sam: we are finding it, we are testing it -- rachel: they are scanning me right now. sam: we are there as they build it. we are on a quest to show you the most cutting-edge companies on the brink of the future. tonight, we are enrolling in singularity university, where the world's brightest minds take on the world's toughest challenges. >> students learn that the accelerating pace of technological progress means anything is possible. >> this technology will allow us to actually bring back dinosaurs. austen: the melting pot of scientific genius is creating game changing companies. walter: this device is our vision of the emergency room in the future. announcer: "bloomberg brink."

♪ companies that break the mold, conventions, boundaries. and the future of technology, design, and industry. sam: rachel, along all of our "brink" journeys, we've seen tons of new companies. talked to all these different innovators. you actually had the chance to attend singularity university. that is a college that i can apply to? rachel: you can apply, but you are not about to graduate with a bachelor's degree. singularity is not an accredited university. it is cofounded by ray kurzweil. their goal is to take on the world's greatest problems. sam: how do they intend to do that? rachel: they try to teach their students to think about technological progress exponentially. what happens tomorrow is not just a little better, but infinitely more powerful.

>> there is a lot of change happening. it is all being led by the crazy technological breakthroughs that we're seeing. >> the world is changing more and more quickly. go back four years ago and people did not use social networks, wikis, blogs. the world will change even more in the next few years. >> this is where the work gets done. the real work. things that really will change the world. >> singularity university is a unique forum. we bring together leading minds and thinkers to educate, inspire, and really empower them to understand exponential technologies and how to apply those into solving humanity's biggest problems. >> how many people here feel like they have seen enough about how the world is moving? and they want to do something about it? >> absolutely. rachel: what do you think the chief innovation of singularity university is? ray: the unique idea about singularity university is the devotion to the idea of the exponential growth of

information technology. computers are more powerful per dollar than they were at when i was a student. a lot of people are pessimistic about the future, and i would be too if i thought the progress in these technologies was linear. 30 steps linearly gets you to 30. 30 steps exponentially gets you to a billion. seeing things from an exponential perspective, it really gives you a different idea of what problems are solvable. dan: we encourage our students and our community to come together to start companies and social and entrepreneurship programs to actually take technology to solve big problems. walter: this machine makes x-ray images with 1/10 the amount radiation and gives three-dimensional data as well. >> we're making a software platform to enable these drones to be controlled by a broad-based server. >> we have learned to make a commercial machine work in zero gravity. >> we took a bench-sized instrument and shrank it down to this device here.

austen:this technology will allow us to bring back dinosaurs and extinct species, and make life forms that help us to live in space and go to other planets. thanks for having me. i'm always happy to come back. i don't think our company would even exist without singularity univeristy. we make dna and we sell it. it is not that complicated. we just make it for a lot less and let everyone right -- write interesting dna programs. and eventually allow dna to become a consumer product. the way dna is made is the same way it has been made for 40 years, making one strand of dna at a time. and a lot of it has errors. you are making things one at a time, which is expensive. then, you have to fix the thing. all we're doing is, we're making dna affordable by making millions of strands at a time and filtering out errors.

rachel: you're the only place in the world that is laser printing dna. can you walk me through the process of how you do it? austen: we are. the laser printing is the final step. we have to have starting material in order to laser print it. this guy here is what makes our dna. this thing makes one million different strands. the way we make it is you have four different letters for dna. a, t, g, and c. if you want to look -- see the bottles. rachel: that is -- austen: there is a, t, g, c. rachel: you mix it all up and you get dna? austen: you flow it in. the dna strand comes out the other side. the problem is that the sequences have errors in them. so we have to clean it up, just like when you make anything. you have to be able to quality control. rachel: you print the dna here and it gets sorted where? austen: this machine has a microscope and camera that looks at the different sequences. it is important to look at the dna and see which is good and

which is bad. rachel: there are one million strands of dna right in that little tiny -- austen: there are one million different strands in the spot here. rachel: put that in context. what can you do with one million strands of good dna? austen: you can do a lot. you could make 100 fully synthetic microbes. these are bacteria that solve problems. that produce drugs, that produce things like oil to replace the petrol that is dug out of the ground. rachel: so there is really nothing that they cannot do. austen: if there is life, this can make it. now that we know what is good and what is bad, let's print out the good ones. rachel: this machine is the innovative piece of -- austen: this is the secret sauce. the dna laser printer. this machine will produce more dna in a single run than is produced in all of the machines in the world in the entire year. rachel: is this going to democratize this entire industry?

austen: anyone in the entire world will be able to be a genetic designer. rachel: what do you think the market is for the technology? austen: if people use print instead of copying from nature -- it is over $1 billion. rachel: wow. that is when it is in the hands of scientists. if you make this cheap, it will -- essentially, more people will flood the market. austen: i believe dna will become a consumer product. people will write code and start two-people companies with $50,000. they will build great businesses just by having access to low- cost dna. we will see people programming life forms at scale and doing it very quickly. we're absolutely, 100% reliant as a species on the development of this technology. life in the long term is not sustainable unless we can direct its future outcome. jason: one third of everything that has ever failed on the space station could be printed

with the printer we're designing right now. >> that will be big for the space station, but it will be vital for mars. ♪

sam: clearly, people are working on some cool stuff over at singularity. rachel: they are working on space. they are on a nasa campus. one company came out of singularity university and they are making 3-d printers that work in zero gravity. it seems pretty fitting that singularity university is located here at nasa ames research center. we are finding things left and right. hangar one covers eight acres, and apparently it is so big, it would have its own microclimate. sometimes, there would be fog on the ceiling. i saw some really cool looking planes.

it is pretty inspiring. why do you think the singularity is here at the nasa ames research center? >> nasa has a certain cachet. nasa invests a lot in looking at the origin of the universe and cosmology. this organization is used to asking big questions. they have large-scale impact. being next-door to that and having access to the scientists that are working on those questions is really valuable. rachel: we are on the second floor of building 20. we are about to talk to the guys at "made in space." what is the advantage of having 3-d printers in outer space? jason: it is very expensive to take things off the service of the planet and put it in space. if you are building something in space, it does not have to survive launch. everything we have ever built for space was built for launch. it has to survive tremendous vibration loads and g loads of the rocket. if you could manufacture in

space, you solve almost every problem the space station has been facing. more than 1/3 of everything that has ever failed can be printed on the printers right now. rachel: what kinds of things? jason: we did a study with some nasa folks. building tools. building clips. then we go so far as to look at how you can build small spacecraft. these are built on the ground today and launched on rockets and cost a lot of money. we think we can manufacture the structure in orbit, assemble it inside the shuttle, and toss it out the door. in 2011, we started testing 3-d printers in zero gravity. we have a contract with nasa. it lets us fly on a zero gravity airplane. rachel: have you done any of that flying? jason: it helps you to understand how to design something if you experience it yourself. rachel: tell me about the difference between a regular terrestrial 3-d printer and one

that is designed for space. jason: all these printers are designed inherently with gravity in mind. it holds things in place and lets things move correctly. when you take gravity out, things move just a little bit. rachel: they come apart. jason: we have come up with ways to hold things in place and allow them to only move where we want. rachel: why did you want to go to singularity? jason: i wanted to work with the smartest people i could surround myself with and learn how to create a viable company in the space industry, which is a hard thing to do. singularity was that place come to learn about new technology, talk about them with people, and figure out ways to solve problems. it would open the doors for other things to come. we are always able to talk to the right people and always have the right tools within at least a phone call's reach. we know every step away, we are making the right choices. rachel: when you hear nasa ames, you think it will be so technologically advanced. you come to this sort of an unassuming building. dan: it is not a movie set. what you are seeing in that laboratory when you see 3-d printing objects, that is not a movie artifact. that is real. that has the potential to change the world. the international space station has a tremendous number of spare parts because you cannot just dial up and get one tomorrow.

90% of the spare parts will never be used. they are just there in case something breaks. there is all this mass that has to be transported out of the atmosphere that will never be used, but you have to do it in order to be safe. instead, forget that. just take some goo, and when you need your spare part, you print that spare part. that will be big for space stations, but it's going to be vital for mars. rachel: just across the parking lot is a rundown mcdonald's. i ran into a friend of mine from nasa and he told me i had to check it out. hi. where am i? >> you are in mcmoon's. rachel: mcmoon's? ok. >> we have rescued these tapes. they are the original tapes from the 1960's, from the lunar orbiter project, which was nasa's first mission to map another planet. when we were going to the moon, apollo era, we had no idea what was going to happen when they landed.

rachel: what kind of technology were they using to take these photos? is this spy technology we are talking about? daniel: it was state-of-the-art spy technology. they got very close to the moon, 30 miles out. rachel: what kind of images did they create? this is the film you're talking about. daniel: this is not film. this is videotape. this machine right here, this is what recorded all these tapes. in 1955, this cost one third of $1 million in 1965. a house cost $10,000 to $15,000. a car would cost $1500 to $2000. nasa bought these for the lunar orbiter program because at that time it was the only recording medium that could possibly record data from the images. rachel: how many of these machines exist? daniel: there are no other machines left in the world. these are the last two functioning machines of its type. this is 35 mm.

it was also recorded at the same time. this data is of much higher quality. almost like having a black and white and a color television. this is their film-based reconstruction. you see how it is dark. rachel: it is kind of blurry. it is not the details. daniel: this is exactly the same image from our tapes. you can see you have higher dynamic range because you can see the shadows here. you can see the rocks much better, the tones are better. >> this is only about 12% of the resolution. this is a reduced -- rachel: this is only 12%? >> yes. the whole file size is going to be about 10 gigabytes. daniel: they could not do this then. they did not have the technology to accurately digitize this and

use this kind of detail and bring it out. we had to wait for 40 years for technology to catch up. >> we are making our vision of an emergency room in the future. what it would look like for consumers. rachel: can you do it to me? ok, it is scanning me right now. ♪

sam: with all this innovation, all this creativity going on at singularity, what is in it for them? rachel: it is interesting, because singularity used to be a nonprofit. now it is becoming a real incubator, taking a stake in the companies that are coming out of singularity. so they are truly invested in their success. ♪ >> we're going to introduce you to another side of su. and that is su labs. [applause] dan: su labs is the ecosystem where we help foster great ideas, foster small teams, find them mentorship, pull them

through entrepreneurial boot camp programming, and help find investors. we do what silicon valley does best. we bring in a collection of people with wine and beer who want to hear great ideas from some young entrepreneurs and get see if we can get them funded. rachel: they probably have deep pockets. bob: there is a mix. interestingly, from the beginning of singularity university, most of the great ideas that came out of programs were funded by other alumni who were angel investors in the community. this is where a community is very powerful. rachel: can you tell me what tonight is all about? >> we are demoing -- we are showcasing a number of our portfolio companies, just as an open environment for people in the class and other visitors and guests we have here. >> we do have investors coming here and saying, how can i invest and be a part of this? in the end, hopefully we just meet good people, make good connections. rachel: what is the value of

tonight? i mean, you have so many executives who could possibly invest. >> this has been invaluable, being able to mix and match people. you never know where a good idea is going to come from. rachel: you guys own a piece of some of the companies coming out of singularity? bob: right. we believe the service we provide, through the mentors, facilitators, finding funding through our entrepreneurship program -- we ask for a small equity token. we want to help them benefit the university long-term if they are super successful, share the wealth. rachel: share the wealth! bob: right. rachel: what they do predominantly here is develop technologies for other companies. you can see on this wall, this is all of their patents. apparently, there are three other walls that have more patents we are not seeing. tell me about triple ring technology's relationship with singularity. >> one of the things we like to do as a company is bridge

between universities, research labs, and companies that have good commercial channels. and singularity, we think it is a creative, great group, identifying those front end ideas. and often times, they are identifying them sooner than anyone else. rachel: what am i looking at? joe: the basic category of machines is called a cardiac fluoroscopy machine. rachel: okay. brian: the instrument is used to do video x-ray on a beating heart. rachel: what is innovating about this?

brian: this does a same job from an imaging point of view but does so with 1/10 the amount of radiation to the doctor in the room and less to the patient on the table. they have never had this before. this is an image of a beating heart. there is a pipe with iodine-aided dye and you fill up the blood vessels with that dye. it turns the blood vessels dark. rachel: that is what is happening right here? >> right. what they look for is the spot that narrows down. that is the spot that needs treatment. rachel: that is where it is clotting. >> the other interesting thing about it is, it gives us three-dimensional data, as well. we have been able to take the x-ray tube technology and adapt it to other applications, particularly in homeland security. rachel: tell me, what am i looking at right here? >> this is the skeleton of a baggage scanning system. you can imagine -- the hole is where your bag would slide through. on the conveyor belt, we built the piece at the tiptop. the idea is that this is an x- ray source. they analyze the data and are able to distinguish materials one from another, particularly liquid. they can tell the difference between water and wine on the one hand and bad stuff on the other. like explosives or oxidizers. rachel: so am i going to see this in an airport anytime soon? >> i believe you may see it on a demonstration basis next year. rachel: hello. what is going on here? tell me about this. walter: we are making this device, which is actually our vision of what an emergency room in the future, what it would look like for consumers. they would have a complete clinic of diagnostics in their hand.

even if they do not have health insurance, it is do-it-yourself healthcare. rachel: can you do it to me? walter: sure. it connects to your smartphone. you take the device in your left hand. rachel: it is so tiny. walter: yes. it will be even smaller. you have to put it on your temple. rachel: all right. it is scanning me right now. walter: it does it in 10 seconds. rachel: what role did singularity play in helping your company? walter: i followed the singularity university program in future math with the idea that i wanted to make a tricorder, you know, like they have in star trek. because, you go to someone and say, you are ok. rachel: you are fine. walter: you will live. rachel: this is making star trek a reality. walter: it is the first step.

i think there is now like 100 companies who altogether are making really great inventions. basically, you know, they always say google is making the global brain. rachel: right. walter: well, these 100 small companies and a lot of them here in silicon valley are making the global body. if i had not come to singularity, i would not have been convinced, i think, that i should set up the company here in silicon valley. >> a really nontraditional university. we are not attempting to have accreditation. we think the accreditation process in the future will change a lot. ray: most education will be online in the future. we have ambitious plans to play a key leadership role in making that happen. dan: what is the future of the university going to look like? we would like to think that it

will look a lot like what singularity university will look like. we want specialists in neuroscience and computer science to come out of the stanfords and harvards of the world and come to singularity university. and how do we apply those specialized skill sets in teams to solve problems? poverty, education, global health, these problems, they hit all of us regardless what country we are in. we can all come together to work on solving it. ray: whether or not our projects are the ones that change the world, i believe many of them will, some of them will not. we expect many successful businesses to emerge from this focus of learn by doing. one kid with a notebook computer started facebook. a couple of kids with a late-night dorm room challenge started google. the right idea can completely change the world. in fact, that is the only thing that can change the world. ♪

sam: we are finding it, we are testing it, we are there as they build it. we are on a quest to show you the most cutting-edge companies on the brink of the future. tonight, we visit the epicenter of the american robotics industry, boston. i will start at irobot, the pioneering company at the heart of it all. >> it has a very mars rover quality to it. rachel: i will meet baxter, whose goal is to bring american jobs back from overseas. sam: i will visit harvest automation, which is developing robots to do the back-breaking work no one wants to do. >> our goal is to revolutionize agriculture. >> "bloomberg brink."