Tech can help us get back to work. From a digital twin of St Pancras International station to the latest tech developments from silicon valley. This week working together and staying apart. A new slice of apple. And theatre through the looking glass. Hey, welcome to click, hope you are doing 0k. It has been a big week for me, look where i have been. Yes, on my first train for six months. And look who i went to see, only my good friend lara lewington, who is smaller than she looks on tv, i had forgotten. True but that picture doesnt help. It was really lovely to see you, and maybe next time i will get the train to you. And if i do, i might be needing this. Laughs. Right, now, i have been looking at this on your social media feed and if i am honest i am still having trouble processing it in my head even now. I dont blame you, my husband bought it for me as a romantic gift you would have thought after lockdown he would be sick of the sight of my face, but it seems not, even if the dimensions are a bit strange. Somewhat, who said romance is dead, hey . But inspired by that i have come up with my own, i have made my own version on a budget, so. Thats me, isnt it . There we go. Laughs. Nice, it is more flattering than mine. Well thank you, no worse i guess, no worse. Now listen, if you are going back to work you may have to wear a mask either on the journey or in the office. For some people at work in bigger offices, all they have to do is maintain a social distance from their colleagues if they can. Yes, butjen copestake has been to see how Computer Vision is being used to help keep people apart, both on the commute and in the office. During the pandemic we have seen innovations in ways to monitor Peoples Movement and activities to help stop the spread of the virus. This includes using drones like draganfly, that can pick up on people coughing. And this system from cameo, which detects whether or not people are Wearing Masks. Cameras, data and Computer Vision software are used to ease the process of returning to work, including a first of its kind system in one of londons busiest train stations. Here at St Pancras International station they are using something called Digital Twin Technology to help monitor Peoples Movements around the station. And they can determine from that different ways to encourage people to move apart during the commute. A digital twin is an up to the minute replica in digitalform of a space, including the people in it. The entire station is scanned by openspace before the pandemic, working with the department of transport and innovate uk. 30 bespoke cameras equipped with sd cameras are dotted around the station with another 20 on the way. Flat against the surface of the ceiling, they are separate from the current cctv system. So we have got three cameras working in this part of the station, one above our head and two along this line, and weve meshed those cameras together so they can give us a continuous view of Movement Across the concourse here. So what makes them different to the cctv cameras . These are much more precise cameras. These are cameras that are able to specifically pick up the movement of people to a certain level of accuracy, so we can then process the data within our digital twin. This is the first time anywhere in the world a digital twin is managing the real Time Movement of people in a train station, and the first system of this kind making operational decisions about social distancing. People pop up red or green depending on if they are two metres or more apart. All the data is anonymised in keeping with gdpr. Video data is combined with wi fi ticketing information and the team has access to huge amounts of pre and post covid Movement Data to help develop the software. Station staff can then steer people to areas which are clearer, redirect lifts and escalators and provide staff at hotspots to encourage social distancing. I think it has been very challenging from our perspective to give confidence to our travelling public around the steps we have taken to make sure that when they go through our stations that we absolutely have robust plans and procedures in place. From the train to the office, a different kind of system is implemented here using pre existing cameras. The Second Home Co working space saw a reduction in users since the start of the pandemic. Now they have introduced an alert system for staff to enforce social distancing. The data from two of the cctv cameras here in this Co Working Space is being analysed in the cloud by an Artificial Intelligence engine that is able to determine how many people are in the space, the distance they are keeping, how long people are staying distant, and even if people are talking, singing or sneezing. You can act on it quite quickly, you get alerted, i get alerted on my phone, so if there was a crowd congregating i can split up quite quickly, so we have a one directional system but if people were bumping into each other than wed definitely looking at rerouting people into a different way. Apart from distance which is the most obvious one, there is also a whole slew of more nuanced behaviours, including everything from what people are engaged in, all of which has different effects on the particulates and the spread of the particulates. Are they Wearing Masks or not, how long are they spending in each others presence . So it is a very rich picture of covid safe behaviour. All around the World Companies are taking advantage of advances in Computer Vision. Amazons warehouse system uses Image Recognition and depth sensors to measure the distance between people. Employees who stay six feet apart get a green circle around them, while those who dont get a red one. Computer Vision Company numina tracked the paths of where people are walking to better understand where hotspots are. The images are immediately stripped of any human characteristics and made into boxes with simple labels like pedestrian, car and bus. Back at st pancras there are plans to embed robots into the digital twin system next. They could be used for cleaning and help enforce social distancing, saving workers from further potential exposure to the virus. Jen there, and until there is a vaccine were going to have to get used to some of these sorts of measures. Of course the other way to keep things up and running, though, is regular and quick testing. Which could help keep anyone with the virus away from others. Right now in the uk there are problems with people being able to access tests, but there are new types of tests currently being trialled. Different researchers are trying different methods, and the problem is that right now we dont know how well any of these will work. With current tests taking a day or more to come back, many of us are hoping for newer tests that could give results while you wait. Normally, developing a procedure takes a long time, and the work is rigorously Peer Reviewed and tested before we even get to hear about it. But right now, every new theory and every new test is being publicised much earlier in its development, leading to claims which can sound too good to be true, but which we all want to be true. Some companies are trying to develop on the spot testing that could take just 20 seconds. This one is investigating using al to recognise the coronavirus in samples of saliva. Other patients in hospitals and care homes are using portable machines like this that deliver dna swab results injust 90 minutes. No lab needed. The uk government has also partnered with the Oxford University spin out behind these little and large devices, capable of analysing swab or saliva samples in 90 minutes. But there is a thought that it might not matter if the tests are not that accurate. Now this does sound counterintuitive, but its an argument that has been put forward by economist and bbc presenter tim harford. You are saying that is not a disaster. It is only a disaster if we ignore the fact that the test is imperfect. So just to put some numbers on it lets imaginei in 1000 people is infected at any one time, which is not a million miles away from the situation right now in the uk. And lets say the test gives 10 false positives, so out of every ten people you test, the test says they are positive but actually they are not infected at all. Run those numbers, you test 1000 people, one of them has got the virus. And then 100 of them have, are wrongly flagged as having the virus, because you have a 10 false positive rate. So then you have 100 times as many people being given false positives as given a true positive. So that sounds like a total disaster, it sounds like you couldnt possibly use that information. But think about it in another way before you gave everyone the test, you would have thought1 in 1000 people has the virus, but now you are able to zoom in on a subset of those people, 100 people, and now you know one out of 100 people has the virus. So the other 900 people are probably fine. But if the alternative is to lock down everybody, to tell everybody they have to stay home and tell everyone they cant go to school or a restaurant, maybe the imperfect test could be better. We just have to use the information in the right way. So your latest book, how to make the world add up, wasjust being finished, i think, as we were going into lockdown. And i wonder whether you looked at what the virus was doing around the world, and whether that taught you anything about statistics . Well i am sad to say it underlined the point i was trying to make in the book, which was that while we tend to think of statistics as a kind of political weapon, that you know, people lie with statistics and they try to win arguments with statistics, actually statistics are a way of seeing the world around us, seeing things we cant see any other way. So they are a bit like you need radar to spot incoming bombers, we need statistics to spot the incoming virus. So i am trying to get people to take the numbers seriously as a way of seeing what is true. Hello and welcome to the week in tech. This week, apple announced the launch of a new workout Subscription Programme called fitness . It forms part of a bundle of Services Including news and arcade, now branded as apple one. Facebook unveiled a new version of its oculus quest vr headset with more power and higher resolution. The new device also comes with a significant price drop. The entry level version will be £100 deeper than its predecessor. And sony confirmed the price of the forthcoming playstation 5, matching the 500 price of its rival the xbox one series x. Google says it has gone beyond being Carbon Neutral, and has now compensated for all of the carbon it has ever produced. It comes as a range of big tech firms have committed to reducing or eliminating their carbon footprint. British based chip designer arm is being sold to the American Graphics chip specialist nvidia. Nvidia said the deal, worth 40 billion, will create the premier Computing Company for the age of Artificial Intelligence. And finally, is there life on. Venus . Scientists have discovered what they say could be potential signs of life floating in the clouds of the planet. A new scientific paper reveals the discovery of gas called phosphene, typically associated with living organisms. The future really is in the cloud. This isnt fog, its smoke. California is a state reeling from wildfires. Flying into San Francisco this week from london, you could barely see the city. My name is James Clayton, and i am the new bbc and click San Francisco technology reporter. And i have landed at a pretty weird time. Ive been to San Francisco a few times before, but this was San Francisco only different. Mandatory masks everywhere, the airport almost completely empty. The streets quieter, much moreso than london. Ive come during a monster week for tech though. Many of the stories based on theme that are likely to dominate tech journalism in the years to come. On monday, oracle agreed a deal with tiktok to oversee its us operations, after mr trump said it would ban the company if it couldnt find a us suitor. Ill be doing more on how tech is being dragged into a geopolitical battle between china and the us. It was also a week that twitter launched its election hub, to promote Accurate Information and resources for voters. How Companies Like google and twitter and facebook regulate their platforms in the run up to the elections are likely to have a massive impact on that november poll, and it is something that click will be doing more on. It also happened to be a week when mr trump visited california, sparking controversy by refusing to acknowledge Climate Changes impact on the environment. Going forward, could big tech do more by notjust being Green Companies themselves but by leading the way in innovation, perhaps even reversing some of the damage humans have done to our planet . At apples launch on tuesday, the company didnt release an iphone or arm based macbooks but they did talk about its new healthcare products, including a new apple watch that can measure oxygen levels in the blood. How the world of tech responds to covid 19 in the coming years is likely to be crucial in our battle against the virus. And finally this week, google was grilled by senators asking questions about anti trust, or in other words, are Companies Like google monopolistic . Whether massive tech Companies Like facebook, apple, and amazon are simply too big and whether they should be broken up, remains a central challenge to governments around the world. The tech stories we have seen this week perhaps underpins the fundamental question of our age how can we harness the progress humanity has made for good and not bad . That was James Clayton who, as he says, is our new man in San Francisco. And hes online now. James, not even off the plane and we ask you to start filming. Well done, what a time to move to San Francisco though. Its a really strange time for two reasons. Obviously, youve seen those kind of horrendous pictures of california under this huge blanket of smoke. And its notjust california but pretty much the whole of western america. It is oregon, washington, then of course you have covid 19. Covid 19 has affected the us very badly and california is no exception. And its really noticeable. How do you feel about being there . If you look at all of the conferences coming up, literally all of them are virtual. So the chances of me actually being able to get there and actually review products in the same way as my predecessor did, well, its going to be quite unlikely for now. I know that different people feel differently about Climate Change within the us and the big tech giants have certainly committed to trying to go Carbon Neutral or i think, google now says it is Carbon Neutral. Do you think the arrival of forest fires at the doors of these companies will change any of their behaviours or focus any of their attention . I think the next stage is, are they going to really invest in the kind of innovation that the world might actually need to try and reverse some of this Climate Change . At the moment, microsoft have committed a lot of money to that, so have amazon and apple too, but its really only been the last year that has happened. What else are you looking forward to covering . The big tech story of the next few weeks is going to be about social media with the us elections. Youre already seeing all sorts of disinformation and all sorts of challenges and problems that Companies Like facebook and twitter and google, who owns youtube, are having to make when trying to regulate what should and shouldnt be on it. Were really looking forward to hearing more about it from you over the coming weeks. James, thank you very much and stay there. You know, all of these launch events that we have been talking about and indeed the run up to the us election, they are all like theatre really, arent they . And that links perfectly to the next bit of the program. Yes, theatre has had a particularly tough time of it since march and until actors can tread the boards again, technology is seeing whether it can fill the void. But can it really provide the excitement of a Live Performance . Marc cieslak has disappeared down a rabbit hole to find out. Were late, were late for a very important theatrical date. However, in order to follow alice down the rabbit hole for an adventure in wonderland, all we have to do is log in to a video chat call. Are you all ok . Alice, a virtual theme park is actually an immersive theatre show, which due to the covid 19 pandemic, the audience experiences from the comfort of their homes via the video chat platform zoom. Its the result of a collaboration between theatre companies, creation, big telly, and fox dog, partnering with tech outfit charisma ai. We have built an animated version of the cheshire cat that the audience talk to. You are now ready to go further into wonderland. And before the show, they can add to it, flirt to it. Its been asked out on dates a couple times. The second thing we do is, weve really pushed zoom into sort of videogame territory. We have taken the tiles that everyone is used to in videoconferences, separated them out and dropped them into a 3d games engine. You can wave to all to the other members of the audience just before you zoom down the rabbit hole into wonderland. I think for us, we started experimenting really early into lockdown. Two weeks into lockdown, we did a production of the tempest. We discovered that its really exciting, when it really comes to life, is when the audience is live and can be seen live too. It is performers and audience live and you have moments where you can see each other. A lot of our shows pre lockdown were in Site Specific locations, moving around, giving the audiences, small groups, little challenges to do. It is as much live film or live gaming, and i think what the pandemic has created is this sort of opportunity put real people into a digital world. Few industries have escaped the effects of the covid 19 pandemic. Theatre has been badly hit. What theatre is about, its about physically being with other people. Its about being shoulder to shoulder with somebody. Its about having the freedom to laugh, the freedom to cry. You know, theatre is fundamentally a shared experience. And the phrase we keep hearing is the theatre industry has been decimated thats the buzz phrase my industry has at the moment, and you know what, its right. Its calculated that theatre is worth £1. 28 billion in annual ticket revenue. The uks government has no allowed indoor performances with social distancing to start again. But to make money, theatres often rely on packed houses which arent possible with social distancing regulations. A handful of theatres in the west end are planning to reopen soon. In some venues, like this one in south london, they have started performances with reduced audience capacities. This has still left thousands of people working within the theatre industry out of work. Can the technology we use to conduct video meetings really help this struggling sector . So, our directors in northern ireland, we have a performer in ireland, and others scattered all over the country. Everyone is at home so they have green screens up. Weve had to very rapidly kind of learn the best rehearsal processes to have for that. Theatre folk are fond of saying the show must go on but with so Much Technology involved, getting through a performance without any glitches can be very difficult. We test, we guess, we second guess and we put in redundancy. We put in double servers, we put in two Internet Connections into the actors homes. We put in backup plans for the live actors. You can have more tea if you answer my riddle. And in some ways, that ability to improvise that a human has is so brilliant in a production like this. Rather than being a passive observer, becoming an audience member in this show requires a fair bit of participation. So after three, i need you to shout shut up to the baby. Help me out. Uno, dos, tres shut up i want to see you dance better than this pick up your knees there is zero chance of me dancing on camera. Thats not going to happen. The alice show completed a run throughout august and with lots of programs cancelled in uk venues pa ntos cancelled, the team has similar plans to use technology to put on a christmas show. So weve been planning now for some time to do the most amazing family christmas digital experience we can, something that you can tune in with as a family online. And we think, you know, it has got so much potential. You can be there, be there on the sofa with your popcorn and mulled wine and have a really good christmas experience. Whatever happens, christmas is not going to be cancelled. Until theatres fully reopen again with performers physically sharing a space with their audience, it looks like Online Solutions might be one of the few ways to keep theatrical professionals employed. These are strange days where sometimes it feels like we have all ventured through the looking glass. And that is the magic of live theatre. That was marc and thats it for this crazy performance. Yup, thats right. As ever, you can keep up with the team on social media, youtube, instagram, facebook and twitter at bbc click. Thanks for watching, dont have nightmares, and we will see you soon. Bye still plenty more sunshine to come for the rest of the weekend for most parts of the uk. It is breezy still in the south, as it was on friday. And the sunshine is a bit more hazy here, in fact there is a chance of a shower, because this area of cloud, there is an area of low pressure that has been swirling further northwards, it is bringing a greater risk of showers to southern parts of england in particular throughout the rest of the day. And in fact, some of those showers can be quite heavy and thundery across the channel islands, the far south of england as well. The issue in the north is the misty low cloud and sea fog, so we will talk about that injust a moment. It has been clearing through the morning. As you can see, there are patches of cloud, more so than yesterday, around in southern areas. There is a brisk wind gusting to 30, 35 miles per hour. So both temper the feel of the day there, but will not stop temperatures getting into the low 20s here. Not as windy as we head further north, so warm and sunny across northern ireland, much of scotland, but we do have that low cloud in the north and it may well drift around into some of the other north sea coasts of scotland and north east england. As the afternoon wears on. In fact, through the evening it will drift further westwards and it will be a bit of an issue tomorrow morning, could be quite grey to start in these areas. Not as chilly here as we are holding onto the cloud. We have the cloud in the south, diminishing risk of showers. Still that key north easterly breeze with us, possibly a notch down on today, by the time we get to tomorrow, but it is still noticeable, although the north sea is at its warmest at this time of year. Again, with a reduced risk of showers in southern areas and more direct sunshine coming through, it could be a little bit warmer again. Warm for many areas, just that north sea coast where the low cloud lingers. Some of that low cloud will make its way southwards by monday morning, so again they could be mist and fog first thing in the morning and then rain to the north late in the day. We are keeping the same story, a lot of warm, dry and quite sunny weather and then it is all that changed most of that we saw coming to the north of scotland on monday is wrapped around an evening area of low pressure, so a spell of wet and windy weather for most of us are behind that weather front, distinctly autumnal feel. Obviously the rain and the strong winds will make it feel much more autumnal, some welcome rain for the garden, the different empty will be quite dramatic. From above average currently, to quite a bit below average by the time we get to mid week next week. As ever, there is more online. The government is facing growing calls for quick action to stem