Tomorrow Daily 036: Augmented reality social media, a cooperative robot swarm, and more

A new app lets you create augmented reality messages for your friends. But I don't understand. I've been seeing messages in the sky for years. Harvard researchers made a swarm of self assembling kilo bots, no not killer bots, kilo bots. And some guy in the UK set up a third person racetrack with a drone and some virtual reality goggles. Suck it, Ridge Racer, this is real life. That's all I've got. Oh, that was scary. Yeah. This is Tomorrow Daily. [MUSIC] Greeting citizens of the internet, welcome to Tomorrow Daily, the best tech talk show in the known universe. I"m your host, Ashley Esqueda. Joining me once again Rich DeMuro, back in the studio. See, it used to be, joining me as always. I know. Now, now we can't do that any more. And once again. Once again. People here, work, work travel is hard. Yeah. Well it's fun, but it's hard. Yeah. Yeah. Well it's hard on me. It's hard on you, yeah on me. And our fans. They're like where's Rich? They get upset. I like that, though. It's nice. It's warm and cuddly Oh yes, you are welcomed back. for me when you guys ask - - when the one or two of you are like where's Rich? Wait, what happened? There are threes of people asking about your whereabouts. But it's good to be back and it's always fun to sit here next to you, so. It's a good time. So with that being said. Let's hit the headlines. [MUSIC] I also just read this is the first show back that we've had all three of us. Cuz producer Logan went to, he was out of town while you were here. Eh, yeah. And so, this is the first time the whole, the team, the team is back together again. The dream team is back. In like a week. You know it's one of these things week and a half it's the summer. Everyone yeah like you look at anywhere and it's like people are taking off, like look it's true at your own job. Like everyone's, everyone's vacationing. True well we have to before the before the onslaught of. Winter holidays product. That slide into holiday season. Yep. All the big announcements coming up. So let's talk about this new kind of social media application. It's an app. It's really neat. It's called Traces, and if you guys haven't heard of this, I think this could be really cool. Mm-hm. So what this is, this is a social app that is. created by a company called Ripple Ink. And it leaves an augmented reality message that can be a combination of text, music, images, video. You can even add things like tickets or vouchers. Oo that's cool. So let's say I was like, Rich, meet - - you and your wife come meet me and the husband at the movies. And then I would basically ping you with the app. I would say oh leave tickets for two at the movie theater for you and your wife. And then it would ping you and say oh here's the address of where you need to go to get your message. Here's who it's from. It's from Ashley. Okay. And when you get there you hold up your phone and you see like a little bubble. And then I try to grab it. And that's how you know that it's there. See, here's the picture. Then I try to grab it. And, like, it won't. No way, I can't get it. I'm hoping that,' cuz we haven't really seen the app in action, specifically, yet. Like, the, the video that Traces has up is just a, kind of an animated demo of how it works. But I, I'm really hoping you pop it. And then, all these great things explode out. It's, like, Like, movie tickets. Like, here's a text message, to make it really exciting. But I think this is really neat because first of all they're putting a limit on how many people you can send a trace to at once. Ok. Five max. Five. So one message just to five people? Yes. OK, I like that. I think this sounds really cool I mean this whole idea of leaving like virtual messages in the real word. Yeah. I think I've heard of several other apps like trying to do something similar. I think it is definitely the future. Like why would you not want this? You put, and here's the other thing, there's so many uses for this, we haven't even thought of like all the cool ways. Think about if you put a lost dog sign, you know what I mean, like in your neighborhood. If everyone was using this app, it's almost like a virtual world. It's kind of a different use, but advertisers would love to use this. If you kind of go to a location, do like a virtual treasure hunt. Limited to 5. Well, right now. For the first 5 people. But they said they wanted to keep it social. Because when it's for everybody, it's less social. And they said that the creators of this app, really interestingly, say that. Social media is not very social. Mm-hm. It's everybody all at once. And so it's very difficult to sort of pick out from the noise what you wanna hear. Yes, it's social until the app wants to make a little money. Well, yeah, very true. That's, that's, come on that's the thing. It's like Twitter and all these things. Sponsored locations. Look at how much twitter has evolved to like a comedy advertiser. Like that promoted tweet that keeps popping up at the top of feed. Like that wasn't natural. That wasn't there when Twitter started. The closest thing I can think of this is like if you look at the app like layer or like Monocle on Yelp, where you kind of like hold your phone up and it shows the little restaurant ratings. Yeah, or like city view on a. [INAUDIBLE] device. Yeah it's something like that, but I think this one is almost like Twitter works. Like you have to kind of follow each other, or have each other's contact info or both be using the app and be linked somehow to send a trace, which is kinda nice. Seems like a lot of work. Like it seems like a lot of work to get a message. I think it'd be fun to leave, like if I left you a little note in that corner when I was gone. Yeah. Like you look at it. I'm like have a good show. And I'd be like so angry I'd smash my phone in half. It would go And it was, yeah it'd be an explosion. But unfortunately this is actually not available right now C'mon for most places. It is available in the UK, it's in beta. What? I gotta go all the way to UK to get a message? Yeah, I'm sorry, you gotta go all the way to London. Okay, twist my arm. Twist your arm, I know, it's terrible. $7,000 message. Yeah, so you see you gotta fly there, stay in a hotel, get your message and then fly home. Maybe I will send my army of robotic bots. I, okay, I love this idea and the video was so cool. But you have to explain this to me. Okay. Why do we need swarms of robot armies? I'm still not sure why. I mean I'm sure there's a million reasons but here's what happened. So Harvard researchers built a swarm of robots, 1,024 of them to be exact. The name, Kilobot. Kilobot, but they're tiny little bots. But they're totally harmless. They're little bots, $14 about. They move around by vibrating their legs. And they communicate with their fellow robots via infrared. And what they do is they demonstrated various ways these things can work together. One of them is like forming a shape. They kind of like talk to each other. And it's just such a neat concept that like you have a swarm of robots and of course it's one of these things where they're, kind of like a proof of concept like hey let's show these things Look at 'em go. in action. And they were, they made like little shapes together. Yes. And the question is what can you do with this. So of course you think of like little robot armies. The, the tiniest most adorable robot army. It's like if you just saw this like, coming after you, you'd just like step on them. I'd be like, aw. Aw. And then I'd just hug them all and then they would smash me. Well, they'd get under your skin first. Yeah. Well, you don't want to give them wings. I think that's the, I think really that's like. Your craft's on the line Game over. Science, yeah, that's a bad idea. Mm. But I, but that is really neat and it reminds me of in nature I see like, flocks of, like if you see like a group of fish. Mm-hm. Mm-hm. A school of fish that sort of all move together. I kind of like that, and I think that's really neat. So I don't know. I think that there could be applications for this. I mean any, let's say for example, if you combine this tech with the squishable robots, the ones that they were saying could help in the event of a natural disaster. Yeah. I mean a whole group of these robots could go and form, like, a block that would help hold up a building, concrete. Or, or, yeah, I mean there's so many different ways, I mean this is the cool thing about this type of technology is, like. Once you create it, then you come up with ideas of how to use it. Right. Like let's say these things were like, really strong and they could like sl, get underneath something and then like kinda like lift up an inch? Lift it, yeah. And then maybe it can help people underneath cars. I mean, who knows. You just don't know what you can do with this kind of thing. But the reality is right now, they're just showing that like hey. We created a thousand robots- - We can do this. --that can talk to each other, and communicate, and coordinate. That's awesome. That's pretty cool. I really like that. And then lastly for our headlines, I, this is just really fun. I'm, there's, there's nothing to be said beyond this other than, this is awesome. Yeah. So, Tom Scott is a British TV personality and he wondered what it would be like to drive a real car as if you were in a video game seeing you drive from a third person perspective. Okay. So, you know, like. [CROSSTALK] Racing games. Even as your first person, which is like you're in the car, which I've always never, I've never liked that. And then, third person you're seated back of the car. So here is the view. So they're in the car and they have, the drivers have these video goggles on. And that is connected to the camera on that drone right there. And so they are following the car along an obstacle course, so you have to drive through that little space right there, and then you have to go around that chain-link fence, around this corner, through these cones, and then straight to the finish line. And it's a lot tougher than it looks I imagine. Much tougher! So they show at one point what they're looking at inside. That's not the actual view they get even though it's like Oli's view. No, that's the, that's the drone view. Now. So the actual view looks way more 8-bit. It kind of looks like an old Game Boy. Yeah. And it's weird cause this is one of those examples of, like, your brain knows how to do a lot of stuff. Right. But when it's presented with, like, hold on, wait, the things that I'm doing right now are not sort of coordinating. Yeah. There's a tiny little delay too in the time. That's what it looks like right there. So you can see how low-res it is. So that chain-link fence looks. Almost invisible, you can barely see it until you get right up on it I would imagine and yeah so they had to drive around, they did OK actually, surprisingly. Yeah. I thought they would hit stuff. I feel like that, your brain would sort of adapt like this is the beauty of our human brain is that it adapts like when it notices that like it's a little bit delayed An adjustment. you'll start, yeah there's an adjustment period. So I can see like in Los Vegas one of the go cart facilities offering this as like a fun. you know where I want to see it? Demolition Derby. I think it would be so awesome, do an entire third person demolition derby where you have the driver seeing their point of view from someone else controlling a drone from over the back of them. Or they could get the air dog. Hm? And so now, with Air Dog, cuz it follows you and has that follow mode, you could have goggles that can show you what you're seeing, during the demolition derby. There's so many things you can do. That's like combining two technologies. I totally love it. I'm really, that's exciting to me. That's really exciting to me. But it's just a really fun thing. I think that's really neat. Kinda reminds me, like I said, Ridge Racer or Gran Tourismo. Like, And I like wonder if someday, like Rich said, they might offer us. Some. It's a video game it's just one, it's like one of those things those guys said they brought together this idea in like 30 days. Yes. They had the idea in the bar and they're like you know, let's see if we can do this. Hey yeah, let's just do it. Who cares? Let's try it out. So I love it. It's awesome. I love people who say why not. And Why not? Why not? Let's take a break, why not? Why not, let's take a break? So yeah, let's take a quick 30 second break. We'll be back with a round of sink or swim of a very interesting. Sleeping aids for you maybe, maybe not cleaning we'll see. And we need your feedback and of course our phone [UNKNOWN] for the day. So click away Tomorrow Daily. [MUSIC] Welcome back to Tomorrow Daily. [MUSIC] We, we have finished the headlines portion of the show. And now, we have to move into sink or swim. [MUSIC] I still, I, that's, like, I think, maybe, my favorite graphic. I think that's why we linger on it for so long. [LAUGH] I think so, I think so. [LAUGH] Like. So Rick you suggested this to me so I, I need you to explain what what Smart Betting is cuz I've seen that robot that makes your for you but this is not that. Oh, there's a robot that makes it. Well I was, I was, caught in or I guess lured in by the fact that they said, never make your bed again or the bed that makes itself. I like that concept. Okay so did I. But listen on. Okay. So what it is, is when you get into it. They're saying you know nobody wants to make their bed. The company is smart bedding. And you know they say it's, it's really tough to make your bed when you get out. You know I never made my bed until I met my wife and then she's like you know. The stickler for making a bed. see, my husband and I just leave it. see, that's what I'm talking about, that's cool, that's what your bed looks like. [CROSSTALK] We're just gonna mess it up anyway. And she also likes to tuck in the sheets which I, like don't really care, I don't need any of that stuff. I'm just like, when I'm sleeping, I just want something over me, I don't care what it does during the day. See, I don't like anything tucked in, I'm the weirdo at hotels- Right, well, I don't like tucked in. You pull it out yes. [INAUDIBLE] all the way around so I can like squish it all I am the worst. I don't want a tucked in sheet. I don't want to get into an envelope. I want to sleep in a bed. Thank you yes. That is what I'm saying. I think we're in the minority with that. I get, no I feel like, I feel like you guys tell us if we're in the minority but I don't feel like we are. Like, I, when I get in, I don't wanna, like, go, Yeah, I don't wanna. You're, like, you're like. I agree with you. I don't wanna feel like I just slide into an envelope. R, exac, thank you. So anyway. So smart bedding, what it does, there's. It's basically, the trick of the whole thing is that the duvet, the top cover. Okay. Attaches to the top sheet, with, little clips. Like little snaps. Okay, so that's what the snaps are. And so basically they're saying they're always perfectly aligned. You're top sheet and your duvet cover, or your comforter, whatever you want to call it. And that's basically it. The bed doesn't automatically, magically, make itself. Anything like that. It literally just snaps together. And once you snap it, you only have to basically put one thing on and that's it. I'm super disappointed. I think it's very misleading. So disappointed by this. Also. Doesn't that defeat the purpose of having a sheet? Like I know, it's like if you're hot at night and you just throw the comforter off of you, you just want the sheet to cover you like, you can't do that. You have to like unzip, No, well you have to unsnap. You have sit there in the middle of the night and unsnap the, your half of the bed, like that's ridiculous. No, and that's going to wake you up if you have to sit there and like unsnap. You're saying you're already. I'm out. I'm out with this. There's no way because, number one. You have to buy like two sets of this. Number two, the toughest part about a bed making is making the bed. Getting that fitted sheet on the bed. I don't care. Look at it. A comforter you just throw over the top. That's the easiest part of making the bed. When you get to that part. You're done. [CROSSTALK] At that point, you're done. But like the me the hard part is getting that stupid [CROSSTALK] perfect in all four corners without messing it all up. And with no creases like, I don't know where my wife grew up but seriously I don't know what her sticklerness is. Does she know how to fold a fitted sheet? Yeah she probably does. Oh wow that I don't know. That's talent. See that's the thing, I never, when I was in college like A you change your sheets like once in forever. Once a year? Yeah. You just change them when you actually move out of your dorm. It's like, oh, I should probably change these. But it's just funny the things you learn as you get older. You know. But it's just to me it's just not that important. No. Like I would rather have the different pieces. You know, not to mention they're selling all these different things, the sham, the pillow cases, the duvet. $200 for a king sized bed. Just go to Ikea pick up a bed set for $50. Yeah. Never make your bed again. Liar. I'm sorry, you can't, you cannot start with a bold statement like that. The, at, at, I think there's a world. Tiniest asterisk next to never make your bed again and it says if you never wash your sheets Yeah. for the rest of your life. Thank you. Because you're gonna have to take those sheets off at some point and Yeah. you will be the one remaking your bed. So I say hack it. I'm out. Sorry. Sink. Oh no. Sorry. All the way to the bottom. I was doing hack it, hack it or back it. It's gonna sink. Sink. Sink, sink, sink. The sharks. Yeah. Into the tank. It's shark, it's shark food. That's what we're saying. Something that is not shark food, your user feedback. Yesterday you weren't here, but we talked about a temporary tattoo that has a bio battery in it that would store energy, and potentially, in the future,. Power your wearables. Wow. Ok. It's kind of cool. Sounds awesome. So we asked everybody to use the hashtag #TDsweattat. Ewe. I knew you would, I knew you would hate that. And tell us what their tattoo would be of and what it would power. I like how you save the gross stuff for when I'm not here. I do, I do. I try to save the gross stuff for when you're not here. So we asked everybody to send in those tweets, and, and we got some good ones. I just love the idea of people with, like, giant back pieces, because they wanna power, like, a phone. Yeah. So Gridfix Engage wrote #TDsweattat Fullmetal Alchemist tatoo of the flame Alchemist would be cool. Since they symbolize energy tattoos. Wow, it's like two in one. That's meta. Meta it is. I feel like that's super meta. And then Tony wrote to us and said. #tdsweattat. Full back tat of the Aztec God of War and it would power my Oculus Rift. So that's some other guy with that tattoo. But it would be that, that tattoo would be a temporary battery tattoo. [CROSSTALK] On, on Tony. Very cool. [CROSSTALK] Powered by sweat. [CROSSTALK] Yeah, if you, if you wanna power an Oculus Rift, then yeah you need. [CROSSTALK] It's gonna, it's gonna have to be big. [CROSSTALK] You gotta have a lot. You might have to get a full body tattoo if you want to power anything like a tv. I'm pretty sure I saw a guy with a full body tattoo yesterday. Yeah he had it like full, it was like going up his like face like to here. Oh, well say, you know people like that too, they run out of real estate. My brother is law is fully tatted. Really? The whole thing. Sometimes you run out of canvas. I think maybe not his face. But up to here. But yeah I was going to say like people get neck tattoos and stuff. So your hashtag today which I'm a big fan of is #TDroboswarm. Hm-mm. And we want to know exactly how many robots would be in your swarm and what would they help you do? If you could control them. Nicest guy by the way, my brother in law. Your brother in You saw him in an alley with all those tattoos and he's a big guy. You'd be scared. You'd be super scared. Nicest guys. See I like, I'm good with, I'm good with tattoos, I have some, so I Yeah your, you have five. No, I have three Three. I only have three. But one of em's kind of big, so. Kinda big, it's not like a back piece. That would, would it, what would it power, like an iPhone we talking, or an iPad? No, it'd probably power like a pebble. Like a pebble watch. That doesn't take much power. Well yeah That lasts like a week on like, a sip. That would be, but it's not like a back piece though. To power like, it's not like a back piece. It's, it's, you know, it's like this big. I think you could power more. Okay. So maybe like, okay it'd power like an iPod. What about your 3DS? I flash. Or your 2DS? Oh my 3DS. Okay, would power my 3DS. There you go. Good. So that's our hashtag of the day. And so now it is time as always to check out our phonetographer of the day. [MUSIC] So you missed a couple of really good pictures. Pictures. Oh, I see them all. You said I know... I see them all in e-mail. . . on the show, they always look... I know. And then people write in, they say thank you for featuring. I know, they get so excited, it's my favorite. So Richard C. wrote to us, and he says I also wanted to send this in. I forgot I took it. As I was going through my photos. How did you forget [UNKNOWN] you text this. It was at a river in North Georgia and just was going for a jog. Photography where a jogging trail is a cool point to take a picture and this is my favorite. Love it. Look at how nice that is! That's with a Galaxy S5! And it's cool because the Galaxy S5, being water resistant, if you would have dropped it in, no problem it's cool as long as you get that USB port. Would have been alright, yeah. [INAUDIBLE] closed up? Loved, yep. I actually ripped that part off of my S5. Well, I mean. 'Cause it got annoying to, like, pop it off every time. Doors, Doors for connectors just never work. Like, they, they make me annoyed. Yeah, I agree. I, I don't know why were are continuing to do that. That's not, I don't like [UNKNOWN]. I'm surprised, yeah, it's [UNKNOWN]. That was a bold move. Because, like. Every night, it's, like pop. Although, you know, people. Some people, I guess the water resistance thing would be. But, the one time I used it in the water, it was awesome. Like, I took. Right. The best video of, like, me going under the water with my son. It was awesome. See, yeah, see. Okay, then. That makes sense. I just, I don't find myself in water often, to where I need a phone in the water. Oh. Yeah. But. It's one less thing to worry about. That is very true. But really nice picture- In the future, all phones shall be waterproof. We don't have to worry about it. All phones. But really nice picture [INAUDIBLE]. Delightful photo. If you out there watching would like to submit a phonetographer picture to be considered for being on the show you can email us at tomorrow@cnet.com. And of course you can always send in your hashtag of the day to our email address if you don't use Twitter. But if you do, you can find us on social media. We are everywhere. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TOMORROWDAILY on all three of those. And if you're on Google Plus,. We are Tomorrow Daily TV and on Twitter you can find us individually. I'm Rich [UNKNOWN] on Twitter. Rich on tech on Facebook. Some of you have already found me there. That's very like internet [UNKNOWN]. They'll hunt you down. Wow. And and you can find me online. I'm at Ashley [UNKNOWN]. Pretty much. All over the internet unless I couldn't get that username. So, just look around for me, you'll find me. Ashley. Ashley Ashkaza, Twitter, Facebook, all the things. But that's it for Tomorrow Daily for this week. We will be back on Monday with a brand new. A new show, it will be a brand new week with brand new technology. Be good humans and we will see you then. Bye. [MUSIC]