Tomorrow Daily 032: Hacking the human body, 3D-printed birds, robo-bees, and more

A student in London has developed a way to hack into another person's body. Let's hope that student's name isn't Lex Luthor. A Dutch company is using 3D printed birds to keep real birds away from scary situations. Like the ticket lines at Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. And a lab at Harvard has developed a robo bee. I don't want to know what that honey is like. Gross. It's Tomorrow Daily [MUSIC] Greetings citizens of the internet. Welcome to Tomorrow Daily, the greatest tech talk show in the known universe. I'm your host Ashley Esqueda and joining me today. Is tech aluminary Michael Hobbs. That's weird. Hello. Mike's gonna be filling in for Rich here and there. Yep, I've Ashley brought me out of retirement. I did. I unretired you. Unhyper sleeped me. [LAUGH] Mike is the, our Director at EGM Media. He does all kind of awesome layouts. So, if you're into, into magazine layout design that's, he's the guy. [INAUDIBLE] okay. Also, we are avid Mario Carters. We have Oh. Long lasting rivalry that we talk about later in the show, but before that we have to talk about this headlines. [MUSIC] So I mentioned the ability to hack the human body. Yes. This is very interesting. There is a student named Yifa Cai, and he is a student in London, and has found a way to sort of hack another person's body using the Kinect and the Occulus Rift. Okay. Are you, is this something you're, would you like to hack another person? I don't think so. You're not, you're not sure? No OK. Well, here's how it works. So here's the video. You can see as this girl is moving her muscles, that guy's muscle is also moving. So she's kinda hacking him. That. Like he's being hacked. That looks upsetting. I think it would be a Does it vibrate? What makes your arm move? So there are simulators via wires that are attached to your muscles and so this, as it says in the video a connect sensor will track. The hacker's muscles, and then, it will stimulate the other person's muscles in the same way. To make it move? Right. And then they brought in the occultist to say, okay, so we have the hacker, is basically wearing an occultist rift. Okay. And they are being monitored by Kinect... Right. And then there's another person with a double wide angle lens camera, attached to or rather like their head space. Right. 'Kay, so they maybe have a helmet or they have some kind of glasses or anything like that. Right. So then they,as they do things, the person in the Oculus Rift can see them doing those things so experience what they're experiencing. Well they can see themselves from the outside. Yeah [CROSSTALK] if they look over they can see. Themselves on the oculus rift as the other person. And the person wearing the camera classes can move, when they move, no when the person wearing the oculus rift move, it makes the person with the camera move, so that when you look through the oculus rift at the person. Yeah. That you're hacking, their hand will move like yours just did. Yeah, the article was saying that the girl picked up her hand in front of her face like this. But it was a man's hand. Oh. So it's a guy with the two cameras on. And she had man hands. She had man hands Oh okay. Just like in Seinfeld. Oh man. So that must be, yeah. So she could crack a lobster open. Oh. And then touch Jerry's face. Yeah. Just all over. God, that's terrible. But yeah, it's a really interesting implications. I really think virtual reality is kinda the new, consumer-wise this is the new frontier. Oh for sure. This is going to, I mean in the next few years I think explode into entertainment and video games. Storytelling and then weird stuff like this where you're just going to feel like your in somebody else's body Do you think there's gonna be a start up at some point where you have to like pay, I mentioned this the other day, like have a start up where you'd be able to like pay somebody to walk around and give you an experience via virtual reality Well sure Like you put on your [INAUDIBLE] Yeah virtual tourism Like you could buy, yeah, or you could buy like weird. Experiences. Live experiences, pre recorded experiences, like, strange days. Yeah. Kind of scenarios happening>> Wonder if you could, like, I wonder at any point if they would do a movie like that. Where you have to wear your [UNKNOWN] and then. Oh, I'm sure there will be [CROSSTALK] First person. Be a big deal. Yeah. For VR. So, I can't wait for that. Oculus Rift, Morpheus. > I'm really excited. All that stuff, and strange things like this. Which what are the uses for this are what? To hack somebody's body for just for a sense of empathy? Well. To see through someone else's eyes? I think that and also they were saying the possibility of retraining somebody with an injury and rehabilitation. Okay. To, to remove in a specific way. They would be able to sort of do that. So that was also really, that was kind of a really interesting facet of it. And I guess if you could refine this so that you had fine motor control, you could even do things, operate on someone. Yeah. From far away. Oh, man. Wearing this. You could have infinite skill, I guess, is one of the things that was pointed out. It would be like The Matrix, I know kung fu. But not, you wouldn't really know kung fu. It would be somebody else. It would just be, but in your body moving in unnatural ways. Yeah. [UNKNOWN] It's really exciting. Against your will. So, you're into RC, you like to fly RC planes. That's true. I've loved RC since I was a kid, planes, helicopters, cars, all that stuff, so. So we saw this story, and I, I, would. I'm dying to talk about it with you because I find it. Super quiet. I found this very interesting. As we mentioned in the intro, a Dutch company is making robotic birds. Using 3-D printed parts Ok, so they're, theyre not making like finches. No, they're making, they're making birds of prey. Ok. That are radio controlled to herd bird populations in the sky. So places like airports, waste management where birds are a nuisance or, or dangerous. Mm-hm. Fly into engines. You know, air bird strikes so they have these rad, radio controlled birds of prey which will scare the birds away. Oh, [INAUDIBLE] Keep them away from bad situations, you know, like at the airports. So, just out of curiosity, like, I don't, I guess I don't understand, I mean I get birds at airports, Sure. cuz that's super dangerous, Right, flying into engines. Like in terms of, like a landfill, well, aside from the whole, like, oh, what, you know, like you have to cut up the rings on your [CROSSTALK] them to get, cuz they get trapped, but they can carry disease. Oh, okay. And, so that's why you don't want them around landfills. And also in agriculture, they might eat valuable, valuable crops. Oh. So, and you don't want to have, this is a great alternative here to the video instead of having to cull them by shooting them or just using loud noises, this is a much more sophisticated way, a natural sort of way. They keep birds away. Now that's, so we're watching right on the screen, that's not a, that is not a real bird, up as high in the sky, but it looks like a real bird. Exactly, I mean we've seen toying even hobby grade, radio controlled birds before, but never quite this realistic. So this one, what is, what is this made, what is this made to look like? This one's made to look like a peregrine falcon, which is a bird of prey, so it scares the other birds, they think it's real. Predators. Man, look at them there, all those birds are just flying away they're like nope. And I guess these, these [INAUDIBLE] have been very successful at 75 percent reduction, Wow. in wild birds. So, how fast can that bird go? Cuz peregrine falcons are generally very fast. Well they can dive very quickly. Yeah. And this one can reach 80 miles per hour. How fast is that in, how fast is that for people who us Americans who don't use metric. Or in the Uk, that's like 50 some odd miles an hour. That's pretty fast. So, quite fast and it can flap as you saw or. Just soar with its wings out and just glide, I dig that. Like a real bird. That's pretty cool. So that's quite cool. They're working on it now. Right now they're controlled by a person and I think the goal is to make them eventually more autonomous so they can do this on their own using GPS. They can just send them out and. Just send them out. Sort of control them via like a computer. Exactly. That's kinda cool. So in 15 to 20 years it'll be just in time for the birds reboot. Yeah just in time. Or we could have a big giant crowd of evil, RC controlled birds. Evil robot birds. Evil robot birds attacking Tippy Hendron's granddaughter. Perfect. [LAUGH] Cast it now. Robirds by the way. Robirds. They call them robirds. Why not robobirds. >I- Too hard to say? I just think they're just trying to be interesting. Robobirds? I like robobirds. These are robirds. Robirds. Robirds. And so 10 to 15 years, we may also be experiencing this next story. Robert Wood at Harvard, they've been working on a lot of sort of small, flying. Insect like robot. Right. And they've now come up with a robotic bee, as if bees weren't scary enough for some people. Think bees are scary? Well, I think cause they, well if you're allergic they're terrifying. If you're allergic they're very frightening. Yeah, but. So this guy has created a robot bee that is the size of a quarter. And we have video of it and it's really remarkable. This is so remarkable. This is a tiny, tiny insect-scale robot. Biologically inspired as they say, it's a controlled flight robot. It can hover like a hummingbird like you're seeing now, it can also steer by flapping each wing independently. If you can see, it's got two wings, it almost looks a little bit like a dragonfly on the top. And it can flap those wings 120 times a second. Yeah, really cute Really Fast, but the problem is with these is that they're still tethered you can see there's a little wire coming out of the bottom. It's still tethered. Yeah, at this point, they're, as with like our phones, the battery technology isn't quite good enough so they can just self-contain everything without tether. It needs a tether for power. Yeah, it needs that tether for power which kind of, that kind of sucks. Because the bees are dying off. There's this whole thing that's happening globally called Colony Collapse Disorder. Colony Collapse. CCD. And we're seeing a lot of bees just, hives dying off for, scientists can't figure out why. And they're hoping that at some point in the future bees would be able to help bees cross-pollinate, the way that, originally, the original population of bees has done in the past. Yeah, right. I think that's their main impetus now, and what they're getting most of the funding for is this robo-bee concept. But bene, they used this for this once they get rid of the tether, which they think they'll do very soon. Make a slightly bigger version, it'll have a battery and a guidance system on board, but then, you know, you could have swarms of these things doing, but like, surveillance. Yeah, or repairs. I think that was one of the things they mentioned like Well what are they gonna repair? Small repairs, like cracks in buildings and stuff. Oh interesting, yeah. Like over time, they'd be able to detect. [INAUDIBLE] certain things and like fix. RIght. Which is kind of whacked. I don't, I don't know if I'm excited about, like, the city, like, walking into Los Angeles and then just seeing, like, instead of a swarm of birds, like, see a swarm of robot birds and then some robot bees. That, that's gonna be terrific cuz they're gonna be doing something good. Oh, they're gonna be helping out. They're gonna be helping out, checking what, maybe doing climate what is it climate monitoring. Okay. All these little swarms running around, you know, sending information back. So I don't know. The sky's the limit [CROSSTALK] Literally. Once. That's funny. Once they, perfect this and get them self contained. Yeah, that's pretty cool, they said ten to fifteen years. Again, just like with the birds, so in, in ten, twenty years, the skies just going to be full of, flying machines helping us out, hopefully. Hopefully helping us out, and not shooting, yeah not shooting us down. On that note we are gonna take a quick 30 second break. We will be right back with with a gauntlet that is gonna be thrown down. We have a, we have a throw down challenge. Mike and I have a long standing rivalry. And we will also be back with your user feedback. And of course your Phonetographer of the day. So stick around, Tomorrow Daily. [MUSIC] Welcome back to Tomorrow Daily. we. We're back from break, and, you know, Rich is out. Is he? [LAUGH] He is unfortunately not here today. Oh, interesting. But, you know, that gives me the chance to do stuff with you that I can't really do with Rich. Oh, uh-oh. Mike and I have a long-running Mario Kart rivalry. Mm, it's storied. His is very storied rivalries. I mean, among the greatest rivalries of all time. I mean. . I mean, Frasier and Ollie Oh I mean, it's up there. I mean, this game came out how long ago? I cu-like, couple months ago. Oh, that's a long time. It's been a really long time. Just a lifetime rivalry Actually, hundred's of. Of races. Hun, it has been hundred of races. Terrible. So we thought it would be really fun if every time Mike comes on the show, we would do a Mario Kart race, and we would recap it for you, because Mario Kart TV does this great thing, where you can set, you can give it parameters and then it will spit out a little recap video for you. Yes. So, we raced this morning, and here's, here's the race. Grumble Volcano. There's me. I'm Rosalina in the sport bike, and there's, Mike. See, there's me. It looks just like you. It's so weird. [CROSSTALK] I got my horses going. Yeah. You gotta, did a little 360. I did a stunt. So, this is, Grumble Volcanos kind of a difficult track. Oh, it is. [INAUDIBLE] layer track. Crazy. One of the crazier ones. Here's me shooting you. They're I am. I just got hit.>>I shot you I past you, I laughed.>>You did you laughed in my my face I got my banana but it wont protect me. You got a blue shell and then i hit you and kept moving and then I got hit by this at beginning of the third lap.>> But I thought i would catch up but i was too far back because of the shell>>Nope. The close call was more with the Morton. Morton. There it is I came in first. Good luck on that. I came in third, had we continued, I would have probably Come in, second. Continued to come in third, and second, and then you would have won. Again, but, not next time. Not next time. So we're going to keep going. so I am now ahead, one to zero in the Mario Kart Mike versus Ashley throw down. For now. For now. But, one zero. For now I'm winning and it feels really good. But at least I shot you once. That is true. You did get me. And then you got blue shelled. And then I got shot by Koopa. Like there was, it was a good race. So that's our, that's our, that's gonna be our throw down. We're gonna do a little, a little small race like that every time Mike comes on the show. Or at least, just once a week, if Mike has to come on the show more than once a week. No more losing. No, I, well. No more losing. You say that, but. I say that and I will execute that. Okay, I believe you. That being said. Hm. Let's you know I think we should jump back into our user feedback. [MUSIC] Yes? Up down? Both. No? Both. Yesterday we asked you guys to tweet us with #TDStarMap,. Oh. And tell us where you would like Google Maps to go next, because now we can go tour Mars on Google Maps. Great. It's so cool. Great. I love it. I thought you would like the second Tweet of this, but our first tweet today is from Jared on Twitter and he says #TDStarMaps. Hey, I'm not sure if this possible, but I'd like to see a map for Gallifrey. I've heard it's beautiful. Now, maybe you can fill me in. Where's that? That, I believe, if I'm not mistaken, because I consider myself to be a Whovian. Is that in space? That is Doctor Who's home planet. Oh. I'm. Out of the loop on Doctor Who. You are out of the loop on Doctor Who. You have to catch up. I just became uncool. You just turned into Rich. Alright. Sorry. You're out of it. You've got to catch up. So that's the Who place. Yep. It's a very beautiful planet where Doctor Who comes from, the Planet of Galifrey. And, and now, now, Whovians who have seen all the things, Day of the Doctor, all that stuff, there is a possibility we may see more of Galifrey [INAUDIBLE] maybe Oh? Is it gonna be in the new series? It might be. I'll have to see. I'm, I think I'm gonna view this new series with, Pete Capaldi is it? Yeah, Pete Capaldi. [CROSSTALK] I'm gonna check that out. He's gonna be fantastic, I think. Gonna be interesting, I think. Yeah. Cuz the only time I watched Doctor Who was the old one on PBS. The really old. The old, what's his name, with the scarf. Oh, Tom Baker. Tom Baker, Yeah Yes that's me as a kid. That was you as a kid? weird Yeah You have not changed Thank you. You're welcome. And our second tweet comes from Andrew, and he says, #TDStarMaps Google Maps should have a virtual tour of planet PNF-404 from Pikmin 3, LOL. Great. And you know all about that planet. Great choice. Great choice. Oh, and you can experience it now in the game. Can you? Well, you can play the game. Well, yeah, you can play Pikmin 3. But, [UNKNOWN] You can't, but you can't go to Google maps and like just see the whole place. No, this is very true. And I'm hoping that, you know, in the future eventually Google Maps, like, for Mars. [UNKNOWN] is gonna compatible with, you know, virtual reality. I'm sure it will be. You'll be able to walk around in these places; I can't wait for that. I don't know, I wonder, do you think Facebook would ever make a deal with Google to do that? [CROSSTALK] Sony's got the Morpheus, so they might be more open to it. They might be more open, yeah. [CROSSTALK]. Or maybe Google makes their own headset. Cardboard. Maybe it's cardboard. And all you need to do is just stick a Samsung phone in there. Fits right there and you put it right in your face. I mean, the rift uses just a straight Samsung note panel, so it might not be that hard for them to make their own. Yeah. That's true. And I can't wait to go to [UNKNOWN] Oh, man, that's going to be so great. Look around. Not die. And not die. Not have my eyeballs bulge out. [LAUGH] As we know happens when you're exposed to the Mars atmosphere. Yes that's true. You don't want that. But yeah, so I'm, I'm really excited about that, I think that would be awesome. Swell. I want, yeah, swell, indeed, swell. But today's hashtag of the day is #tdrobopets. Mm-hm. And we want you guys to tell us what robotic pet you would want, if it could be any animal, miniaturized. Me. So what would you want? So for me I would want a little tiny robot giraffe. Oh, that's cool. Or a little, like, tiny elephant like I think is in the book version of Jurassic Park. Yeah. With the little genetic engineered tiny elephant. A little miniature elephant. Yep. What would you name it? I don't know. I'd probably, I'd, for a giraffe,. Probably, like, Karen. Karen. [LAUGH] Yup, Probably, like, Fred, or, William. There's my go to. Yeah. Pet names. Hey, you. Also. Thing. Totally acceptable. Yeah. Yeah. It's fine. Reggie. But let's us know what robo pet you would like, and and what you would name it. I think we should have you. [CROSSTALK] the name. You should name your robo pet. You gotta give it a good name. A good strong name. And now it is time for our phonetographer of the day. [MUSIC] Our phonetographer today, I thought today was really lovely. This is from Collid and he writes to us and says, It's a picture taken 2 months ago in my trip across Germany. The place is called Garmisch. It, I took it using my iPhone 5. My name is Khalid. Look at that. Beautiful, verdant. I mean, look, look at the rays. The rays, the sunlight streaming. It's really stunning. I went to Germany last year for E Fun, I didn't see anything like this. I was in Berlin though. I saw some really amazing sights. Don't get me wrong, Germany is gorgeous, but wow, that is a nice picture. Kinda reminds me of the Machu Picchu. Oh yeah a little bit with the, with the green and it's like very, there's a lot of mountains. This is, this is really beautiful. So Khalid good job. Well done. Yeah. Well done. Well done. I'm, continually impressed, by by all of the pictures. [INAUDIBLE] photographers? Yeah. Yes. Cuz you watch the show all the time. Of course. Yeah, and but they're always good. Always impressive that's why you pick them. Yeah. Thankfully we get a nice selection of them. Ya know. Yeah we get a really good selection of them. Often beautiful nature scenes. Yeah. Yeah a lot of really good landscapes, but then we had the guy send in a picture of a lizard. I like that. Oh the lizard. Yeah Yeah that was a funny one. Good one. Blizzard. That was a good one. He looked live. He still is, I'm sure, somewhere, giving advice to somebody. Yep. I hope he's not dead. If you want to send in your phonetography you can email us. You can just email away, tomorrow@cnet.com. That's our email address. No attachments please, cuz I won't open them. But please send us a link to your picture on the internet and we will check it out. And then also if you wanna catch up on social media, if you want to tweet at us, if you want to email us, you can catch us on Facebook, Instagram, everywhere on the internet. It's Tomorrow Daily. Except. Except on Google +. [UNKNOWN] TV on Google+. Okay. And you can find us there. And then where can people find you on, on the Internet? Well, I'm not everywhere. No. I'm on the Twitter machine. You're very elusive except for Twitter. I'm aloof. Aloof. OK. I'm on the Twitter machine. I'm Valis23. Valis23 Should I spell that out? No, well we gave, we had a lower third earlier, but for people who are listening just spell it out. V as in victory OK A as in you Ashley L as in land bar OK I as in iPhone, S as in Superman. Yeah, good. And the mystical number 23. All right. Fantastic. [LAUGH] That's great. There you go. But I don't tweet often, I don't tweet well. I'm embarrassed by everything I say on Twitter. He's actually fairly amusing and usually we, it's tough getting him to fight, so. I will tweet when she says something to me otherwise I'm fairly silent. Fairly silent. It's like Penn and Teller, that's our, that's our friendship. But I'll start tweeting more and if I get some toys, I'll tweet that. [CROSSTALK] Yeah, you just got we'll have to talk about that next week. Yeah, I just got the little parent jumping sumo, mini drone. That's gonna be exciting. So I'll test it out today, and chase my cat around, see how that goes. Take some video of that so we can see your cat freak out. So you can see my cat's **** from down below. That would be amazing. [CROSSTALK] I think everybody would enjoy the show. That is it for Tomorrow Daily, everybody. Be good humans and we will see you next week. Bye. [MUSIC]