What made us say WTF in 2018

[MUSIC] What's up guys? Welcome to this special edition of What the Future. Today we're taking a look back at the most WTF stories of 2018. We've got a lot to cover so let's get right to it. [SOUND] I think most people would agree watching their kids take their first steps is both exciting and terrifying. That's probably also how a lot of people would describe seeing Sophia the robot's first steps. At CES this year, she finally got a pair of legs that let her walk, albeit slowly. Point 6 miles an hour to be exact. [INAUDIBLE] Now we first saw Sophia in 2016. Back then, she was just an AI enabled talking head that gave disturbing answers to questions. Okay, I will destroy humans. Now, since If Sophie will learn to walk. She's become quite the celebrity. Will Smith tried in full to seduce her. I think we can be friends. Let's hang out and get to know each other for a little while. You are on my friends list now. And she sang a duet with Jimmy Fallon Say something I'm giving up on you. Now Sophia will be joining us at the CNET stage in a few weeks at CES 2019 in Las Vegas. So don't forget to tune in to our live coverage for that. [MUSIC] We talked a lot about SpaceX in 2018. But nothing grabbed our attention quite like the first launch of the Falcon Heavy rocket in February. Maybe it was the fact that this was the largest and most powerful rocket yet from SpaceX. Maybe it was seeing both first stage boosters return simultaneously and safely to Earth, or maybe it was the payload. Elon Musk's cherry red Tesla roadster complete with a dummy astronaut named Star Man. Now we haven't heard much about Star Man and his ride in a while, but last month, SpaceX said they both made it beyond Mars orbit. And what about Falcon Heavy? Well, we haven't heard much from SpaceX about that either, but Parts of its core have been spotted in transport in Arizona. That's led to speculation that Space X is getting ready to launch Falcon Heavy again in the near future. [MUSIC] I can't help but groan a little every time I hear about another flying car in the works. But the Pal-V Liberty may be the closest thing we've seen yet, mainly because you can pre-order one right now. We first saw the Liberty at the Geneva Auto Show in the spring. Now it's not really a flying car a la Back to the Future 2, and despite its appearance, it's not a helicopter. It's technically a gyrocopter. Copter. That means it can't take off vertically. It needs to get up to speed on the ground, before going airborne. And you do need a pilot's license to fly it. But what it does have going for it is it's size. In car mode, it fits in a standard parking spot and it runs on gasoline. Now originally the first units were supposed to be delivered in 2019 That's been pushed to 2020. Starting at $400,000, I'm going to keep holding out for a flying DeLorean. Roads? Where we're going we don't need roads. [BLANK_AUDIO] [MUSIC] This world has a serious plastic problem. We use too much of it and we don't take care of it when were finished. That's why there's the ocean clean up project. It's a massive collection device also known as Wilson. that's trying to cleanup the plastic in our oceans. In October, it left the San Fransisco bay area for whats known as the great pacific garbage patch. That's a huge collection of plastic floating between California and Hawaii. It's estimated to contain 80,000 tons of debris. Now Wilson arrived there in November, but it hasn't exactly been smooth sailing so far. Engineers have been troubleshooting problems since they arrived. Basically the plastic they collect isn't staying inside the system. But they've said they're confident they'll get it to work. Now it's also worth noting Altmetric named Ocean Cleanup's work mapping the Great Pacific Garbage Patch one of the top ten most impactful scientific papers of the year. [MUSIC] That's gonna do it for us this year. We're gonna be at CES in 2019, look out for us there. I'm Andy Altman, thanks for watching What the Future. [MUSIC]