future with the last couple

of versions of the game, but with this particular iteration,

they have gone all the way into space.

Call Of Duty and space guns.

What's that going to be like?

Securing Bravo.

GUNFIRE

So far, the maps have that familiar Call Of Duty feel to them.

Plenty of cover, but they are also designed to be quite tight.

This means it forces combat.

Oh, come on!

So because the game is set in the future, this has allowed

the designers to introduce some futuristic weapons as well.

So as well as guns which fire bullets, there are weapons which use

energy, which is what I have here.

You can switch between sniper mode and rifle mode.

Come on.

Thank you.

The question is, by setting the game in the future,

does that change the essence of Call Of Duty?

A lot of the fans were hoping instead of moving this series

further into the future, they would have taken it back

to the series' roots.

It started in World War Two combat,

then moved into contemporary warfare.

I think that's what the fans were hoping for.

When this got revealed that it would be in the future,

they feel like they have not been listened to.

This has caused something of a backlash.

The original reveal trailer for Infinite Warfare,

the first time the fans realised it was going to be set

in the future, it picked up about 1.3 million unlikes on YouTube

and 300,000 likes.

This is the most disliked Call Of Duty trailer Activision has

ever had, that it's released for any of its games.

How has this online hatred affected the game's development?

We have very passionate fans, who know what they want,

and because we have so many fans, we have very vocal fans who come

out of that.

I think we have seen a turning point, when we had the E3

presentations, where we showed some of the campaign where the ship

assault missions were shown.

Incoming missiles.

Clear, clear!

We set out to make a unique experience, to kind of redefine

the face of Call Of Duty.

While the multiplayer is pretty much what you'd expect

from a Call Of Duty game, this latest version could

have a VR-shaped ace up its sleeve.

This is the Sony PlayStation headset, and I will try out

the Jackal experience, which is the spacecraft.

The thing is, most of my attention is straight ahead, because straight

ahead is where I'm pointing my ship at its targets.

It is not really getting the full benefit of virtual reality.

I think it demonstrates to really get the most out of VR,

you have to design your experiences for it from the ground up.

As controversial as it is popular, the Call Of Duty franchise continues

for another year.

I only wonder if the next instalment will continue searching

for inspiration in science fiction, or return to its historical roots?

In a summer full of sequels, reboots and remakes,

it is nice to come across an original story,

especially if it blends traditional filmmaking techniques

with cutting edge technology.

My name is Cooper.

I look after my mother mostly.

Making a stop-motion film requires tremendous discipline,

because you have to build everything.

Nothing exists as a virtual object in a computer that you can download

a new file and then you have another set or what have you.

You don't have an infinite number of characters,

you have to build a puppet and you can only use that

on one set.

If you want another puppet, you have to build another puppet.

If you must blink, do it now.

About epic battles, warriors and monsters.

We talked about this movie as a stop-motion David Lean film,

which is kind of silly when you think about how

you make these movies.

The biggest set is about 20 feet long.

So it was a real challenge to test the crew, to make a film like this

of this sweep and scale.

Something like the big skeleton monster, which our heroes face off

against in an incredible temple, we built that big monster puppet

full-scale, that they face off against.

It's this 16 foot tall puppet that weighs 400lb.

At the base, we had to build essentially a metal contraption

controlled by a computer like you would find

on a flight simulator.

It was like a marionette because we had these cables that

went from the wrist to the ceiling, and dropped down to the floor.

There were held in place by plastic buckets filled with sand bags.

Don't touch anything. He did it.

There is a battle on a raging sea.

That is a combination of stuff we shot as reference on stage

to figure out how to do the water, using panes of rippled shower glass,

pieces of paper, metal grids that we put garbage bags over.

Then we bring that into the computer and modify it and enhance that

using CG techniques.

Do you need a little help?

No, no, no.

HE GRUNTS

Yes.

That is it for this week.

Follow us on Twitter for more of our escapades.

Thanks for watching, and we will see you soon.

hi

hi there.

hi there. Thankfully