Gadgetory

well welcome to the 359 I'm Roger tang and with me a special guest Sally Nieman hello Sally helped produce the our in-depth look at the Sony AIBO robot before we get to that we want to talk about Elon Musk is boring company it's reportedly abandoned plans to dig a massive tunnel under Los Angeles's crowded 405 freeway and push its loop mass transit project turns out I guess there's some lawsuits that are looking to get more of an environmental assessment of this project Elon was hoping to bypass all this and now he's he scrapped the plans well it's funny because I was in attendance when he announced you made this big announcement in May we were in we're right off the 405 freeway he talked about the you know the hope the the promise of this loop project idea that these things can go 150 miles an hour and cost a dollar so what would you do with a dollar mass transit system I mean that sounds amazing and I would probably use it every day I grew up in a big city where I had to drive everywhere and I hate driving moving to New York for me was amazing because I don't have to drive and for a dollar yeah right I don't know like MTA fees keep you learn up so a dollar would make a huge difference I just don't see it happening yeah so there is he is talked about plans for connecting Dodger Stadium to a local subway stop so and that's like like a three-mile stretch so maybe that happens maybe the loop project is still alive all right next up Sal you spent you and birch carry spent a week with sony's AIBO this is the $2,900 robot dog tell me what were your impressions so bridge I got to take it home the whole week she was able to enjoy a boat together with her two-year-old daughter and I got to see a lot of it as well we took it to meet another real dog and we took it to a Senior Center where we got to see how older people interact with AIBO because it can be sort of a companion way anything you would think robo-dog probably a toy but it's so real that it can actually be good companion for older people interesting yeah and I know that was one of the big pitches for IMO correct I was a little skeptical at first but I mean what did you think was it was it actually was a cute was it extremely cute it's not creepy it's the idea very scrappy but it's extremely you see it and you you can not go to it touch it and just play with it like if it's a real dog it's just the whole AI and how he moves and how it interacts with you right it's extremely incredible we're seeing some footage of I bow with Bridget's dog yes and that's both super adorable and there he's pretending to pee oh really so he does different tricks right he's verbal commands correct he does about a dozen action saying you can use different words for different things that he can do like pick up the bone go peepee it can actually take pictures with the nose oh really yep once the app is out together with eyeball and yeah I just you can teach it to do different things alright so lastly let's talk about the electric scooter craze these rentable scooters are popping up in cities all over the country but our own Derek kurz talked about how they're leading to a surgeon injuries including two deaths attributed to Easterners not a surprise right you're whipping around zipping around the city in crowded traffic you know they're they're calling this disruptive technology one doctor she talked to quick but this is disrupting your elbows and knees and head so if you are into the scooter craze be aware it could be hazardous to your health and please wear a helmet yes for a full coverage Sugar's on CNN I'm Roger Cheng and I'm Sally Nieman thanks for sayin for to happen the most part of this test was seeing my daughter's interactions but I needed to do more research work to others think of ivory I've said that was super normal all that footage cool alright thanks everybody for joining us for the recording of the audio podcast it's time to go ahead and submit any questions or comments you have about I bow Sally had a lot of first-hand experience with the dog and she could probably floor any concept or curiosity you might have for me I am not surprised about this whole Elon Musk development at all I mean come on it's a great idea on paper but the level of ferocity that he went into this without what I felt was necessary research and inclusion for the local agencies to get on board of this I mean come on he did include some city officials but who were on board with this but you know there are other folks other local folks local parties who yeah Wanda get a clearer look at what this might actually mean to the community from an environmental perspective yes so and you know you almost didn't want to go through that that kind of rigorous process I was hoping to kind of bore his way through and yeah like these lawsuits that basically stopped him in his tracks as far as AIBO goes let's get back on board all right so Sally what was your favorite trick that I Bo did my favorite freak I guess when he started singing so unexpected like how does he sing like because you expect a dog to bark yeah the hand to maybe go peepee but not to sing so when he started like randomly singing I thought that was pretty cool wait and tell me put this pee-pee thing cuz like he doesn't actually pee right he just does the motion and you can hear sound there's really no liquid coming out do you have to take him to go pee like once a day or something no cuz I think you just randomly does it he went oh really so you asked him to go you can command it to go P yep yep well if you want it to be as real that's true well I mean I couldn't I don't think that's true so be like batteries would fall out oh it just makes out right yeah yeah great it's a card right it's not softer it's not soft he doesn't have fur yeah and it's still cute and I mean and I want to say this now we're looking at some footage of being at the Senior Center and yes there were people who were skeptical and saying like why am I supposed to talk to an inanimate machine yeah I'm quoting uh one of the people we spoke to but then there's you see this lady and she just fell in love without ya and she was just so it just made her day and I would say it made her weak like the the small interaction she had with the dog she was just so happy you wanted to cry watching her oh wow it was so amazing yeah we've definitely we've done a bunch of stories about sort of the the benefits psychological benefits of having a robot companion and like having something as a cute looking as I bow I mean I could see how that can be I could have almost medicinal purposes right I mean definitely therapeutic for sure and you know you could it's the right word not medicinal yeah yeah you think about the initial cost which is $2,900 yes and you think oh but if I buy a dog it's gonna be cheaper than that but not in the long run no true and it's a lot more trouble actual pee and so it's it's big money yes but you know if you can afford it right there will most likely not be an I bow in the Chang household anytime soon I don't think I mean I'd love to check it out check it out once there no Sony wants to send me a loaner for a few weeks love to take it home exactly I can see how exactly I would like imagine I'm trying to imagine like my son would react to I go run around yeah III think and I think that's one of the things that Bridget enjoy the most about having IVA it was hurt her daughter's interactions with the dog oh yeah you can see all of that in the video so make sure to watch it there you go Ron what questions do we got well I mean I was gonna say let's address the elephant in the room about that price but you guys just kind of like covered that III think it's interesting a lot of people brush this off like why wouldn't you just get a real dog but there are a lot of scenarios where you can't have a real live animal allergies come into play sometimes like if you were if you're in a Senior Center not to sound crass but there's sometimes elements of those citizens that may not mesh well with a real animal perhaps dementia could cause complications and issues so still giving them in that opportunity to experience joy and companionship albeit automated I think it's still kind of a fantastic thing and the way they've kind of set this up and priced it out that's kind of the ideal scenario it's not really consumer friendly price wise to put in every single home right but I love the idea of being in a Senior Center and having those people being able to interact with or even bringing into the classroom and teaching kids that perhaps grow up you know in an inner city it don't necessarily have a lot of opportunity to have pets to kind of teach them to to co-mingle with another quote-unquote living creature yeah I have to wonder if like down the line you can get like an insurance company to pay for some of this whatever like if it has psychological benefits right like if it is you know therapeutic as you say like you know I know apples been trying to do that with Apple watch like who's the save Sony that couldn't do something similar with I'm sure it's a lot more research yeah absolutely but having said that he does recognize 100 faces Wow and and the dog is looking for that emotion so if if it comes to you and it's giving you the hand and he sees that you're happy he's gonna continue to do that right and it's interesting I didn't actually know this but it comes with an 18 t Wireless play right there's no Wi-Fi around it'll actually connected Network right yeah I didn't realize it actually need the network to to operate properly yeah but everything is internal though all the commands is are internal so it's also not recording your audio or any yeah I saw that in British story that was that was a good bit of detail because we didn't really know beforehand like what prior to the story like what the privacy aspects for this thing was you say it comes with the 18 t plan does that come included in the price of yeah price covers a three-year plan to be a coverage plan oh that's cool yeah be it'd be kind of lame if they're like and here's a new Wi-Fi bill right or I wonder if they'd ever give you the opportunity to tap it into a pre-existing plan oh maybe I mean I'm already an AT&T customer if I want to has those uh you know yeah after three years I have to wonder how much the plan is I imagine I don't imagine there would be something like that like it'll cost you ten bucks a month or something hmm all right let's take some questions from the chat here's a great comment from Ryan he says I feel like I'd like this AIBO better than an actual dog a lot less cleaning up yeah plus you don't have to worry about dog sitting if you go away that's a good point to like you can shut AIBO all the way down right yeah it actually has an on enough button they don't recommend you shutting off but it is that's when you're at home with it interacting because at night it goes into the charger when you're not a home he goes and sits in the charger oh really does a sit in the charger by itself by itself yeah you connect the charger and there is an actual camera on the back which is mapping the room and you should there's a map the room like would it know like if the charging station is in the living room and I take it to a bedroom would it know to like walk its way back into that you should know I guess it depends how long it's in the root lane but you'd only had it for a week for example and she had a hard time leaving the living room okay so it didn't really roam around all of the apartment gotcha and that's the other thing heed it his movements are amazing but he doesn't walk up or down the stairs okay so it tells us something like which like I get it I mean having that comes with a firmware upgrade research in robotics and how stairs are a huge challenge robots like a sophisticated $50,000 robot still can't climb up stairs so it's not surprising has enough money to spend on AI boy it probably has true true so if you have the charger downstairs well then you got to build a little like stair elevator thing that's something that's what I was gonna say you got enough money for I boy I got enough money for a dog elevator probably yeah but it's supposed to no address like even if you put it on a table sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't it can fall off you can okay got it it'll kind of like fall asleep so it doesn't how durable is it has fell off the table we did not try it yeah she's probably yeah I I would freak out if like my $2,900 basically robot toy fell off the table like fell three feet like inches oh yeah that would be bad it's a good question I'm not really sure how adorable it is all right yeah these these the the footage that we're seeing it's just yeah it's just that's too cute it's heart-wrenching when uh when Olivia had to say goodbye oh yeah I was almost crying with her our next question is coming in from James Gordon what did the real dog think of the Robo dog oh oh yes so we took it Yahoo is is place to meet Tori who Sam and the real dog actually at first he didn't know what he was it was kind of sniffing the ball a little bit oh yeah then it hated him it was just working like crazy and then a little bit after that she just didn't even Carrie was day he just ignored him ignore him completely that's so that feel I feel like that's more cat like I kind of apathy something right there if you see he's just barking at the dog and then he didn't care and actually there was another dog at the Senior Center that somebody brought yeah and that dog wasn't really paying much attention to Weibull but it was funny to see that most people were like really going into I bow and not really paying attention to the dog besides the owner poor dog alright to bring things full circle let's talk about musk one more time what is the next steps then what is this Dodgers Stadium plan he was talking about there yeah there's basically he'd proposed underground tunnel connecting Dodger Stadium to a subway station three miles away I think it's a little bit less ambitious than the than the plans to put a tunnel underneath the 405 I don't know it's that it's all still kind of up in the air at this point but I think they're still trying to pursue something with with LA I mean I want to see I want to see something happen I'd love to see I mean the Olivia ting the 405 traffic that I mean that would've been a huge deal like I can see the benefits of it yeah I don't necessarily know if Elan should have assumed that he would bypass some of the standard you know review process for it but I could see like LA desperately needs like a mass transit system that's effective like there's you know there is a subway now there's there's a there's a light rail system I've been on once so people people other cars out there that familiar with aller but I know my sisters who live in San Diego just driving down to a ladies oh yeah yeah yeah the drive from LA to San Diego it's it can be bad yeah for sure so how long until musk tries to put something like that in for the new Amazon HQ in Queens I don't know I would love to see that actually I would love to suggest a new sides to current New York Metro transit yeah yeah I mean it's not gonna happen just because there's like if you think you know has a lot of regulatory red tape I mean New York City is gonna be way way worse we're wrapping up here let's take a couple more questions from Ryan are there any plans for any other animals like AIBO cats hamsters any other thing like that no I mean it looks this is a reimagining of the original iPhone right why there's a dog I don't know if they've explored other like they want to see how libel works before they start to do other animals right such a big and robot is the robot dog is such a I do you immediately understand that right I could see like maybe a cat there are other folks working on companion robots Patrick Holland wrote a story about like the Affleck duck there's like a robot Affleck duck for children cancer patients patients who can't actually be around real animals so there's a bunch of this stuff going on right now it's a fascinating area are you even if you go to a toy shop I mean you can't really go to toy shops anymore but you look at Amazon and or they write all the toys are mostly I mean maybe you wouldn't call them robots right fancy fur bees exactly that's a Furby so the for real stuff all the you know babies that oh those creepy babies it creepy babies Wow everything you have to pay for diapers for those babies it's kind of crazy why those fake babies that's it's insane yes Bridget always touts the Hachem older oh yeah really hip and trendy right now yeah they creep me out big-time my wife's totally like we should get a hatch mole for a kid I'm like beanie babies furbies hatch imel's all right down the chain oh the same thing I really wonder though going back to we were talking about with the other animals if that is really necessary because as much as I bow does it really behave like a dog as much as any other automated Sheen would or is it really just our minds tricking us by looking at it saying like oh it's a robot dog could you essentially just put it in a different chassis and call it something else does it it does have the mannerisms of the dog but I get your point I mean there like I said there are other folks working on these companion robots most of them know that it doesn't work to have a companion that looks like an actual human because it creeps you out too much but like a cute thing you know like really LG companion robot that failed on us to see us like something like that the one that took the faceplant office yeah I mean it was super adorable right it was also kind of cute and whatever it's non-threatening looking that's sort of what I think that's what a lot of these folks are trying to do it didn't it may not necessarily be a dog but some sort of like cute approachable form factor going back to the dog even if your mine is the one that's playing tricks on you yeah if you're a person that hates cats you want you prefer a dog or any of you don't like dogs you might be more interested if he looks like a cat hi Bo cat yeah it's just a thought I had like does it really matter or is it just another another gadget really but I guess depends on how well those man your isms kind of develop over time I mean I do think it matters like the fact that it's a dog I think makes it more approachable for people yeah it's like psychologically they get that it's like a little companion that's what a dog is man's best friend and just putting you in back that form factor makes it more approachable yeah and it just matters because that's what people want yeah it's like you know going for a new iPhone and if they don't have the roast goal at this store you might wait any matters and the phone is exactly the same but you want that color I won't have to actually start doing paint jobs for I bow just like white and silver yeah right yeah hundred dollars I should be able to choose the color yeah what if you want a green dog yeah dog or or like an app store so you can change the voice yeah see maybe they could actually do that pretty easily yeah right that's just software yeah and I mean and there is going to be improvement also in like the commands and the things you can do like eventually it'll do more stuff with updates yep what a horrifying thought you got a plug your dog into the USB port to make it learn a new trick no you don't because it's an 18 to write down the Wi-Fi yeah Wi-Fi or so never plug in things because it kind of works by itself and just sits you know he's charging I'm sure that that would destroy the illusion if you had to like port it to it like ah I like this recent comment from tech slacker aren't people getting paranoid with everything in their home soon turning into a mini computer with a speaker microphone camera Wi-Fi connectivity and even a I that'll learn your habits yes it's interesting about this because well this specific dog is not really recording audio right or video when you take the pictures once it comes out and you can take the the pictures with the nose that will be saving to the cloud but it's not really every whatever set it sends to the cloud the data and the record of what's happening but it's not it's not like Amazon Alexa we're like it records what you're saying yeah yeah yeah and you can always delete everything but you just have to call customer service to either call customer service yeah there isn't like a web portal where you just or browser where you just I would have to look more into it for twenty dollars they did invest in a website say I mean you could easy you could be at ease a little bit sensor it's not really recording your conversations right right a lot of processing is done locally right exactly so everything is internal right so everything he learns so it'll save it'll send things to the cloud because it is learning more things with time but it's just the record of what's happening hmm more than actual audio yeah although I imagine if you're yeah if you are creeped out by privacy issues I mean that this is probably gonna worry you like yeah and the thing that is sending to the cloud is the big church just because you can get them on your phone right right right you know there has to be a way of it yep you know you always talk about the the camera in the nose but you keep skimming past my favorite feature the dog but cam that's just Matt being the room you can't take a picture with it's but no until somebody hacks it sorry I had to go there yeah I mean I was talking to Bridget about this and I was and I was saying what if I go into a place where there's no Wi-Fi can i connect my phone into the dog if it has the AT&T service you have to hack the day yeah sure okay I can't imagine this is a like a really high speed connection No so yeah we're talking about hacking without it I mean once you do that then I don't know you get a call from you TT like okay you've used like I don't know how you're I Bose use 50 gigs of data but we're shut your I bow down I'm sorry all right I'm putting a challenge out there to anybody out watching this show if you do get an eyeball I challenge you to hack it and show us the results we'll have you on the show I want to see that yeah I would love to see that we're just about out of time let's talk real quick about the electric scooters Timothy says the electric scooter is a next version of walking down the street using a cell phone and looking down and not paying attention hopefully it all calmed down eventually he's not wrong there I don't see as many of the scooters but I know our our friend Joey here in the office he uses the one wheel a lot any number of variants in there I should we start licensing people for these scooters cuz like if there's that many out there who can't well that's the issue is it's not people buying these East Cooter's it's these rentable scooters right like bird and lime a bunch of these services which haven't come to New York yet but I think will be coming soon that just like our our city bikes basically can rent you know 10 minutes on the scooter so they can get across town so you've got people just are randomly riding these things and so that just I feel like that is a recipe for injury particularly here in New York and also I mean I know there's a lot of loss like in New York you're not allowed to ride your bikes on the side so I walk yeah you know is that the same with the scooters I don't know I think it kind of goes with anything that is a two-wheel rideable thing I think they even get uppity about it with scape words even though it doesn't technically they don't want you using a vehicle on the sidewalk so yeah I would imagine a scooter would qualify would have to be on the street as a plane you actually imagine driving a scooter or riding a scooter in the streets of New York City next to the bosses and all the traffic next to the next to the cabs and the cars and other bikers I mean that just yeah I'm still flabbergasted by the bikers themselves like the way they handle themselves in and out of traffic and with the city bike rentals and all those things happening the ride-sharing stuff like that's getting bonkers and I'm seeing people out there it's always funny to see that guy in like a full button-down suit riding a bike to work oh yeah it's like props to him for the effort but you see more often than not a bunch of them who probably have never ridden a bike in their life using city bike yeah not cool to see what I hate seeing is people riding a bike looking at their phones would drive me crazy without a helmet and and I've been here about a bike before cuz also they they think that traffic laws don't apply to them right so you're looking to see if there's a car coming and it wants to make a bike comes from the other side and I mean the scooter is pretty much the same thing oh yeah scooter you're thinking the laws don't apply to you yeah yeah well anyway PSA time watch the road no matter what you're riding or driving yeah careful out there we don't have enough doctors out there to handle everybody falling off scooters these days we are out of time thank you everybody for joining us thank you Sally for coming on the show thank you so much yeah it's been wonderful all right take it away 359 is available on iTunes tune in feedburner stitcher google play music google podcast the amazon echo and of course cnet.com shell tomorrow take care folks you you