CES: In-car gaming, robotaxis, and humanoid robots (Full Transcript)

[00:00:06] Speaker 1: Tech to get us around is one of the big themes of CES. Everything from land to sea to air. Back on land, Sony and Honda are working together on the Athila. All of these cars have Sony's entertainment capabilities, including PlayStation, remote gaming. But what if you want to take your in-car gaming to the next level? In this game, I have to push all these bombs off the raft and keep the chest on. But as the car is moving, the raft is moving too in a similar motion. And if we brake, for example, you can see the raft takes a break as well. Lots of people can game in the car using their phone or another device. What's the advantage to it being tied into the physics of the car?

[00:01:10] Speaker 2: So by using the actual live data, we're synchronizing this motion. The motion sickness comes when the visuals are not in line with the vestibular system, so basically your balancing system of your body. And having that synchronization, you're curing or improving the motion comfort by a lot. So by our system, we can allow gaming while driving for most of the people and having them enjoying such a good entertainment.

[00:01:37] Speaker 1: For now, this is something to keep passengers entertained. But could that change with autonomous driving? I'm out. I'm dead. Many of the world's major car brands are working towards autonomous vehicles. And now chip maker NVIDIA is getting in on the action. Their self-driving platform is going to be used in a Mercedes being released in the U.S. this year. And this is Uber's design intent for their RoboTaxi, which will include this handy little screen so you know which Uber is yours.

[00:02:20] Speaker 3: We can also change the lights on the Halo so you can better identify it. So it actually has mainly a technical role in terms of housing the long-range LIDAR, but it also has a role in helping the consumer know that that's the vehicle they're looking for.

[00:02:31] Speaker 1: Uber disrupted this industry a number of years ago. Yes. And changed the way people are employed as well. What responsibility do you have to the drivers, the Uber drivers who are going to be out of a job once autonomous cars take over?

[00:02:42] Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a great question. It's a responsibility that we take seriously. But because we are a company that disrupted an existing industry, we also are very realistic about the fact that self-driving technology is coming to the world, whether we are playing a role or not. We actually believe that five years from now, there will be more humans driving on Uber than today. And part of the reason for that is that the market is continuing to grow. But the other part of the reason for that is these are expensive vehicles to build and deploy, and it will take a long time for them to become available widely.

[00:03:13] Speaker 1: Uber, of course, have competition in the race to bring RoboTaxis to our roads. One of the biggest announcements, though, is these robots building cars.

[00:03:25] Speaker 4: This is Atlas. Atlas can basically do most of the things that you can do with your own two hands. It's not as good at like dexterous, like super fine assembly stuff. But if you need stuff picked up, moved around, things plugged together, Atlas can do it.

[00:03:42] Speaker 1: It will start being deployed by Hyundai in 2028. Factories are already very automated. There are already lots of robots in factories. Why do you now need a humanoid in there?

[00:03:53] Speaker 4: The big thing that's behind the desire for humanoids is flexibility. So Hyundai builds the most amazing automated car plants in the world. When they make a car body, it's actually close to 100% automated. But building a plant like that is this gargantuan engineering process, where it's so expensive to change. And so the idea with humanoid robots is just with software, you can completely change how a factory works and adapt to new products.

[00:04:26] Speaker 1: Working in the factory is probably just the beginning for these robots.