And clowning in california. La la la los angeles. A city of many sights. Theres the movies. The beaches. The high life. And in between each of them. A whole lot of this. With hardly any rail alternative, the traffic here drives the locals to distraction. Its led some of the bigger thinkers to suggest radical alternatives. Electric car and Space Travel Guru elon musk has even started digging a tunnel. He envisions an Asimovian Network Of Car and passenger carrying tubes underneath cities in the future. How boring meanwhile, back in the almost real world of marina del rey, a more modest way to reduce traffic two electric cars that belong to a whole apartment block. Envoy operates a closed car share system. The vehicles can be booked out by residents only and used for up to three hours at a time. Now, this is not a car that you would use to drive to work and back because youd end up paying for and hogging it for the whole day. This is much more a car that you would use for convenience for popping out for the occasional errand. Yeah, we believe that if its a two car household, we can hopefully reduce that to one. Experts say for every shared car, it takes 11 vehicles off the road. So were working with developers on communicating that with policymakers in the city, saying if we include car sharing within communities, we should be able to reduce our Parking Requirements on new developments. Envoy is just starting out and hopes to roll out into new areas in Southern California and then new cities across the us by the end of the year. And further into the future, aric would like to see shared vehicles being available wherever there are large groups of people. Now, for some, this kind of thing is going to be an interim stop before we get to fleets of Self Driving Vehicles cruising the streets, picking us up whenever we want, and no one has to own a car at all. So, how is that getting on . Well, heres marc cieslak in phoenix. Ride sharing company uber has been in the news recently for all the wrong reasons. Its founder and boss Travis Kalanick has resigned after coming under pressure from investors following a flurry of public controversies, including complaints of Sexual Harassment and bullying at the company. Kalanicks departure comes after the dismissal of 20 staff whove all been fired as a result of the scandals plaguing the start up. Whilst ubers Corporate Culture may be in disarray, it is pressing ahead with an ambitious tech project. If youve used a ride sharing app before, you know the drill. You have an app on your smartphone, you push a button and a car arrives, and it behaves very much like a taxi. But, here in arizona, if you push that button, theres a good chance that the car that will arrive will be a Self Driving Car. The sunny University City of tempe, arizona is one of two locations, including pittsburgh in pennsylvania, that uber is testing a fleet of Autonomous Vehicles. A host of sensors, including lidar and cameras, have been fitted to these volvo suvs. The sensors become the cars eyes on the road, informing systems which drive the car, as well as trying to predict the actions of other road users and pedestrians. All right, and were engaged. All things which humans take for granted but are difficult for machines to achieve. Im taking a ride in a self driving uber. There are, however, two guys in the front seat. What is it that you guys are doing here . So, in the drivers seat here, i am monitoring whats going on around me. Im still technically a driver being that this vehicle has to be taught whats going on around it. If an event that the car does not know how to react to, thats where i can take over. So you are the safety driver, if you like . I am the safety driver. Now, you are the Safety Laptop Operator . So what are you doing here with a laptop . From the laptop, i can monitor a lot of the prediction software, so i can see where the car is going, where the car wants to go, so this is all feedback that goes directly to all the engineers and they are able to look at whats going on and improve for the next iteration. So what youre hearing, the car is determining it wants to change lanes, but other vehicles around us are too close, so it decides against it and stays in lane. Right now, you see it just change lanes there. Over the course of our ride, the driver does take control for a short time, but the majority of the ride is performed autonomously. Uber doesnt publicise how often the Human Drivers take over, though. Its not been plain sailing for this project. Injanuary, one of the Autonomous Cars here in phoenix was involved in an accident. Nobody was injured but a Self Driving Car was left crashed on its side. And a Pilot Testing programme in San Francisco was called to a halt after a row with the California Department of Motor Vehicles over permits for Autonomous Cars. On top of all that, waymo, the Self Driving Car Company Owned by googles parent firm alphabet, has accused uber of stealing trade secrets. Uber denies using or receiving stolen technology. Thankfully, back in arizona, my ride continues without incident. Im in a robot car, essentially. Thats like something from a Science Fiction movie. And im a tiny bit disappointed. Because the car is driving itself without any hassles. This is like any normal cab ride. And uber isnt alone when it comes to self driving testing. The state of arizona is very accommodating, allowing Self Driving Cars from waymo, ford, General Motors and intel on its roads. Were several years away from fully Autonomous Cars taking to the highways yet, and it seems that the road to fully Self Driving Vehicles is still a bumpy one. Some american freeways have Carpool Lanes which you can only use if you are carrying more than one person in the car. The idea is those lanes at least are travelling at a decent speed. Well now, they are also planning similar lanes for Autonomous Vehicles and they are calling them hyper lanes. the system will be controlled by a central computer and will whiz Self Driving Cars along at speeds of over 100 miles an hour. You would use Access Stations in your local neighbourhoods and once you enter the station, your car will start driving itself and they will launch them onto a hyper lane. After that point, the car would be able to drive itself and you can just sit back and continue sipping your coffee and check your phone. The plan is to use existing highways to create these hyper lanes. Customers would pay Surge Pricing in order to ease congestion and arrive at their destinations as quickly as possible. There are also plans to use the service for Parcel Delivery and autonomous buses. However, to put even a test version of this in place is going to cost 12 million per mile. So for the time being, it looks like Autonomous Cars are going to be stuck in traffic with the rest of us. Its time for this weeks tech news and boy, what a week. You thought google glass was dead, but its not. It released its first update for three years. A us Officialfrom The Department for Homeland Security said this week that Russian Hackers targeted Election Systems in 21 states during last years campaign. And netflix has announced two Interactive Tv shows where you can pick the storyline. They said it was designed for kids, but come on, that looks fun. And could we soon be seeing the queen in a g whiz . Probably not. But the queens speech outlined plans for Petrol Stations around the uk to go electric. Its part of a government plan to push more electric cars onto the road. And more news from the uks roads this week Driverless Cars are being given the green light to begin trials later this year. A collaboration between jaguar land rover, ford and tata motors has been showing off how Autonomous Cars can talk together to provide real time traffic information. And what if you could tackle a mario level while out and about . Abhishek singh has done just that, creating a Super Mario Brothers level in an augmented new york central park. He created the whole thing for the microsoft hololens, which unfortunately isnt yet available for the general consumer. The abundance of everything here in the us is evident and its thanks in no small part to having one of the best educated and most skilled workforces in the world. And it is from right here that the xprize in education was born. Now, this is a competition that encourages entrepreneurs to use tech to teach. Now the finalists have been announced in london this week and dan will take a look at some of them in a minute. But first, he travels to tanzania to see whats in store for those hoping to offer something new to the next generation. Im sitting right behind the pilot hes right there we are travelling a long way from any town or city to visit some of the 200 children in a village in northern tanzania. We are booting up a tablet, the first one. The interesting thing here is that most of these children, about all of them, have not seen a tablet before. But not only that a lot of them wouldnt have gone to school even before, so the Learning Process itself is brand new. The whole programme is in swahili so the local children can understand. I think they are going to need more tablets laughter. This is one of about 150 villages in Tanzania Chosen as the test bed for the Global Learning xprize. Within a few months, 4,000 tablets will be given out. The challenge to teach a 7 to ii year olds to read, write and do maths over the next year. The most Effective App will win 10 million. The prize here, though, will be much more valuable. Older children can walk up to four hours to get to and from school. For younger ones like 7 year old amina, thats simply too far. Shes been lucky she is one of those thats been chosen to take part in the xprize challenge. At the start, she has not seen a tablet before, so shes not used to touching screens. And when it comes to reading, she does not know more than one or two words in a sentence. Butjohn, who is with the project, thinks the tablet will help her eventually to read fluently. Back in the capital, dar es salaam, the World Food Programme is testing Solar Panel Stations that will monitor the progress of each child when they recharge. That way, if a tablet breaks, the youngster can get a new one without having to start lessons from the beginning again. In london this week, Ii Semifinalists from seven Different Countries were chosen from the nearly 200 teams that entered. They will refine their software before the final five are chosen to go to tanzania to start the year long project with the children. So the problem is that there are about 60 100 million kids who have no access to school, because school is too far. Then you have 250 million more who go to school and leave without ever having learned to read or write a word. And these are kids in botswana, in boston, in, you know, in brighton it doesnt matter. Kids go to school All Over The World and they go, they dont learn, and why is that . So thats the question we are trying to address. You know, in our greatest desire, every single child on planet earth has access to a world class education in the palm of their hand. Every single child has his or her potential fulfilled. That is the dream and its not a far fetched dream. Its possible. We are hoping to be back next year to see how the teams get along but for now, its time to say goodbye. Weve brought some biscuits to say thank you and suddenly, the difficulties the team will face when they arrive become clear. With just 20 or so tablets per village, there simply wont be enough for everyone to take part. To reduce potentialjealousy, the tablets will be locked to only run the educational software. But Everyone Wants one. A village mama has been chosen to settle any disputes, and the schemes Partners Unesco will be asking some other important questions about tablets, too. We are doing an assessment of the social and emotional impact of such learning. Because we expect quite some criticism from that side. We are engaging with the psychologists, anthropologists, educationalists, to try to understand what does it do to the child . Is that an option that is ethical . Because children go to school, they are socialised also its not only the learning, its learning much more, to be part of the group. Its notjust 10 million, it could be the answer to the whole countrys education problems. And even the whole of africas. Virtual reality is no longer in its infancy. So here at this years sheffield doc fest, Content Makers are trying new ways of grabbing our attention. This is first impressions, were i can see the world through the eyes of a baby over its first few days of life. Why is someone putting a toy in front of my face . Its quite unnerving. The trend may seem to be moving towards how far we can go with the medium to make the Virtual World feel realistic. In my shoes aims to create a sense of intimacy. Ive been to some amazing places in vr, ive even had some workouts in Virtual Reality. But one thing i havent tried yet, which im about to, is the idea of it trying to create some sort of emotional engagement. Now this is going to require a second player, here ive got 0llie who is willing to take part. Very willing. Thank you for doing so. First of all we are going to pretend to be strangers, which isnt entirely true, weve met a couple of times. Then were going to pretend we are in a long term relationship things are moving fast around here and thirdly were going to be on a tinder date. Say something. I can hear what hes thinking, who wants that on a date . Im actually the man. Im a man on a date with a lady. Im not a murderer. The situation is feeling a bit intense. Thats good to know. No, but you know what i mean. You can meet people online and they can turn out to be murderers. Yeah. Im just saying that im not. Oh no, get me out of here. Ill hold your hand. Do it. Shes touching my hand. He likes that, look at that smile. This date is terrible, why are we Holding Hands . Goodness, goodness no, this date is going really badly. 0h, crikey. It was really, really good fun, the experience. And i can see that it is possible to engage you in an emotional way and i think the fact that i could feel that uncomfortable really was quite something. I wanted to get up and leave the date when it got awkward and when you tried to hold my hand, we are acting, i wasjust like no, no, get me out of here meanwhile heres Something Else to stir up the senses. With your help to share our story, we can finally have our lands legally recognised as ours and we can continue to fight these dams. Commissioned by greenpeace, munduruku is the story of the Indigenous People of the Amazon Rainforest. And to help make it feel real, a humidifier, heaters, fans and grace the sensory technician with some fragrances to hand, are all around. Ok that really smells like a forest, thats amazing, that smell is really good. I dont know why the chairs vibrating, i dont know what that means. This project is part of our Amazon Rainforest campaign and weve been working with the munduruku to try and build solidarity between urban and indigenous populations in brazil, to protect that land where they are facing huge threats from logging, from hydroelectric dams and from mining. What we wanted to do with the Multisensory Side of it is really emphasise that sense of presence that you get within Virtual Reality. Its very difficult sometimes when you can just see something to really feel like youre there. We wanted to make it as vivid and immersive as possible. Elsewhere companies are working on the next generation of 3 d sound for vr. This software is developed by a Company Whose Audio Optimisation is already used in over 150 million smartphones. The sound is great, no questions about that and i could certainly feel like something was coming from a speaker over there. Now this Head Tracking Device which is attached to the top means that if i was wearing a Virtual Reality headset, then when i turned my head backwards or around, if there was a sound overhead, say it should sound like its coming from up there. Obviously i couldnt test that element but long term that is certainly the plan this software hopes to be able to achieve. Whilst the experiences are becoming more real, the kit is still pretty bulky so you are unlikely to forget that youre wearing it. Although maybe some sort of reminder of reality is still a good thing anyway. Right, what should we play, whats your favourite game . I think we should do. We should do flags and ill take you both on. That was lara, and now time for some fun and games with these two clowns. Not being rude, they are actually trained circus clowns. But theyre also the bosses of a Company Called two bit circus, and they want to build an enormous high tech fun house in downtown los angeles. Protect that ball. So we are building what we call a micro amusement park. Its a 50,000 square feet Entertainment Complex dedicated to the future of fun. The future of fun thats a catchphrase. Well, you know, heres the thing. There is this period of time when kit comes out of the lab, before its ready for the home, that its perfect for out of home. You know, you can do some vr in your home right now, but it is so much cooler if its social like this and has environmental effects and all sorts. Motion platforms, your friends can play with you. Brent and eric have been making high tech games and showpieces for Corporate Events for a few years. Their Planned Amusement Complex will be a permanent home to some of their greatest hits. Along with new Experimental Experiential Oddities being developed by their team of computer scientists, roboticists and engineers. Weve got machines that can cut metal and cut wood, we can prototype our Circuit Boards here, we have people writing software. And the beautiful thing about this place is that at the end of almost every day, there is something new to play with. It is maximum fun. The philosophy here seems to be tinker first, think later. I dont actually know the point of this game. Neither does anyone else here. This is the ultimate play space and a great coming together of people with many different skills. We are drawing on multiple industries. So we have a lot of people from the Games Industry here. So all of the development thats gone into sophisticated 3 d game engines like unity and unreal, we can put that to work building immersive environments. My background and the background of some others here is in robotics and sensors. And we bring, we come with a completely different toolkit. But the combination of those two things makes programming around here really exciting. But there is still one big build remaining. We are standing right in the middle of our micro amusement park. Most of it is going to be a big open space. The kitchen will be in that corner. A 100 Seat Interactive Supper Club is going to be over there. With 15 million backing from Companies Including intel and japanese ventures, brent hopes that this 50,000 Square Feet Space in downtown la will become the first of many two bit circuses around the world. You are opening in. February . Early, early 2018. Ok, i think youve got a bit of work to do. Weve got some work to do, its a little empty, you can see, it will be a lot more fun when we are done. But, yeah, from the moment we break ground to the moment we are ready to open, its four, five months. Well, if they can pull it off this is going to be an incredible space and a perfect excuse for us to come back here in january to see how they got on. Ok, thats it for this week, follow us on twitter and facebook for loads more stuff throughout this and every week. Thanks for watching and well see you soon. If the truth be known, thursday will be a hard sell for the latter part ofjune, given that low pressure is still very much the dominant feature. Not a cold start to the day, that is positive, 12, 13, 1a degrees across the south. But as i say, even on this big picture here you get a sense that there is an awful lot of wet and windy weather to be had, not just to be found across the northern half of the British Isles either. As we slump towards the south west, a dank start here. Not cold, 13, 1a degrees but the cloud sits low on the tors and moors in the south west. Hill fog around, further east and it is a good deal drier, still a lot of cloud with a hint of brightness if you are lucky. In the northern part of wales in the north of england, light patchy rain here with hill fog around. The Rain Beginning there to ramp up and as we come into the heart of scotland, a lot of rain here, especially in the south east and into the north east of england. Weather warnings about this. A lot of rain here just keeps on coming. It is fed in by this north to north westerly wind and that will be it for the day. That is the bad news about it. All the while the rain is trying to move a bit further north through the course of the day. So for any heat at all, well, we have to rely on a little sunshine coming through in the south east. 18, 19 here but underneath the cloud wind and rain further north, up to 1a degrees. Itjust keeps on coming through the daylight hours. Here we are into the evening and the pattern is very much the same. I changed the day and the pattern remains the same. The one crumb of comfort at this stage is that by then we may see 80 millimetres of rain across the high ground in the north east and the rain will be lighter and patchier across the north and west. Down in the south east, 23, mayjust pop off a couple of heavy showers and the start of the weekend looks to be a bit damp across the south eastern quarter until that front moves off into the near continent and then we look back towards the atlantic to see the supply of weather for the weekend. Once the front is gone, there is a lull in proceedings and a decent day for many on saturday. Pushing the Weather Front into the North Western corner of the British Isles during the course of saturday afternoon, that will then transfer a Weakening Band of weather down towards the south west and we do it all again. Not a bad day following on behind but again, a scattering of showers across the northern and western parts of scotland. So compared to what comes in the next 2a hours or so, the weekend is dry, bright and warm for many of us. Welcome to bbc news, broadcasting to viewers in North America and around the globe. My names mike embley. Our top stories 0ne of the worlds most senior Roman Catholic cardinals, george pell, has been charged with multiple counts of child sexual abuse. Tough new Security Measures unveiled for flights into the United States but theres no ban on laptop computers. Hong kong Police Arrest democracy activists hours before president xi arrives to celebrate 20 years of chinese rule. The policeman who took on the London Bridge attackers tells us about the moment he faced them alone. Ijust had one voice in my head saying, dont go down, dont go down. And all i know is that i was swinging all over the place
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