This huge new fusion reactor took 19 years to build (Tomorrow Daily 272)

[MUSIC] Greetings citizens of the internet. Welcome to Tomorrow Daily, the best geek talk-show in the known universe. I'm Ashley Esqueda. You're watching one of our short episodes. We're gonna be at you on Thursday with a long episode. To deep dive, if you will, into the stories of this week. So that being said, let's hit the headlines. [MUSIC] So we're not quite at the point where you're going to be able to lock a Mr. Fusion to the back of your DeLorean, but there is a new fusion reactor set to light up, before the end of this month. It's a Stellarator reactor called the W7-X and it's over at the Max Planck Institute in Germany. It took more than a million hours to build this thing. Over 19 years to make it fully complete. 50 individual six time magnetic coils make up the cage that holds super hot gases. And they're cooled to -200 degrees celsius. The machine itself is 19 meters wide and in the shape of a ring, and the position of the cage was specifically optimized by a super computer to pin point the best possible design for the machine itself. Traditionally, we've used nuclear fusion reactors called Tokamaks, but the one issue with them is they can only be used in short bursts, and any magnetic disruption can destabilize the reactor. Stellar raters like the W7X are supposed to be designed to be impervious to those disruptions So this could get interesting for the future of nuclear energy. Engineers are waiting for approval from Germany's nuclear regulators, but if all goes well, they wanna flip this baby on by the end of November. Let's make some energy. Meanwhile, in Japan, a movie is being released with a robot costar. The film is Sayonara, written and directed by Japanese filmmaker, Koji Fukuda. It's a story of a Japan that has been decimated by radiation and the main character, Tanya, gets a very low priority number for evacuation. Meaning she has to stay behind and suffer radiation poisoning. But she's not alone. Her childhood companion, Leona, is there with her. But that is not CG or make up you're seeing Leona is actually Geminoid F, a real life robot created by Hiroshi Ishiguro, who's robotics work you might be familiar with. He's the guy who made that robot that looks exactly like himself. It's kinda weird, but it's kinda cool. So back to Geminoid F. Since Geminoid F can't walk, this story gives her a knee injury and then sits her in a wheelchair for the length of the movie, where she can move around freely. It's interesting that she's treated like any other cast member on the film's web site, and in the movie it looks like she helps Tanya deal with her increasing radiation sickness. Hey Bethesda, I think I just found the plot of Fallout 5! Too soon? All right, so very last story. I always like to ask where's my Rosie the Robot. And honestly Patin about a year ago said that they had one for us, but now there's actually a working prototype. The Patin showed off it's skills at Tokyo Design Week last week and, to refresh your memory, It's a wheeled robot that's kind of like a Roomba, but it's built around an adaptive AI that let's its owner choose what type of AI it should use and then place objects or attachments on top of it that Patin can work with. For example, if you were to place a lamp on it it would pinpoint where you are in the room, find the best location for the light source relative to your position and then wheel the lamp over to that location. There are depths sensors, contact sensors, and other features on board powering the little robot and it looks Really, really fun. So, here's the new stuff, it's designers announce they're going to make the patent as an open source platform so [UNKNOWN] and hobbyists alike can create their own features, apps, and attachments for it. There's still no word on pricing or availability, but But Flower Robotics says they wanna have this thing out and available for you in 2016. And I still want it to make me pancakes. Hey, guess what? It's Monday! Let's talk about Crowd Funding. [MUSIC] This sounds like a joke. But I assure you, it's not. There's a robot band that has gone to Kickstarter to fund a lead singer. So I should probably start with the humans involved in the project. There are three guys named Frank, Marcus, and Stock, and they're artists who built three robots named Fingers, Stickboy, and Bones. Those three robots comprise Compressorhead, a robot jam band of a Sort. But the robots need a force, a lead vocalist to sing and interact with fans. And they wanna make a record that no human can perform. The robots can do specific musical actions humans just can't do live, like playing multiple riffs at the same time. They don't want a record label to interfere with their artistic goals because they're real musicians, man. So KickStarter seemed like the way to go. Part of the project includes a mindlink web app that would notify users when the band comes alive and translates some of the robot's communications into human speech. Super weird, but so metal. Metal Do you see what I did there? There are all kinds of pledge levels you can get in at. And they want over $300,000, so they've got a long way to go, and about 25 days left to get there. So, if you're interested in hearing a band That is comprised entirely of robots, this would be your chance. All right guys, let's look at your beautiful, beautiful photos. [MUSIC] Our phonetographer for the day is Terrace, who wrote in and sent this picture that they took with their iPhone. success and they said. Hey, guys, check this phone out earlier last month on my iPhone 6S. I use Clarity from Camera Plus and Borders. Other than that, photo is untouched. This is a partial panorama as well. If you think the photo is show-worthy, you have my permission to use it. Well, Tara, obviously it's show-worthy because there it is, right here on Tomorrow Daily. Thank you so much for sending in that amazing panorama. Just, oh, it's so beautiful. If you guys want to send in your photography please feel free to do so. E-mail us tomorrow@cnet.com. Send in your photo, give us a little story about it, give us permission to use it on the show, and of course, tell us what device you took it on. Put it on Act. I find that pretty interesting. And also, you can find us online, we are tomorrowdaily.dom, if you'd like to share this show with a friend. We're tomorrowdaily on all your favorite social media sites, like Facebook and Twitter. And I'm Ed Ashley scatter on Twitter, and producer Logan is @LoganMoy. And you can also find Jeff Conatta our co-host who will be here tomorrow @Jeff Conatta with to f's and one t on Twitter. And that is it for the show today, we'll be back tomorrow with a brand new docket, of wonderful science facts, meaning science fiction. Blown up in your face getting all great and stuff but until then be a good human. We'll see you guys next time, bye. [NOISE]