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tv   Click  BBC News  April 4, 2024 3:30am-4:01am BST

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hello and welcome to las vegas, sin city, home to big casinos, big hotels and big entertainment. and everyjanuary, it's also home to big tech because this is where ces happens, the consumer electronics show. now, it takes place across the city in hotels like this and also in the massive las vegas convention center.
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this is where we get a taste of the tech trends to come for the new year. and over the years, we have seen it all here — autonomous cars going up and down the strip, even a flying one on the sidewalk. so, what's going to be big this year? it is time to find out. the self—proclaimed most powerful tech show on earth truly is global, with companies from around the world battling for attention and some splashing out to make a real spectacle. there's even a mini theme park in one of the halls this year, with a hydrogen—powered train that goes... ..all of a few metres. so lovely of them to name it after me too! i think that's a different sk. 0h, 0k. but after a year of tech hitting the headlines, often for the wrong reasons, there's no existential crisis here. the buzz is back... dance music plays ..the party's pumping, and ces is a scramble
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of people, products and predictions for our future lives. everything you could ever think up appears to fill these seemingly endless aisles where incredible innovation collides with absurd apparatus, allowing you to take the mic... he mimes t0 rock music ..go for a ride or shoot some hoops. oh, well done! honestly, i don't know what all the fuss is about. it's easy. talking of hoops — even next year's drone soccer championship has a stand. although it's more like quidditch, if you ask me. there was a time when ces would feature a deluge of tvs, each one bigger, brighter, sharper, smoother and thinner than the next. they are still here,
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including the occasional whopper, but tv picture quality is improving much more incrementally these days, and the real screen innovations are happening elsewhere. got to hand it to lg — the company always puts on a display, and this year, that display is transparent. these oled screens look astonishing. although, come to think of it, you probably wouldn't really want to see through your tv screen at home. you'd want the blacks to be black, wouldn't you? so i feel this is probably more for use in eye—catching advertising displays. oh, and even though it says �*wireless�*, that's not quite true. you still need a power cable, which does beg the question, why not run the hdmi cable into it at the same time? transparency does seem to be a thing this year. here's a strange roll—out display that you can see right through too. now, the video actually comes from a normal projector, but whereas that projection
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would go right through normal glass or plastic, this so—called nano optic material catches more of the image. it really does look quite bright in real life. so, in theory, with this material, any window could become a display. this is a mesh of led pixels, but between the pixels, instead of there just being black fabric or even glass, there's holes, so you get this transparent display effect that's much easier to manufacture, especially at size, than normal led or lcd panels. here's something that first caught my eye a couple of years ago. the looking glass display is the best glasses—less sd display i've come across, and it's now available in a big and a small version. as you move your head, its lenticular screen
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really does allow you to see the images from different perspectives. unlike traditional sd tvs, here, the background really does emerge from behind the foreground as you move from side to side. now, wherever your tv is in your home, i bet it's been there for a while, hasn't it? yeah, well, displace wants to change that. they want you to be able to take your screen anywhere. now, in order to achieve that, this screen needs to do two things. firstly, it needs to have no wires and, secondly, it has to stick to your wall. so, let's break that down. number one — no wires means no power cords, so this thing runs on batteries. and to make sure that you're not charging it all the time using a wire, four of those batteries are hot—swappable. pop them out, charge them elsewhere, pop them back in again. number two — it sticks to the wall using suction cups that are also powered by batteries. now, i admit it does seem a bit weird that you want to just
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pop your telly off one wall and pop it onto another, but if you do, well, at least it only weighs iikg, so you don't need to be quite as pumped as our man here to lug it about. now, i know what you're thinking. what if the batteries run out? does this thing fall off your wall? well, yes, but slowly. because they've given it a kind of...airbag system. yes. if it detects a suction failure, it fires adhesive strips at the wall and slowly lowers the tv to the ground on wires. less air bag, more bungee, i suppose. so that's ok, but i can't help thinking they've had to invent a whole new safety system as a precaution for their whole new attachment system. overengineered much? given everything that's happened in the world of ai over the past year or so,
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it's little surprise that here, plenty of companies are keen to talk about what they're doing with it in their products, and that's particularly true when it comes to health care. well, one of the first things that many of us do in the morning is look in a mirror. so if you're not wearing numerous health trackers, like i do, how about the idea of that mirror being able to tell you how your health is doing? lindsay, let's have a go. tell me about the technology, first of all. absolutely. so this is our newest product, it's our anura magicmirror, and what it does, it does a 30—second video selfie and we actually measure over 38 vital signs and risk of disease parameters. so everything from heart rate, breathing, blood pressure to actual risk of cardiovascular disease, risk of stroke, risk of fatty liver disease — many different parameters, so... how on earth do you assess all of that from looking at someone with a camera? yes, so how it works is we're actually measuring the facial blood flow patterns
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underneath your skin using reflective light patterns. so we use a process called transdermal optical imaging. and so what happens is we take a 30—second scan, we analyse your facial blood flow patterns, and then it gets sent up to the cloud for processing. and so we output all these calculations. 0k, brilliant. yeah. shall we try it? well, let's have a go. let's try it. sit still. and it's...it�*s already begun the scan, so we'll have your results quite shortly. make sure you're in the right spot and it'll be done in 30 seconds. i'm doing well on most of these things, which is great. my risk of heart disease, stroke — all incredibly low. but some of these things, it's hard to imagine how they would even be calculated. when it comes to something like type 2 diabetes risk, how on earth can it assess that? so in the background, we have a population of about 40,000 patients where what we've done is we've taken their demographic info, all their medical history. so this number you see here is the percentage of users with your facial blood flow patterns who are at risk of developing type 2 diabetes. great — if it's not going to get you in a panic
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when things aren't right. and there was one little niggle in my brief experiment. whilst the differences are pretty negligible, i've redone the scan a couple of minutes after doing it the first time, and the figures are just slightly different. it tells me i'm 36. apparently i was 38 a couple of minutes ago. same face, but i'm happy. can i go with this one? meanwhile, plenty of wearables being launched here, and many of them are pretty compact too. in fact, there's a whole trend for smart rings, with a few new ones launching. the 0ura has been popular for a while, but this is ultrahuman. this goes beyond tracking your daily activities and giving you a readiness score, though. it actually acts as one big data platform, bringing in information from blood tests and also, if you wish, from a continuous glucose monitor. so, for example, you could see how the sugar that you've eaten has affected your night's sleep by having all of that in one place. much hype about it in tech circles as the company has high hopes.
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initially, the blood function will be india—only before expanding, and an air quality monitor to also sync the conditions you sleep in is coming. here's a bit of a different way of being able to assess your heart rate and how stressed you may be. these are mindmics. now, they work as regular earbuds — you can listen to music, talk on them. but they also are listening within your ear, like your ear becomes a speaker to your heart. it's very buzzy here, but i'm feeling quite zen. in just a couple of minutes it's told me my heart rate was 57, my heart rate variability was 51 and apparently i am well in the rest and digest category, not fight or flight. these devices do also seem to incorporate our mental health too — in particular stress. and i'll have more health—related gadgets next week.
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in recent years, the automotive industry has become a bigger part of ces, and this year was no exception. from concept crab cars to electric diggers, via bikes lifted straight out of tron, vehicles are now big news in vegas. but it's notjust the cars themselves vying for attention. a major theme coming from many of the companies focused on what the marketing speak labels as the "in—car experience". it's essentially using tech to make you, the driver, the star of the show. so, naturally, one car company brought in a star of their own to demonstrate their latest big idea. imagine a car that's creatively bold. now, imagine a song conducted by the road...
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mercedes has teamed up with musician and technologist will.i.am to create sound drive. ..and your foot on the pedal means it's time to jam. it takes telemetry and information from a range of sensors, including acceleration, steering and gps, to dynamically change specially produced tracks in real time. # it's the bass line running, running... how do you simulate gravity pushing down on the engine where you have those subtle oscillations? there's some subtleties that happen when you go, "mm..." — you feel that, you hear that. you pay attention. and because i'm an audio nerd, i pointed that out and i told them, "hey, ithink i could solve that. "if you give me sensors, i could point those sensors "to an audio generation engine and i could oscillate gravity "pushing down on an engine — i could simulate that." and then i said, "hey, but i think the future "of electric vehicles is more than vroom, vroom. "if you let me just, like, go free—fly, i think "i could come up with something
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truly transformational. " and so they were like, "yeah, try it out." i'm like, "are you serious?" naturally, i wanted to give it a go to sample that "in—car experience" for myself. this is wild! it's undoubtedly impressive from a tech and music perspective. music plays wow. you can really feel that rise up with the acceleration. so what this system is doing is it's collecting information from all of the sensors in the car, so that's accelerating, braking and steering, and it's using that information to dynamically adapt the music that's playing. it's pretty cool. but it'll be user and industry take—up that determines whether it goes beyond a very fun gimmick. elsewhere at the show, autonomous driving and all of the connected industries continue to be a big draw. luminar create lidar products and software for self—driving cars.
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this year they were showing off the latest update to their hazard—detection capabilities. the system is designed to react faster than a human can, in this case, swerving to avoid a dummy of a small child at a split second's notice. let's buckle up again, then. rock music. are you belted up? yes. 0k, we are ready to proceed. three, two, one. go. whoa! it's effective... ..if not a touch disconcerting. wow. the company says it won't swerve if doing so would take the car into obstacles or other danger. ces shows that the line between the car and technology industries has blurred to a point where one now barely exists.
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like much to be seen here, though, how much actually makes it out of las vegas remains to be seen. apple knocking samsung off there. the us counting for the 1.2 billion smartphones this year according to the international data corporation. this is the lowest annual number of units sold in a decade. the first new version of prince of persia has been released in 1a years. it is the debut edition to be voiced in farsi. it has persian mythology and nature. it farsi. it has persian mythology and nature-— and nature. it was super important _ and nature. it was super important for _ and nature. it was super
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important for us. - and nature. it was super i important for us. scientists have completed _ important for us. scientists have completed the - important for us. scientists have completed the first i important for us. scientists i have completed the first solar powered project in space. the space solar power demonstrator was able to beam it wirelessly. it will help to chart the solar energy and how one day, it might be transferred to earth. and finally, artificial intelligence is expected to affect nearly 40% of all jobs according to new research by the international monetary fund. it is suggested that they should see it after adopting ai, but lower income and older workers could fall behind. we're back at the massive consumer electronics show in las vegas, which is notjust about the big companies with their big flashy stands. alasdair keane has been to what i think is the most exciting hall of all, which mayjust contain the next big thing. this is eureka park, a space
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packed full of start—ups all trying to find new customers and investments. but what does it take to present your tech on the global stage? let's go meet some of them. my name is mirko cesena, a co—founder ofjedsy. i'm from italy originally but four years ago i moved to switzerland for founding this company together with my partner, herbert weirather. i'm peter yau from hong kong and our company is - called xox0 beverages. hi, i'm beatriz. we're from st37, so sport and technology olympic sports. this really is an around—the—world trip in bright ideas, with many of these start—ups bringing their tech to this huge event for the first time. that makes it an ideal hunting ground for those looking to invest in the next big thing. the entrepreneur is so important and so special in being able to make an opportunity successful.
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they've got to be able to walk through ten—feet concrete walls in order to make their vision a reality. passion must play a role in it as well, if the company is passionate about it? to be an entrepreneur you have to be a little bit crazy. you have to believe that what you want to bring to the world that doesn't exist needs to be there, and most other people don't see that. what we do is we have created a machine that is focusing - on making cocktails and mocktails. - so now the machine itself is... we're doing a rental businessj to all the businesses like bars and restaurants, so they can help to - produce different drinks. it's a drone that goes onto the side of buildings? exactly. we take off from the building and we land in the other building, so basically flying in between these two places makes us very efficient because doctors and nurses, theyjust need to open the window and place the package inside the drone, or also take it out as soon as it arrives, and it charges automatically. it does everything by itself. we need no manpower at all. so we do ai video analysis, i and today we're presenting it, the application, into video refereeing specifically. i
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so you have trained computers on the rules of sports... exactly. ..and it can replace the referee? it could. it could, actually. for now we give the assistance for the referee so he can i have the final call. this is a new cooking technology to cook and bake your food. it is a way to cook fast at low temperatures. and we do that with running electrical currents through your ingredients. we have developed specially for ces a blueberry muffin square, where the cake base has been baked from a raw dough to the cake in three minutes. and in addition that cuts also 90% in energy use versus a regular domestic oven. this certainly is a place where you'll see new ideas being brought to the world. so can these inventions make it to the next stage and the mass market? the proof will be
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in the pudding. jaunty ragtime music i don't know about you, but i still love a robot. here's one that's making me a latte. i tell you, this had better be a blooming good coffee! whether or not it'll beat the human barista, or indeed the coffee maker, depends on your point of view, i suppose. but this type of bot certainly generates a bit of interest at these shows. ho, ho, ho, ho! "bbc foamy hazelnut latte" — they even know my nickname! robot: thanks for coming. have a nice day. i will. thank you very much. mm! much more useful, and i think more practical, are robots that can roam our world doing
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the more mundane stuff like sweeping the roads. here's a concept robot mooting the idea that if you're going to go off grid, you might want a solar panel on wheels that follows the sun like a sunflower, gradually charging its batteries so that you can then run your camp, your car or anything else you've got knocking about that's electric. i'm going to build my own robot. itri is taiwan's industrial technology research institute, and i'm trying out its new modular robot design, which involves quite a bit of twisting. talk amongst yourselves. to be honest, you could get a robot to do this bit, couldn't you ? a typical production line might need several different types of robot, but this prototype has interchangeable joints so you can build and alter your bots as you move them.
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i thought i'd crossed the thread then. in which case we'd leave quite quick and let them sort it out. this means you don't need to bring in specialised robots if you only want to make a small batch of items. and if something goes wrong, you can swap out a faultyjoint without having to shut down the whole arm. there — i've built myself a completely useless robot arm with nothing on the end. you're welcome. baby voice: daddy! deep v0|ce: yes, my child? dog whimper effect i'm just waiting for my next guest in this robot—themed section. don't know where it is. oh, my... oh, my gosh! spencer laughs this is h1, a remote—controlled prototype
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from chinese company unitree. i've seen this outfit at a couple of tech fairs now and, although boston dynamics has won youtube with its amazing dog and humanoid bot bits, this is a reminder that this kind of tech is not unique any more. h1 is nowhere near as advanced as some, but it does have the basic balancing skills, which means it can certainly handle some action from a kid from the mean streets of vegas. all right... i've always wanted to do this. spencer laughs i think it's time to exit, stage right. right, 0k. right. ok. he's not happy about that. # oh, well, bless my soul... and that's it from here
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for now but, like a vegas buffet, there is way too much for one sitting. trust me — i've tried. so we'll be back at this crazy place next week. you do not want to miss it. see you there. see you there? see you there. excellent. # i'm all shook up # hello. areas of low pressure are forming an orderly queue in the atlantic, heading our way over the next few days, bringing further bouts of rain. there will be some drier, sunnier interludes, and then, by the weekend, two things will happen — it will turn warmer, but it will also turn windier. the area of low pressure heading our way for the weekend isjust starting to take shape behind me. not much to see just yet,
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but that low is set to deepen. in the shorter term, you can see a couple of different low pressure systems working through. thursday morning, starting with some pretty heavy rain, actually, across parts of england and wales. that will tend to pull away eastwards as the day wears on, then we'll see some sunny spells, scattered showers, then later on, more rain will push through the southwest of england and into wales. for northern ireland and scotland, you can expect largely cloudy skies, some bits and pieces of rain and drizzle, but also a bit of snow mixing in over high ground in scotland. temperatures in the north of scotland only up to around 5 or 6 degrees. 16 in the southeast of england, and then through thursday night, we'll see outbreaks of heavy rain driving northwards once again, still the chance of some snow, even to relatively low levels across the northern half of scotland, where it will be a cold start to friday. further south, a very different story — starting the day at 11 or 12 degrees in much of england and wales, and then through friday, that rain and hill snow continues to journey northwards across scotland. behind it, we get into a mix of sunny spells and heavy, blustery showers, turning quite windy through friday,
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particularly out towards the west, but temperatures will be climbing. still cold in the north of scotland, but for northern ireland, england and wales, 15 to 18 degrees, and then, into the start of the weekend, this deep area of low pressure, with lots of isobars squeezing together, is set to pass to the west of the uk. now, that is going to bring some very strong winds. we will see rain clearing the north of scotland, clearing to a mix of sunny spells and showers, probably not too many showers. there will be a decent amount of dry weather around, but the winds very brisk indeed, particularly for some of these western coasts, 60mph gusts or more. with those winds coming from the south, though, feeling pretty warm. it could be the warmest day of the year so far, particularly in eastern england. highs of 20, maybe 21 degrees. not quite as warm on sunday, but temperatures still well up into the teens. some showers, some sunshine too.
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live from washington, this is bbc news. the founder of world central kitchen accuses israel of targeting their convoy, killing aid seven workers. israel's government says it was a mistake. nato allies pledged to support ukraine for the long—term as us aid remains stalled.
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hello. israel is facing international condemnation for what it calls a mistake in an air strike that called seven —— qjl seven aid workers in gaza. lloyd austin spoke on wednesday to his israeli counterpart expressing outrage and stressing the need for swift action to protect aid workers. presidentjoe biden is scheduled to speak by phone with the israeli prime minister on thursday. meanwhile, the un has suspended overnight aid operations in gaza for at least 48 hours to evaluate security in the wake of the attack on monday. the founder of world central kitchen, the organisation that the aid workers belonged to, says the strike was a result of systematic targeting by israeli forces. lucy williamson has more on the aftermath and what we know on how the attack happened. israel's army said
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it had misidentified them. today, colleagues wrote their names on the body bags

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