Tomorrow Daily 087: Baseball-playing bots, Uber and Spotify partner, a bionic bar, and more

On today's show Japan is trying to build a robot that can play baseball. Well trying. Do or, well do or do not. Okay. Spotify and Uber are collaborating to make your ride so musical. And speaking of music a music video is using scientific techniques to bring sound to life. Mm. What. Very exciting stuff. Lot of sound. It's Tomorrow Daily. [MUSIC] Greetings citizens of the internet. Welcome to Tomorrow Daily, the best geek talk show in the known universe. I'm your host Ashley Esqueda. Joining me as always, punching the sky on a Monday, Khail anonymous. You look like Link today. Thank you, this is my. That, I wasn't, I didn't want to tell you. This is my hero's tunic. Thank you very much. Yeah, you've been playing too much Mario Cart. [CROSSTALK] That is true. I'm gonna ride the master cycle this weekend, very exciting. That Hyrule castle track is so much fun. They changed all the coins into rupees. I know I love it so much. Sorry, all right, we have other things to talk about. We do so let's do the headlines. Okay, baseball robots. Mm-hm. Once again, teaching robots things is either really cool or really scary. This, I would say, falls on the really cool side of the spectrum. Yeah, sounds cool. This is awesome. This is the work of the Ishikawa Watanabe Laboratory at the University of Tokyo. For the last several years, apparently, a team of researchers at this university have been working on perfecting a range of separate robots. So they've been using multiple robots, here they are, there's one throwing. So each one of them can perform a separate task, this one's tracking, you can see the cameras watching the ball, they've got their eye on the ball. And the end goal of this is combining them into a single humanoid robot that can play baseball. So there it is batting. Oh just one robot. Yeah. Look at this one's batting. So there's lots of different kinds of robots. So they have the throwing robot which we saw that uses fingers similar to how humans use them to throw a ball with precision. Apparently they can throw into a strike zone with 90% accuracy. [LAUGH] Oh my god. So then there's the tracking system. It uses pan and tilt active to achieve a wide field of view. There's high speed actuators in there. A high speed visual feedback to track a target moving at a high velocity. This is the running robot. The batting robot you just saw uses high speed stereo vision to track the ball and hit it anywhere in the strike zone. And then, there, this is a bipedal running robot that uses high speed visual feedback to note the position of the robot and adjust its balance in real time. And then there's. Catching robot. It controls a it, they have this hand that can open and close 10 times a second. Wow. And it measures the ball's height flight using high speed tracking. The same tracking cameras and everything. So this is one group working on, on all these different. Robotics. Yes, yeah, they're working on all these different aspects of playing baseball and then they're hoping someday that they'll be able to, just like Captain Planet or a Power Ranger. Yeah. Like put all of them together and create Megazord. [LAUGH] Shoot. That plays baseball. So it's pretty cool. And be like perfect at baseball. It would be really good. I mean, it would be really, really good at it. The thing is though, some people would argue that would be very boring to watch an all baseball all-robot baseball game, because you would have to program the games, you would kind of know what the outcome would be, so with humans, there's margin for error, things that could go wrong, with robot baseball, if they really perfect it, it'd be kind of boring. Yeah, but then we add, like, obstacles, and deadly things, like- Traps. Fire, and chainsaws, and stuff like that. Yeah, okay. I like it. It's like battle-bots, but with baseball. Baseball battle-bots, I like it. No, but I thought of that, and I just thought it was. So so cool and, and I would just love the idea of, you know, some day we'll just flip on the TV and it's just like, aw, you know. Yeah. It's the World Series of robot baseball. Yeah. You know a whole alternate world. The Babe Ruth robot. Yeah. Babe Ruth Bot? I like it. That's pretty cool, that was pretty cool. Pretty neat. I thought it was really neat. Nice. So, okay, I heard about this partnership, I don't know all about it, and I wanna know if it's available here, so tell me about Uber and Spotify. So I don't know if you listening or viewing have used Uber, but Uber is a is like a, instead of a cab, you use your phone and you call up. And a, basically a Town Car comes and picks you up and takes you to your destination. Yeah. While they've partnered, Uber has partnered with Spotify, which is a music service that you can use on your phone or what not. Streaming music action, okay. Streaming must action. And it, now there is a button inside the Uber app that lets you pick a playlist. To listen inside your Uber ride. So this girl is requesting an Uber. Mm-hm. Okay. She's requesting an Uber and she's also picking a playlist, so now when she gets in the Uber it will play the playlist inside of her Uber so she can dance straight from her house into her car. Aw, they're jamming in his house. Yeah, I didn't know this. Here comes the Uber. Yep. Okay, she's leaving. That's a very slim door. Yep, there's the town car. There's, this, ca, I'm sorry, but can I just say I've never had an Uber driver get out of their car smiling and waiting for me, [CROSSTALK] they just are like Well, and be handsome, too. Yeah. Like, [INAUDIBLE] is like a debonair guy. It's like Rick Fox. Right, right. Totally ridiculous. That's cool! Yeah, you get to pick any playlist you want. The driver gets to control the. Loudness, of course. Well that's good. But this is, we didn't expect this partnership to come along. So it's, it's pretty interesting. It is a little weird. Yeah, it's, it's weird but it's kind of cool. If your party, if like you and your friends are going out to a party and you need a ride so that you can be safe, why not? Gotta get your party mixes on. Yeah, you can put your LMFAO on. It's launching in only tens... [LAUGH] [LAUGH] It's launching in Tennessee. What you don't [UNKNOWN]? It's you know what the sad thing is? It's okay tell me about the launch cities, and then I'll tell you about the sad thing. The launching is on London, New York City, Nashville, Mex, Mexico City, San Francisco,. Singapore, Stockholm, Sydney, and Toronto. These are all... Oh. The major cities. International cosmopolitan cities. Yep. It's, well, it's, you know, they're already pretty big. So [CROSSTALK] We should've taken [UNKNOWN] right after this. So then, what, here's the, here's the issue. You do have to have a Spotify account. Which is like $9 a month. Okay [CROSSTALK] it's premium right? Spotify premium okay. Yeah, premium Spotify. And you, you know, have to order Uber. You have to take an Uber somewhere. Yeah so, so there you go. Also they're gonna have a live event on Friday, Oh, okay. This Friday where you can win a chance to get a ride with some artists that if you synch up and use this. Oh, okay. Artists like Andrew W. K., Jake Owen, and Diplo one of my favorite musicians. I was going to say two out of three of those artists I may have never heard of. Which one? But, I won't say. But I, two out of three of those artist, you'll have to just guess. Can you say. Can you, okay. You know, the sad thing for me. Two out of three? Okay go ahead. Is that, the sad thing for me is that I could just imagine like, I feel really bad for some Uber drivers who are going to get like, a bachelorette party. And it's gonna be two o'clock in the morning and these girls are gonna be like woo, and they're gonna have, they're gonna just play over and over and over again Turned Down for What. Oh yeah? Like it's just gonna be on repeat and this poor Uber driver is gonna be like. Kill me I think that this, this is like a response to though the fact that they pretty much when they get in the car. Look cuz they're, they're wanting a tip. Right. They're wanting a good review or whatever. And so this is kind of to like, up that, like, likelihood. Well haven't you ever take an Uber and like, the radio, like when somebody's playing something and you're like, I hate this song. Right. And you wish you could change it. They try, they try to assume what you listen to. Yeah. They're like, aw, you know what, kids love rock. Maybe the guess by your picture. So they have like your figures, Oh. Like your profiles or whatever. Maybe they try it again. So you would be, I'm guessing, Taylor Swift? Well, Taylor Swift's not available on Spotify, remember? Oh! She took all her music off of it, so there's no shaking off for me, thank you very much. I knew you were trouble when you walked in! Oh, boy. Celebrity love story, hashtag of the day. Which is T. D. Uber spot. And because of this live event on Friday happening, I, the question is, what playlist or song would you want to hear when an uber driver came to pick you up using this service and what famous musician would you want to be in the car as a ride along. Okay, any, any. Any play-, even a song. Or album, whatever. Mm-kay. Taylor Swift. Oh, boy. [LAUGH] And the Music to Listen to While Taylor's Away playlist. Oh, perfect. I like that. That's good. I wonder if she, she'd probably really like that. I'm throwing, I'm throwing. No, but if I was to give you. It's a little shady. If I was to give you a non-Taylor Swift a-, answer. Jack Black. Okay. Cuz that would be fun to [CROSSTALK] That would be amazing. And my fall out three playlist. Oh I like it. And I'm wearing my fall out shirt today anyway so. I was surprised you didn't say like Tenacious D that you were playing today. No you don't want to listen to listen to our own music. Yeah all right so what else, what do you got, what do you want? I would want to ride in a car, being inspired recently by Sonic Highways I'd ride in a car with Dave Grohl. Oh, okay. Cuz he just seems really cool and funny and like that you could have a lot of fun with him depending on where you're riding and in LA car rides take a really long time. And then I think I woulda wanna listen to, I'd wanna, you know what because it was Dave Grohl, I'd wanna listen to like Britney Spears, circa like early 2000. To throw him off his game? When she was hot and had the snake. No, because I feel like we would totally like. Fan, like fangirl out a little bit and be like, and like dance and go crazy to it. I feel like Dave Grhol is a teenaged girl on the inside. Yeah. In his heart of hearts I fell like maybe he's just a little bit of a teenage girl. Good choice. And I love that about him. But I feel like we could have a lot of fun listening to old Britney Spears so we could sing a long. I'd love to make Taylor Swift listen to Spotify, wolf. That would be good. That would be pretty amazing. I would show that. All right. So that's a question for you guys basically. Yeah. So who would you ride in a car with? And- And what would you have, what would you listen to? What would you force them to listen to? Yeah. What would you make them listen to? So, you know, what would you just wanna listen to? All right. So our first story is also music based. This is really, really awesome. You're gonna have to check this out. We're gonna show you this video. If you are listening to the show only, you have to watch this part of the video. I would say this is, like, the must-watch. Mm-hm. Also, I mean, the baseball robot, pretty amazing. [LAUGH] Yeah. I always love really cool music videos. This music video is from a guy named Nigel Stanford and a director named Shahir Dowd and, Nigel Standford decided one day after seeing a documentary about people with synesthesia, it stuck with him. These are people with like. Audio visual disorder, people who say like, when I hear a sound, I can also see color. Like, I can see the color in sound, things like that. So he then saw a video years later called Cymatic, which is the study of visual sound. So he decided he wanted to make this video. So this is really cool. Each sound and each audio track uses Cymatic visualization to form the basis of the track's composition. So how it's all put together. So this right here is a Chladni Plate. I hope I'm pronouncing that right. It's a thin metal plate that vibrates when sound waves run through it. So they put sand sprinkles on the surface. And then this right here, this speaker. the bass track has a, a thin dish of frozen vodka inside there to make, it was a little more viscous so that's why they put frozen vodka inside. Gotcha. Than water. And then, the drum is visualized, using a host pipe attached to a subwoofer. You can see it changes, like, based on the frequency. It's a very specific frequency to be able to get water to do that. Wow, that looks amazing! It's really really cool. And okay, so then they have this which was, carved on a record player that they were playing. And then they, they flick against the record player to make this sound. And then, they also had the piano track right here. This is ferrofluid. It's in a long, shallow dish. And there's magnets that are activated by the keys. So, he puts all these things together and creates this amazing music video and also a really cool electronic track that you can check out. You can head over to his website. Again, his name is Nigel Stanford. I'm going to make sure he gets a bunch of credit. He's a New Zealander. He's a musician, he obviously loves the study of cymatics and also in the song conveniently is called Cymatics, so it's really easy to remember. And this off of his new album, Solar Echos. Cool. Isn't that neat? How's the music? Like I, it's really cool, like I really, it's very. What's it sound like? It's, there's a lot of like [NOISE] and things like that in there. Okay. Because like, depending on the sound. Not dubstep. no, I wouldn't call it dubstep, it's like electronica. Oh okay. Interesting sort of like industrial, electronic music. Like, kind of what I would refer to it as. Yeah I guess you have the most control over the crazy sound, when you do electronic. Yeah I mean, they just had a lot of control over everything they were making inside that studio. So I just thought that was really neat. You have to check out the new video. You have to watch it and listen to this song. It's pretty cool. Linkin, Linkin, and. Show description? Yes of course. If you go over to the article for the show you can find all of the links and stuff to everything that you see and hear about on the show. Yeah and if you're on YouTube you can, if you go to the CNET tomorrow daily. I know there's a lot of people are having problems finding those links. I know. They're on the, they're on the CNET thing. Well maybe what we can try to do is put them in the description. For our YouTube video. Yeah we can. Cause I love, I love the YouTube people. Yeah. You'll hook them up? I'll hook them up, no big deal. Alright. Well on that note we're going to take a quick 30 second break but we'll be right back with a very exciting colleague of ours about to take a trip to the bionic park. Oh, oh, okay. [CROSSTALK] I'm severely excited about this. I know. It's painful. And then of course we have your user feedback and our phonetographer of the day, so don't click away. [NOISE] [NOISE] [MUSIC] Welcome back to the show. We have returned. [CROSSTALK] This is awesome. This is really, really, really cool. Listen, he is jacked up about this. Okay because what happened is. Here I'll lead it in a little bit. Okay. Please. What happened is when we reported on the show about this cruise ship that had so many robotics and stuff like that right. The quantum of the sea. The quantum of the sea is the most high tech cruse ship to ever be created. Right. And during the show, I was like uh,I was like one of the first ones there. I was like let's see if they can send us or whatever. Like, ha ha. That'd be cool, and they then- And then. And then they were like, yes. They actually, you know, we always go like, hey call us. They did. They did. And which was pretty cool. So, we couldn't get, we couldn't go there, right? It's in New York. Sorry this is how he said it. Sorry. It's, it's in New York. But they were like hey, hey I'll cover this whole ship and, and everything. But they were like no, no, no. But then we want the most. It's the robotic bartenders. The Robot Bar. It's all we care about. Okay, you finish. So we sent our very own CNET's Update reporter Bridgette Cary over to the ship because she is based in New York and we had her go hang out with. The bionic bartender, so. And it's as cool as we'd thought it would. It's really cool so. Except for his like spinning bow, whatever. It's great. Check this out. Well it's not often you can get served by a robots, in this case we're at the Bionic Bar on Quantum of the Seas, where robot bartenders serve up drinks constantly. All you have to do is order your drink from an app. And about a minute later, how'd it come? With each cocktail, the robot arms reach up above to gather the proper liquor proportions. When the drink is ready, it's poured into a plastic cup. First to be picked up, you have to pass your wrist band. If ordering from a soulless machine concerns you, there will be waiters. The waiters also serve as the eyes on the ground to make sure minors don't try to use other people's bracelets to order alcohol. But there is a plus side to ordering from machines. You don't have to pick. Now Royal Caribbean didn't make these robots. They're actually from a company called Maker Shaker. They've been working on these for a while now and they made a deal with Royal Caribbean to get it on Quantum of the Seas and you may see it on other cruise ships later too. But the challenge in building a robot like this goes beyond programming the arm. But actually the big challenge was to build everything around the robot. In a way this would become like an extension of your arm, when you want to make a cocktail. These robots were developed in the city of Turin, Italy, which is a city known for a cocktail shaking bot. Turin is the birthplace of Martini and Vermouth. Next, to the bar, these really cool screens. They give you an idea of how much wait time you have for the next drink. You can see who's up next. So, you can see how long it takes until your drink comes along in the queue and get some trivia on what's most popular drinks are with different age groups. I keep having enough of these, I'm gonna start wanting to tell this thing my problems. It's been a hard day at work guys. I don't think human bartenders need to worry about loosing their jobs just yet. Well that is untill they can teach these things to put the little umbrella in the drink. Not bad for a robot. I'll take another one of these. Keep them coming, keep them coming. So that was Bridget Carey's trip to the Bionic Bar on the Quantum of the Seas, it's Royal Caribbean's flag, new flag ship, cruise ship. If you want to check out a full tour, Bridget actually did a tour of the other parts of the ship which, Yes. Are also very, very cool. Over on her show update. So if you wanna check that out make sure you head over to cnet update and you can check out, the rest of Quantum of the Seas. But thank you, Bridget. Yeah! Thank you very much, Bridget. That was For going out and drinking on our behalf. Yeah. That looked great. I didn't, she didn't tell us what she ordered, though. It looked like maybe I was gonna call it a Tokyo Tea. That's what it looked like to me. Oh, a Tokyo Tea? Yeah. Oh, I know what that is. You know what that is? That's like a Long Island Iced Tea, but it has Midori in it. Oh, okay. Instead of like, Coke. That sounds classy. So, they, it changes the color. She looks like a classy lady. I never met her. Fun fact. This'll be nice. I used to be a bartender. So. Oh, really? [LAUGH] Yeah. Oh, God! Fun fact. Bar, used to be a bartender. I can even flip, I can flip the bottles, do it with a little bit of flair. Really? Wow. Yeah, it was really fun. Yeah, I like the fact that you don't have to tip them, too. Yes, I really quite enjoy that. But you know that's like another couple bartenders who aren't working. Now they can go on a cruise. [LAUGH] it's time to go on a cruise. They're not working on the weekend. No it's time to get more tattoos all over the body. Hey, hey, hey. [LAUGH] Relax. So that was our that was our fantastic little trip to the Bionic Bar. Once again thanks goes [UNKNOWN] and let's move on to your user feedback [MUSIC] Last week we asked you guys, I know it seems like forever ago, but we asked you about Playstation's View Service. Oh, yeah. So, the View Service introduced by Sony to kind of. Cut out the middle-man of your cable service and provide you with television straight through your Playstation. Were people happy or mad? Here's the thing. Yeah. We got really mixed responses on it. Oh mixed responses. Okay. So Gabbz wrote and said, I would try it but it does depend on price & channel availability. I love my Netflix a lot but I'm a huge Playstation fan. So there you go. Okay. All right. Stephan wrote to use and said, I would need BBC. Actually, should I read this in a British accent? Yes. I would need BBC. That is all I would want from it. Mostly for Doctor Who. And Sherlock. And TopGear. And about a million others. Oh, yeah. Was that a good British accent? [CROSSTALK] Not that great. It was not that great. Yeah. No but. That's, that's a good point. BBC. Yeah. It's a little important. That's all they need is the BBC though. I think they can mark that down. I think they could probably lock down one channel for you. Dane wrote I would have to be paid to be leave cable. Bottom line. He's just straight up, like you would have to pay me to leave my cable provider. The end. Hm. Alright. Period. End of story. There it is. I'm glad there is one person that stuck to that, to, to cable. Just like, nope. Yeah. Cable all the way. That's pretty. Then we got an email ->> Like commercials I guess. We got an email from Chris he says, I am all about any A la Carte media offerings but I hope they have an advertisement-free offering. Amazon allows you to pay a little less and see ads or pay a little more and not see ads. I really like this business model,. Sony could do this, or even offer different advertising tiers. And then he gives some examples. Netflix and HBO is pay service, no ads. Basic t v, free service with ads. Cable t v pay service, with ads. What? Boo. [LAUGH]. That doesn't make any sense. But it's like Hulu. Yeah, you have a point. It's like Hulu, you pay. And you have to watch ads. And they're really frequent. Yeah. They're all the time. I mean, not to complain about Hulu Plus but guys, dial it back. Yeah, on SNL there's like, there's more commercials than there is sometimes on television. Yeah. Than skits. Yeah. I think the commercials are actually Saturday Night Live sketches if you The joke's on you. If you look at it in a very meta way you can actually get through. Hulu Plus, Saturday Night Live. Yeah. If you think like these are all really bad Saturday Night Live sketches. Yeah. That are just passed off as commercials. Well it's just like, whenever you watch like a clip from like, oh, it's the clip from the Simpsons or whatever, and the commercial is longer than the clip. How does that even happen? I just don't understand. That happens with YouTube videos, too. Yeah. You watch a trailer and then they play a trailer before it, like. It's a 30 second. No! Trailer. This was supposed to be an ad already. It's a 24 second clip and you're just like why, why, what just happened here. So, yeah, no, we totally get you guys. Yeah. I love it. But they sound, honestly, kind of torn on it. They do. Like nobody, they need to give this for free to everybody for like two months to get everybody kind of like what they think of it. Maybe they'll put it in beta like PlayStation now. Yeah. And then they'll say like, What would you pay for this service? And then whatever people say, somebody will make it. Triple. [LAUGH]. Good point guys [UNKNOWN] Great. Great price guys. Yeah. Let's triple that. Too bad. That is what the prices. Okay. It's time for our final piece of user feedback which is of course, our phonetographers of the day. [MUSIC] I really like this one. Yeah, are you ready to snap some pics? Yeah. This is from Jessica D., nice lady, check out these shots. She says, 'my husband and I were stationed in Hawaii for a few years. We were sitting on the beach and I snapped this picture with my phone. A lot of people say they look like a postcard. I love your show and I hope you like it enough to put on your show. You guys rock. These photos were not Photoshopped in any way. Not bad for an outdated phone, that's a Galaxy S3. Yeah, that's pretty good. Look at that nice...ah, man. They do look like a postcard. That makes me miss Hawaii. I've been like twice. And I want to, I would like to go back. They were stationed there. [CROSSTALK] Yeah! They were stationed there, so they were. They were all up on that military base. Look at that. Wow, yeah. Yes! Be right back. Relocating the show to Hawaii. Yeah, Hawaii Daily is what we're gonna change our show. Yeah, Hawaii Daily. We'll be right in between the U.S. and Japan. Oh that's great, we can report on both of those things. [LAUGH] Yeah, there's [INAUDIBLE] There's a volcano going on. Yeah, but those are great. No, it's super good. S3. Yeah, Galaxy S3. Pretty good, I was really impressed. That's impressive, yeah. That's what I say. So thanks, Jessica. If you guys wanna send in your phone-tography, or if you'd like to contribute to our hashtag of the day, or you wanna. Give us tips, pho, story ideas, whatever. You can always e-mail us tomorrow@cnet.com. And of course, if you hate e-mail, you can find us on social media. We're tomorrowdaily on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and tomorrowdailytv over on Google Plus. And to you YouTube friends don't forget to subscribe, and you iTunes listeners, don't forget to add that. Like, all... Rate and review us on iTunes. Yeah, rate and review us on iTunes. It does really help. [CROSSTALK] Right. I know that we're cnet. Right. And that seems like maybe we don't need your help, but there are a lot of podcast out there you guys, so video podcasts too. There's like a couple of other podcasts out there. Yeah There's still one or two. Yeah there's one or two. So, so please rate and review us, that always really helps and we do appreciate it. And down vote them. Yeah, just bad reviews. [LAUGH] Just kidding. No please don't. No. Don't. Don't. Rate everything you like really nicely and then just say nothing about the things you don't. [UNKNOWN] Cuz if you can't say something nice, say nothing at all. And don't forget our personal Twitters. Yeah, you can find me at Ashley Asket over at Twitter and. At [UNKNOWN]. [UNKNOWN]. Pretty straight-forward. Yeah. I like it. Pretty, pretty easy. All right. That is it for the show today. We will be back tomorrow with a full, fresh, new docket of weird, wonderful technology and geek news. So until then, be good humans, we'll see you next time, bye. [MUSIC]