>> we're on a quest to show you the most cutting edge companies on the brink of the future. tonight i'll try on electronics that measure concussion. >> i feel bad for the dummy. >> i'll meet a paralyzed man b ing again, thanks to exo exobio exobionics. >> and we'll check out a power bill of zero. >> this is zero electricity and zero gas.

>> companies, boundaries, and the future of technology, design, and industry. incorporated e some electronics into your fashion scheme recently. >> i'm going with more of a high tech wardrobe. i went to visit this company called mc-10 in boston. they're creating microchips so or l they can be worn on even inside our bodies, collecting data that will help us lead a healthier life. >> there's all kinds of data to life, s lead a healthier like don't eat french fries, hey'll do x, y, z to you, but that doesn't stop me from ordering you. > it might if you could see in realtime what the french fries were doing to your body as you

ate them. >> mc-10 on the brink of revolutionizing wearable electronics. >> fundamentally, i think mc-10 is going to change the way we think about our bodies. being able to naturally integrate electronics into our everyday lives, we'll be able to understand our own personal biology in ways we never understand before. mc-10's heading over to secret lab. it's not a secret lab at all actually. where er at harvard, they're building these wearable electronics that can actually monitor what's going on inside your body. >> all right. let's do it. >> welcome to the mc-10 clean room. >> thank you. this is really action he siting. i feel like i'm in a nasa facility. can you tell me exactly what is going on here. > if you think of the tremendous innovation and electronics space, things have gotten smaller, cheaper, and faster. they're still fundamentally boxy and rigid.

c-10 is about taking the electronics and allowing them to conform to humans. >> what are you making here? >> we manufacture and pattern here.lectronics themselves >> so microchips? >> microchips. so the process is really about putting down different layers. > it's like a cooking show almost. you start with your dough, and then you -- >> more or less. nt 're adding differe ingredients. you're removing some ingredients. >> you can see some of those patterns beginning to form. island like blocks and then spring like interconnects. and those are used to give the system threads. >> welcome to mc-10. >> thanks, man. to the take you background of our technology. this substrait limits what you can do with electronics. makes it s this and soft and bendable.

number two is -- >> can i touch it? >> sure you can. that's what we're about, touchable electronics. and the last idea -- >> okay. you to build intelligence between those pieces. you've got bendable, stretchable, entirely new form factors for electronics. i'd love to be able to show you real live working examples. >> i'd love to see them. >> let's go. >> i'll follow you. >> i'm going to ask you to wear this. this is an example of what the future of wearable sensing is going to look like. >> sure. >> biostamp is a proprietary piece of electronics that's just body and on the provides information about anything from your temperature, your brain activity, your heart rate, your muscle activity, and the combination of those pieces of information allow us to nderstand better what's going on with our own human physiology, make better decisions about our own health care, and hopefully lead healthier, longer lives. > kind of interesting the implications of the technology

that will collect all this data hat's going on in your body, which on the one hand, has real potential for changing all kinds of medicine and health care. i kind of wonder a little bit about my insurance company. they sort of discover that i've been scarfing like t-bones at the rate of three a week and decide to cancel my coverage. >> what makes your operation unique is the ability to transfer this into something that is flexible. be wearing, either on our skin or on our clothing, or erhaps even inside our own bodies. what does that mean for health care? what does it mean for patients or doctors? >> you want it to work in the next step is really to

finish developing the products for those targeted customers. e're doing

looked at. >> the idea is to get new data where you've never had data before.

>> the age of the bionic man is upon us. i visited exowe bionics, where i got to see a device that allows paralyzed people to walk. >> it's being used in rehab facilities, hospitals. does it have to be used there, or does it have wider applications? >> i actually spoke to somebody who wore the exosuit to the most important moment of their life. >> exobionics on the brink of overcoming paralysis. >> seeing the technology actually start in the lab and make it to the point where it's actually affecting somebody, it's pretty powerful. >> i never knew that bionic technology existed to the point where it was going to be used this soon in my life. >> can you tell me a little bit about the technology i'm looking at right now. >> this is exo. we like to think of it as a wearable robot. it's been designed to help people with spinal cord injuries actually stand up and walk. how it does that is we have a structure here that goes around. and we have these electric actuators on both the knees and the hip that help move the user. >> can you tell me about the genesis of the company. >> we actually started with the darpa grant. we were working at u.c. berkeley and spun the technology out of there. the main emphasis of the technology was to help soldiers. >> two weeks after i started working on the project, my brother, who was a navy s.e.a.l., had an injury that broke his neck. that planted the seed for spinal cord injury and what exo could do to help that population. that coupled with doctors seeing the technology, seeing what we were doing, they kept coming to us and asking us, can you guys help make him walk again? >> there any way that i can actually test out the technology? >> so we always start with a walker. it gives us the most stability. >> okay. we're the first thing going to have to do is stand up. the robot's going to do all of your legs.r you for so your knees and your hips are going to be taken care of.

two, three. whoa. wow, that's such a weird sensation. it feels like it weighs nothing. >> exactly. exo goes ight of the down and around the side of your body and on the ground. so you don't feel anything. i'm a spinal cord injury patient today and i have no ontrol over my lower legs, the exoskeleton is a great tool for helping them walk. they're walking. and as you progress through with the walker, then we can graduate to crutches. > it's a lot bigger, though, than i expected too. >> we like to think of this as he first 2k cell phone of the bionic industry. our goal, obviously, is to make it smaller as we progress and as we get to that personal device that doesn't need all the featureslity and other this one has for the rehab environment. we have to keep pushing the have.ology all the users they're counting on us to have the next device on the market at that they can take home with them. >> sot first time i was able to put on the exo and walk was a

surreal experience. i was concentrating so hard in he beginning on how to walk, and i never had to think about that before. i was in a 008, motorcycle accident. i was involved in a head-on ollision on a mountain road with the car. doctors say i have no chance of walking again. inng a police officer, being the military, i was always used to up and running. always going. o now i was relearning how to walk, and it was taking away from my moment of realizing how tall i was again, and that i was and my knees ng, were bending, and i had a heel strike. it was with the robot. >> so, mike, can you explain how this whole system works right here. >> absolutely. so i'm controlling this step, which is a push of this button. in the backpack, we have a computer and a cell phone. ur engineers can actually tap nto the cell phone and it

communicates how many steps, how much the robot has been walking, and all of these things. backpack is the computer. these are the batteries. hip motors and knee motors. on his right hand, we have our crutch interface. he actually can engage the walk cycle by just hitting his thumb on this button here. >> so i initiate the walk, and enthis my first step. >> how does it feel to be taking steps right now? >> it's amazing. yeah, it's slower than my windchill, but it's more gratifying. >> so i understand you were actually able to walk down the aisle and stand at your own wedding due to the exosuit? >> what was great about it is i doing tell anybody i was this. my wife knew, but all my guests didn't know. so when things were delayed, they're getting antsy, like what's going on? >> did he get cold feet? out of those ing doors, and there was just a roar. t's like maybe how a

professional football player feels or a basketball player and they go out on the field and the crowd is cheering. that's how i felt, like i was a superstar. >> we really have gone from a company doing research and development on science fiction tuff and built it to a manufacturing company. more manufacturing robots in california, and i think you really are seeing the birth of a bionic industry. >> what's coming up for you guys? of the device from spinal cord injuries to general gait therapy, stroke, a.l.s., m.s., other issues where you have trouble walking, we can have the exo help with that. the goal is to have the personal unit really to translate from rehab hospital to the home. >> i really want to get outside with this more than i already have. i want to be able to walk over uneven terrain, get back out to my roots outside. actually having that mobility device where people can go out and belly up to the bar with you and have a drink. > this home comes with a

guarantee of ten years of zero electricity and zero gas payments. total cost k at the of owning, operating, and maintaining the home, it's less than renting.

>> so if you're thinking about building a house, you naturally start to think about energy efficiency. in e's a new company down houston called houze, which stands for zero energy. they're trying to take home building and efficiency to a whole new level. >> when building a home, people are thinking about reducing their energy bills for years. name, what'sn their

so unique about houze? >> they're basically trying to look at the entire package, not just the construction of the home, but the energy systems within it. matt miller went down to houston to check it out. >> houze on the brink of commercializing the zero energy home. >> i believe that what we're doing will revolutionize the home building industry. our mission is to make every home a zero energy home in america. it's smart. make it affordable. masses.for the we're building zero energy homes right here in independence texas, and uston, using this as a model to duplicate across the united states. > i see that there are some houses that are in pretty bad shape around here. >> where we see challenge, we also see opportunity. this community is right for being revitalized, and we're taking that leadership role. why don't we go see the model

homes. fantastic. this home comes with a guarantee of ten years of zero electricity and zero gas payments. this is 100% natural gas powered homes. natural gas is the fuel stock for the power cell to make electricity. so we're actually producing more electricity than the home uses, a pretty significant amount. the way that we contribute to sell back to we the grid, and we pay for the natural gas. on.s is the producti this is how much energy or electricity that we're producing right now. 1.6 kilowatt hours of electricity, but we're 2.8 ing back to the grid ill the was kilowatted of electricity. we get paid to sell it back to the grid. >> so you can pass the savings consumer, and they get a better house at a lower price. >> that's correct. >> show me the way. >> come on in, matt. >> so the power cell is kind of the base of innovation off of which everything else runs? >> this is an always on piece of

equipment. it runs off of natural gas. generates oes is it all the electricity that the home needs. >> how does it work? >> it's a lot like your car in hat it's got a piston driven engine inside. the engine turns the generator, and when it does that, it's also providing all this heat that we're using in innovative ways. there's no reason to use electricity when we have all this heat available. >> you can do anything with heat and water. obviously, coffee makers, whirlpool, hot tub. > we want to partner with people that have products that can be manufactured consistent with our solution. so we'd love to have a line of appliances that work with the we're building these homes. one of the key pieces of equipment that we're going to hydronic loop. we call it the aqua drive. t's a closed loop system that circulates water around the home. o it gets hot by heat that

comes off of our power cell, which you saw earlier. house? it heat the are we talking about steam heat with the radiators similar to what my grandparents had? >> like that. but it's not steam, it's hot water. makes ges the game and technology like this much more interesting and useful. we're zero based thinking on everything piece by piece within the home. we realize that, to use better materials, to use better echnologies in the homes, we had to offset that somehow, and the only way to offset that is systems built approach. >> it's not one piece that makes it so interesting. it's everything together in the way it works. >> we're bringing everything together, every relationship, every technology that we're of, we use a special form created foam that they for us called houze foam. >> you guys manufacture their insulation basically? >> we do. we're one of the largest

manufacturers of spray foam for construction in north america. houze product specifically is the highest cutting edge technology available today. this is a great visual demonstration. it's hot air blowing into this lower cavity, and you can see where the spray foam is actually topping the air flow from coming through, where with these products, you can see the ifference of allowing for penetration. these gauges are measuring the temperatures inside of the boxes. spray foam does the eliminate the air infiltration, it actually reduces the temperature by 30 to 40 degrees. >> do you think i can get a chance at shooting the gun? >> we can make that happen. >> let's do it. >> so that was a blast, literally. one of the first things i thought about when i was reading about these homes is i want one. you're not going to get any

electric bills. you have designed them to have ample amount of space. is it going to be $500,000? $400,000? what are we talking about for the price? >> $225,000, $250,000 max. about 75% of the new homes sold in america are $250,000 or less. so we felt like, if we're going to go after the masses, we're going to have to achieve a $250,000 or less price point. we are doing this at an affordable price point in a iddle class neighborhood and making product and homes that regular people can live in and benefit from. when you look at the total cost of owning, operating, and maintaining the home, it is less than renting. you come back a year from now, see that this community has changed. we felt like we needed to build homes and demonstrate that these better er built homes, performance homes. we always had the benefit of

delivering products that would change any home. we are incubating new technologies that we're confident that manufacturers will want to take to market and help us mass produce. think in some sense houze is like a blueprint for what home builders are going to be doing from now on? >> it is a blueprint for what home builders will be doing in the future. we believe there's potential for every single home in america to be a net positive energy home.

>> from pier 3 in san francisco, welcome to the best of "bloomberg west," where we focus on innovation, technology, and the future of business. i'm emily chang. every weekend, we'll bring you the "best of west," the top interviews of the week with the power players in global technology and media. to our top story. sony's hacking nightmare. the fbi has confirmed north korea was behind the devastating