In our season premiere of our new video series Next Level with senior technology editor Lauren Goode, we got the exclusive first look inside what multinational aviation company Airbus has been working on in its Silicon Valley labs: modular airplane cabins, ones that can be swapped out in less than an hour to give commercial flyers the experience of spas, gyms, and day care centers while they’re in flight.
In our second episode of Next Level, Lauren Goode goes inside Dolby’s little-known biophysical labs, where the company has been embarking on a five-year project to track people’s emotional responses as they watch movies and TV shows. They’re using a variety of biosensors to track this, as well as displays that are so bright, the human body could interpret digital flames as a real fire.
Can a video game make you less distracted? Neuroscientists at UCSF think so. Dr. Adam Gazzaley and his team at the Neuroscape project have been incubating games that could possibly improve a person’s brain function, and a company called Akili is trying to push these games through the FDA approval process to turn them into "prescriptions." In this episode of Next Level, Lauren Goode visits the UCSF labs and tries the games herself.
Mixed reality headsets and so-called "smart" glasses have struggled to catch on. Avegant thinks it can change this, and gave The Verge's Lauren Goode an exclusive look at the light field display tech that it believes will someday replace our phones.
DJI's Aeroscope technology can track rogue drones. With drones showing up at airports, disaster sites, even in baseball stadiums, public safety officials need to contend with them. In the second episode of Next Level season two, we take a look at DJI's solution for these drones.
Water scarcity affects more than 40 percent of the global population. In the third episode of Next Level season 2, Lauren Goode visits Zero Mass Water, an Arizona-based startup, that is harvesting water using solar panels that pull moisture from the air, even in the desert
Exoskeletons have been around for decades, both in real life and in science fiction. But the latest wave of exoskeletons are advanced enough that they’re being tested in automobile factories, with the hopes of preventing injury, and can even allow paralyzed people to walk. In the season 2 finale of Next Level, Lauren Goode reports from a Ford factory in Michigan where they are beta-testing an exoskeleton vest on one select employees to reduce workplace injuries.