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tv   Click  BBC News  May 21, 2023 2:30pm-3:00pm BST

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this is bbc news, the headlines. ukraine's president zelensky says russia does not occupy the embattled city of bakhmut — following a day of conflicting reports. zelensky has also told the g7 summit injapan that he won't enter into peace talks with russia until its army leaves ukrainian territory. us presidentjoe biden says vladimir putin �*will not break our resolve�*, as the united states announces a new package of military aid for ukraine — including ammunition, artillery, armoured vehicles and training for soldiers. there are calls for the uk's home secretary suella braverman to be investigated — following claims she requesterd a private speed awareness course, to avoid points on her driving
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licence, after she was caught speeding last summer. now on bbc news all the the latest tech innovation. it's click. this week — paul's in for a shock. 0h! paul laughs. the planes that are preparing for the unexpected. burlington airport. lima, foxtrot, bravo, oscar. the man who doesn't
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want any surprises. all right. normally, i have four smartwatches. a band broke on one, so i'm down to three right now. it's a good job you've got the other three, isn't it? it is. otherwise, i'd be losing data. and we're getting nostalgic, with a flashback to those coloured blocks. it's poetry, art and math, all- working in magical synchronicity. it's... it's the perfect game. spencer: air passenger volumes are set to grow from pre—covid levels of 4 billion passengers a year to 8 billion — a little more than the current world population — in about 15 to 20 years. lara: this means there'll be more aircraft flying _ and more flights to manage. so, although a lot of the talk recently has been about autonomous cars, let's not forget that planes have had autopilot for quite a while. but just how autonomous could they get? could we one day see flights take off without a human pilot on board?
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well, shiona mccallum's been to airbus hq to find out the latest. toulouse is one of france's most historic cities, known by the locals as la ville rose, or the pink city. it's also famed for its tasty food, given it's so close to the border with spain. there's culture, art and architecture, but there's also something else. we see it as certainly the aviation capital of europe and maybe the world. our history in aviation in toulouse goes back to the early 20th century, and in fact, only 300 metres from where we're sitting in this fabulous, modern a350 is the hangar in which the french concordes were built in the 1960s. and it's here that airbus is testing
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its most recent technologies, focusing on three areas. firstly, the ability of an aeroplane to support the pilots by automating some of the functions required for a diversion in case of a problem during flight where the aeroplane needs to land quickly. the second stream, related to opening the possibilities for automatic landings at airports that are not equipped for the automatic landings normally used today in service. and the third stream was assisting pilots with taxiing, which sounds an easy task, but on my screen here, you can see the complexity of a busy airport. so we wanted something that would assist with that and reduce the pilots' workload during the taxi phase. right, this might look like your average cockpit, but come with me and i'll show you — we're in a demonstrator aircraft. this is where the technology is all being tested. and the idea is that airbus want to make their flights safer. known as the dragonfly project, based on the insect�*s ability
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to recognise certain locations, the team have been working on these futuristic capabilities for the last couple of years. and just before the research closes, i've come to see what they've been doing, starting in the lab. airbus 5—9 india lima, diverting to airport lima, foxtrot, bravo, 0scar. the aircraft was able to generate a new flight trajectory plan, and, using artificial intelligence, to generate a synthetic voice, the plane was able to communicate with both air traffic control and the airline 0perations control centre over the radio. in an unlikely scenario where the crew is no longer able of controlling the aircraft, this function will take full control of the aircraft and autonomously, in a safe manner, fly the aircraft down to an auto—land at a suitable runway for a diversion. and so what were the main challenges with this work? the challenge is to explain
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to the controllers exactly what will happen, so that they can manage surrounding traffic. we have performed two flights in the middle of the civil airspace, so, with other commercial aircraft around us, and the french control authorities, they could fully understand the situation. we safely landed the aircraft. it was really an amazing feat. when it comes to assisting with landing, usually a plane connects with existing ground equipment technology, but the team here are trying to make it possible without that tech. they say their innovations could allow the aircraft to land at any airport in the world and to assist, they're using a combination of normal cameras, infrared cameras and also radar technology, which the team says help them see behind the clouds. they are just capturing the trajectory of the aircraft. and then we use these, these pictures, let's say, and we try to extract the information. it will make the pilot comfortable on the fact that he's really aligned
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and he's really on the good path to go to the, to the runway. and that's what we have seen in the last flight test, that he's really able to be confident on the solution, yeah. philippe, you've been doing these dragonfly tests for the last two years. yes. you've seen an improvement in the capability over that time? yeah, clearly. clearly. step by step, we have reached a very good level of implementation, which is, i would say, not very far from what could be a solution on the civil aircraft to make, again, the pilots' lives easier and safer. it'll be up to airbus to decide if they will implement these technologies on their fleets. but not everyone in the aviation industry is a fan of the research that airbus are doing. pilots are mostly fans of automation. we like things that reduce our workload, but automation is supposed
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to support pilots to make decisions, not necessarily replace that cognitive decision—making that we do. those applications need to be looked at in terms of supporting a two—crew flight deck. we have two engines for redundancy. we have multiple electrical systems for redundancy. and it seems crazy to me that we would look at replacing one pilot and the only redundancy for that pilot is going to be the automation. what's your thoughts on aviation becoming fully automated? i'm a pilot, 0k? we have no strategic objective to remove pilots from the cockpit. that's our policy. but we will do whatever is safest for the overall safeness and security of the aeroplane. we're many, many years away from ever being able to contemplate a completely automatic aeroplane, i can assure you. fundamentally, all of this
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research means that probably in the not—too—distant future, you could find yourself on an aeroplane with a lot more automated features — but no pilot? well, that still feels like a long way away. that was shiona up in the air. we're coming back to earth with a bump now, quite literally, because depending on the road surface you drive on, you could be in for a smoother or more bumpy ride. but one thing that's worse than cobbled streets is potholes. and paul carter's been to a test track to see some of the latest technology that's hoping to create a smoother ride for everyone. yes, uneven surfaces are the bane of many road users' journeys, spoiling the ride experience and in some cases, even causing damage to vehicles. i've come to a secure test track facility in the uk to meet a company hoping to change this by developing a solution that they say can do for uneven road surfaces what noise—cancelling headphones do for background noise.
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clearmotion is a company founded out of mit and has developed a technology that can actively adapt the pressure and suspension of a vehicle to give the impression of smoothing out any bumps on the tarmac. using independently driven dampers and actuators in all four wheels, along with some processing power under the hood, the system can dynamically adjust and adapt in real time. so, what we do, when you drive down the road with the wheel, the wheel will sense an acceleration, depending what kind of obstacle you hit. so, this acceleration is measured by our device. it's built into the device accelerometer. based on that, we calculate how fast the wheel wants to go up and then we say, ok, how do we calculate the counter—force accordingly? but if we do that only on one wheel, you might get a rock on one side, but not getting this smooth ride
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we all expect. so, the... these signals get sent to a central body controller, in vehicle, where our software resides. it calculates the synchronisation between all four wheels and based on that, it commands the controlling feature for all sides. that's the theory, at least. seeing it in the workshop is one thing, but i wanted to see it in action. so, it's out to the track. but first, i wanted a sense of what it feels like without the tech. should i be more nervous now it's wet? robotic voice: let's take control! oh, wow. whoa! paul laughs. they look, like, really small to the naked eye. so we did the bumps in the standard car. now we're going to do it in this car, with the system turned on. wow. that is extraordinary. big difference.
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that's side to side wobbles dealt with. yeah, well, that's quite nice. what about throwing some undulations into the mix? you may feel that it doesn't feel like the bumps are there. it doesn't really feel like there's anything there at all. i can assure you they are. and you'll find out very shortly. we're going to try that again, but switch the system off. we're going to switch the active part of the system off. so, it's more representative of what a standard car would feel like going over there. 0h! paul laughs. that's what i thought. yeah, i wasn't expecting that! wow. obviously, this is a test track, and it's not necessarily replicating real—world conditions. i thought we were going to take off. but the level of potential benefit from this kind of technology is clear. it should also be pointed out that the concept of active suspension in itself isn't new,
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and variations of it are available in some production cars, often as a paid—for added extra. these can range from fixed or semi—automatic systems to suspension using cameras to analyse the road surface. the target market for this tech is currently vehicle manufacturers, not end consumers, as clearmotion claim that this can be fitted to most production vehicles more efficiently and cheaply than fully integrated systems. there are business strategies working with vehicle makers to integrate this with new cars. so, basically, this would be new cars coming off the lot. the car you experienced today was a retrofit, but really, our strategy is to go out with new vehicles. one of the real benefits here is, it's very easy for an 0em to integrate. it's low cost, it's totally local to each wheel and there's just basically electronics and wires going between them. this makes it a lot easier. you don't need to redesign the car
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with hoses or other sort of systems. it allows a auto—maker to adopt this. it reduces the friction, really. so, we're driving along. you feeling the...? can feel it starting to vibrate. yeah, there we go. but it's notjust on the road that there are potential benefits here. systems like this can be independently controlled and programmed via software, meaning there are possible applications in other areas, such as entertainment, turning the car into a simulator, for example, or even giving the car the ability to perform gestures. roads have jostled us since the horse and carriage. goodness me. wow. this is clearmotion. whether you see technology like this as a must—have feature or an expensive gimmick will clearly depend on a variety of factors, including your personal driving habits and relationship with your car. but ultimately, it will be for manufacturers to decide just how smooth yourjourneys might be in the future. awesome. yeah.
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spencer: now, with the advent of wearable devices monitoring heart you may collate his have approved the microsoft attempt to purchased activision blizzard. the proposed deal is the biggest in gaming history but it needs uk eu and us regulatory approval. 0pen al's chief executive testified in us congress about the possibilities and dangers of artificial intelligence. chatgpt creator told senators that al can be as big as the printing press but called for more regulation, suggesting a new agency could oversee the ai.— suggesting a new agency could oversee the ai. , �* . , ., oversee the ai. didn't really engage with the hardest _ oversee the ai. didn't really engage with the hardest questions - oversee the ai. didn't really engage with the hardest questions and - oversee the ai. didn't really engage with the hardest questions and get. with the hardest questions and get into the details. when they say, let's start an agency, it may have no teeth whatsoever if it doesn't have a clear vision or it could be
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very meaningful. the have a clear vision or it could be very meaningful.— very meaningful. the uk's first driverless _ very meaningful. the uk's first driverless bus _ very meaningful. the uk's first driverless bus started - very meaningful. the uk's first | driverless bus started operating very meaningful. the uk's first i driverless bus started operating in scotland. don't panic, it will have two staff members on board with one monitoring the attack and the other one helping passengers with ticketing. apple is bringing new accessibility features to i0s devices including ways to help nonspeaking individuals type during calls and conversations and tools allowing blind and visually impaired users to interact with objects. new updates will be released later this year. spencer: now, with the advent of wearable devices monitoring heart rate and blood pressure, we're now able to gather unprecedented amounts of personal medical data, which could, in the future, revolutionise the way our health conditions are treated. when lara was filming her click special on clinging on to youth, she met stanford professor michael snyder, who's often referred
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to as medicine's most measured man. you wear a lot of trackers, don't you? i do. tell me about them all. all right. normally, i have four smartwatches. a band broke on one, so i'm down to three right now. it's a good job you've got the other three, isn't it? it is, otherwise i'd be losing data! i bet you're still annoyed you're losing the data from that. i am, because they measure different things and they're different resolutions. and i also have my exposometer that measures my airborne exposures. and my hearing aids that you can see here, which measure not only... they help me with hearing, but they also measure activity, my interactions and things like that, which the other devices don't do. 70 stanford scientists, including snyder, are hooked up to an array of biosensors to see how far wearables can go in detecting the onset of disease. talk me through why you are wearing so many and what they're measuring that's different from each other. yeah. well, in general, there is some overlap. so they all measure your heart rate,
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heart rate variability, which are pretty nice for being able to tell whether you're healthy or not. but they also measure other things. some measure skin temperature. some measure blood oxygen. one of them measures blood pressure, not very accurately, but what they're good at is measuring the changes in blood pressure or the changes in blood oxygen. what you have in your hand here, i assume that one is just your phone that is connected to the devices. correct, yeah. but this one that is tracking for pollution, can you keep it in your bag or your pocket or you need it in your hand the whole time? yeah, well, no, i can wear it on my arm and ijust got back from a trip. so, normally i have it in my backpack, where it's very convenient. it's always right next to me. so it's measuring airborne exposures. it measures all the particles you're exposed to, so things like pollen, moulds, all this sort of stuff. it also collects all the chemicals and measures, for example, the carcinogens. this is a lot of data. how useful is it to you or to anybody? well, first of all, i don't think
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you can ever have too much data. and i think it's all useful, because just imagine driving your car without a dashboard. that'd be a disaster. you need sensors on your car to tell you when you're running out of gas, your engine's running into trouble. you want all that stuff. hundreds of thousands of readings a day are fed back to the laboratory. the scientists there say they can predict illness before symptoms occur. so here, you're collecting lots of data. what's going to happen next that people are going to benefit from? well, certain kinds of things, like alerting you when you're getting ill from infectious disease, like a viral infection. i actually think you can pick up other things. i'm hoping we'll be able to tell when you're getting cancer. some people have shown you can pick up when heart issues are appearing, something called a—fib, and we're hoping you can pick up myocardial infarction — heart attacks — with these devices. his goal is to get wearables on us all. do you think everyone should be tracking themselves this much? well, it might be a little much for some people, but i think at some level when you're passively tracking people, for example,
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just like your car tracks the health of your car, we think this will be able to track the health of you. it can all run in the background. if something's going off, it'll find that. might it not make people feel a little bit paranoid about everything? well, i think you will at first, perhaps. but i think down the road, the answer is no. you get used to this stuff. we have other experiments in the lab where we can actually see how people are ageing and we're not all ageing the same. some people are more cardio agers, meaning their heart is going off. other people are more metabolic agers, meaning the metabolic systems are changing. others are immune agers, meaning their immune system is ageing first. what can we do about it, though, once we learn all of this? well, it turns out there's actually markers that are associated with this. so imagine, for example, your liver age. well, maybe you should cut down on the drinking, perhaps, a little bit. i don't drink! it wasn't me. well, there you go. gosh, how interesting is that?
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and you know what? we've also finally met someone who wears more trackers than someone else i could mention. yep! data, data, data. it may be meaningful, but it also helps gamify how healthy you are and there is something really compelling about that. and it does work, doesn't it? it does. we all love a good game. 0ften, it's the simple ones that are the most addictive. and so now, i'd like us all to cast our mind back to the 1990s and ask, how many hours did we lose to tetris? too many! and i've still got my game boy with tetris on it. why? that's commitment for you. well, get this. the story of the creation of tetris has now been turned into a movie. and we got to speak to notjust the visual effects team behind it, but also the creator of tetris himself. it was the most beautiful thing i'd ever seen. it's poetry, art and math, all working in magical synchronicity. it's. . .. it's the perfect game. tetris.
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i am alexey pajitnov. people know me as a creator for the computer game tetris. i was really, really interested all kinds of mathematical puzzles, riddles. by day, he worked as a programmer for the government at the soviet computer science centre. by night... he invented games for fun. a very famous puzzle board called pentomino. there are 12 different shapes made out of five squares, and when i start to program this to play a game, i decided that it would be much more fun to make a real—time game out of it. close, but we need something more. tetris is the story of how the rights to the video i
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game tetris came to be - in the possession of nintendo. and it's really...almost a spy thriller. - only ten other people in the world have seen what you're about to see. it's called the game boy. package it with tetris. that was brand new industry and brand new stuff. for me, it was a symbol of future. the soviet union have worldwide rights. nothing gets out easily. we have barely idea about intellectual property, and none of... even software industry market didn't exist. alexey and a couple of buddies from work made the game ibm—compatible, which meant colour graphics, eight—bit music and floppy discs that people copied and shared for free. it spread like wildfire. basically at this time, tetris was like a small plant of future growing up through the layers of bureaucracy, of the grid. mr rogers, have you ever.
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negotiated with the soviets? we're here for tetris. what did he say? i don't speak russian. they really reproduced the atmosphere of the time. i'm going to make you a millionaire. i do not have right to receive money from my game. that's criminal. no. it is communism. the challenge for us was to make places like london look like soviet—era russia. thousands of reference images, everything from propaganda posters to vehicles to wardrobe. in my opinion, it feels so authentic. it's almost like we had a time machine to go back and shoot it because it feels that close to home, i think _ music: the final countdown by europe. everybody knows the words. good ideas have no borders. the atmosphere of the movie was very truthful. that was a very dark time, when the soviet union is going to collapse. the world is changing and soviet union will not be left behind. -
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but it also was the very helpful time. you could feel the spirit of the hope in the movie. the cavalry is coming. we don't have time. got to have a plan. alexey, alexey! i don't know about you, but i was cool as a cucumber as long as i only had four or five lines to complete at the bottom. after that, it got worse and worse, and i'd just completely lose it. yeah. at that point, i think my trackers would be telling me how stressed i was! good point. well, listen, that's it from us for this week. thanks for watching. we'll see you soon. bye— bye. there is a lot of fine weather to come across the uk in the week ahead — our good old friend high pressure
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building up from the azores. some areas may catch a few showers but those will be in the minority. in the sunshine, many will end up feeling rather warmer, actually, particularly in contrast to recent days. here is the high pressure stretching up from the azores. you can see it wobbles about day on day, and those changes in wind direction will have subtle effects on how the weather plays out. low pressure to the north occasionally trailing its weather fronts south, giving the increased chance of a shower in one oi’ two areas. here's how we end sunday afternoon in terms of our temperatures. 20—21 across many parts of england and wales, 16 for scotland and northern ireland, where we've had the tail end of a weather front around here through sunday daytime, and it will continue to slowly slip south overnight sunday. very little rain, though, in association with that. if anything, perhaps a greater chance of the odd punchier shower across east anglia thanks to something a little more unsettled out in the north sea. just 4 degrees for newcastle.
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clear skies, light winds underneath that ridge of high pressure taking into monday. here's the high on monday. as you can see, just trying to continue pushing east, sending those showers further east into the north sea. could be the odd shower around early on, though, across parts of east anglia and i think we'll keep a little more cloud for lincolnshire, east anglia and into the south—east through the day. the weather front makes its way south, weakening all the while, but what it mightjust do is enable a few showers to break out across northern england on monday afternoon, the odd punchier one maybe, most likely for high ground across the pennines. 20—21 in the sunshine again on monday, a little warmer in scotland and northern ireland because there will be more sunshine here. we are looking at a glorious week ahead for the chelsea flower show, a lot of fine weather to come, just a bit of a dip in temperatures on tuesday. that could be the case for many parts of england and wales. little bit of a change of wind direction, pulling in something a little cooler off the north sea, and the chance of a little more cloud around. instead of 20—21, we are looking at 18—19. scotland and northern
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ireland, 16—17. as the week plays out, high pressure stays with us so, aside from the risk of the odd shower across scotland and northern ireland courtesy of the tail end of some weather fronts, very little rain to speak of through the week ahead.
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live from london. this is bbc news ukraine's president zelensky rejects russia's claim that it is in control of the embattled city of bakhmut. translation: bakhmut is not occupied by russian federation as of today. - there are no two or three interpretations of those words. president biden says the us will not waver in its support for ukraine — as he announced a new package of military aid. the g7 reaffirmed our shared and unwavering... let me say it again, our shared and unwavering commitment to stand with the brave people of ukraine. calls for the uk home secretary suella braverman to be investigated — following claims she asked civil servants to help her avoid a speeding fine.

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