Startup says rooms on wheels are the future of self-driving cars (Tomorrow Daily 270)

[MUSIC] Greetings citizens of the internet. Welcome to Tomorrow Daily the best geek talk show in the known universe. I'm Ashley Esqueda and these are our short episodes. We're going to start our long episode next Thursday once a week. It's going to be really exciting You're gonna like it. Jeff Cannata is going to co-host with me, you'll see him tomorrow. Let's hit the headlines. [MUSIC] We have seen a lot of concept ideas for self driving cars but what if the car of the future, Look nothing like the cars we know and love today. Meet next. Next is a Silicon Valley startup with a pretty radical idea for a self-driving car in the future, a clear box on four wheels. The idea here is that going forward Part into the future, if we commit to self driving cars we'll probably want something a little more like a moving office and less like a traditional automobile. That's why you can fully stand up inside a next transport or sit down and work on your laptop. The concept video even shows the cars linking up while they're on the go making a sort of train of elevators on wheels. Next plans in active suspension system that would give riders the feeling fo not riding on a road at all. Aluminum and air bags to reinforce the bottom half of the cars in the event of an accident. And seat belts that would keep riders safe while commuting. Obviously, this is a super, super, super ambitious concept. And there are a lot of research and development hurdles to overcome before a working prototype can even be built by Next's 2020 goal. But it's still weird and fun to think about. Would you ride around in a Next transport? I totally would. We gotta hook them up with the taxi company that's installing Mario Kart in its cabs. Okay, everybody. It's time to get fancy. Never in my life did I think I would get my nails done inside of a vending machine, but here we are. Nail art is pretty popular these days with intricate hand painted designs, nail wraps, and other sparkly happenings getting done on our fingers, but soon you'll be able to skip the time at the nail salon by using fingernails to go. Fingernails to Go is from [UNKNOWN] Technology and it's a pretty simple concept. Walk up to the booth, pick out a design, stick hand into machine, hope machine doesn't cut your fingers off, and leave with a pretty manicure with your design of choice. Here's the futuristic part though. Not only can a customer pick an existing design, They can also upload photos via USB stick to the machine and have their own images or design painted in detail right on their fingers with a thermal ink jet printer and specially formulated ink. A camera scans your nails to get an exact size and shape for each one so matter how long or short your nails are Or what you have on top of them, it can get the job done. [UNKNOWN] says they'll be announcing which retailers will get the kiosks first, but I'm going to go ahead and guess that some Tokyo mall will have this available on day one. Also, this is where I usually could say The Simpsons did it first, but we'll just have to settle for the make-up gun. Professor Logan. Close your eyes Marge. [NOISE] And now you're ready for a night on the town. The makeup gun. Clip never gets old. Hey, tesla owners if you've been abusing your auto pilot, that's gonna change. Ever since tesla rolled our auto pilot to its model s and model x users, we've seen some pretty crazy near misses from people throwing caution to the wind and letting auto pilot attempt to navigate without the driver's hands on the Steering wheel. Obviously, Tesla is not a huge fan of seeing a ton of hey, my Tesla tried to kill me videos up on YouTube. So, Elon Musk announced the company plans additional constraints around when people could turn on autopilot. There weren't any specific details on what constraints those would be, but it's Very possible and likely it could take you from other cars with lane assist technology. So for example if the driver's hands aren't on the steering wheel for more than a couple of seconds, autopilot would disengage. So I guess if you're trying to make Make your Tesla do bad stuff while you're driving it on the road? Elon Musk wants you to stop that. He's bopping you with a news paper. Hey Rick and Morty fans. You want to check out this Mod Squad? [MUSIC] Dave Dalton is a maker in Kansas City, Missouri and he's also a huge Rick and Morty fan. So, he got to work and created Rick's awesome portal gun. It doesn't just shoot out a static image like some baby toy though. The portal is fully animated when activated. So cool. There's some real precision involved here. He installed a tiny projector inside the gun that runs the animation continuously on a loop so you don't have to see a projector menu every time you activate it. Plus he had to install a small fiber optic to know when the loop Starts and ends, so the animation could be complete when activated. He also does a pretty good Rick impersonation, so nice work, Dave. All right, guys, it's time for our phonetographer of the day. [MUSIC] [SOUND] Our phonetographer of the day today is gonna be a little bit meta. This is from Amy. She took this with her iPhone 5C. She wrote us an email, and she says. My technology classes watch tomorrow daily at the beginning of every class. My students always have interesting lunch table discussions because of you. I snapped this with my iPhone 5C while my class was watching your amazing show last week. You have my permission to use this in the show, ps love the new co-host, and of course Ashley is awesome. That's super sweet of you Amy and we are officially inviting you to say hi to us via Skype call to your class. Any time, you can cash in that magic coupon, cuz it's really cool. That's awesome that you're the show to your students. Hi students. Hi Amy's students. Nice to see you. If you guys want to submit your phonetography please do. Send it to tomorrow@cnet.com. We love hearing from you. Send us your picture, what device you took it on, give us permission to use it in the show, and tell us a little story about it too. If you want to find us online on social media, you can find us @TomrorowDaily on Facebook and twitter and, of course, you can find me @AshleyEsqueda, Jeff @JeffCannata with two ns and one t and producer Logan @LoganMoy all on twitter. That's it for today's show. We'll be back tomorrow with a brand new docket of weird science facts meeting science fiction. But until then, be a good human. We'll see you guys next time. Bye. [MUSIC]