sam grobart: 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, i try on electronics that measure concussion. ow, i feel bad for the dummy. rachel crane: i will meet a paralyzed man who is walking again thanks to ekso-bionics. how does it feel to be taking steps right now? jason gieser: oh, it is amazing. sam: and we will check out a house that will cut your power bill to zero. david goswick: this home comes with a guarantee of 10 years of zero electricity and zero gas payments. >> "bloomberg brink." ♪ companies that break the mold, convention, boundaries. ♪ and the future of technology, design, and industry. ♪

rachel: i hear you have incorporated some electronics into your fashion scheme recently. sam: yeah, i am going with more of a high-tech wardrobe. i went to visit this company called mc10 up in boston. what they are doing is creating microchips so small they can be worn on or even inside our bodies. collecting all this data that we are generating all the time that will help us lead a healthier life. rachel: there is already all kinds of data out there that tells you how to lead a healthier life. like don't eat french fries. it will do x, y, and z to you. but that doesn't stop me from ordering them. sam: it might if you could see in real-time what those french fries were doing to your body as you ate them. >> mc10, on the brink of revolutionizing wearable electronics.

david icke: fundamentally, i think mc10 is going to change the way we think about our bodies. being able to naturally integrate electronics into our everyday lives, we will be able to understand our own personal physiology in ways that was never possible before. sam: we are now heading over to mc10's secret lab. it is not a secret lab at all, actually. it is over harvard. that is where they are building these wearable electronics that can monitor what is going on inside of your body. all right, let's do it. david: welcome to the mc10 clean room here at harvard. sam: thank you, this is really exciting -- i feel like i am in a nasa facility. can you tell me a little bit exactly what is going on here? david: if you think of the tremendous innovation in the electronics space, things have gotten smaller, cheaper, and faster. but they are still fundamentally boxy and rigid. what mc10 is about is taking electronics and allowing them to

conform to humans. sam: what are you making here? david: we manufacture and pattern the electronics themselves here. sam: microchips. david: microchips, yeah, and conductor chips. the semi-process is really about putting down different layers. sam: it is like a cooking show, almost. you start with your dough and then -- pizza. david: more or less. you are adding different ingredients, you are removing some ingredients. sam: can i touch that? can i pick that up? david: yeah, go ahead. you can see some patterns that are beginning to form. you can also see some island-like blocks, and then you can see spring-like interconnects at the side. those are used to give the system stretch. sam: hi, ben. ben schlatka: welcome to mc10. sam: thanks, man. ben: i can take you through some of the background of our technology. mc10 takes the intelligence out of this and makes it soft and bendable. think about -- sam: thin, not thin, so thin -- ben: that's right. step number two is -- sam: can i stretch it?

ben: sure you can. that's what we are about -- stretchable electronics. sam: thank you -- stretchy. ben: and the last one allows you to build intelligence between those pieces of thin silicon. you have got bendable, stretchable, you can think about new form factors for electronics. i would love to be able to show you some. sam: i would love to see them. i will follow you. ben: i will ask you to wear this. this is an example of what the future of wearable sensing will look like. if i can attach it to your wrist right here. biostamp is a piece of electronics that sits naturally on the body and provides information about anything from your temperature, your brain activity, your heart rate, your muscle activity. the combination of those pieces of information allow us to understand better what is going on with our own human physiology and make better decisions about our own health care and ultimately lead healthier, longer lives. sam: kind of interesting the implications of the technology that will collect all of this data that is going on in your body, which, on the one hand,

has a real potential for changing all kinds of medicine and healthcare. i kind of wonder a little bit about my insurance company, when they discover that i have been scarfing down t-bones at a rate of three a week and they decide to cancel my coverage. what makes your operation unique is this ability to transfer this into something that is stretchy, that is flexible. we may be wearing either on our skin or on our clothing, or perhaps even inside our bodies. what does that mean for healthcare? what does that mean for patients, for doctors? david: you want it to happen in the background without thinking about it. it has to be mindlessly simple. the idea of having continuous pickup of information is you can get access to healthcare only if and when you need it. sam: you are clearly in a development stage right now. david: sure. sam: tell me a little bit about the steps from here to mass-produced product. ben: clearly we have done some excellent prototyping. we have got the attention of some world-class partners. the next step is to finish developing the products for those targeted customers. we are doing some interventional medical devices with partners

like medtronic. on the consumer side, in sports and fitness there is a huge amount of focus on both optimizing performance but also reducing the risk of injury. our checklight product with reebok is a great first example. it is an impact indicator for contact sports. while it is not a diagnostic for a concussion, it acts as an extra set of eyes on the field. sam: i am looking forward to checking out their work next, in fact. can you show me what you have been working on? paul litchfield: yeah. first, sam, i would like to introduce you to isaiah. sam: can we see how this works? paul: yeah. sam: ow, i feel bad for the dummy. isaiah kacyvenski: you have a -- yellow stands for a moderate impact. sam: you may want to get that looked at. isaiah: exactly. the idea is to give you data where you never had data before. sam: isaiah, you played in the nfl. you said you sustained -- was it

seven concussions? isaiah: seven concussions, yeah. those were diagnosed. those were the ones i couldn't hide. sam: that is something about being an athlete. you're not necessarily motivated to say, "i have sustained a concussion." isaiah: there is an emotional investment of getting your place on the field, spending that time -- i want to play. sam: i don't want to be taken out of the game. isaiah: exactly. being able to change that behavior, keep your head out of impact in whatever sport you play, and that is the real powerful thing we have seen with the checklight. sam: we are looking in this case at a hockey set up, but obviously this has applications for other sports. isaiah: let me demonstrate a little blocking with you. sam: it is on. paul: has it triggered yet? oh, he's got the red. sam: oh, the red! ben: our vision is within five years from now, everyone is going to be able to take advantage of thin, conformable electronics in the form of the biostamp to fundamentally change how they play sports, to how they take care of their own health. giving people information about their own body is an empowering thing. we believe that consumers should have access to that information and should control that information for themselves.

jason: i never knew that bionic technology existed to a point where it was going to be used in my life. russ angold: you really are seeing the birth of a bionic industry. rachel: how does it feel to be taking steps right now? jason: oh, it is amazing. ♪ rachel crane: the age of the

bionic man is upon us. i visited ekso bionics, where i

got to see firsthand an ekso suit, which is a device that enables paralyzed people to walk. sam grobart: i imagine something like this is being used in hospitals and rehab facilities, hospitals -- does it have to stay there, or does it have wider applications? rachel: no, it does have wider applications. i spoke with somebody who wore the ekso suit to the most important moment of their life. >> ekso bionics -- on the brink of overcoming paralysis. russ angold: to see the technology start in a lab and make it to a point where it is affecting somebody -- it's pretty powerful. jason gieser: i never knew that bionic technology existed to the point where it would be used this soon in my life. rachel: can you tell me about the technology i'm looking at right now? i mean, this thing is walking on its own. russ: this is ekso -- we like to think of it as a wearable robot. it has 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 then we have these electric actuators on the knees and hips that help move the user. rachel: can you tell me about the genesis of the company? russ: sure. we started, working at uc

berkeley and spun the technology out of there. the main impetus of the technology back then was to help soldiers with load carriage. two weeks after i started working on the project, my brother, who is a navy s.e.a.l., had an injury and broke his neck. i got to see a spinal cord injury and what ekso could do to help that population. that coupled with doctors seeing what we were doing. they kept coming and asking us if we could help make a skeleton if it helps people walk again. rachel: is there any way that i could test out the technology? katherine strausser: we always start with a walker. it gives us the most stability. rachel: ok. katherine: the first thing we have to do is stand up. the robot will do all of the work for you for your legs. so your knees and your hips will be taken care of. 1, 2, 3. rachel: whoa!

wow, that is such a weird sensation. it feels like it weighs nothing. russ: exactly. all the weight of the ekso goes down around the side of your body all the way to the ground. you do not feel anything. if i am a spinal cord injury patient today, and i have completely no control on my lower legs, the ekso skeleton is a great tool for helping them walk through a specified gait pattern. you are walking. as you progress through with the walker, then we can graduate to crutches. rachel: it is a lot bigger than i expected, too. russ: we like to think of this as the first suitcase cell phone of the bionic industry. our goal is to make it smaller as we progress and as it gets personalized, it does not need all the other features that this has for the rehab environment. we have to keep pushing the technology for all of our users out there that are counting on us now to have that next device that is out on the market that they can take home with them. jason: the first time i was able to put on the ekso and walk was a very surreal experience. i was concentrating so hard in the beginning on how to walk.

i never had to think about that before. in october 2008, i was in a motorcycle accident. i was involved in a head-on collision on a mountain road with a car. the doctors said i had no chance of walking again. being a police officer, being in the military, i was always used to up and running, always going. 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 actually walking, that my knees were bending, and i had a heel strike. and it was with a robot. rachel: so, mike, can you explain how this whole system works right here? michael glover: absolutely. i am controlling each step with just a push of this button. in the backpack we have a computer and a cell phone. our engineers can actually tap into the cell phone, and it communicates how many steps, how much time the robot has been walking, and all these things.

the bulk of the backpack is a computer. these are the batteries. we have hip motors and knee motors. on his right hand, we have our crutch interface. so he can actually engage the walk cycle by just hitting his thumb on this button here. jason: so i initiate a walk. and then my first step. rachel: how does it feel to be taking steps right now? jason: oh, it is amazing. it is slower than my wheelchair, but it is more gratifying. rachel: i understand you were able to walk down the aisle and stand at your own wedding due to the ekso suit? jason: what was great about it was that i did not tell anybody i was doing this. my wife knew, but all my guests did not know. so when things were delayed, they were getting antsy -- rachel: did you get cold feet? jason: exactly. [laughs] i come walking out of those doors, and there was just a roar. [cheers and applause] it may be what a professional football player feels when they

go on the field and the crowd is cheering. that's how i felt, like i was a superstar. russ: we really have gone from a company that was doing research and development on science-fiction stuff, and built it to a manufacturing company. we are manufacturing robots in california. i think you really are seeing the birth of a bionic industry. rachel: what is coming up for you guys? russ: we are transitioning the device from spinal cord injuries to general gait therapy. that can include stroke, als, ms, other issues where you have trouble walking, we can have the ekso help with those issues. the goal always has been to have the personal unit really to translate from the rehab hospital to the home. jason: 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 where i want, you know, outside. russ: the dream is having that mobility device where people can go out and belly up to the bar with you and have a drink. david goswick: this home comes with a guarantee of 10 years of zero electricity and zero gas payments. when you look at the total cost of owning, operating, and maintaining the home, it is less than renting. ♪ sam grobart: so, rachel, if you

are thinking about building a house, you naturally start thinking about energy efficiency. there is a new company in houston called houze -- h.o.u.z.e. -- which stands for zero energy. they are trying to take home building and efficiency a whole new level. rachel crane: when building a home, people have been thinking about reducing their energy bill for years. other than their name, what is so unique about houze? sam: they are 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. david goswick: i believe that what we are doing will revolutionize the homebuilding industry. our mission is to make every home a zero-energy home in america. it is smart, it is stronger. make it affordable, make it for the masses. we are building zero-energy homes right here in independence heights, houston, texas. using this as a model to duplicate across the united states. matt miller: i see that there are some houses that are in pretty bad shape around here. david: where we see challenge, we also see opportunity. this community is ripe for being revitalized. we are taking that leadership role. matt: why don't we go see the model home? david: fantastic. this home comes with a guarantee of 10 years of zero electricity and zero gas payments.

these are 100% natural gas powered homes. natural gas is fuel stock for the power cells to make electricity. we are actually producing more electricity than the home uses by a pretty significant amount. the way that we contribute to zero energy is we sell back to the grid, and we pay for the natural gas. this is the production. this is how much energy or electricity that we are producing. right now, we are using 1.6 kilowatt hours of electricity, but we are sending back to the grid 2.8 kilowatts of electricity. matt: you get paid to do that, when you send energy back? david: we get paid to sell it back to the grid. matt: so you can pass the savings on to the consumer. they get a better house for a lower price. david: that is correct. matt: show me the way. dan bullock: all right. come on in, matt. matt: the power cell is kind of the basis innovation off of which everything else runs? dan: this is an always-on piece of equipment. it runs off of natural gas. so what this does is it

generates all the electricity that the home needs. matt: how does it work? dan: it is a lot like your car in that it has got a piston-driven engine inside. the engine turns a generator, and when it does that, it is also providing all of this heat that we are using in innovative ways. there is no reason to use electricity when we have all this heat available. matt: you could do anything where you heat water. coffee makers, whirlpool, hot tub. dan: we want to partner with people that have products that can be manufactured consistent with our solutions. we would love to have a line of appliances that work with the way we are building these homes. one of the key pieces of equipment that we are going to put in is this hydronic loop. we call it the aqua drive. it is a closed-loop system that circulates water around the home. it gets hot by heat that comes off of our power cell, which you saw earlier. matt: will it heat the house?

are we talking about steam heat with radiators like my grandparents used to have? dan: very similar to that, but it is not steam, it is hot water. the power cell really changes the game and makes technology like this much more interesting and useful. david: we zero base the thinking on everything, piece by piece, within the home. but we realized that to use better materials, to use better technologies in the homes, we had to offset that somehow. the only way to offset that is through a systems-built approach. matt: it is not one piece that makes it so interesting -- it is everything together in the way it works. david: we are bringing everything together. every relationship, every technology that we are aware of. we use a special formula spray foam from lapolla that they created for us called houze foam. matt: you guys manufacture their insulation basically? doug kramer: we do. we are one of the largest manufacturers of spray foam for construction in north america. the houze product specifically

is the highest cutting-edge technology available today. this is a great visual demonstration. it is hot air blowing in this lower cavity, and you can see where the spray foam is stopping the airflow from coming through. where with these products, you can see the difference of the allowance of air penetration. these gauges are measuring the temperatures inside of the boxes. not only does the spray foam eliminate the air infiltration, it also reduces the temperature by 30 to 40 degrees. matt: do you think i can get a chance at shooting the gun? >> we can make that happen. matt: let's do it. ♪ matt: that was a blast. literally. one of the first things i thought about when i was reading about these homes was i want one. you are not going to get any electric bills, you have designed them to have an ample amount of space. is it going to be $500,000,

$400,000 -- what are we talking about for the price? david: $225,000. $250,000 max. about 75% of the new homes sold in america are $250,000 or less. we felt like, if we were going to go after the masses, we are going to have to achieve that $250,000 or less price point. dan: we are doing this at an affordable price point in a middle-class neighborhood and making product and homes that regular people can live in and benefit from. david: when you look at the total cost of owning, operating, and maintaining the home, it is less than renting. we come back a year from now, you will see that this community has changed. we felt like we needed to build homes and demonstrate that these are better built homes, better performance homes. we always had the vision of delivering products that would change any home. we are incubating new technologies that we are confident that manufacturers will want to take to market and help us mass produce. matt: do you think in some sense houze is a blueprint for what homebuilders are going to be doing from now on?

david: it is a blueprint for what homebuilders will be doing in the future. we believe that there is potential for every single home in america to be a net-positive energy home. ♪ >> turning ideas into action,

the clinton global initiative attracts some of the world's most influential people, leaders in business, politics, and philanthropy. the goal -- find solutions to economic problems and establish commitments that improve lives. on this bloomberg television special, we take you to the cgi america meeting in denver, colorado, where a discussion of the nation's growing wealth gap featured the housing and urban development secretary julian castro. secretary castro: we want to address that affordable housing component so that folks can live comfortably in a decent, safe place. >> a panel of visionaries