This week uber the top. 0ld deckard meets new. Who . And smile, were in dubai. This is how a self driving car sees the world. Lidar sensors feed the car with a continuous 360 degree view of its surroundings, along with crucial depth information. It is the Key Technology for a successful autonomous drive. And this week in the us, a mighty court case has begun which may take this key away from uber, stalling its progress towards the self driving revolution. It all revolves around this man, anthony levandowski, who left googles autonomous spin off waymo and joined uber a couple of years ago. Now, waymo alleges that he took 1a,000 secret files with him and that these were used to develop ubers technology. We expect the courts to take about three weeks to decide on the case, and what impact that might have on ubers plans to taxi us around without a driver. But undeterred, uber continues to look to the future of transportation which, in just a few years, might look very different to the way it looks now. Dan simmons has been looking up. Even self driving cabs will get stuck in jams, so this is ubers vision. When youre tight for time, go by air. Its ambitious and so is the time scale. Our goal is by 2020 to launch our first demonstrator flights in dallas and los angeles to show that, as a concept, this can work, and then work to scale by 2023 and 2025, so were providing commercial flights to a lot of our riders, giving them a new way to travel. One of ubers partners, bell helicopters, has showed off its design for a four seater cabin, which could include a pilot. Heres their 360 view, with the alternative set up four seats, four passengers. The aircraft, like our cars, would navigate automatically. Its electric with a range of about 60 miles, they say. Weve seen other designs for air taxis of late, including chinese firm ehangs184, which recently shuttled actual people in this autopiloted drone. And this air cab by german firm volocopter, which uses 18 rotors and nine separate battery packs, just in case. While nasa and the faa are working on new air Traffic Control systems for these types of craft in the united states, its the faa that will have to be convinced self piloting electric air cabs are safe. We will ask the applicants to come forward with their engineering proposals of what tests will they propose to do so that we can ensure that if theres a fire or a short or if something goes wrong during a flight, that somebody can safely land and get away from that aircraft before it does damage to the people on board the aircraft or on the ground, for that matter. So, will it work . Heres ubers case study. Weve landed in la. Traffic is a nightmare and a taxi would take us 80 minutes. Whereas the air trip to the sky port, plus a short transfer, is less than half an hour. And uber says it could end up costing about the same amount. 0k, there are many reasons why self flying electric taxis sound like a good idea, but when youre saving less than one hour, ubers dream will need to run smoothly to deliver. Apologies, mr simmons, very busy airspace right now. Its blade to blade up there bleep. Unfortunately, the weathers closing in, mr simmons. Im not quite sure were going to get you in tonight. Bleep. Really sorry. Were just cleaning out the cabin. Bleep. Youre two kilos over, im afraid. Might want to lose the penguin . Bleep. Ah, were just recharging your taxi at the moment, mr simmons. It will be a while. At least that last one shouldnt be too much of a problem. Uber have teamed up with ev specialists charge point and are predicting a four minute juice up time. Now, that would be special sorry, youre running 17. 5 seconds late and the pilots had to cancel. Please do book again via the app. Perhaps the most challenging part of this project is to get us, the public, comfortable with the idea of taking an air taxi. When we think about consumer adoption of new technologies, this is not a problem that is novel or unique to travel. We saw this with elevators when they first came out and actually, in order to get consumers comfortable with it, an elevator an elevator operator would remain in the elevator, even when it was made electronic, just to give consumers comfort. We are going to be doing the same with Autonomous Vehicles right now, as we have safety drivers staying in the car, explaining this sort of technology to riders, and the same will be true with our pilots. We will be launching with pilots who will serve not only as the operators of the flight but as an ambassador to get riders comfortable with this new mode of transit, so soon enough, theyll forget about its novelty and be back to texting and making other use of their time while in transit. Just like the uber waymo court case over who owns the specialist tech that makes self driving cars work, the creation of the flying cab will no doubt have its own dogfight in court perhaps thats another reason why ubers keen to get in early. That was dan. Now, the first place that we are expecting these flying cabs to take to the air is, of course, the city of dubai, which always promises to foster and allow trials of new technologies. Although when we visited last month, it soon became clear that flying taxis there too are still a few years off. But one big change that is being unveiled is not to do with aircraft, but with its airport. Kate russell has been looking at whats new in arrivals. Dubai international is the worlds Busiest Airport for international passengers. Nearly 90 Million People went through it in the last year and in the next couple, it plans to expand annual capacity by one third again. This airport has two runways, it has three terminal buildings and four major concourses, but we have room for no more. So whatever growth we take from this point forward, it has to be done with the existing infrastructure. So Dubai International has decided if you cant get bigger, you have to get smarter. I was invited for a peek inside its brand new airport command and control centre, just before it becomes fully operational. This airport has been kitted out with the latest camera equipment to help staff predict the flow of passenger traffic. The technology is kind of cool. What it does is it uses 3d cameras in the ceiling and it looks for the outline of humans on the floor, moving around, and then it tracks them through the whole process. Airport staff can get this information on smartphones and tablets, which helps them to direct the crowd, open new gates, and even tell passengers where their baggage is. While all this data helps keep the airport moving, the amount being collected is also causing some issues. Already, theres 7 billion data points in there and weve yet to connect it up to everything. So weve still weve got baggage data and passenger data but weve yet to put in things like Energy Consumption and water consumption. And once we bring that together, we can really optimise the airport and make it more efficient and drive for even more passengers. So, what do you do when you need a data centre in a hurry . Well, building one inside shipping containers is definitely one solution. As dubai prepares to play host to a massive world expo in 2020, the airport had to do some quick thinking to be able to handle the extra 10 million passengers a month. This solution took just over 12 months to build. A traditional data centre, built out of bricks and concrete, would normally be about 2 3 years. Next on the list of high tech upgrades is face recognition to clear immigration quickly, al to predict seasonal fluctuations in demand, and a system to tell passengers when their baggage will hit the carousel all great news if youre passing through the airport, but there is a solid Business Case for all these upgrades too. The more passengers we can put through this site, the more profitable this airport will become, and its betterfor the city, its better for the economy. So were really working hard to make sure we maximise the use of this Dubai International site. With aviation projected to contribute almost 40 of dubais wealth in the next couple of years, this airport will continue to be a vital part of the economy. Flying high isnt fun for everyone, though. 0oh hello, world. Acrophobia, or fear of heights, is one of the most common phobias, but this Virtual Reality therapy hopes to help. Sweating again. Chan here can confidently fly a plane, but when it comes to heights in general, its a different story. Oh, no. Oh, ive got to move come back, come back. No, i cant do it. Come back. I cant move while im out there. I need to be back here to do that. I couldnt go up a ladder. Just couldnt go up a ladder. I couldnt go over high bridges. If i drove to wales, i went round the long way, instead of going over the bridge. Ijust dont like open heights. But i canjump in an aeroplane and fly an aeroplane. Thats a completely different environment in my head, anyway, it is, thats for sure. Welcome back. Oh, god oh, its dark so, how are you feeling . Um. Anxious, sweaty, nervous. Even though youve been through the process of doing this before . Yeah. You still feel the same level of anxiety doing that now, or is it dramatically reduced . Im way more confident. Ive got much more confidence than when i did it the first time. I was on holiday with some friends. They were going on the roller coasters and i talked about this vr thing that we were doing and they said well, then, you should be able to go on the ride. So i watched my family and friends go round a couple more times and then thought, well, i can do this. If you look to your left, youll see a basket of light balls. What i need you to do is throw the light balls down into the atrium. I think vr can treat pretty much any type of fear or phobia. It might be a fear of a cat or spiders or dogs. What vr can enable you to do is relearn that actually, you are safe in the situations you fear. The beauty of vr is, in fact, that disconnect. When youre there, you know actually youre not really in that environment and that enables you to do things you wouldnt normally do in the real world. But all the Scientific Data says that learning you make in vr does transfer into the real world. In this programme, you are going to try a series of tasks. Earlier this month, it was announced that the Uks National Health Service has invested in this idea of using Virtual Reality therapy to battle Severe Mental Health issues by putting sufferers in a virtual environment they would struggle with in the real world. This immersive approach, plus the availability of virtual therapists, could more readily provide more therapy to more people at a lower cost. At the heart of a lot of Mental Health problems are difficulties with interacting with the world, and with vr we can put people back in the situations that trouble them and coach them in the best ways to think, feel and behave in those situations. Weve got to test it, weve got to trial it and weve got to make sure things work, but the potential is enormous. Hello and welcome to the week in tech. It was the week police in china donned special sunglasses to catch crooks using facial recognition tech. British mps went to washington to talk fake news with facebook, google and twitter. And virgin moneyjoined lloyds bank in banning customers from buying bitcoin with their credit cards. The cryptocurrency had another fall this week, falling to as low as 6000, before recovering. Thats down from a high of almost 20,000 in december. It was also the week that spacex rocket, the falcon heavy, blasted into space. Elon musk sent it off with his old cherry red sports car, a tesla roadster, a space suited mannequin, and a david bowie soundtrack on repeat. However, it wasnt all good news for tesla, as the electric car company also posted its biggest ever quarterly cost almost 700 million. It says its addressing production issues with its model 3 car. And finally, a 14 year old has created an app to help people with alzheimers disease. It uses facial Recognition Technology to help people remember their loved ones. They can scroll through photos of friends and family and the app lets them know who the person is and how theyre related to them. You can also take a picture of someone you dont recognise and the app will try to identify them. Now, if you are a film fan, you will know that it is awards season, and over the next few weeks, well be chatting to some of the real heroes behind the movies nominated for the best visual effects 0scar. First up, blade runner 2049 and spoiler alert, if you havent seen the film, you might want to go and make a cup of tea for the next four minutes or so. Still here . Good. Well, if you have seen it, then youll know that the character of rachael, from the original movie, makes a surprise appearance, looking exactly like she did in 1982. We found out how. I had yourjob once. I was good at it. Things were simpler then. A lot of the work we do in visual effects is kind of very broad and very strong, think about the monsters screaming towards camera. This was the complete opposite, it was very subtle stuff. So it was all in the kind of micro details of the face. So the biggest challenge is with the emotional performance and in this case, she was talking, so she was delivering lines. Dont you love me . We did three shots from the original movie. That was kind of like a proof of concept that our digital rachael was good enough. We showed it to denis, the director, and the studio, and they couldnt really tell the difference and then or you know, they had to struggle to see which one was digital. Thats kind of when we knew we had it in the bag and that she was good enough to hold up on the big screen. We had sean young on set in budapest, so we scanned her and got another photographic reference of her as well. And what that allowed us to do was to fit a digital skull inside the digital model we had of her. When you age, obviously your soft tissue drops down with gravity and you get wrinkles and so on, but your skull doesnt change, so your skull is pretty much the same. What that allowed us to do was that we had a digital skull and we kind of built our 23 year old sean young from 1982 around that skull, so the cheekbones, the forehead, the chin, the nose, so on, we could kind of fit it around the digital skull, which was invaluable reference for us. And that kind of ensured that we had a physically correct model to sean youngs real skull. We also captured the performance of a body double, so its her body thats used in shots. So we had a lot of kind of treated data to work from. The good thing about the treated data is we can rotate around it on the computer, we can look at it from all angles. When it came down to doing the actual performance, it was all hand animated because basically, denis, the director, he wanted to basically direct a normal performance, like he would do on set with a regular actor. We can make a still image look very, very photo real and good, but getting that believable animation, thats still the biggest challenge. I know youre here. Great film, and next week, well be talking to the oscar nominated visual effects supervisor of marvels space epic, guardians of the galaxy volume 2. All i can say is, i am groot. Back in dubai, im really starting to see how determined this Young Country is to lead the world in everything smart. I have already seen the high tech police force in action, met the robocops, and the drone unit that will watch over everything from the sky. Now, im meeting the worlds first minister for Artificial Intelligence, and hes ambitious about what comes next. One of my favourite sayings from the Tech Industry is larry page of google said, almost every time we do something crazy, we make progress. Do you find the same thing . Many of the ideas that they come upo with, notjust silicon valley, even the Top Tech Companies from around the world, whether from the uk or china, the common denominator with all of them is that they do not fear something that seems impossible. They come up with ideas that might seem crazy at first, but then the impact of these ideas will be truly global and phenomenal. So with that mentality and with the idea of let the brightest minds from around the world come, let them thrive here in the uae and let them create something for the rest of the world. How do you make sure that you bring all of the people of the uae along on thatjourney for Digital Change and innovation . The uae is very unique. We have a very young population, that population can be retrained and repurposed in positions that will be created, i think, in the future. We understand the opportunity for us to lead the future. We launched an initiative in 2017 called the one million arab coders initiative. Were teaching 1 Million People how to code. This is the language of the future. I think making these coders into our special Intelligence Experts is going to be a difficult challenge, but itll be something thats easier than training someone who does not have any understanding when it comes to the language of the future, which is coding. So think about what apple has done for the iphone and what google has done for search, that, hopefully, is going ot be what the uae is going to do for governance. Dubai is a place not scared to adopt new ideas orfail trying, so its throwing all of its might behind leading edge innovations. Concepts that may look outlandish elsewhere are all welcome here. And the Dubai Future Accelerators Programme is what the government hopes will take these ideas from page to stage. The government can drive the vision of where dubai goes next, i guess more like a company than a country. After all, the monarchy needs little in the way of democratic input. A majority of this can fail, but the moment you create one success story, the skys the limit on where you can be. So as long as you have that kind of mindset a ton of this will be a write off but once you have that success, the whole world will talk about it and you will become a platform. We believe regulations, or amending regulations, in favour of any innovation is a must. Entrepreneurs struggle a lot to show their new technologies and whatever they work on, and to have those Decision Making individuals and the government work hand in had with them to really disrupt, makes life makes the growth process much, much faster. So dubai mayjust have the recipe to pull it off, an accommodating leadership and a lot of cash. This may be the Perfect Place to fail and come back smiling, especially as the government is committing to make dubai the happiest city in the world, alongside the smartest. Visiting the dubai smart office, i was suitably welcomed by farah. Mrs kate from bbc click, your host is waiting for you. Who took me to meet one of the leading Technology Champions in the country, and despite the reputation the country has on the outside, it made me very happy to discover shes a woman. The technology is not the end of ourjourney, its only a means that will take us to improve peoples lives and make them more happier. By having Artificial Intelligence agents embedded in our government services, by having robots like our receptionist, this is the future but yet we keep challenging ourselves. What is next . Whether all this works or not, you can see dubai is dreaming big. This is a dynamic, modern city, built from the desert up. Maybe its motto should be if you dont try it, you dont succeed. That was kate in dubai, and thats it from us for this week. Dont forget we live on twitter at bbc click, and were also on facebook too. Thank you very much for watching and well see you soon. It has been a Beautiful Day across most of the uk today, blue skies, cold, crisp weather, it will stay cold, crisp weather, it will stay cold and crisp through tonight, still some wintry showers around, most will affect Northern Areas of the uk. Let me show you what is happening now, the low pressure that crossed last night, you can see and spinning around, it brought the girls in the north. In the wake of that a lot of wintry showers carried in on that cold air stream all the way from iceland and greenland. Are the wintry showers pushed by that wind, they will continue across scotland, maybe the lake district, could be overnight so some of us will wake up tomorrow to fresh covering of snow, a few centimetres. In the south, clear, pretty much everywhere temperatures will fall below freezing in rural areas, down to around minus five degrees. Monday dawns on a frosty note, a lot of sunshine around except the occasional flurry, were sunshine around except the occasionalflurry, were between weather systems, one approaching, the weather system behind me approaching ireland, that wont arrive until later in the days of most of monday a lot of sunshine around, lighter winds, the odd flurry and there, around five or 6 degrees, not a bad day, and monday evening that weather fronts starts to approach, the winds ahead of it will freshen up to gale force and it will freshen up to gale force and it will really blowha rd will freshen up to gale force and it will really blowhard across some of these western coasts, then that rain will start to fall as snow across ireland and eventually many parts of northern ireland, scotland, on the heels of wales and the pennines will get some snow as well. So a messy picture on tuesday, snow of scotland settling potentially in the lowlands, across the pennines, the hills of wales, in the south it looks like it will be mostly rain tuesday afternoon, the weather front still hugging eastern counties, on tuesday in the west we have sunshine although it is cold, 4 degrees there in belfast. That front moves out of the way, another one midweek, big low pressure the way, another one midweek, big low pressure across the way, another one midweek, big low pressure across north atlantic and this one will draw in slightly milderairso ifany and this one will draw in slightly milder air so if any snow falls, it will mostly be across the tops of the pennines and across scotland to the pennines and across scotland to the south, Gale Force Winds and outbreaks of rain. Not a pretty picture on wednesday. This is bbc news. Im shaun ley. The headlines at three the headlines at four;, as 0xfam admit they failed in moral leadership the government warns uk charities that funding will be withdrawn if they fail to co operate with the authorities in cases of Sexual Exploitation by staff. The sector has to step up in terms of tackling what is an industry that has been targeted by individuals. By paedophiles. Yes. They are targeting this because of the chaos that we work in. A russian passenger plane carrying 71 people has crashed shortly after taking off from moscow. All those on board are believed to have been killed. The foreign secretary, borisjohnson, holds talks in myanmar about the return of rohingya muslims