High Tech Highway Click

That's it from me.

Now on BBC News, Click.

This week, cars, bars and a police

riot. -- ride.

I am on my way to a reported

incident on 1-off Las Vegas's

busiest highways. With the last rain

falling over four months ago, the

Audley Road is mixed with fresh

water have become a lethal recipe

for disaster. -- oily roads. In the

driving seat is a sergeant from the

Nevada Highway Patrol. He is using a

software that alerts into an

incident as soon as it is reported

by someone calling 911 or through

driving apps and provide him with

details and the best route to get to

the scene.

The location, what kind

of accident, the degree, and if

there are any responders that are on

their way.

It constantly updates in

on the situation as it develops.

Having a robust system in place

doesn't just help with

weather-related collisions.

With our

Route 91 shooting that we had, for

the portion that we handled, the

Highway Patrol, it's getting the

public off the highway as quickly as

possible, closing of the freeways we

could have the critical resources,

fire, medical, ambulances, to get

people to the hospital quickly.

In

2017 15,000 crashes were attended

to, with over 300 people dying on

average in each year in Rosa -- road

accidents in Nevada, getting

emergency services to be seen as

quickly as possible is critical.

There is an injury. Camera 217.

The

system has been running through the

regional transportation commission's

traffic centre for the past three

months.

Now because we are getting

information through so many

different data streams, not just

dispatches, but social media, things

like the apps. Because all of this

is happening so quickly we might

have already sent out all of that

information and had everybody in

this room where before the first 911

call comes in. So we are talking

about possibly ten to 15 minutes of

improvement in response time in some

of these incidents. That's major

when you are dealing with these

kinds of incidents.

The app pulls

information from various sources, in

vehicle sensors, TV cameras,

information from driving apps. It

factors in what day of the year it

is, the time of day and the weather.

Responding to incidents rapidly is

one thing, but the point is to be

able to predict them before they

happen so the responders can be

better prepared and in the right

location.

We look at the historical

data, running through algorithms to

develop patterns that are merging.

By doing that we can look forward in

time to identify where these

incidents are likely to occur.

Unfortunately, the app wasn't able

to predict this one.

It looks like

it is the real. You can see how she

was spinning out. She did a full 180

and struck right here.

Being able to

foresee accidents here could really

save lives. The hope is that as the

data gets more sophisticated the

predictions will become more

accurate.

Everyday we get more and

more evidence about what causes,

what triggers, incident and the

artificial learning get smarter and

smarter and more capable.

For Nevada

now the initial results are

promising.

They get there faster, we

clear it faster and that means less

secondary accidents and if you think

about it secondary accidents have

basically 18% of secondary accidents

are fatalities. So we are reducing

the fatalities on the road.

And of

course the goal is to prevent

accidents altogether and Richard

Taylor and Lara Lewington have been

looking at some in car technologies

that may help make that a reality.

At CES as you might expect there's a

lot of interest in self driving cars

and it's pretty clear that we are on

a 1-way street towards full

autonomy.

But that does still seem

to be a way off, although we don't

know exactly how far. In the

meantime there is plenty of

innovation to be seen before we

reach our final destination.

Unsurprisingly, the move towards

autonomy to driving is focused

largely on safety, with healing day

creating a system to intervene when

we needed the most. -- with Hyundai.

With accommodation of biometric

sensors in the seat, they are

tracking heart rate and a low

resolution camera which is tracking

your facial movements. The reason it

is low resolution is so that the

refresh rate is quicker. So if

there's a problem, if you've lost

concentration or you are drifting

off to sleep, then the car can

quickly react. So autonomously be

moved off the road to a safe spot.

And the basic tremors of this

technology could be available in

just a year. -- a sick premise.

Meanwhile, Nissan has a more

futuristic twist on biometrics. The

idea of this system is really to

provide an interaction between man

and machine, between my brain and

the AI. The concept here with Nissan

is even in a world of autonomous

vehicles, there will be roles for

humans to play. After all, a lot of

people find driving a positive

experience. It can interpret signals

coming from the human and actually

in -- enhance the ride. This sort of

brain the vehicle text currently

involves wearing this bizarre helmet

to capture my brain activity and

interpret signals as much as half a

second before my muscles do. So, as

I'm about to say change lane or hit

the brakes on it will initiate the

action for me, giving me a smoother

ride, and yet still allowing me a

sense of control. They do need to

sort out that helmet, though. Oh

dear. I'm not driving very well

here.

Yet what we can't hide away

from is the fact that when full

autonomy does come to pass, it is

not simply about cars. This is

Yamaha's concept motorbike. A self

driving racing vehicle that should

be able to do speeds of over 120

mph, although not on actual roads

you would hope. But whatever the

form of autonomous vehicle it will

need to interact safely with

pedestrians at and cyclists, a

challenge that Ford are hoping to

overcome in their vehicles.

Initially cyclists will have to be

seen by the vehicles and we are

building the reception into our

autonomous vehicle that allows it to

detect the cyclists, objects,

understand their intent and make

sure we can be safely navigating

same space.

And Ford are just one of

the big brands that have called on

the help of a company, whose

processes, combined with

intelligence software, can make the

environment around the vehicles

safer. For example using light as

sensors to alert the driver who is

about to open a car door onto a

cyclist. -- lidar sensors.

And AI is

fuelling other experiences. Speech

recognition specialists power many

of the day's in car interactions how

they are looking in the future as

well.

Today we think about

interacting with using voice, but

there are other modalities. Of

course we have a touchscreen, but

maybe we can use gestures and in

this particular prototype we

introduced eye tracking, to help the

assistant understand what am I as a

driver looking at and then I can ask

questions about my environment. If I

see a coffeeshop in front of me, I

can just ask a question about it.

What is the user rating of this copy

shop?

Starbucks coffee has a user

rating of three stars.

So the other

part of the system is that there are

microphones in different parts of

the car, which means the AIA can

respond according to whether

different passengers are. So here on

the passenger seat I can say,

"hello, Dragon, I'm cold".

OK,

raising the temperature in zone

two...

There's definitely a trend towards

making our journeys more enjoyable

as well as safer. To you to have

updated their happiness concept,

aiming for a more pleasurable

journey and even suggesting where

you might want to go -- Toyota. For

anyone needs their car to tell them.

I will tell you something

interesting. There are many options

around Union Square for casual

dining the Michelin stars. Do you

like it?

Yes. That was a bit of fun,

but I didn't need the AI to tell me

that I was ready for dinner. Let's

go.

Welcome to the Week in Tech. The

week Ford announced it would have £8

billion in electric cars in the next

five years. A flaw in a VR app left

20,000 users' names exposed. And

hackers stole $400,000 worth of

cryptic currency by hijacking a

server. It was a busy week for

crypto currency, as big coin

encountered its busiest daily crash

in four months. -- biggest. It is

thought fears over increased

regulation, especially in Asia,

would be an issue. A contraceptive

app previously thought as effective

as the pill has been criticised by a

Swedish hospital for a number of

unintended pregnancies they say were

linked to the app. The company

behind it have defended the product,

saying that as with any form of

contraception it isn't 100%

effective. They are now launching an

internal investigation, however. And

I bet you didn't expect the latest

Nintendo offering to include a whole

lot of cardboard. The latest add-ons

for the switch console are cardboard

packs, turning the consoles into a

fishing rod, motorbike and even a

robot suit. Gimmick or brilliant?

Finally, the rescue with a

difference. A drone was used to save

two swimmers off the coast of NSW in

Australia. Lifeguards were being

trained to use the rescue drone when

practice became reality and it was

launched, robbing a flotation device

to the teenagers. The whole rescue

took just 72nd. -- 70 seconds.

In this trendy part of downtown Las

Vegas, these passengers are waiting

to hop on a special kind arrive. For

the past two months, this French

autonomous vehicle company has been

offering free bus ride to the

public. Admittedly it doesn't travel

far, it just does a loop around the

block with one stop at a doughnut

shop. At least they are getting a

taste of the future! Down the road I

am waiting to catch a more private

road which I've built on an app --

booked. As if by magic the door

opened! The team was still ironing

out a few issues, shall we say. I

think this is the first genuinely

autonomous vehicle I've been in

where there really is no driver and

their really is no place for a

drive. There's just a safety man

here. That's it. Safety man has an

Xbox one controller down by his

side. NAVYA is not alone in this

space. Other companies have been

battling it out to become the first

fully autonomous cab sharing

service. Self driving cars use a lot

of sensors to be able to navigate

the road safely. That's one of the

most important is LIdar, how the car

judges its surroundings. The design

of these centres is at the heart of

a court case. NAVYA's car is no

different. It also uses Lidar to

look around. What it is not doing is

looking at the traffic lights to

judge what colour they are. They've

fitted special sensors to each

traffic light and those sensors talk

to the car. That doesn't sound very

scalable to me. That sounds like you

wouldn't be able to put this sort of

technology on the open road without

fitting every single traffic light

in the US with these centres. It is

much more just for predetermined

routes for this kind of shuttle

vehicles.

While I've been riding around in

this particular smart vehicle, Dave

Lee has been up in Reno, not that

far away, looking at a system that

is making use of data collected by

vehicles like this to help an entire

city to move more smoothly.

There's been great strides made in

self driving technology over the

past decade or so, but the thing

about autonomy is that it often

tested in bright and clear

conditions. The real world is much

more distracting.

conditions. The real world is much

more distracting. In fact, it is not

just

more distracting. In fact, it is not

just darkness that is difficult for

existing autonomous technologies.

Whether it is through rain, snow, or

just Faarup ahead on the road, there

is a lot self driving vehicles

struggle to see. Important work is

taking place at the University of

Reno, Nevada, that is attempting to

solve that problem, making autonomy

more intelligent. And it all begins

here, on the corner of 15th and

Virginia.

So at that corner we have

a light sensor. That light sensor

used to be on the autonomous

vehicle. But if we move it from the

vehicle to the intersection, so it

can track each pedestrian here, each

vehicle here.

What kind of things is

that picking up? Is it recognising

who people are?

No, it only

recognises this as a pedestrian or

this is a vehicle. It does not

recognise who the person is.

Think

of this intersection as providing

more eyes to an autonomous vehicle.

It could detect the threat and

communicate that to a car heading in

its direction, telling it to slow

down, beware.

So what these centres

are doing in essence is giving

autonomous car is more eyes on the

road. Yes.

They just know more about

what is coming up ahead.

Exactly, so

no black spots.

Part of the same

programme is this connected car. A

modified Lincoln that can not only

drive itself around, but also

communicate with other vehicles and

components in the city, signalling

its intention is to others.

The

hardware that you see is pretty

similar to what you are going to see

in most autonomous vehicles, if not

all of them. Where we really dissing

wish ourselves as in the software.

So our research focuses on what I

call social intelligence. We are

trying to build machines that

understand people, and understand

human social behaviour, and can

predict what other people are going

to do, and then act appropriately.

It is a skill that humans have. We

navigate driving effortlessly, even

though we can't read other people's

mines, and it is a skill that

computers are going to have to have

if they are ever going to drive cars

in the world with the rest of us.

And then there is the challenge of

making the technology work in

difficult conditions. Inspired by an

earlier project to help drone see in

the dark, the team at the

University's autonomous robots lab

has confined lidar, radar and

cameras, to dramatically improve

what car can copperhead. It is also

cheap. Once that technology is safe

and ready, the plan is to deploy it

on electric losses like this one.

Until then, the team plans to use

the autonomous tech together large

amounts of data in preparation for a

self driving future. This bus made

by a California -based company is

already out on Reno's roads, but

right now with a more traditional

type of driver.

It is not autonomous

yet. The idea is to at some point

focus on that project. However,

right now we are focusing on data

collection for what we call the

living lab, and data collection is

going to be used for the mobility

programme.

For the foreseeable

future, these buses will gather data

for the living lab programme in

Reno, a city that perhaps knows more

about what is going on on its

streets than almost any other city

in the world. That was Dave, and now

the something we have been hearing a

lot about recently. Augmented

reality. Now, it works by overlaying

graphics on top of the real world,

and while AR games like Pokemon Go

have enjoyed global success, the

most hyped it of AR kit, Magic to

get leap, is still waiting to be

released. AR remains a technology

that promises more than it delivers

-- Magic Leap. But by combining AR

with AI, researchers in Florida are

hoping to create new ways to train

people to perform complex tasks. We

took them AR kit for a test drive,

or should that be a test flight? The

University of Central Florida has a

long established relationship with

the simulation industry. Helping

create simulated experiences for

everything from driving to

supermarket shopping. The simulation

lab here's latest project is a bit

more highflying than High Street,

though. As long as we have had PCs,

we have had flight simulators. But

if you are really serious about

learning how to fly, then you need

an aircraft and a human pilot to

teach you what to do. But this lab

is about to be transformed into an

aircraft cop that, with the help of

this augmented reality headset. And

when I put it on, it will also

provide me with my very own virtual

captain. Called Project Cap, it is a

collaboration with aerospace giants

Boeing.

Necessary information. Sure,

I have doubled my flow. Give it your

best try.

The aerial cockpit is

designed as a training simulator for

pilots. They can brush up on skills

or practice in almost any

environment. It does feel as if I

can reach out and touch the

controls, and I am very much tempted

to. And I do that, and of course

there is nothing there. The net. OK,

cap, you seem to have a good idea of

what to do in this aircraft. So

taxi.

Roger, you are clear to start

number two.

Ready. At the moment,

Cap response to a very small number

of voice commands or questions.

Beacon.

On.

Might check.

My cheque,

one, two on three.

But this can

still be useful for training pilots.

Augmented reality gives us a chance

to bridge the thing strapped on the

digital world and the things around

us. How can we start to merge those

things together in effective ways?

How can we create holograms right

before you for things that would be

less safe if you were to do them in

the real world, or that you might

need additional information besides

what you can build around you in the

real world?

Closed and locked. Looks

behind him to check that.

VR 140.

It

is a very convincing illusion that

there is a pilot in here with me.

Any questions?

Do we have a specific

altitude restriction?

Per year in

development, Cap is actually

modelled on a real pilot.

We have an

opportunity to take some of our

friends who are pilots, in this case

one in particular, and see if he

would actually subject himself to a

full body scan, the then be able to

use him as our avatar. So that is

who we have, and actual pilots, who

knows the mannerisms and gestures,

that we can put into that virtual

pilot's seat.

But is this another

instance of technology putting

people out of their jobs?

No, not at

all. It is to provide student pilots

with the opportunity to practise

interpersonal skills before they

actually get to a flight training

centre, with real pilots. And we can

provide them with a greater breadth

of experiences, through introducing

different variables, such as

different cultural types of

personality styles that they can

practice with.

I do wonder about

other applications for this sort of

kit. Somebody that might be able to

teach you how to drive a car, for

instance, will teach you how to

operate various bits of equipment

and machinery.

Some of the work that

we had done before doing the work

with Boeing was in things like

medical simulation, being able to

have a holographic overlays that you

could see the x-rays laid on top,

exactly placed, or the CT scans or

MRI is. Those are things that we

think hold great promise, not only

just because they will help with

visualisation, but they might also

lead to better quality of care, or

lifesaving, because you have better

access to data right when you need

it.

So one day, beyond the cockpit,

Cap's digital descendants might help

teachers teach us how to do all

kinds of things. -- might help teach

arts. And from Boeing to boosting. I

am on my way to the Tipsy Robots,

where mythology has been given a

hi-tech makeover -- boozing. Here,

the drinks are shaken and served by

these two chaps. I can even invent

my own cocktail by choosing from

some of the 120 odd spirits hanging

from the ceiling, or I assume all of

the 120 odd spirits, in one. Can I

do that? No, I can't do that,

apparently. These droids can mix 100

cocktails are now between the two of

them. That sounded impressive until

I discovered some human bartenders

can do ten times that. And that is

it for Click in the US for this

week. Don't forget, you can follow

us on Twitter, where you can see

loads of extra backstage videos and

photos, although trust me, you don't

want to see what happens after I

have one or two of these. Cheers,

see you soon.