[narrator] We live in a world our ancestors would barely recognize. Around the globe, the impact of human ingenuity is now everywhere. We've pushed back
the limits of our planet at speeds, depths and heights that would have left
our forbearers breathless. Driving all these achievements is humankind's extraordinary gift for invention. Through genius and inspiration, we've created exceptional solutions
to complex problems. From the everyday to the spectacular. Some good and some not so good. This series celebrates the million ways our great inventions have transformed our world. [male voice]
That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. [narrator] For most,
it's the first thing we travel in. And the last. [high-octane music plays] [narrator] Among the greatest inventions
to transform our world, few come close. I mean, the car has to be
one of the greatest inventions ever. [narrator] Every minute, 150 are built. Built for luxury. Convenience. For work. Ultimately, they're this little kingdom that we reign over,
and no one can control. [narrator] We reveal its secret history. And when one of these things exploded, full of fire and boiling hot water, the results
could be absolutely catastrophic. [narrator] And the many surprising ways this invention has changed our world. [female voice] For the first time in
history, two young people can go off in their own little private space
in this car and connect intimately. [narrator] We explore
its incredible evolution. And that we are only just realizing
its true cost. Can the car survive? Or must it undergo
its most dramatic evolution yet? [high-octane music plays] [narrator] Today, there are more than
a billion cars on the planet. More than at any moment in history. The average American
drives 20,000 kilometers and spends 13 full days in their car every year. We have grown to depend on cars in cities and in the countryside. We race them, pimp them, buy treats from them. They are so part of our lives that it seems impossible
to imagine surviving without them. And yet somehow we did. So, back in the day before we have
any kind of combustion engine, the only way to get around
is either with your two feet, or, if you could afford it, on the back of a horse. [horse neighs] [narrator] Nowadays,
the horse is a racing machine. A recreational animal, a luxury. But in the days before mass car use, the horse was an essential part of life. A "workhorse." As cities grew,
so did our dependence on horses. And in the 1900s, the greatest concentration in the world was in London. It's quite amazing to think
that just two generations ago, or about 100 years ago, humans were getting around town
with horses. And in London, you needed about 300,000
to make that city function. [Boeree] And so obviously,
traveling by horse is great, 'cause, I mean, they're much faster. You don't have to expend energy yourself. With the exception
of having to fill 'em up with grass every now and then. They're a pretty good way to get around. [narrator] Fuel may have been cheap, but inevitably, all that hay
created a heap of problems. [brass band music] [Somara] Horses poo out
15 kilograms of manure a day. And their urine... Ten liters per day. Multiply that by 300,000 and you've got a huge amount of waste material as a result of this particular type
of transportation. [narrator] And of all the problems
the Victorians faced, this one was a stinker. All of this waste just lies on the streets
until someone cleans it up, causing huge health problems. Attracting flies,
which can transfer typhoid fever and cause other enormous health problems
for the population. The situation was so bad
that people were paid money to clear crossings in the street, so that people didn't have to step
in manure as they just crossed the road. [narrator] Flies spread killer diseases like typhoid, a disease which still kills approximately
150,000 people globally a year. and flies are drawn to horse dung
like bees to honey. There had to be a cleaner alternative
to the horse-drawn carriage. As luck would have it, a cleaner alternative to horsepower
had been around for decades. Steam. In fact, it was the ancient Greeks who first recognized
the potential for steam power. So, the story actually starts
in ancient Greece with a guy called Hero from Alexandria. And he came up with this device
that looks very simple. It's just a sphere like so that you fill
with water and you heat with a fire. And that creates steam. The point is that it has these nozzles
that allow that steam to come out. And because they're arranged
in a certain way, that produces jets of steam
coming out of this sphere, which then causes it to rotate. So that's a very early example
of a steam engine. [narrator] For 2,000 years, Hero's steam-powered spinning sphere
remained a novelty. Until 19th-century engineers discovered a way to turn steam
into motion. The key innovation when it came
to harnessing useful work from steam was the invention of the piston. [narrator] At first, steam-driven pistons powered simple static devices,
like water pumps. The invention of the crank shaft
turns steam power Into forward motion. [Steele] What that means
is that you can use the expanding steam to push the piston
down the length of the cylinder. And then by using a kind of crank arm, you can turn that linear motion
into rotational motion, which can drive the machine,
or it can drive the wheels on a train... however you want to use that energy
to do useful work. [narrator] The steam engine,
or external combustion engine, turns water into steam. Inside a narrow chamber, the steam expands, pushing a piston. The piston rod then pushes a crank shaft. Its clever design uses the linear motion
to rotate an axle. And if you join the axle to wheels,
welcome to the steam age. Steam engines saw people
traveling faster than ever before. The first public railway opened in 1825
in northern England. A journey in Britain
that used to take 15 hours by horse could be done in three hours
by steam train. The steam revolution
still governs our world today. Steam powered turbines provide us with over 85 percent
of our electricity needs. And modern renewables, like this solar-powered generator
in California, uses 170,000 mirrors to focus the sun's rays to super-heat water to power generators. The external combustion engine
would transform the world. But would it be the answer
to the horseless carriage? There's so much excitement
about what steam could do that they wanted to channel the steam into every type of transportation,
whether that was in steam trains,
steam ships, even steam cars. [narrator] For a while, it looked
like steam cars were the future. [jaunty marching tune music plays] So, these first steam-engined cars
all of a sudden meant that not only did you have this amazing form
of personalized travel, but before, the only way you could go faster
than what your two legs could do would be on the back of a galloping horse. Maybe you could get
to 30, 40 miles an hour. But now, suddenly, you could go
50, even up to 100 miles an hour. [narrator] In 1906, a car made by
the American Stanley brothers set a land speed record
of 204 kilometers per hour. It seemed that the horseless carriage
had truly arrived. So why aren't we driving around
in steam driven cars today? They were a huge pain in the ass. You had to not only
bring along a ton of coal to fuel them, but you also needed to bring
a bunch of water. And these things are really heavy
and labor intensive. Not to mention, annoyingly dirty
and probably a bit dangerous to deal with. [narrator] Steam cars
came with a serious health warning. [male voice] They did suffer
from a terrible Image problem, because, you know,
we all forget these things were handmade. Every single one
was in effect a prototype. And when one of these things exploded, full of fire and, you know,
boiling hot water, the results could be
absolutely catastrophic. [narrator] Engineers also discovered
that steam power had its limitations. An external combustion engine
is extremely inefficient. Even like the absolute
top of the range steam trains could only achieve an energy efficiency
of, like, seven percent. The best cars, that was even way less. I think they only achieved
one percent efficiencies. [narrator] So engineers started to look
for a safer, less bulky engine that ran on a more energy-efficient fuel
than coal. In Germany, in 1885, an inventor ditches coal and water for oil. His patent names ligroin as the fuel
to generate power, removing the need for steam. So cut to the 1880s,
and a guy called Karl Benz, you might recognize his name... He decided, well, what if you can take this external combustion and make it happen inside the casing of the engine? Maybe that will be
a more efficient process? [narrator] The key fuel, ligroin, was a by-product of oil manufacturing, best known as a household cleaner. He used ligroin oil as a form of fuel for combustion within the engine itself. And so by cutting out these various
processes of having to heat steam, transferring that steam to a wheel... You were actually having
the combustion reaction all in one place, which meant it was much more efficient. [narrator] It works like this: A piston draws a mixture
of ligroin and oxygen through a valve
into a combustion chamber. The valve closes. And the piston compresses the fuel
and the oxygen together in an energy-rich mix. As the piston reaches the top
of the chamber, a spark ignites the combustible mixture, causing it to explode. This explosion rapidly heats
the compressed gas, making it dramatically expand,
forcing the piston away. A second exhaust valve opens, allowing the returning piston
to push out the exhaust fumes and ready the chamber for another cycle. Benz's patent
is one of the earliest versions of the internal combustion engine. Fuelled not by coal and steam,
but by ligroin. As seen In this 1930s demonstration. Benz's ligroin engine is more efficient, cleaner and safer
than a coal-powered steam version. It had to be a success. Well actually, no.
No one really bought his car. So as genius as Benz's new invention is, unfortunately, no one wanted to buy one, because they still had their horses
as a convenient way of travel. And people were basically... They didn't believe that a car
would be able to take them any kind of meaningful long distance. But Benz's wife, Bertha,
had a fantastic idea. [Arney] One morning, she got up early
and took her sons to Karl's workshop. And "borrowed" his prototype car. She just took the car
without telling him about it, with her two sons, and decided to make the
200-kilometer round trip to a nearby town to prove all the naysayers wrong. It was effectively
the first grand theft auto. [narrator] Bertha wanted to prove
that her husband's car was reliable over a long range. But it wasn't long
before things went wrong. The brakes started to disintegrate. The brakes were basically
just this wooden block against the wheel. Now, the car had never been
this distance before. It had never braked this many times,
and the wood wore down. So Bertha was stuck. If she couldn't find a new alternative, then this car
wouldn't reach its destination, and she would never prove
that it was the future of transport. [narrator] So Bertha found a tanner and asked him
to cover the wooden brake blocks with a strong leather covering. The bemused craftsman complied, not realizing that he had just created
the world's first brake lining. Car brakes today, like these disc brakes,
are technical marvels. But still follow the same basic principle
of applying pressure to the wheel to slow it down. Some modern brakes even allow cars to go from 100 kilometers an hour
to a standstill in just over 30 meters. But for Bertha, the brakes
were just the start of her problems. Then disaster struck. Bertha was about to run out of fuel. This car was powered by ligroin. It's a cleaning product that you could buy
in pharmacies or drug stores. So Bertha took a little detour
to a tiny village store and purchased all the ligroin
she possibly could. Much to the confusion of the pharmacist. [narrator] Ligroin is similar to another
by-product of oil called gasoline. Today, there are approximately half a million gasoline filling stations
around the globe. But it's thanks to Bertha
that chemists became the very first. Bertha had no idea
that she had started a revolution. That secret trip kick-started
the global petrochemical industry. Today, oil dominates our world. We refine it for industry and plastics. But above all, it's to power our cars. Over 70 percent of all oil
is sold as fuel. Gram for gram, refined oil
holds twice the energy of coal. And, instantly flammable, it's a great source of energy. When Bertha and her sons
make it back to Benz's workshop, they are hailed as heroes. They've proved that the car
isn't a novelty. It's a real form of transport. It's the future. So this design that Benz creates
is unbelievably important. It's basically the granddaddy of all of the modern petrol engine cars
that we see today. [narrator] Together, Karl and Bertha Benz
will change the world. Every car you see today, from sports car to taxi, from racing car to the family car, owes its lineage to this patent. And the ingenuity of the wife and husband team. But the motor car wasn't ready
to take over the world just yet. In the early years of the 20th century, the motor car was a highly specialized
piece of machinery. Each part taking highly skilled workers
days to make, as demonstrated here in a film made by the Ford Motor Company. The framework, the carriage, the engine, the wheels, the upholstery... Every part of the car
needed a specialized craftsman. It was expensive. And early cars
seemed destined to become a luxury only the super wealthy could afford. The story now moves to America's Midwest. And a rural farmer from Michigan,
Henry Ford. Although he grew up on a farm,
Henry's obsession was engineering. At only 15 years old, he would entertain himself
by taking a pocket watch apart and putting it back together. It's this skill at breaking things down
into their component parts that influences
young Henry Ford's thinking when he dreams of building cars. Alongside an important lesson
from farming. Actually, he looked at abattoirs and how they stripped carcasses
of, you know, bits and pieces of meat
to make sausages and so forth. And he suddenly had this brainwave that he could use the moving production
line that were found in these buildings, and he could adapt that to making the car. So instead of having two or three men
building an entire car and having to know every aspect
of how to construct the car, you could have one person
working on one individual job, then move the part to the next person who was expert in another job. And suddenly, you had this conveyor belt
of individual experts, each producing their job
to the highest standards, which meant
that you could produce cars in hours rather than days and weeks. [narrator] Ford's assembly line,
first introduced in 1913, sees the time it takes to build a car go from more than 12 hours
to just two and a half hours. The amazing thing
that Henry Ford's production system did was to radically reduce
the price of a car. So when it started,
I think the Model T was 850 dollars, and just ten years later,
it was half the price. And a few years later,
it was about 300 dollars. [narrator] Suddenly,
the car comes within reach of families with even modest incomes. And, of course,
among the first to benefit were the remote farming communities that in 1915,
made up over half of all Americans. He needed to design a vehicle
that would be ideal for people in very, very remote areas. In the Midwest, anywhere across the States
where there weren't roads that they could actually
really get around in. [narrator]
The effect on agriculture is dramatic, with farmers reporting
a 68 percent increase in their efficiency,
thanks to their new set of wheels. And farmers buy them by the million. On the 26th of May, 1927, the 15 millionth Model T
rolls of the Highland Park assembly line. Ford's genius has created, arguably, the most
important invention of the 20th century: the assembly line, a concept that is used to this day for the mass production of cars. From three million cars a year in 1925 to almost
six million cars a month, today. Mass production
has touched every part of our lives. Even changing what we eat and what we drink. And with simplicity at each stage
of the process, robots replace people, speeding up manufacturing even further. Today, we take for granted
the benefits of mass production. But it was Henry Ford's vision that helped transform American industry. [Rock 'n Roll music plays] [narrator] Exported around the world, everyone can benefit from affordable,
personalized transport. And car ownership explodes. By the 1940s, just 30 years
since the birth of the Model T, car ownership in America has risen a thousand fold. It's a car's world,
and everyone benefits. Doctors could get trauma victims
to the hospital in record time, saving lives. Firefighters reach blazing buildings
before they are lost. Bad guys benefit from a quick getaway. And it isn't long before the cops
are hot on their tails. What I find absolutely amazing is how quickly America responds to the mass introduction of cars. The whole country is rebuilt
around vehicles. I mean, not just roads are... you know,
made and tarmacked for the first time, but whole freeways and turnpikes are built to accommodate this vehicle. Motels are introduced. Drive-in movies come along.
Petrol stations. What it does
is it starts to expand the city out, you know, towards the horizon. [narrator] America becomes
the first nation dominated by the car. New types of businesses
spring up for car users. Filling stations appear everywhere
to fill thirsty cars. And drivers refuel in roadside diners. And the new mobility
of people around the country has a vast effect on the economy. From the late 1930s onwards, car driving tourists across America spend 700 million dollars a year on fizzy drinks, hot dogs, even golf. Today, golf is worth 84 billion dollars
to the US economy alone. It's a sport that couldn't exist
without the car, with so many courses in remote places. From just a few hundred golf courses
in the US in the 1910s, thanks to the automobile, There are now nearly 20,000. It doesn't take long
for the car bug to spread. Postwar West Germany falls in love
with an idiosyncratic beauty: the Volkswagen Beetle. From only 9,000 made in 1947, by 1955, the millionth Beetle
had been built and sold. [male reporter]
There was a big celebration in Germany to mark the one millionth "People's Car"
since the war. Over 150,000 people were present
to take part in the jollification. This included a stage performance
by French can-can girls. And it's just not true that one
is given away with every Volkswagen. [narrator] The Beetle not only provided
West Germans with jobs, but also engineering to be proud of. And West Germans loved it so much
that by 1965, over ten million had been sold, helping drive
the nation's economic miracle of the 1950s and 60s. The car was transforming economies
around the world, but it was also affecting
the design of our cities. Thanks to the car, workers could live
further from the workplace, creating another American first: the suburb. Since the car became affordable
in the 1920s, suburbs in the US
have grown at a remarkable pace. Before the car,
cities were pretty grotty places. They were full of people,
because people had to be near work. They were full of horses
and the side effects that having lots of horses brings with it. And they were smelly, grotty, not particularly nice places. Having a car meant
that you didn't have to live in the city. You could work in the city,
but live outside of it and drive in. And this has led to the development
and advent of suburbs. Through having a car, you could go from
living on top of one another in the city, not particularly wanting
to venture outside, to having space
and freedom to grow in suburbia. And actually wanting to go outside,
sit in the garden, have a barbecue. The car brought that to you. And then you could simply
commute into the city, do what you needed to do there
and go back home to this paradise. [narrator] Beyond commerce
and city planning, the car was about to have a major impact
on families themselves, particularly the younger generation. Mass car ownership itself
is all about escapism. And the effect on the family
means that you can escape the family. This must have been
extraordinary for teenagers, that first wave of teenagers
who can actually get away from it all and escape and not have to worry about being watched. It was very exciting. [narrator]
Back in the early 20th century, family life was a distinctly local,
suffocating affair. So, in a rural community like that,
the family would have been very insular. If you look at that, you know,
'round the turn of the century, if you know a boy liked a girl, they would probably come to have dinner,
you know, over at the girl's house, and the parents would be there, and they would be chaperoned all the time. But then the car comes.
All of a sudden, they can go for a drive. They can be alone. They can have this space
that actually promotes intimacy as well, which is kind of something
you don't think about with a car. [Aucock] With the car, you could just get into the car
and drive it and go places. So, it opened up America. Because you didn't have to think about the logistics of actually
getting to where you wanted to go. You could just get into the car and do it. And people did. [narrator] And within a few decades, the car has become more than a workhorse. It's a work of art. A thing of beauty. And we fall completely in love. Between the 1950s and 70s, car ownership continues to explode, doubling every ten years. In the new century, there is one car
for every six people on our planet. Today, the automotive industry continues to dominate global manufacturing. In Germany alone,
it employs almost a million people, producing over five million cars a year. But among the car's
most alluring qualities is speed. [engines roaring] [narrator] Speed is like a drug. [Papadopoulos] When you hit
the accelerator, you have that adrenaline rush, and you have that because what's happening is the fear of going fast sort of kicks in that response of hyper-awareness of what's going on. But, at the same time, you have that part of the brain
that kind of feels it's in control, so you're in many ways
walking that balance between danger, but also control. So it's a very powerful position to be in. [engines roaring] [narrator] Originally, the speed of a car
was a measure of its quality. You know, to be able to sustain a vehicle over, you know, 30 or 40
or 50 miles an hour before 1900, that was a feat in itself. [narrator] But speed soon becomes
an end in itself. But to actually
start hitting a few of the, you know, the sort of magic figures,
100 miles an hour... that would have been
160 kilometers an hour... It started to get people focused on actual speed record breaking. [narrator] And engineers
are soon exploring the interplay between car and atmosphere. Aerodynamics. [Boeree] The problem
with trying to make anything go fast down here at ground level on earth is that we have this thick soup of air
that we have to travel through. And the faster you go,
the greater the force that the air molecules exert
on the vehicle. So it requires more and more energy
to make something go faster and faster. And so, this sort of created
the study of aerodynamics, because the shape of the vehicle
has a really big impact on how fast you can go. [narrator] As designers try new profiles that allow cars
to slice through the atmosphere, the car evolves. [rock n' roll music plays] [narrator]
From the blocky cars of the 1940s to the sleek sports cars of today. Even racing cars
go from engines on wheels to streamlined machines that slice through the air. I mean, you must have felt this yourself
when you're swimming. If you try and put your hand
through water with it flat, you could feel the force. It takes a ton of effort to do it. But, if you put your hand like that, it slips through the water really nicely. And so this same principle
applies to car design. You want to have something
that's nice and pointed, and allows the air
to flow around it really smoothly without creating any kind of turbulence. [dramatic music plays] [narrator]
Aerodynamics is critically important in the breaking of speed records. One of the early speed pioneers was 1960s British driver Donald Campbell. [Papadopoulos]
It's not climbing and it's not flying, but it's going as fast as possible. So it requires, you know, nerves of steel. It requires ingenuity. It requires risk-taking behavior,
and it requires belief in oneself. [narrator] Using the same principles
of aerodynamics that apply today, helping the vehicle channel the air
over the car body, Campbell and his team manage to break
both the land and water speed record in the same year: 1964. [Boeree] But the problem with going
really fast is that at some point, the air resistance
isn't just a drag problem, but if it gets underneath the car,
it can actually create lift. In a similar way that happens with planes
that take off on a runway. But you really don't want that when you're
in a car that doesn't have wings, and if it goes in the air,
is gonna come back down very badly. [narrator] It's this effect
that Campbell experiences not on land, but on water, in 1967. [melancholy music plays] [narrator]
Campbell's life comes to an abrupt end chasing a speed record. Campbell isn't the first
to succumb to the speed bug. He won't be the last. It isn't long before the problem becomes an epidemic. [dramatic music plays] [narrator]
As the domestic car becomes a killer... With the invention of the car
also came the car accident. [narrator] ...a new branch of engineering
develops to combat the problem: passenger safety. From the 1950s onwards, in Europe,
safety becomes a priority. And that means
that we started decades of work to try to make these new vehicles safer. [narrator] Cars are built of metal. Humans are merely flesh and blood. In a high-speed crash,
we don't stand a chance. The problem is
you're gonna keep going forwards until something stops you. And that could be
the seat in front of you, the steering wheel, the inside of the car,
which is now stationary. These are all rigid things that are
gonna stop you incredibly quickly and do a lot of damage to your body. [narrator] The first major safety
developments are basic waist belts, which can save lives if used properly, as this public service announcement
from America shows. [woman] Watch out! [tires screech] [man's voice]
Although we were wearing seat belts, Alice was badly shaken up. I'd have to get Alice
over to Dr McAllister right away. Then we discovered something
that gave us both a genuine shock. What if this had been Nancy? [narrator] But the waist belt
was far from a perfect solution. [PSA narrator] The majority of injuries
in car accidents are to the head. [narrator]
It left the head and upper body vulnerable. 1959. A Swedish engineer suggests
a simple improvement to the waist belt. Nils Bohlin was an aviation engineer who specialized in ejector seats. He understood that full body restraint was the key to saving lives, as seen here
in the US military film from 1949. Knowing how an unrestrained body could be damaged in an accident, he proposes the V-belt, the principle of all seat belts today. A three-point belt that connects
across the stomach and chest. It was a simple improvement
that has saved many lives... when it was used. But no one could force everyone
to buckle up. So car manufacturers looked for a solution that doesn't rely on perfect behavior, but on technology. The key to safety
is being able to slow you down over as much time as possible. That's what's gonna reduce the force that is going to potentially cause damage. So one possible solution
is by having this air cushion that will slowly
decelerate you down to zero. [narrator] It takes engineers
another 20 years before a more effective,
but elaborate safety system is unveiled in Germany in 1981. The airbag. And that is the principle
behind the airbag. It's an air cushion that just increases the amount of time
it takes for you to stop, compared to if your head
just hit the steering wheel. [narrator] A simple idea,
but one with a lot of challenges. The airbag has to be fully inflated
before you land on it, because you're filling
this thing up quite quickly. And so that is forcing the airbag out. So, if you're hitting something
that's already sort of expanding towards you,
that's like it's hitting you even harder than it would have done otherwise. It really has to fill incredibly quickly. [narrator] In fact,
in under one-twentieth of a second. Filling an airbag
in this short space of time presents a real engineering challenge. The answer is found
through the precise choreography of engineering and chemistry. The airbag needs to very rapidly detect
that the car has come to a stop. It's got just a few milliseconds before
you come into contact with the wheel. So the way this works
is that a small electronic accelerometer detects if there's a sudden change
in speed of the car. And if that happens,
then it sends an electrical signal to basically a small packet of chemicals
behind your steering wheel. The electricity heats it up,
and it causes the chemical to decompose, releasing a huge amount of gas
very, very quickly that inflates the airbag like a balloon. [narrator] The most widely used compound
in airbags is sodium azide. Normally stable,
chemists know that when heated, the compound instantly releases a huge
amount of non-flammable nitrogen gas. The reaction is so fast,
that just 130 grams of sodium azide can produce 67 liters of nitrogen
in the blink of an eye. A brilliant cross-disciplined solution that has saved countless lives. The car has come
to dominate our modern world. From helping first responders save lives to becoming
our preferred form of transport. But the car's success
may also spell its downfall. There are now more cars on the road
than ever before. And more cars mean traffic, traffic and more traffic. In central London,
cars move slower at rush hour than the horse and carriage did in 1900. And in China, in 2010, a 60-kilometer traffic jam
lasted 12 days. And traffic jams exacerbate a major problem. Pollution. Contributing to the major issue
of the 21st century: global warming. Gasoline-powered vehicles have
one big disadvantage in this day and age, and that is,
each one is a miniature power station. The sort of mixture of particulates and noxious emissions
from petrol engine vehicles is harmful to health. I think we're reaching a point in society where we're not prepared
to put up with that anymore. [narrator] Along with poor air quality, motor vehicles are now believed to be one of the largest contributors
to climate change. The great invention
that has transformed our planet may end up killing it, unless something radical changes. One possible solution
was there right at the start. This car from 1900 is electric. Electric cars have been with us
for more than a century. Instead of
the internal combustion engine, an electric motor drives the wheels from between 55 to 240 kilometers. But the first electric cars
had a limited range and were overtaken by
Henry Ford's longer-ranged petrol cars. But now the tables are turning back
to this cleaner alternative. An electric car engine
is essentially an electric motor and a battery with a power controller unit
in between the two. And all that happens
is that we charge up the battery. We put energy into the battery system, and that energy is drawn down
by the electric motors, which drive the wheels. So a very, very simple process. We're not burning anything.
We're not burning any fuels. We are producing no emissions at all. [narrator] Electric vehicles
have always been part of our lives. From the lunar rover to the Japanese bullet train. Electricity is a proven way
to transport us. But for the domestic user, recharging is not as quick as refueling. Obviously at the moment
when you're at the fuel pump, it perhaps takes you
a couple of minutes to fill the tank up, and that tank of fuel
provides you with quite a long range. Typically in excess
of 300 or 400 kilometers. But charging with electric vehicles
is typically anywhere from 30 minutes to maybe several hours, dependent upon
the type of charging station. So there's a great deal of infrastructure and high-speed charging
infrastructure that's required in order to see electric cars
being taken up to their full potential. [narrator] But, even with its challenges, the electric car will be the next step
for this great invention. The electrification of cars
should hopefully make the car sustainable. It won't be this polluting beast
choking us all and shortening our lives. It will be something that emits nothing and can be charged from solar power and is completely sustainable. I think it's very exciting. And the advent of electric cars
could possibly save the car itself. [narrator] And safety
is entering the electronic arena too. Cars are now fitted
with smart electronics. Radar. Even laser-equipped radar. All in an effort to remove the most
dangerous aspect of a car journey: you, the driver. The self-driving car. It's a dream long held
as science fiction. [upbeat music plays] [narrator] This futuristic film from 1956 takes a glimpse into the world of 1976. Car journeys are controlled
by a central computer... We're heading for Chicago.
Please route us through. Synchronize your speed and direction. [narrator]
...which plots your best route... We're all set for auto control! You're now under automatic control.
Hands off steering. [narrator] ...and makes sure you go
as quickly and safely as you can. All you need to do is have a drink. Even smoke a cigar. As your car whizzes along under the watchful eye
of the control system. Which means less traffic. And fewer accidents. Happy driving. Now the future is here, and it's very different. Each car has its own controller: an on-board AI computer. A breakthrough technology in this quest
is called light detection and ranging: lidar. So a lidar system uses a laser beam
to effectively range find to work out what's out there
and how far it is away. And it does that by bouncing
a light signal off objects in the environment. And those points, those measurements
that are made in the environment can be created into something
called a point cloud. So in other words, what is physically
out there around the vehicle, which the vehicle needs to avoid. [narrator] By using lasers, the technology paints a picture
of the world around it, reacting to danger in the blink of an eye and fundamentally
changing our relationship with the car. The car was the thing
that allowed us to be in control, to go as fast as we wanted,
wherever we wanted. And that's gonna feel
like it's being taken away. But on the other hand,
you've got to imagine that the reason
that we have so many car accidents is because all cars are autonomous. We all have our own brains, thinking about where we want to go
and what we want to do. Eventually, when we have driverless cars, they will be on a network,
understanding where each other's going, which means
it will be profoundly more safe. [narrator] But what would
a driverless reality mean for drivers? Do driverless cars
spell the end of the car as we know it? [Chapman] Most drivers
who like the response of a gasoline-powered vehicle, they feel that it's going to respond
to their commands. A driverless vehicle is not gonna take
any notice of what you want. And so, you know, driving as we know it is gonna be over. [narrator] Or is it the beginning
of a brave new world? [Aucock] What's really exciting is:
What happens now? The reset button
is essentially being pressed. That's why the future of the car
is gonna be so exciting. [narrator] And some designers
are even looking to take the car off the road and into a new dimension. But whether it's in the sky
or on the ground, the car remains
one of humankind's great inventions. The car has to be
one of the greatest inventions ever, because, you know, not only does it give us the autonomy about where we can go and takes us from A to B safely, but it also is absolutely revolutionary because it saves us on our most
precious resource, and that is our time. We can get places that before
would take weeks or even months to get to, within a day. [narrator] The car. A great invention that's transformed our world
for over 100 years, and may be about to transform it again. NARRATOR: In this world,
the only way is up. In any modern city street, the enormous impact
of this great invention is all around you, even though you
probably can't see it. LIV BOEREE: The trade off with
building ever taller buildings is that you need to find
increasingly ingenious ways of getting those people up the top. NARRATOR: And the
sky isn't even the limit - we're reaching for the stars... DR. ARCHER: Imagine the views
you'd see, it would be amazing! NARRATOR: But what invention
connects our city streets with exploring,
mining and parking our cars? ANJULA MUTANDA: We'd have a very
different looking world if we didn't have that. NARRATOR: But in the early days, this invention was involved
in so many accidents, it took patience
and ingenuity to make it safe. Then, we couldn't
stop building without it. Our developed world would
feel flat and monotonous if we didn't have it. DR. WHYTE: So it's
completely central to how the modern
world has been built. NARRATOR: It carries us,
helps us, saves our energy, yet we take it for granted. We could not live without
it now, or in the future. This is the story of the rise
and rise... of the Elevator! Look around the
world's great cities and what dominates the skyline? More and more,
we build up rather than out, to save on land space. And the reason we can go up... and up...
and down... is thanks to a small box. A vertical people carrier which can stop safely
when we want it to, and saves us climbing
flights and flights of stairs! DR. ARCHER: I've been
30-40 storys up, and obviously
there's no way in hell I'd want to do that via stairs. The elevator's
a great invention because what it's enabled us
to do is to build a whole world and to live in that world
safely and comfortably that would've been unimaginable
before the 19th century. NARRATOR: The elevator
has allowed more people to work in the same building; more people to live in the
vicinity of their workplace. MARK STEVENSON: So, the elevator
allows you to go up which of course
means you can build up. So now you can build more
stuff on a smaller piece of land and as land gets more
and more expensive, particularly in
urban environments, then that's a good
thing to do, potentially. NARRATOR: In 2016,
China's Shanghai Tower set an astonishing
new world record with the fastest
elevator in the world. It travels at about 74 km/h; faster than the
average city speed limit. In 2017, at the Lotte
World Tower in Seoul, an elevator called the
Sky Shuttle was unveiled. It's the world's tallest and
fastest double-deck elevator. Elevators are an enabler,
a convenience. But what gave us the idea to
invent them in the first place? In the horizontal
world of our ancestors, why did we feel the need to
travel mechanically upwards? Sadly, there is no
evidence remaining of how we reached the tops of
our ancient, highest buildings. The Pyramids are
a lasting example of man's vision and ability to stretch the limits of early
construction techniques, to create magnificent
structures without any kind
of primitive elevator! Of course we were
able to build high long before the invention
of elevators, I mean the pyramids - immense amounts of
human manual labour went into building these
incredible structures. It just meant, that if you
wanted to get to the top of them you have to use your
good old leg power. NARRATOR: We may not have
had elevators to lift people. But 5,000 years ago,
Ancient Egyptian engineers invented the very simplest
lifting machines to pull off
their extraordinary feats of architectural design
and construction. Those simple lifting machines became a bit more sophisticated
under the Ancient Greeks, about 2,000 years
after the Egyptians... This reconstruction
gives an idea of how the Parthenon in
Athens was built in 447 BCE. This was the era of
the great Archimedes. His was a brilliantly
inventive mind, fascinated by mechanics and the development
of simple machines. One of the earliest examples
appears to be Archimedes, or at any rate, is
attributed to Archimedes, and it's a pulley system that enables you to
carry things up and down. NARRATOR: Archimedes
is known as the father
of experimental science, and helped our understanding
of how a pulley works. Essentially, it saves
us a lot of effort moving things up and down. A pulley is really
quite simple. You have an object, you'll need a counterweight of
the same mass of that object, you connect them with a
rope or a cable of some sort, and you just have
a winch at the top. And by using the
tension in the rope that is perfectly balanced. The forces completely
balance out so it means that that
is a stable configuration, no matter how
high the thing is... which may go against
what your intuition is, but often the case with physics is that your intuition
can be wrong! NARRATOR: You only have
to look at Roman architecture to realise how much
we could achieve with a simple, primitive
elevating machine. The Romans' invention,
based on a pulley, was really a service-elevator. Historians believe
that in the Colosseum, there was a system of elevators to carry wild animals
and gladiators, from the lower floors
up to the arena, to fight... So this early, we
began elevating people. There are medieval
examples of things being lifted, platforms being
lifted up and down, powered by mules, powered by people sometimes. DR. ARCHER: We had incredibly
tall buildings before, big cathedrals
and things like that. Imagine the sort of
labour that was involved not only in building that high without any sort of
mechanical support but also just getting
up there all the time. NARRATOR: Segovia Cathedral
in Spain is an example, now part of a
world heritage site. Construction began in 1525, on one of the highest
spots in the city, which only added
to the challenge... The top of the nave
is 33 metres high. Elevator technology would
surely have been helpful? But pulleys and platforms
were better than nothing. I think church builders of
yore and cathedral builders would have been very
ecstatic about the elevator. The height of the spires was to a certain extent constrained by how
high we could get. So if you can get higher
then you can build higher. NARRATOR: Dutch houses
had hooks in their gables to attach a pulley rope, to hoist goods up and
down from the upper floors, at least as early
as the 17th century. The principle
still works today! Or you can use a 21st
century lifting platform to whizz your bulky items
up to a top floor apartment, on a furniture hoist like this. Meanwhile, that
prehistoric invention - steps - had been developed
into domestic staircases. We started building taller
homes using a staircase to reach the upper floors. But they didn't
satisfy everyone. There were those
with power and money who could afford to commission
an ‘elevating device'... to carry them from
one floor to another, to save them
taking the stairs... In the Palace of Whitehall
in 16th Century London, a very large King Henry VIII
was having mobility problems. Historians believe
his leg was injured in a jousting
competition in 1536. A contraption was
installed in which servants would have pulled
the weighty monarch up and down on his
stair-lift chair by hand. It probably took
quite a few of them! The lift must have
been immensely strong - when he died 11 years later,
Henry VIII weighed 180 kg! Royals seem to have
liked an elevator - at the Chateau de Versailles, King Louis XV of France
allowed a ‘sliding chair' to be installed by his mistress
in the eighteenth century. It saved the poor lady
from using the stairs for her visits to the King. Industrialisation demanded
bigger scale everything including factories. Moving goods around
these larger, taller buildings required an inventive solution. There are obviously precursors which is about moving
platforms up and down, but they are deeply unsafe. And they can only be
done to a certain extent, so long as you know
that at any moment you could plunge
to the bottom. NARRATOR: The technology was
open to adaptation like this - hoisting an injured person
down the mountain to a hospital. Nowadays the technology is
mainly used by ski vacationers. The first ski lift was put into
operation in Germany in 1908. Since then winter
sports enthusiasts no longer have to
climb mountains. They're simply pulled up by one of over 22
thousand ski lifts in the world. 200 years ago, industrialists were greedy
to move quantity quickly, but they had to be careful
how heavy they made each load on their elevating machines. Using hemp rope - however
thick and well-made - it wasn't always up to the job. It was liable to rot and
snap, or to wear thin. Something stronger was needed. Around the middle
of the 19th century, engineers started replacing
rope with steel wire, and that remained
the material of choice for the next 100 years or more. DR. WHYTE: Factories are being
built on multiple floors, you were starting
to see the early signs of what are going
to be skyscrapers. But the fact is, people
can't be confident that the elevators they're
using are wholly safe and the alternative is stairs. NARRATOR: Replacing wire
with rope worked up to a point, but the constant bending
and straining over the winches made the wire wear out quickly and its durability
was as yet unknown. The quest for
super-strong materials to winch our
elevators up and down is as crucial today as ever,
if we are to build even higher. But what has this
little guy got to do with improving the strength and
resilience of elevator cables? There is always hope
that the natural world will provide amazing
natural solutions, instead of us having to
figure out synthetic ones. Will the basis of spider
silk really hold the answer for cabling technological
development? Throughout civilisation, we've always been
taking lessons from nature; bio-mimicry, taking
things we've seen and applying them in
engineering, in structures, and in medicine and health. Spider silk is a
very strong material and it's also a
very fine material. Scientists have
found that spider silk is comparable to steel
in tensile strength. NARRATOR: In 1990, a spider silk gene was
cloned for the first time and subsequently produced
enough silk for us to weave. But so far, mass production
on a commercial scale of any super-strong,
spider-silk rope has remained a pipedream. Now and in the future, carbon-fibre is proving much
more likely to yield solutions, in the search for stronger and importantly,
lighter weight cables. The higher we build, the more cable we need
for the elevators to work, and the heavier they'll be. So it has become vital that
we develop lighter cables to keep overall
weight to a minimum. Elevators require a
cable to carry the elevator. The cables themselves have a
self-weight as well as the load. Therefore by reducing
the self-weight of the cable, we can actually reduce
the load in general. By doing this, we can
have elevators that go larger, And they can go in larger
structures, and go higher. NARRATOR: So when
engineers are developing a new cabling solution, how do they make sure it works? How can they test safely? In a country where
there are no skyscrapers, lies the world's largest
hi-rise testing facility for new elevator cables in an active, limestone
mine in Finland. But they're not measuring
its height from the ground up. The elevator shaft starts
305 metres underground, and can test elevator
systems up to a kilometre high. Engineers here
have been working on a new high-tech
cabling system, using a light-weight,
carbon-fibre core instead of steel. They've discovered
that super-light cables mean the elevator can
go further and faster, and cuts the amount
of energy needed. To demonstrate the cables'
strength and stress tolerance, they put a wristwatch at the
bottom of the elevator shaft. The car is put into an
accelerating freefall, then stopped abruptly... and the cables hold it fast. The watch survives intact, apart from a light
coating of dust. Testing this kind of
futuristic technology is crucial to feed our
aspiration to build even higher in the 21st century. And we want to travel
deeper underground. Industrialisation saw
mine owners install crude, open-sided cage elevators, which were crammed with workers as they travelled
down to the coalface. In fact, the world's
longest elevator is in the world's
deepest gold mine - Mponeng [M-PON-ENG]
in South Africa - the elevator
travels a staggering almost 2.3km
into the depths. But back in the 19th century, there were very few
people brave enough to travel in an elevator,
even in factories. What got the ball rolling was the first enclosed
space to carry people called an ‘ascending room'. It was opened in
London in 1829, for 12 tourists at a time to
pay and admire the view... even though the elevator
wasn't entirely safe. What could happen then, still happens very
occasionally today. Cables can break,
and it's terrifying. In 2018, in this
Chicago skyscraper, at least 1 cable snapped. The elevator plunged 84 storys
with 6 people trapped inside. Everyone survived, thanks to a
life-saving mechanism. As elevators developed, we
couldn't stop cables breaking, but what about
breaking the fall? Elisha Otis is the
man we have to thank for inventing the
ingenious component that changed the future
of elevators... a brake. In 1854, he took an
enormous gamble, and demonstrated
his new invention under the glare of an audience. The spectacle was breathtaking. Such was his faith
in his brainchild, that Otis hoisted his elevator
to the top of the building. Elisha Otis came up with
a really cool mechanism that was basically a
rudimentary safety brake. There were these metal teeth
all the way up the lift shaft, and if the rope
broke, these hooks, which were attached to springs, would spring outwards and
get caught in the metal teeth, making the lift stop
dead in its tracks. And he even demonstrated
this bravely by standing on a platform
and telling a guy with an axe to cut through the rope
and to everyone's shock, he fell but then stopped. Thus the confidence to build
elevators came from there. NARRATOR: Everything
changed almost overnight in the building trade,
thanks to Elisha Otis. We could build up and up, with an easy way
of ensuring people didn't have to walk
flights and flights of stairs. DR. WHYTE: The safety lift enables you to be confident that when you get
into the lift it will go up and it will come down
and you will not die. And that is something
that is absolutely necessary. And that's what amazes
people when Otis brings this to the New York
world exhibition, is that they're able to see
this is something that's safe. Most people don't
like new technology, they're kind of
suspicious of it. Until the point
it stops sucking, basically, it actually
becomes useful.... The braking system made the mass adoption
of elevators possible because the biggest
fear people have walking into an elevator
is it's going to fall. And now that we're told that even if it
falls, you're going to be okay. NARRATOR: The world
would never be the same again, thanks to the
elevator's safety brake. Now that lifts
could be trusted, progress picked up speed. The technology
proved versatile... From 1875, we
could carry a barge from one canal to
another at a lower height.. The barge moves into the
elevator at the upper level, and is lifted down to
the other, or vice versa. In 1880, German
electrical engineer, Ernst Werner von Siemens,
devised the next innovation; the world's first
electric elevator. That was followed quite quickly by automatically closing
doors to the elevator shaft. For a long time, elevators
had 2 sets of doors: the shaft doors on each floor and the elevator
cabin's own doors. Both had to be locked manually, and couldn't be
opened or locked, unless the elevator
had stopped at a landing. Even the burgeoning
car industry benefited from the
new elevator technology. The first vertical
car parking elevator opened in France in 1905. Why take up lots of
room with turning circles, when you can simply stack
cars one on top of the other...? For a period in
the 20th century, we had elevator
operators in fancy hotels, who would take care of
opening and closing the doors, and select which
floors to stop at... Now this luxury is reserved
for a few exclusive venues and skyscraper
tourist attractions. Elevators were significant in the creation of
many of the world's most iconic tall buildings. Our cityscapes would
look utterly different if it hadn't been
for Elisha Otis. DR. WHYTE: You just need to
look at the skyline of somewhere like New
York across the 19th century. New York just grows,
and it grows out. But more interestingly
it grows up. People want to
stay on Manhattan, people want to be
where the action is, they can't afford to
buy up multiple blocks, and so what they do is
just build up and up and up. NARRATOR: The Paris
skyline would not look the same without its famous
icon, the Eiffel Tower - for the first 40 years, it was the world's
tallest building. The city planners
want to protect the aesthetic of the old city by allowing no more tall
buildings to be erected. The result is that the Eiffel
Tower stands out to this day, And the skyscrapers
are mainly confined to a separate space
outside the city limit - where you could be in
any 21st century downtown. The Eiffel Tower
is one of the most popular tourist
attractions in France... And what do you do? You go up it,
probably by elevator! From 1889, you could
still walk up the 1710 stairs, if you wanted to,
to reach the first floor, but why not take
one of the four elevators and save your legs?! It proved that the
elevator was to play another crucial
role in society, in tourism. The elevator's hugely
important in tourism The Eiffel tower's tall and you can walk up by steps but you really
feel it at the end. It's the elevator that
makes it a tourist attraction. NARRATOR: The Eiffel Tower's
modern elevators are so busy, they're said to
travel the equivalent of two-and-a-half times
around the world each year. Elevators can become tourist
attractions in their own right... like this one in Lisbon,
completed in 1902. The Santa Justa transports visitors from
one district to another 45 metres up. Originally it was part of
the city's transport network, but now it's often
full of tourists wanting to sample
vintage Portugal. That's super-short compared
to the elevators here, in the world's
tallest building. Burj Khalifa in Dubai
stands at 828 metres high. 21st century tourists love it. It's in the top ten of the
world's biggest attractions. Altogether there are 57
elevators in the building. But if you want to walk
instead up to level 160, you can take the 2,909 stairs! The cool thing about
the Burj Khalifa lifts and all these other very
modern very fast lifts is that they've found a way
to accelerate them relatively slowly,
so it's quite a smooth process. So you still feel an
increased force downwards in the beginning but
because it accelerates slowly, that force is spread out
over a longer period of time. NARRATOR: The
contemporary experience of travelling in an elevator
like this can be unnerving. Zooming upwards OR
downwards at relative speed, can make your ears pop, and give you a slightly
weightless feeling... It's just an elevator, not a
jet plane! What's going on? This is a classic example
of Newtonian physics, the laws of motion. I'm sure you've noticed
when you're standing in an elevator and it
suddenly starts going up, you'll feel heavier,
and that's because not only on top of
the force of gravity you've got this upward force
of the bottom of the elevator acting on your feet and
legs as it pushes you up, it increases the
effects of gravity and that's why you feel
a sort of positive g-force. Similarly, if you start
going down an elevator, in those first few moments
as the elevator accelerates, the force of
gravity is lessened, and so you'll feel
temporarily lighter. NARRATOR: Gravitational
force or G-force will always come into play if you move quickly
upwards or downwards, so designers have
to consider this. DR. ARCHER: The higher we go, the more you
have to think about how can we make elevators
that can get to those heights in not a long amount of time, but also don't subject your
body to horrible g-forces that are going to make you feel pretty sick or anxious,
or things like that. And that's why you start to
see more efficient elevators that will accelerate you up
very slowly to high speeds so that you don't
notice it as much. NARRATOR: The architects and
engineers designing Burj Khalifa have succeeded in providing an extraordinary
elevator experience. On holiday, I rode
up the Burj Khalifa. And what I really noticed was,
that I didn't notice anything. I didn't notice a speed change, I didn't notice any discomfort, I didn't even feel sick in
my stomach thinking; ‘oh I'm going for
a nervous ride'. It was simply so smooth and
that is how developed we are in the technology that
we use for elevators today. They're so smooth, and
they transition so well that you can go up the
span of a huge distance in no time at all and
you won't even know it! NARRATOR: According
to one estimate, an average, well-maintained
office elevator makes about
400,000 trips per year. An average worker uses
the elevator 8 times a day. The likelihood of this worker
getting stuck is 0.01% per year. The vast majority of elevators
don't break down very often. When they do get
stuck with people inside, it's called, in the
elevator trade, a Mantrap! The unofficial record for being
stuck is a terrifying 41 hours - it happened in a New
York office building. No one was hurt, but it was a long time
to go without food or water... But the benefits of elevators surely outweigh the
small risk of a man trap? Elevators made
it possible for us not only to work
in tall buildings, but to live in them as well. These days, hi-rise living
is more often than not, a lifestyle choice, many people
love it and enjoy the view, Wherever you live,
humans are great adaptors. If you're living
on the 34th floor you adapt to the 34th floor and you kind of
forget about the view. It's only when somebody
visits and goes oh my gosh look at your
amazing view you go oh yeah. So I think wherever
you put people, if they've chosen to
be there, they like it, they get used to it. NARRATOR: By the end of
the 19th century in most cities, we were already used
to buildings of 6 or 7 floors without elevators, like these traditional
apartment buildings in Paris, the vision of the
city's planner, Baron Georges Haussmann. Richer folk lived on the
prestigious second floor. After that,
the poorer you were, the higher up the building
you lived, and the more stairs. Many tenement buildings,
like these in Glasgow still with outdoor staircases,
were originally built to house the influx of
manual workers needed in the industrial revolution. Elevators paved the way for the development
of social housing in great volume and at height. Well, what it makes possible is
the vertical stacking of people on a scale that hadn't
been achieved before. It grows out of a tradition. So tenement blocks
already existed in New York, office blocks already
existed in New York. What the elevator
enables you to do is to just do that on scale. NARRATOR: Following
the initial invention, technology breakthroughs
allowed us to install ever more efficient lifts of
different shapes and sizes, to suit buildings with
different purposes. Tower blocks became
a one-stop solution to a housing shortage in the
post-war construction boom, following obliteration by
bombs, or slum clearance. Good quality,
affordable housing was needed by hundreds
of thousands of people all over Europe. Tower block building is characteristic
of social housing, in which the elevator is a sign
that you are being looked after. It's a sign you're part
of the modern world. NARRATOR: This
building in Marseille, revolutionised social housing. Its Swiss-born architect,
known by his pseudonym Le Corbusier, had a
vision of ‘streets in the sky' in this first example of
‘brutalist architecture'. I think the
positives are seen as having all these people
living together in these spaces. Using the elevators
will give them much more of that
sociability and connectivity. NARRATOR: Elevators
provided a lifeline to people who would otherwise
struggle to get around I think elevators are
an important invention because they have
a social role to play, because somebody with
a disability in a wheelchair, parents with prams, or
shopping bags, all of that, can get from A
to B really quickly. And I think without that, life
becomes for some people, an insurmountable struggle,
so they are very important. NARRATOR: However, elevators
were not a universal panacea to make mass housing palatable, and living in a high rise
wasn't always as dreamy as the architects envisaged. Living at height on different
floors from your friends took a bit of getting used to. Ultimately, for shy, infirm or
elderly people for example, it could be isolating. There is kind of this
sociability in the sky that can develop. But that's not
true for everybody. I mean some people can
move into these apartments, use those elevators every day and still feel completely
lonely and isolated because they don't feel
that same connection. NARRATOR: In some cases,
building up and living in
‘streets in the sky' isn't always a step
closer to heaven. One of the biggest
indicators of where you live a long and happy
life is how socialised you are. And high rise blocks, they generally have
less social cohesion because people are not
interacting on a human level. The sadness of course
is that in lots of examples, the rich,
their elevator works well; for the poor, the elevator
stops functioning because it's not well
looked after enough. And so what you end up with is the worst of all possible
worlds which is high rise living but without the
thing, the elevator, that's meant to make
the high rise work. NARRATOR: Elevators that
aren't maintained properly and constantly break
down or are vandalised, can become a bad joke when
you live in a multi-story tower but it's no joke
climbing the stairs. Yet we can't live
without elevators. What more can we aim for? Constructing
ever-taller buildings presents logistical challenges, with thousands of people
moving around daily, all expecting a
speedy reliable elevator at the touch of a button. Smart buildings
now and in the future will have intelligent elevators that monitor the flow of
people and lift journeys. Then, maintenance can
be planned for quiet times, and potential problems
predicted and solved before they become a crisis. But there's another
hidden problem looming, that could have
a profound effect on the way we
build up in the future. Have you ever been aware of a super-tall building
swaying in the wind? It can be imperceptible
OR, in strong winds, really quite noticeable... DR. ARCHER: Buildings
are like really dynamic, the higher you go, the more subjected to wind
forces and sway and torsion, and all
things like that, so they actually need
to be able to react to that. They are not rigid things in
the way that we think of them. They are swaying and
twisting and turning. NARRATOR: And it's
not just the building. The elevator shafts
inside it move too. It's another consideration
that keeps architects awake at night. The trade off with
building ever taller buildings is that you need to find increasingly ingenious ways of
getting those people up the top. And so elevator design in these
modern super tall buildings, there seems to be a
physical limit on how tall of an elevator
that we can build. NARRATOR: Where
the elevator shafts are situated in the building
makes a difference. The elevator also presents a
design difficulty for architects which is the question of
where you put the elevator? Do you put the
elevator in the middle, and once you do
that, you create a core around which buildings
are going to be arranged. Or do you put the
elevator on the outside which then creates all
sorts of other problems. So there is a way in which
the function of the elevator and the form of the elevator
begins to dictate the wider function and
form of the building. NARRATOR: And then
there's a whole other problem of people who simply
can't get into an elevator, however high up it's going. I've come across people
who won't go in elevators. They've developed
a phobia about it because they think something
bad is going to happen. So that's kind of excessive fear that something terrible
is going to happen. Now sometimes that can be as a result of
something did happen, somebody did get
stuck in a lift because elevators can get stuck, and therefore
that's a rational fear, you've actually
been in that situation and you felt claustrophobic
you felt you couldn't get out, you couldn't escape, but there are other
people who've also learned those behaviours from
hearing other people's stories. NARRATOR: What
if the lift is outside? Perhaps that might be even
more scary for some people? The highest outdoor
elevator in the world is in a national park in China. Taking the long
double-deck elevator journey is the only way to reach a
particular viewing platform. But for most people who think nothing of
stepping into an elevator, there's an unseen
danger to themselves, that we're only just
beginning to investigate... Today, living at height
can bring a certain kudos... Apartment blocks
with great views and large picture
windows to enjoy them, can fetch top dollar prices in
a competitive property market. The elevator becomes a symbol of the modern world. It becomes a sign that you
are part of the modern world and it proves highly
attractive to the very rich who want to live in these
high rise apartments. NARRATOR: But, there
may be a hidden danger, an insidious effect
on people's health, working and living at height. Researchers at the
University of Bath are investigating
the physical effects and possible harm done
by low frequency motion. It can cause ‘sopite syndrome' which is a kind of
motion sickness, bringing lethargy
and drowsiness. DR. DARBY: It's the sort of
motion that we use when we rock babies to sleep, so it's in-built
in the human response. And so we really need
to understand what the cause of that is,
and what the onset of that is and how we can prevent
that from happening. NARRATOR: The new
research is eagerly anticipated by architects and planners. Moving this purpose-built
room backwards and forwards and side to side
replicates the kinds of sway felt in a very tall building
in severe weather such as high winds,
typhoons and hurricanes, even earthquakes. Some of the world's
tallest skyscrapers are in major earthquake
zones, like Japan, which experiences
100,000 quakes a year. In the UAE, where
seismic activity is common, the very top of Burj Khalifa,
will move up to 2 metres! Until now, there has
been little research done into the effects on
people living and working inside super-tall buildings. What people don't
understand enough about is how much movement
is acceptable for people. How people respond
to being in tall buildings and so understand how they
respond to the sway motion, and how we can then
use that information to inform more efficient
design of buildings so that it's fit for humans. NARRATOR: As skyscraper
designs move to the next level, elevator design will
have to be fit for purpose. But the considerations
of the future will be different
from the past. Will we build so high? What effect will concerns
about the planet's future have on building design
and elevator technology? There will still be need for
tall buildings in some places, there will still be
a need for elevators and so what we've got to
do is find a way of doing that using energy
sources that are safe. Using materials
that are durable. And, you know, in
doing to elevators what we're trying to do
to every sort of technology, which is make it as
green as we possibly can. NARRATOR: Architects
and city planners are aware that we need to
consider building upwards sympathetically to the
existing environment, as well as creating
tall buildings that we want
to live and work in, and feel comfortable in. One of the great lessons
of the last generation has been that you can
achieve very high levels of population density
with medium sized buildings. That actually they
work every bit as well and probably better than
building very high buildings. And that lesson might
teach us something about how we manage
not to build up or out, we just densify the
cities we've got already. NARRATOR: That
could mean constructing connected
buildings in clusters, thanks to futuristic
elevator design. Elevator engineers
are creating concepts that move people up,
down and left and right... This ground-breaking
design has no cables at all! It works by direct
drive from a linear motor fitted inside the
elevator cabin - no need for a machine room
to house motors and winches. There can be multiple cabins
in a shaft which circulate rather than always travelling
in the same direction. So, buildings can be
connected horizontally as well as vertically. But in the world of elevator
research and development, there's a truly mind-blowing
project on the cards, which would make science-fiction
turn into reality. Just how high could an
elevator take us in the future? It's a 21st century
space race... NASA says it's possible... The Japanese say
they can build one... The Chinese say they
can build one sooner... the space elevator! It would give us
a platform in space that's tethered
to Planet Earth. Astronauts would
be able to travel up an enormous elevator tower to reach the international
space station. And we'd use it
to launch satellites. Although it would cost
billions to build, the theory is that it would save
huge amounts of money in rocket launches. Space elevators are
this brilliant idea of instead of having
to rely on rockets to get things up into space, what if we could build essentially a building that's
so tall that it goes into space. ROCKET BLAST NARRATOR: Launching a satellite
can cost anything between $10 million and $400 million, depending on the size of the
rocket carrying it into space ... the lift-off itself is one of
the most expensive elements. The space elevator
would eliminate that cost and bring the overall
satellite launch in at 5% or less of the current cost. Experts say it will
have paid for itself, possibly 90 billion dollars,
after around 50 launches. It would put satellites straight
into geostationary orbit past the region where
earth's gravity is strongest. That means it would stretch
over 35,000 kms' from sea level. Scientists say we
have the technology. It's just a question of
figuring out a few challenges! But it could be
a reality by 2050. Imagine the views you'd see -
it would be amazing! The space elevator is
an ingenious idea that could potentially make getting things
into space a lot easier. Rockets are prohibitively
expensive in terms of you need to get things
up to a very high speed to escape earth's gravity, and then you have to
throw half of it away. NARRATOR: The
hurdles are enormous. Building a structure sky-high
means it'll reach the sphere of millions of bits
of space debris, or unpredictable
super-fast meteorites, which could crash into it... The elevator structure would
have to withstand the weather in earth's upper atmosphere, as well as influences from
the sun, such as radiation. It's going to have to be
pressurised and sealed, or everybody I guess would
have to wear a space suit. So there's lots of
tricky things to consider but it could be once
it's built an incredibly energy efficient way of
getting people outside of earth's gravity
and off into space. NARRATOR: It promises to be
environmentally sustainable But extraordinarily
difficult to pull off! The final elevator design will
be literally out of this world. Up until recently,
we haven't had the engineering or the materials to even consider
making such a thing. We're now getting to the stage where people are
beginning to test that idea. It's a huge project. It would be one of the
biggest engineering projects ever completed. But if we could complete it, then what you have
then is a very, very cheap and regular
way of getting people and materials into space. NARRATOR: To make
this dream a reality, a new ultra-strong
construction material, capable of sustaining hits from
space junk and other threats, must be invented. This would be such
an engineering feat that it's unfortunately
just, sort of stuck in the realms of
science fiction right now. But in theory the
physics does work on it, we just need to find a way to we need to find a material
that is incredibly lightweight to form the elevator cable, the structure of the building, but that is also strong
enough to not fall apart, because I mean the
tension forces required to hold this thing together
would be enormous. NARRATOR: It's the
kind of incredible challenge that excites
scientists everywhere. The space elevator
would doubtless make a humble invention even more
significant in world history than it was already. Once we could control it
and make it stop safely, the elevator became
our flexible friend... It's surprisingly adaptable it can move boats it can park cars. Fundamentally, the
invention of the elevator has allowed us to
accommodate many more people sharing the same piece of land. Elevators make a huge
difference in peoples' lives. In fact, I think we forget how much social impact
some of these technologies had on our lives
and I think elevators are an example of a
fantastic technology. NARRATOR: It has
shaped our modern cities; it has enabled us
to enjoy the view, and its future looks secure, however high we aim to build. Yes of course I can
see a future for elevators... As we continue to make
taller and taller buildings, given the limited space
we have on the ground, they're going to be an important
part of all building design... NARRATOR: We'll develop
it to reach as far as space, and we'll innovate
and adapt it, to fit whatever shaped
environment on Earth that we want to create... People are always
trying to improve it and when it doesn't work you see just how
dependent we really are on it, in order to live our lives in
modern high rise buildings. I think the elevator's a
great invention because just put simply, allows the
movement of goods and people. It allows us to build
buildings in the sky and change the
whole city scape. And I think anything that
helps people move from A to B who perhaps wouldn't
have been able to do that is a great idea. While some technological
breakthroughs are seen and
heard by everyone... there is one great invention that has quietly changed the
world, behind closed doors. DR. WHYTE: If our ancestors
were to see this, they would assume
it was witchcraft, they would assume
it was magic. NARRATOR: It has
revolutionized industry. From toys
to electronics, to cars! And helped protect people
in the most dangerous tasks. LIV BOEREE: They've made
processes much more efficient, they've also made
things much safer. NARRATOR: We fear this invention
will put our jobs in jeopardy. We have accustomed
ourselves to its existence and many things that we use,
many things that we value wouldn't exist without it. NARRATOR: These
ingenious machines, never ask for thanks. From the first of its kind... to the futuristic, complex
versions of today, our planet has
been transformed... by the industrial robot. Working away behind the scenes, there is an army
of machines, bigger, stronger and faster
than any human. In fact, industrial robots
have slowly but surely been taking over the world! They come in many
shapes and sizes, and there are now
nearly two million in use. Whilst almost 50 per
cent are found in Japan, these hardworking
human replacements are now in every
country on earth. DR. ARCHER: The reason
to do this is to make things more
efficient. You can do a huger throughput by using robots that
are doing repetitive mundane tasks compared
to doing it with a person and that frees that person
up to do other things. Yes it's taken away a
whole set of other jobs that used to exist, but they weren't
particularly high-quality jobs and it's enabled a huge
swathe of other jobs. who are the people
who build the robots? Who are the people
that design the robots and maintain the robots? NARRATOR: These
mechanical minions are now found in the factories
of almost every industry. But what is an
industrial robot? It's something that can be used
to do a very repetitive task, often very physically
demanding task, that once upon a time, humans
on an assembly line would do, but we've now found
a way to get a robot, that can be programmed to
move things in a certain way, to do that for us. DR. ARCHER: Industrial robots
are essentially machines that can do monotonous tasks that used to be done by
people back in the day, but now have been
sort of automated. So you're thinking
about things like welding, screwing bits of metal together, a whole number of
these sorts of tasks, can be automated and performed by robots. NARRATOR: It has taken decades
of research and development to perfect these machines, but the story of these
automated apparatus starts with the creation
of the robot itself. Perhaps surprisingly, the idea
of mechanical human beings, dates back to
early civilizations, including ancient
China and Greece. But the first evidence
of early robots was recorded in
the 15th century, when the world famous
polymath Leonardo Da Vinci, sketched his plans
for a humanoid robot. Da Vinci's notebooks,
rediscovered in the 1950s, contain detailed drawings
of a mechanical knight, now known as Leonardo's Robot. In 2002, an engineer brought
Da Vinci's drawings to life, by building this
extraordinary knight. The advanced design
was capable of sitting, waving its arms
and rotating its head and jaw. Da Vinci's knight
is even inspiring NASA in their development
of future technology. So although centuries old,
a little bit of Da Vinci will one day make
it into outer space! It wasn't until
the 20th century that genuine developments
towards the robot we know today began to happen. In fact, it was in the 1920's when the term ‘robot'
was first used. MARK STEVENSON: The original
term, 'robot,' comes from a play called
Rossum's Universal Robots which was about a factory
that made artificial humans which was premiered in 1921
and became one of the most successful pieces of science
fiction ever in the theatre, got translated
into 30 languages. So the idea of an artificial
machine that was human-like was with us from the 1920s. I think it depends what
you mean by a robot. If we're thinking about
in some sci-fi thing which is android's walking
round who look human and do everything
that seem to be human. That I think, is still a future that people find
rather frightening. NARRATOR: The word
robot refers specifically to a machine that can mimic
or replicate human movement. This idea of a cold,
metal device, that is stronger, faster and more intelligent
than a real human, struck a nerve,
deep in the human mind. After the term
robot was coined... the idea of these
all-powerful machines, rapidly permeated
our popular culture. Robots were everywhere, from the small screen to the big and they developed
quite a following! CROWD CHATTERS ANJULA MUTANDA: If you look at
cinema, how many films are made where the robot
becomes the evil thing, or the thing that takes over, and I think those
films speak to an internalised fear that we
have about becoming obsolete, because machines take over
and become better at doing and creating than we can
and I think there is always that tension that human beings have with machinery, with
technology, with robots. NARRATOR: Movies shaped
the way we saw our technological future. Characters embodied
the terrifying, unstoppable force of a robot. Depicting scenes of androids, which would send
shivers down the spine. Directors wanted to
be the first to frighten us with the threat of technology and a world ruled by machines. While art was inventing these
dark dystopian nightmares, behind the scenes,
engineers were working hard to turn these
fantasies into reality. But who would have guessed that the world's
first industrial robot would be created
from a children's toy! The light bulb moment
came in the late 1930s. A man by the
name of Bill Taylor, used components from a toy set to build the first
pick-and-place industrial robot, known as Gargantua. Its' sole purpose was to stack blocks in
pre-programmed patterns, just like a human arm. But an arm that
would never get tired! Robot arms are based
on a series of joints, hinges, balls and sockets,
but the number of those joints determines the manoeuvrability
of the robot arm, and essentially, it's based
on the principles of rotation and an axis of movement. NARRATOR: Taylor's
simple robot, whilst primitive, was the beginning of
a series of innovations that would change the
course of history forever. But the biggest
development was yet to come and it was all the idea of
one man, George Devol. His invention started a
revolution in manufacturing that continues to this day. George, an entrepreneur
and prolific inventor, loved to spend time in
his workshop designing. It was here his next
big idea was born. Whilst looking
through a journal and seeing a picture
of an assembly line, he thought about saving humans
from doing such mundane tasks. In 1954, he designed a machine that
could do these jobs instead. It was the world's
first industrial robot. But it was just the beginning. A chance meeting
would change his life and the world of
manufacturing, forever. At a cocktail party in 1956, Devol met Joseph Engelberger, an American businessman. The two men started talking
about George's latest invention; his programmed
article transfer device, now known as
an industrial robot. Engelberger spotted
an opportunity, and saw how it could
be used in manufacturing. Forging a historic partnership, Engelberger began
working with Devol to develop his robotic device. This would officially
become the first ever robot and Engelberger
went on to be known as the father of robotics. By 1959, the first robot
prototype was developed - the Unimate number one. Engelberger immediately set out to convince top
American manufacturers in the automotive
industry of its benefits. General Motors, a leading car
manufacturer, took interest, installing the machine
on its production line at its new jersey plant. This was to be a
monumental step forward, revolutionizing manufacturing and marking the birth
of the robotic industry. In 1961, Engelberger
set up his own company, selling his ground
breaking machines. A recognized global leader, Engelberger presented to
audiences around the world. In the meantime, General Motors
jumped ahead of its competition to become the most automated,
automotive plant in the world. In 1969, its Ohio
plant was rebuilt with unimate spot-welding
robots installed. Capable of production
speeds like never before, the robots built
110 cars per hour; more than double the rate of any other automotive
plant in existence! The way in which technology
replaces humans is not new. I mean if we think about the
first industrial revolution, what we see is the
replacement of human labour by spinning machines,
by weaving machines. We can look back further, I mean if we think about the way in
which horses are domesticated that replaces human
labour with equine labour. So this is a story
which goes back forever. The robots are just
another episode in that story
of humans replacing themselves, or humans being
able to do things that were never thought possible
using something or someone else. NARRATOR: The Europeans
were quick to catch on, and installed
unimate robotic arms to perform the more
unpleasant industrial jobs that were dangerous for humans. Industrial robots were
transforming productivity, but Devol and
Engelberger's robot mission was driven by a higher goal... saving lives! LIV BOEREE: They've made
processes much more efficient. They've also made
things much safer. You know these laborious tasks
that people used to have to do They would often lose a finger
and all these terrible things that these risks, that these
workers were exposed to. We now have machines
to do them for us. NARRATOR: Engelberger's
success grew and grew. His robots were
conquering the world. In 1969, he signed
a licensing agreement with Kawasaki heavy industries, to manufacture and
market the unimate robots in the factories of S.I.A. In Japan, the post-war
economy was booming and robots were
received more openly, which could be down
to the Japanese media. They view robots as a
source of pride, not terror, since they highlight the
country's ability to innovate. From the 1970s, Japanese car manufacturers
began to use Unimate and productivity
hit an all time high. The rest of the world took note
and the robot revolution began! We went from
using tools ourselves to allowing the tools
do our work for us. But while these
industrial machines were changing the
world of manufacturing... the idea of a walking,
talking robot in the home was still a long way off. Then, in the 1960s... a US company made
the breakthrough. In 1962, a machine that
started to resemble the robots we know today, appeared. In Silicon Valley, SRI International
constructed ‘Shakey'... The first truly mobile
and perceptive robot. This tower-on-wheels
was well-named, awkward, slow and twitchy. Equipped with a camera
and bump sensors, Shakey could navigate
a complex environment. It was the beginning of
the robotic insurgence! In the 1960s it was
anticipated that by now all of us would
be leading lives of almost infinite leisure because robots would
be doing everything for us. ROBOTIC SOUNDS NARRATOR: As technology
made robots real, their scary, negative
image began to change. In movies and books, the idea of friendly
robots helping humanity was becoming accepted. Robots had been rebranded! But in the world
of industrial robots, a big development was
already on the horizon. Until the 1970's, heavy duty
industrial robot jobs were limited to the
most cumbersome part of a production process. But the 1980s saw the most rapid
technological advancements, allowing industrial robots to replace humans for
much more intricate tasks. The eighties was the
era of consumerism. When new technologies
were being developed at a staggering rate. Asia was at the
forefront of innovation and the latest TVs,
stereos and computers, were in high demand. Advancements in technology, combined with a
global financial boom meant demand for these
new gadgets was sky high... But humans alone could not produce the
products fast enough. Fortunately, industrial robots
were also developing at a pace! From 1980, new robot designs were consistently
developed and manufactured. These robots were now
microprocessor-controlled, meaning they were smarter and could perform with a higher
degree of operational freedom. DR. SOMARA: Industrial robots
are built using mechanical components, But essentially they
function based on software and computer programming which makes them extremely
accurate and repeatable. NARRATOR: Throughout
the 80's and 90's, the speed of production enabled
by these industrial robots, helped satisfy our
appetite for new technology. But industrial robots
are very different to a fully functioning
intelligent robot, that a human being
can interact with! An industrial robot
is usually partial, it will be designed to
conduct a specific task whereas a robot, in general, tends to be all encompassing. And industrial robots really have a very
specific task to do and they will do it
over and over again and they are not as
personable as general robots. NARRATOR: Even today, the
limitations of technology mean there is still no single robot that could fully
replace a human. But there is one organisation that is very close to
building a robot world! In Nagasaki, Japan, this is a hotel like no other. It is the first in the world to
be entirely staffed by robots. Throughout the hotel, robots are deployed
to provide information, from front desk services,
to storage, as well as check
in and check out with technology Including
voice and facial recognition. There is a quirky
velociraptor on reception... and a giant mechanical arm in a
glass case that stores luggage. However, this
revolutionary idea has suffered a few hiccups, not quite living
up to expectations. Some of the robots featured
have been discontinued, and humans had to step
in where robots failed... proving that, even though this
is an unprecedented concept, there is still a long way to go toward the integration
of robots into our society. But this isn't stopping
researchers around the world striving for improvement. Robots are now becoming
more human-like than ever. One is so convincing she's been given official
citizenship of Saudi Arabia, and the United Nations title
of 'Innovation Champion'. This is Sofia, a humanoid robot capable
of holding a conversation! MALE: Welcome to the world,
Sofia. SOFIA: Hello world! How do you feel? Sofia: A bit rigid. Interviewer: I bet you are.
I mean, what emotion do you feel
being awake and alive? Curious. NARRATOR: She's
become a celebrity, and has appeared in
several high profile interviews. Sofia is not the only example
of artificial intelligence to be able to fit
into everyday life. But what is the difference
between a robot and AI? They're used incidentally,
in the popular perception, a robot is a
physical thing, okay. Although we talk about
bots in software now, and an AI is purely
a software thing, they're actually completely
interrelated and in fact, if you look at
the natural world, there is no intelligence
without a body. NARRATOR: From voice powered
personal assistants to self-driving vehicles,
there are plenty of applications of artificial
intelligence in use today. One of the most important
are emergency drones, which are vital in a disaster. They can drop
supplies to victims in hard-to-reach
locations during a crisis. From hurricane victims,
to hikers in the wilderness who might need
medications for a snake bite, a drone can reach them all. It can also assess structural
damage after a disaster, from helping firefighters see
the exact locations of a fire, to showing emergency responders
where to find injured people. They can carry police
cameras and pepper spray or spot violent
behaviour in large crowds. Drones are at the forefront
of artificial intelligence. And the next
generation of technology is just around the corner. Deadly weapon use in battle has always been a decision
made by a human being. But that may soon change. Modern advances in artificial
intelligence and robotics have poised some of
the world's largest armies on the brink of a new future. Autonomous weapon systems. These robotic weapons,
not humans, will one day make decisions
about life and death. It might seem like fantasy, but this machine
already exists, designed to be used in war. This robot will be
commanded by algorithms, in tasks that used to
be calculated by us. It will be able to interpret
likely threats and target them, all on its own. Russia, China
and the United States are all working on
autonomous weapons. However this new technology
brings with it many issues. When should the military
delegate to a machine, the decision to
take a human life? Thousands of A.I. experts support the ban on
autonomous weapons as countries could be
under threat at any time. This glimpse into the
future presents a moral leap that raises many questions,
not yet answered. But not all technology
is so controversial... some is making a difference...
for the good. BOOM! NARRATOR: In many
war torn countries, it is helping to detect
an explosive device before it goes off. Taurus,
the bomb disposal robot, allows operators to control it using a virtual
reality headset. Before its existence, humans would put
their own lives on the line to detect and defuse devices. Now, it's up to
Taurus to intercept. The robot relays
high-definition, 3D images and feedback to a technician
a safe distance away. The bomb disposal
robot works so well, that users forget they
are working remotely! This high tech equipment
is just one example of how robots are protecting
us from hidden dangers. And this isn't the only one
providing a helping hand. In 2014, a French robotics
company invented Pepper, a social, humanoid robot, designed to live in
someone's home. Loneliness and social isolation
are problems facing many, from seniors to teenagers. Research has shown that help
could come from social robots. These autonomous
systems are programmed to connect and
communicate with humans. Pepper interacts
with its owner, by using voice and touch, and can even understand
human emotions. The robot analyses a
person's body language, facial expressions and words to properly
guess his or her mood. Pepper is equipped
with 3D cameras, an ultrasound system, and tactile sensors. It can also connect
to the internet to expand
and broaden its knowledge. The use of companion robots and assistive
technology providing care is in its infancy, but
the future looks positive. Today, cutting-edge technology is part of everyday
life for the human race. But the possibilities are now
taking us one step further. We have developed
the capability of enhancing the human
anatomy ...by introducing robotic, mechanical elements
into the body. There are already
several successful half man-half robots,
called Cyborgs like Professor Kevin Warwick. He claims to be the
world's first cyborg, short for cybernetic organism. Kevin experimented with
various electronic implants in his own body. He installed a
microchip in his arm that allowed him to
operate doors, lights and other computers remotely. But the first legally
recognised cyborg is Neil Harbisson. An artist born without
the ability to see colour. KEVIN WARWICK: So, I see things
in grey scale, from black to white. NARRATOR: In 2004,
he decided to change that. KEVIN WARWICK: Using technology,
so what I have now is this antenna
implanted in my skull that allows me to hear
the sound of colour. NARRATOR: The antenna also
allows him to perceive colours beyond the normal
human spectrum: he can hear infrared
and ultraviolet. However, Neil is
not the only human who has found an upgrade. Canadian, Rob Spence lost his right eye during
a shotgun accident as a child, so he replaced it... with a camera lens. The tiny camera records
everything he sees and this footage can be
viewed on another screen, like a baby monitor. Known as Eyeborg,
Rob is a filmmaker and is always looking into ways to develop the
technology further. These human cyborgs
are walking amongst us so who knows when
you might meet one. I mean in a way we are already
kind of cyborgs our self. You know, I even
use technology to see. I mean, without
glasses I can't see, without my phone I can't speak
to people, without, you know the fact is the line
between what it is human and technology
is already blurred. I think we live with
that quite happily. NARRATOR: Cyborgs
are only a small part of the robot world. New technology
extends far beyond this, as far as space. From machines that
are capable of walking on extra-terrestrial surfaces like NASA's desert Lunar Rover, to Cimon, the first
artificially intelligent crew-assistant,
designed by Airbus. ASTRONAUT: Cimon,wake up. CIMON: I'm waiting
for your commands. NARRATOR: This computer
provides a tailored answer to an astronaut's query. ASTRONAUT: CIMON
what can you do for me? CIMON: I will send
the survey answers after each experiment,
down to earth. NARRATOR: The spherical
robot has a large screen that either displays a simple,
friendly, cartoon-like face or the required information
for experiments and repairs. Cimon could save
astronauts a lot of time and help them
perform more efficiently. Back on earth, in our
manufacturing bases worldwide, industrial robots
are at the forefront of dealing with
tough assignments. They're programmed to
perform the most dangerous, dirty and repetitive jobs
with consistent accuracy. They're able to do this thanks
to super-dexterous machine arms that are fitted
with precision tools that perform finely tuned
feats of engineering. Their automated functionality allows them to operate
around the clock. And at breakneck speed,
increasing production. DR. SOMARA: You can expect to
have the same job done over and over again
to a certain standard and not have to worry
about standards ever slipping, unless you want to
incorporate wear and tear. But one of the advantages
of using industrial robots versus humans is that
they always perform to a certain standard that
you set from the beginning. That makes them pretty great! NARRATOR: Even though these
autonomous systems provide us with
many advantages, we have to remember they
can also bring a risk of danger. In 1979, a man
called Robert Williams was cited as the first
human killed by a robot. He was an assembly
worker at Ford in Michigan and was crushed to death by
the arm of a one-tonne robot on the production line. In 2017, a woman was
killed by an autonomous car as she was crossing
the road in Arizona. Police confirmed that the car
did not appear to slow down. These and other
deaths and accidents serve to highlight
the constant need for health and
safety regulation and the control of
machines and robots. Globally, the industrial
robot market is worth 35 billion dollars. Robots can be used in almost
any part of an assembly line and are vital in the most
dangerous parts of production... like hi-tec precision cutting. Hundreds of
different cutting paths can be programmed
into the robot, which produces
precision accuracy and greater flexibility. Robots are also
the main workforce in one of the car industry's
most toxic environments... spray-painting. Due to the hazardous
nature of solvent-based paints, robots are used to
minimize human exposure. These paint robots
have thin metal arms to allow maximum
manoeuvrability and accurately mimic a
human's application technique... the perfect machine
for this very specific job. MECHANICAL SOUNDS Industrial robots may be
able to outperform humans, but it still takes a human
brain to design them! Once the exact requirements
have been identified, specialist manufacturers,
like this one in the UK, use decades of experience
and the latest tech, to draw up the blueprints
for a bespoke industrial robot. The machines they design here, have the power to
transform the productivity of an entire company. Once the design
process is complete the blueprints are sent to their Swedish
factory to be made. Profitability is important but the designers say the
one thing driving the industry, is safety. Their robots have replaced
humans in dangerous jobs such as heavy lifting, which minimise
risk to the workforce. These robots are
also very accurate, leading to a higher
quality of workmanship. The robot revolution has now
taken an ironic step forward. Here, they manufacture
the industrial robots, using... robots! CLAES BENGTSSEN: The stages of
making an industrial robot is that we produce them in
a single piece takt flow, that means we move the robot
through different workstations and gradually add value
until it's a complete robot. NARRATOR: These robots
are built to withstand the rigours
of working in a factory 24 hours a day! Robots can produce
things that humans can't. Robots work well in high
temperature, low temperature. They work well with
doing heavy lifting, working with dangerous objects,
hazardous areas in general. Robots are doing
the dangerous work. HYDRAULIC SOUNDS NARRATOR: These
autonomous human replacements are still being improved. But the next
generation is coming... with industrial robots designed
to work alongside humans! In recent years, productivity within the
manufacturing industry has been steadily increasing. One way to increase it
even further is to use cobots. Cobot is an abbreviation
of collaborative robot, which basically means a
robot that will cooperate... However, it will not be
working with other machines, but with people. But this robot completes
tasks quicker than humans, increasing productivity. Cobots can be used
in different places and are able to
perform various tasks. They will continue to
transform the industry. The factory of the future is robots and humans
co-operating in new ways. ANJULA MUTANDA: Cobots is
the idea of working in collaboration:
man, woman and machine. And there is some research that shows we are
much more work efficient when we are working
alongside a robot. I kind of already am working
with cobots in a sense. In science we're already
using a lot of machine learning to assist in the
scientific discoveries that would have been done you know, by just crunching
numbers on a computer, or even back in the day,
doing things by hand with maths. NARRATOR: These futuristic
cobots are complex machines which work hand in hand with us. The robot does not replace
the human workforce, it complements
their capabilities and removes more arduous
tasks from their duties. Cobots will hopefully contribute to a more attractive
working environment. Employees should feel more
supported in the work they do. Boring, monotonous jobs
will be outsourced to cobots so that employees
can take more time over tasks which
require creativity. But would you want to
work alongside them? Yeah I'd work with
a cobot, why not? You know, by taking the
advantages of both a robot who's able to do a repetitive
tasks, crunch numbers very well find optimal solutions and
coupling that with a human who can adapt quickly
to new situations maybe think more laterally,
things like that, then yeah you're going to get
the best of both worlds. Somebody in, I think, Sweden is developing
a robot therapist, that mimics the
expressions of a therapist and asks the questions and I've looked at this stuff and I had a visceral
reaction against it, because I was like,
how could that machine possibly know what a person
is going through in terms of their body
language and their experiences and their feelings
and their backstory, but the robot was asking
all the right questions. I definitely would
work with a robot. However, I'd want to
make sure that they weren't better than me at the
particular type of work and also I'd want to
make sure they wouldn't steal my packed lunch. NARRATOR: So, with
robots starting to become commonplace in our
work environment, will they take over the
world...? DR. SOMARA: I think robots
could take over if that's the intention, but I think what would be
most useful about robots is to perform mechanical tasks and the tasks that have to
be done to a certain standard, perhaps in toxic environments. Robots can replace humans in areas that are
dangerous or risky, but I don't think we
should be looking to replace the power of human creativity
or chance or randomness. We've seen this, throughout
history, of new technology, perhaps taking away
tasks and taking away jobs, but creating new ones in
the process and innovating and just generally
developing things further. NARRATOR: We might
not want robots to replace us but machines are now
doing many jobs humans can't or perhaps don't want to do. Robots have created
their own niche. They fulfil a requirement
we didn't even know we had. In the film industry, this
robotic arm supports a camera capturing images
like no human can! It enables the production to
film at ground-breaking angles, creating mind-bending shots that it's been almost
impossible to capture in the past. In this Shanghai
restaurant, they've introduced a robot workforce that
take orders from humans. You simply use an
app to secure your table, so the system knows
where you are sitting... then order your meal. The kitchen receives the order. When it's ready, the robot
delivers it to the table. It knows where you
are sitting exactly, by using a chip and sensors, so there is no confusion
like receiving the wrong food! When it gets low on power, the robot simply returns
to its power station, recharges and returns
to work ready to go again. If it proves to be successful, it could soon be in a
restaurant near you! We are continually developing specialist skills
for our robots. This robot is programmed
to engrave an egg without cracking it! From industrial robots
completing mundane tasks, to autonomous systems
that can take our drinks order, robots are everywhere. So, should we be worried
about our future job security? The thing with robots
or artificial intelligence is I think some people view them
with a little bit of suspicion, because we have ‘othered' it. It is non-human,
how can it possibly make the same choices
or decisions as I do, and we are very subjective
beings, we are very partial. We like to think we
have a moral compass. We like to think that
our judgements are made on complex reasoning
and things that are felt and it's about the emotions and we view technology
if you like or robots as not having those emotions. So not being capable of the
same complexities as we do. There is a really big
worry at the moment, that lots of jobs are going
to be replaced by robots. Artificial intelligence,
machine learning and that's perfectly true,
they will, as they already have replaced
lots of jobs in manufacturing, they're now going
to replace repetitive, cognitive, clerical jobs. NARRATOR: Robots can
be viewed in a negative light. However, most people seem
open minded to the opportunities and benefits they bring. I would completely
trust robots. We actually have work
robots in my workplace and they've never
put a foot wrong at all, so yes 100% I'm with robots. Plus they also turn up on
time and leave on time as well. NARRATOR: Most experts agree
this technological takeover is positive and humans
will never be fully replaced. I think there will always
be some people involved, I think you can't extricate
humans from robots completely, but that doesn't mean humans
have to be doing the tasks. You do need people that
are engineering and designing and maintaining robots. We're not at a place where
robots are self-sustaining. They can't create progeny. They can't maintain themselves and I don't even think, going further ahead,
we'll be at a place where it'll be so sophisticated
that robots will take over. Humans will always be there, but they basically will
just make our life easier and that's the whole point. I suspect we would live
with another sort of technology that does things
we don't want to do or does things we want to do but does it better than us,
quite easily and I suspect if I found
someone who could, I don't know,
a robot that could go away and do all of my marking,
I would be thrilled, only too happy let it
or him or her or they do it. NARRATOR: As robots
become increasingly smarter and more autonomous, will they one day, even be
able to think for themselves? DR. ARCHER: Already started
to introduce robots into surgery, now a lot of those are with
a human there controlling it, but eventually that's
going to be robots that are capable enough
to actually do surgery almost unassisted
and able to adapt to the sorts of things that can
go wrong during an operation. So, we will be moving forwards with more intelligent robots
doing more complicated things that at the moment we think are only in the realm
of human beings. NARRATOR: As robotics and
autonomous systems flourish in their human relationships, are we moving towards
a better, brighter future? With robots and humans
becoming colleagues, do these advancements
promote teamwork? Or do they mean we're
becoming too dependent and trusting of
autonomous systems? Robots can make us lazy because they can be used in
roles that normally we would've been involved in
physical labour. So doing the grunt
work, the menial tasks all that sort of thing, where people would
have been moving more have been replaced
by machinery. NARRATOR: Robots
replacing humans in tough jobs has been welcomed, but when they can assist us
with smaller everyday tasks, that highlights some
red flags for society... If you also think about
a smart phone as a robot for looking up information, rather than thinking
through what we might need we just ask ask our phone, ask the computer, and don't really have to
think too much about, where what something means
or where it's come from. So in that way if you like it
can make our lives easier yes, but on the other hand,
it can make us think less for ourselves and do less for
ourselves because ‘oh the robot will get it'. NARRATOR: Industrial robots
are vital for the future of
almost every industry. But we, their masters, need to decide how
much power to give them. Nevertheless... without this great invention history would have
played out very differently. The story of the robot is like the story of a
lot of technologies which are developed initially for industrial purposes. Developed
initially in factories. Developed initially
for big corporations, but gradually become smaller, gradually become cheaper and gradually become part of our everyday lives. NARRATOR: So,
what is next for robots? The developments so far, are only the beginning. What does the future hold? You should be both
scared and excited. I mean it's, you know, every technology
is a moral choice. But technology isn't the answer,
technology is the question and the question is
given this new thing how are you going to
use it to make the world more sustainable? Managing the robots,
the design of the robots, maintenance of the robots; all of these things are now new
roles that weren't done before and so it just goes to show that yes, by adding a robot you've taken a job
away from a human, but you've actually created
a whole new industry of jobs that will necessarily have
to have humans involved. NARRATOR: Robots
are creating a new industry and have undoubtedly
changed our lives. I think industrial robots
are a great invention, because the
productivities a lot higher, perhaps the accuracy is there, people working alongside robots
in that kind of environment can produce more,
sell more, do more, offer people more
products quicker and I think from that point
of view, they're brilliant. Robots are a
fantastic invention, from the artificial
intelligence side to just the ability to do
tasks in more precise ways and repeat that over
and over and over again, in a way that a human
being never could. we're only going to see
that being used more and it's only going
to make life better. [HYDROLICS]
