- Hi there, I'm Frank Graff.

Are self-driving cars in your future?

How nanotechnology can save lives, how virtual reality helps engineers, and technology's effect on evolution.

Futuristic science, next on Sci NC.

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- [Announcer 2] Funding for Sci NC is provided by the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.

[bright music] ♪ - Hi again, and welcome to Sci NC.

Self-driving cars or shuttles?

Nice thought.

Climb in, let the vehicle do the driving.

But how far away from that future are we?

Researchers at North Carolina A&T are working on it.

[casual rock music] - This is quite exciting, to be working these things, that we think that we are changing the future.

We start developing, and then implementing and we see the immediate outward results.

- [Jose] So we set the new destination, and we see the same thing, a new route, and then the system is waiting for a new input.

So we push the autonomous mode button.

- [Frank] Engage, as they say.

- Engage.

- I'm trying not to say, "Keep your hands "on the steering wheel!"

[Jose chuckles] A massive amount of technology, as well as faith in that technology, rides along with the passengers in an autonomous vehicle.

This is the two mile rural test track for autonomous vehicles at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University.

Are you at the point where you're not nervous being in this anymore, and you're trusting the technology, or are you still nervous yet?

- This is a project under development, so after several rounds, you get more comfortable, of course, because you know that the system has previously worked, it will work again.

And every time, it works better.

But there's still, at this point, the driver needs to be alert.

- [Frank] You're no doubt wondering how it all works.

[bright exciting music] Well, first think what's required for a person to drive a car.

- We first use our eyes to understand the environment, right?

So we first perceive the environment around the car.

Then we make decision to whether we should accelerate, or whether we should take a break, or turn, or whatever, right?

And then we use our hands or foot as a sort of actuator to accelerate or turn.

- [Frank] An autonomous vehicle system works essentially the same way.

The vehicle must note where it is in space, and what is around it.

That's where an array of sensors comes in.

There are two cameras above the windshield.

- One is looking in front of the car to understand the road, how the road is changing, and whether it is turning, or whatever.

The other one is looking out for, to look at the traffic lights, and whether it is red, or green, or whatever.

- [Frank] Radar on the front bumper judges the speed of the vehicle in front of the car.

It also checks for any objects in front of the car.

There are two GPS receivers to tell the vehicle where it is.

Then there's the Lidar system on the roof.

- It's a sort of laser-based censor that is sending laser signals, and then receives them back.

And that's the way that you can very accurately understand the environment around the car.

- [Frank] All of that information is provided to a powerful computer system that establishes the vehicle's location and speed, perceives the area around the car in real time, including the locations and speeds of other vehicles, and avoids collision with a planning technique.

- [Jose] Well we are going now at 15 miles per hour.

- [Frank] Right.

- Because that is the speed limit that we set it at.

That map is telling you where it is located, a crosswalk, where it is located, the stop line.

And then there is a decision-making system that is given the information to other system that is the control system to reduce the speed here, increase it again, or maybe if there is an object, so it says stop.

- I mean, this is really a very active constant flow of information.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's a lot of things are currently going on to give us this ride.

A very, very complex system.

It's very important, the processing time of the information.

[casual upbeat music] - [Frank] All of that information is compared to a map of the area that is pre-programmed into the computer.

A drive-by wire system adjusts the vehicle's speeds and turns the wheel.

- Yeah, so right now we are reducing the speed because there is a stop.

It does like human driving behavior.

It stops, waits a certain amount of time, and then continues.

- You're not gonna do rolling stop signs, or rolling stops in there.

Okay.

- Exactly.

- [Frank] The result of all that data crunching is projected on a screen inside the car, but that's also where challenges are visible.

You can see the vehicle, and that's a building next to it.

But notice all that white in the distance.

That's because the vehicle isn't certain what's around it.

The maps the system is using were made in the summer when the trees were filled with leaves.

- Yeah, it's like, oh this car looks sort of about the same, but not really.

The density of our trees were getting smaller, so the returns from Lidar is less.

And so most of the time, they're just going through it, and like, oh well, this doesn't look exactly how it was a month ago when you made this map, and so we've been having to battle that problem.

- [Frank] That's why the rural test track is so important.

- [Ali] Rural transportation has its own challenges.

Lack of GPS, lack of proper communication, low maintenance of the roads.

Narrow roads, sharp turns.

- [Frank] The technology is rolling along, but it hasn't arrived just yet.

- The major challenge, they have to be able to deal with unseen scenarios, like human.

There are so many problems that you are dealing, and then you never saw it before.

And then you have to make decision about it.

So those that we know, and we plan for it, and we train them, so they are good.

But then beyond that, that's the major research problem.

How we can generalize, and how we can deal with unseen driving scenarios.

- [Frank] Like squirrels?

- Yes.

Like squirrels.

[laughing] - Now to nanotechnology.

Super small tech, dimensions less than 100 nanometers.

Producer Evan Howell reports on a partnership between North Carolina universities and the Pentagon that scientists hope will save soldiers and civilian lives.

[bright synth music] - [Evan] Remember when big tech used to be, well, big?

Giant computers, cellphones.

We've come a long way.

The materials that go into things we use everyday have gotten smaller, much smaller.

And it's now at the point where you need a microscope to see some of them.

It's called nanoscience.

- So, we can't see most of what we work on.

- [Evan] Kristen Dellinger and other researchers are manipulating materials right down to the atomic scale.

It's part of a $1.5 billion partnership between North Carolina A&T, the University of Carolina Greensboro, and the Department of Defense to keep soldiers safe.

The project is called ICONS.

But then there's also the issue of clean water.

- We create censors that basically allow us to determine, for example, if water's contaminated with arsenic, or lead, or mercury.

And so at the nano scale, we're able to create things that interact with these ions that are extremely small.

[truck beeping] - [Evan] Soldier health and safety in the battlefield is a primary focus of the partnership, and while it seems pretty basic, water quality is a major focus.

The government spends a lot of time and energy moving bottled water around the world to help keep soldiers hydrated.

That's because troops are often deployed in areas where they don't have access to clean water, and that puts them at risk of getting water-borne diseases like dysentery.

When bottled water isn't an option, soldiers currently use mobile biometric testing like this to make sure water is safe.

They tend to be about the size of a small suitcase.

Researchers hope to make the solutions a lot smaller and more portable.

- [Kristen] One of the big projects that they've been working on is enhanced filtration systems, and to ensure the effectiveness of those filtration systems, they need accurate censors to be able to tell someone on the battlefield in a very critical situation, for example, and very quickly, if their water is safe to drink.

- [Evan] The goal is to scale the test down to the size and simplicity of a pregnancy test.

The soldier would simply dip a tool into the water for a reading.

The question is how do you design a censor to detect harmful contaminants?

Researchers are focusing on the biochemical makeup of cells that will be present in any test.

Cells are made of nanoparticles, and those nanoparticles emit different colors because they reflect and absorb specific wavelengths of visible light.

- So what we have here is a software system that is attached to our microscopy.

So what it does is allows us to look at very small particles such as cells, using color.

So other microscopy can allow you to do that using black and white, but over here, the advantage is you can use color to distinguish between even different components within those particles.

- [Evan] Once a method to detect what's in the water is found, next comes building something that will administer the test.

We'll call it a proof of concept that requires specialized manufacturing.

- We print it by using 3D printing machines, so it prints the device by using something like rubber material, so it is elastic, and it can make the flow happen.

- [Evan] And the proof is in the rubber.

The technical name for this is a microfluidic chip.

See the channels that zigzag through the center?

That's where the microscopic censors that detect the contaminants are located.

Researchers are already looking at other applications for this type of technology.

Similar size and styled chips could be made from ultra-thin graphene, and woven into a soldier's uniform.

Those censors could be used to detect dangerous airborne particles.

But for now, the focus is on clean water.

- The water component is really important to us, not only from the perspective of applications to the Department of Defense, but also from a humanitarian perspective, so we also have interest in developing censors that can be deployed in relief areas, after hurricanes, in third world countries that have needs to test water quality very quickly using low-cost censors.

- This season on Sci NC, we're featuring a series of stories celebrating the hundredth anniversary of North Caroline State University's College of Engineering.

First up, virtual reality.

- Now, if you're anything like me, you're always fascinated by the brand new digital technologies that are being developed really everyday.

Right here at Fitts-Woolard Hall on the Centennial Campus of North Carolina State University, there's this place where they're developing all new virtual reality tools to enhance teaching and learning, and even things like medical care.

My name is Dr. Nehemiah Mabry.

I'm a proud engineer and graduate at NC State, and I'm about to go have some fun in the virtual reality cave.

Let's go.

Beam me up, or launch me out, Karen.

This is Scale World.

It's a 3D experience that has been developed by Dr. Karen Chen in industrial systems engineering.

It is funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation, and it teaches concepts of size and scale.

How big is a billion?

How small is an atom?

Oh, wow!

- We intend it to go to 10 to the positive 15, and 10 to the negative 15.

- See it, ah look here!

Yeah, this gets a little nerveracking, because of the ant is standing in my living room.

And this isn't one that I can step on.

In fact, this is one that maybe can step on me.

This is awesome.

- Those commercials you see the headsets, but we can also create 3D experiences using 3D projectors.

So we will be experiencing 3D visuals where users don't need to wear those headsets.

We'll be, we'll still wear something over our faces, but light 3D glasses, and interact, we'll still see our own body and move around, and superimpose our body, move our arms around, and visualize various, I call them scientific entities, in this program, Scale World.

- And the thing that's so cool about this is that I feel like I'm in this environment, but yet, I still see you all, like outside of this environment.

It's really surreal.

- Through our lens, or our eyes, the visuals are moving around.

However, it's because Nehemiah's wearing the tract 3D glasses, he doesn't see the earth shifting around, but we are not getting the perspective that he is getting.

- So by pointing the handheld device, I can go from the size of an ant to the size of a whale.

So this whale is literally right in front of me, and it feels like if I wanted to, I could pet the back of this realistic-looking whale.

Oh, oh, oh!

Oh, okay.

All right, I'm bigger than the whale now.

Did you just make me a giant compared to this whale?

Wow.

Wow, look at this!

And obviously the whale was much bigger than me, but now I'm scaled up, and the whale is small, so.

- [Karen] I think that is exactly what we want, those questions we wanna ask the students that experience- - Ooh!

- [Karen] This environment, to see if they'd be able to answer that question, after they've been- - [Nehemiah] The idea is to use Scale World for education.

The team is currently working with STEM students at a middle school in White County.

- We create different interactive 3D scenarios in a virtual environment, and depending on the specific research question, say more recently, we have a collaborative project with researchers and College of Design and College of Education, trying to use immersive virtual environments, along with 3D graphics and visuals, to help K through 12 students in better understanding sizes and scale, and improve their numeracy.

We can go to 10 to the negative eight.

- [Nehemiah] Oh, I kinda wanna see that.

- So there's a wide range.

You will certainly see the powerhouse of a cell.

We talk about that all the time in biology.

- [Nehemiah] Yes we do.

Yes we do.

- So that is echoing our K through 12 content, and we include that in Scale World.

- Oh, mask off!

Mask!

[Karen laughing] And suddenly, I'm standing eye to eye with the coronavirus.

Wow, so you're the one that wreaked havoc on our world.

[Karen laughs] Oh, wow!

This is a bridge!

- Brooklyn Bridge.

- Oh, okay.

So as a civil engineer, you know I like this one here, because I design bridges, and I've been to New York several times and seen this Brooklyn Bridge going from here to here, and so often, when we design this on paper, even designing this on paper as an engineer, you don't get a sense of how massive the structure is that you're basically manipulating.

[chuckles] And just like that, I'm in outer space, reaching out to touch planets.

You know, you have movies like "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids".

- [Karen] Yes.

- And then you have the other movies where you're big, almost like Godzilla.

I'm like Godzilla.

- Yes.

- It's Godzilla in space.

That's exactly what I am.

Wow.

Okay.

So it gets bigger?

- It gets bigger.

I am collaborating with faculty members from College of Design, College of Education, and I also have collaborators in the Department of Psychology, so really cross-disciplines design.

Who would think?

Engineers and design.

- [Nehemiah] We're already seeing how virtual reality tools can help with everything from car design to customer service.

Scale World, and other immersive learning technologies, will lead to many new developments in healthcare, and in other industries.

- I am interested in understanding how humans move, how they behave, how they carry out different tasks, so I am interested in applying virtual reality technology to create scenarios, virtual scenarios, that allow me to study human performances, movements, and behaviors.

- [Nehemiah] Imagine the virtual instructor who can deliver exercise postures to people with chronic shoulder pain.

Never mind that it's just plain fun.

- So he sees things right over there.

- Wow.

It's like right here.

It's like I can hug the world.

Ah.

This is what the world needs.

Wow.

Man.

And we're just all on this blue marble in space that we call home.

- We're learning more and more about how humans and our technology affect the natural world, and here's one you might not think of.

How we get rid of pests, specifically, cockroaches.

Producer Rossie Izlar explains the effects of technology on evolution.

[tense music] - [Rossie] Humans and cockroaches have been locked in an arms race for decades.

No matter how hard we try to eradicate them from our homes, they always evolve to evade us.

- The cockroach spends all of its time inside the house, constantly exposed to insecticides, with something like eight generations a year or more.

And so mutation can arise and be selected upon much faster.

- [Rossie] Because of that rapid mutation time, cockroaches develop resistances to insecticide within three to five years.

They've even evolved to dislike the sugar in the poison's bait.

And now, scientists are finding that pressure from humans has changed one of their most basic evolutionary functions, how they mate.

- We need to keep in mind that there are about 5000 species of cockroaches worldwide, and a lot of these species are really important ecologically, only really a handful of species are pests in our homes.

- [Rossie] We're in scientist Coby Schal's lab, where he and his colleague, Ayako Wada-Katsumata, study cockroach evolution.

And of course, he convinced me to hold a Madagascar hissing cockroach.

[cockroach hisses] Ah!

[Rossie laughing] Which is not considered a pest.

People actually keep them as pets.

It's pretty cute.

I admit.

These are cute.

But these cockroaches, the German cockroaches, are not cute.

They're the ones that have adapted to live entirely alongside humans.

- Globally, we don't know of any natural populations of the German cockroach.

So to put anthropomorphically, the German cockroach has kind of abandoned its natural life, and has joined humans wherever humans are.

- [Rossie] In the last few decades, insecticide companies noticed that some cockroaches were no longer attracted to the glucose or the sugars used as baits.

Ayako discovered the reason why.

The neurons inside the tiny sensing hairs on cockroaches' heads, called sensilla, changed the sweet receptors to bitter receptors.

So when a mutant cockroach encounters something sweet, it closes its mouth and runs away as if it was bitter.

We don't know if that mutation was already present in cockroaches at very low levels, but Coby and Ayako do think that these glucose-averse cockroaches survived and passed the trait down to their children, amplifying it in the gene pool.

- As Charles Darwin very well put it, natural selection drives adaptation.

- [Rossie] But that adaptation has implications for a cockroach's mating behavior, and to explain that, we need a PG-13 primer on cockroach sex.

When a male cockroach loves a female cockroach very much, it, okay, just kidding.

Male cockroaches entice females with what scientists call a nuptial gift.

It's a sticky sweet mix of compounds on the male's back.

While the female eats it, the male shimmies down her body to assume the mating position.

He locks her into place, and they proceed to mate for an average of 90 minutes.

But glucose-averse females reject the nuptial gift.

[all chuckling] She's like, hell no!

You might be saying here okay, wait.

That's a good thing, right?

Less mating, less cockroaches.

Well, no.

- We found the glucose-averse male behaved differently than the normal male.

And also, he provide the more sweet secretion to glucose-averse females.

- [Rossie] Basically, male cockroaches have changed the chemistry of their nuptial gift, making it even sweeter so that it takes longer for females to break it down into glucose in their mouth.

The mutant cockroaches also act faster than normal cockroaches, shaving off 50% of the time it takes to start mating.

- The glucose-averse male is a lot quicker to draw.

- [Rossie] And so, once again, cockroach evolution has robbed us of a win.

- Some of them always survive, and develop totally new populations.

- [Rossie] In the future, insecticide companies will have to keep changing their baits to stay one step ahead of cockroaches.

- We're really suggesting that the formulation of bait should continue with some sugar, but reduce the amount of sugar, and include more savory stuff.

Our taste and the cockroach taste are actually quite similar, and we've evolved together in the same environment.

- Cockroaches, ooh.

Rossie Izlar trained on the world of creepy crawlers for this story, also.

That's all you need to know.

- This is the largest terrestrial leech in the southeast, and it's hungry.

It hasn't eaten in more than a week.

What does it eat?

Earthworms.

The leech sense the worm's vibrations, and pounces.

It probes the length of the worm, looking for an end.

It finds it, it uses its powerful throat to suck the worm down, "Lady and the Tramp" style.

The leech won't need to eat for another week.

[tense eerie music] Okay yes, that was terrifying.

But let me make the case for the leech here.

This specific species, the haemopis septagon, can only be found in pristine ecosystems, like old growth forests.

So they're an indicator of high environmental quality, even though we're not sure exactly what they do in those ecosystems, besides eat earthworms.

- A wise tinkerer saves all the pieces.

- [Rossie] That's Alvin Braswell, an emeritus curator at the Museum of Natural Sciences.

He loves these leeches.

- Until we understand all these pieces in our world, it's a little bit dangerous to discard pieces, simply because you don't know them, or you don't understand them.

- Leeches are kind of like mosquitoes, in that we're like, ugh, when we think about them.

But the oldest leech fossils date back 200 million years.

So they've been on this planet longer than we have, and more than likely, they're doing something very useful in the ecosystem that we just don't understand yet.

- And that's it for Sci NC for this week.

If you want more Sci NC, follow us online.

I'm Frank Graff.

Thanks for watching.

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