Supersenses

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Factual: Science & Nature: Science & Technology

Prof Ben Garrod investigates the AI revolution which is super-charging sensing technology.

An AI revolution is super-charging sensing technology. Prof Ben Garrod meets the scientific first adopters who are having their worlds turned upside down and inside out.

We've been building computers to think like us for years, but our ability to replicate human senses has been impossible. Until Now.  This technological disruption is starting to profoundly change how we interact with the world around us, revealing it to us for the first time in high fidelity and with striking detail.

An AI revolution is super-charging sensing technology, promising us eyes with laser precision, ears that can distinguish every sound in a mile's radius and noses than can sniff out the early signs of forest fires before a flame is present.  

Prof. Ben Garrod, evolutionary biologist & primatologist, meets the first adopters. The archaeologists, ecologists and medics, who are having their worlds turned upside down and inside out.

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Supersenses: Remote Touch

Remote Touch

BBC Radio 4 - Supersenses, Remote Touch

Prof Ben Garrod investigates the technology that's trying to replicate human touch.

Professor Ben Garrod tries his hand with new technology aimed at allowing us become more digitally intimate.

We've been building computers to think like us for years, but our ability to replicate human senses has been impossible. Until now. This technological revolution is starting to profoundly change not only how we interact with the world around us, but is allowing us to see, hear, smell, taste and even touch things we never imagined possible before. 

An artifical intelligence revolution is super-charging sensing technology, promising us eyes with laser precision, ears that can distinguish every sound in a mile's radius and noses than can sniff out the early signs of forest fires before the first flame forms.

Evolutionary biologist and broadcaster Professor Ben Garrod is off to meet some of these sensory innovators and technological pioneers - the programmers, robotics engineers and neuroscientists, who are turning our world upside down and inside out.  

In episode four - we’ll explore touch and what role does it plays for our nearest living relatives. Ben tries to give his mum a hug from 5,000 miles away. We discover what brain scans show when Ben given both painful and pleasurable touch. We explore what role the body could play in our use of computers in the future. We hear about remotely-operated sex toys. And learn about how all this might shift our understandings of intimate relationships in the future. 

Could these new technologies and natural evolutions be redefining what it is to touch? Ben takes us through the amazing adaptations, and technological developments that could help touch become digitised.

Producer: Robbie Wojciechowski
Presenter: Professor Ben Garrod

Series exec: Alex Mansfield
Development producer: Melanie Brown

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