..mario? it's a me, mario! woohoo! driving stateside can be a liberating experience. wide roads, big trucks, massive cars, but at a desert bottleneck like las vegas, it can be ever so slightly frustrating. beep, beep! come on. but today i am driving an audi with a little more brainpower under the hood, sorry, bonnet. there is extra information about the current speed on it, and it also is telling me there is a red light that will turn green in about 30 seconds up ahead. three, two, one. here we go. the car is connected to las vegas‘s traffic management centre over ag. it reports its position and the centre tells them how long until the next light turns green. indicate left, and the centre informs me about the left light instead. and round we go. one of the advantages, says audi, is that it is a bit of a stress and tension relief as you know you have some time before the light goes green so there is no point getting impatient. at the moment, this is only available in certain models of car, and only in las vegas, because this city has just one traffic management centre that handles all of the lights. some cities have more than 100 different authorities in charge of their signals. so, one obvious use for this in the future is to feed into an autonomous driving system. if the car knows when the lights are going to go green in front of it, then it can better driver itself. if it has some kind of backup data signal from the traffic management system then it should get it right more. which is a good thing. it is judging that i will not make these lights. oh, and it is right. the car was right and i was wrong. now, i do not know much about the car industry, but what i do know is getting into it when you are a new player is really tough, and complex, and expensive. faraday future is a company that heard all of those warnings and said, eh, let us try anyway. how is that going for them then? dave investigates. faraday future, a new car company that promises to beat tesla at its own game. last year at ces they showed us a scale model of a concept car they had no real intention of making. this year they promised something more, well, real. introducing the ff 91. they're pretty proud of it, they say it can do zero to 60 quicker than a bentley or a ferrari, and of course, a tesla model s. it can even park itself. just press a button and... record rip. it is being lazy tonight. i'm being cruel. it can park on its own. i saw that for myself. it's going wide at the minute. this is a three—point turn. one of the reasons we do that is because we want to make sure all of the sensors in the car, of which there are many, can get a full view of the empty spot to verify there is no one there. look at that. spot on. straight. quite impressive. it is all well and good, but it will be some time before you can actually do this yourself. each and every car park will need to be approved by faraday future before the feature will work. and there would need to gather data on the system and future cars so it is less chicken and egg and more chicken and $150,000 car that isn't even on the market yet. speaking of which, faraday future have promised it will be ready by 2018. there is a lot of potential but it is hard for them to deliver. the factory they need to build this thing for example, they showed a picture of it and it isjust a pile of dirt at the moment. the factory. to build its car, they have planned a huge plant in the nevada desert planning to become possible to make the cars next year. there are reports the factory is on hold because they are running out of money. hello? it looks ready for construction but there is no equipment, no materials. and if they want this place ready by 2018, it doesn't look like they are making much progress. we are resource—limited at sometimes. things like this need to take priority. construction of the factory has stopped for some point and it still looks like it is stopped. it will start soon. was it because of financial restrictions? it is a matter of keeping the cash flow balance between the projects we are trying to do. not too encouraging. but the good news is if they ever release a car it will blow your socks off. all right. heads back. hold on. let's go! oh my god! that is so quick. oh, my god. this is now the fastest production vehicle in the world. and we are just getting started. well... well, it is not very useful on a school run, is it, really? that was dave with faraday future. cars were certainly the big theme of last week's consumer electronics show in las vegas. we went to testdrive some of the projects on show. i have arranged to meet richard at bosch, not to look at a washing machine, but a car. wow! it is pretty sci—fi. it does look sci—fi. bosch have a rich heritage with cars. they invented the spark plug over 100 years ago. you and your facts. this car obviously looks different but what does it do that we haven't seen before? a number of things. the personalisation feature is not too far down the line. the idea is it can pick up my facial features and know who i am and personalise the experience. it will adjust my driver's seat, the mirror, the colour scheme, the entertainment system, even the drive mode. that is pretty cool. once you are driving is there anything it can do to make it more safe? you obviously want to keep your eyes ahead. what can you do in the car? a number of things courtesy of gestures. in order to make gestures recognisable, what bosch have done here is introduce what they call "ultrahaptics," this panel here, it is emitting ultrasonic waves i can feel tingling against my hand to see where i can gesture. once i do my gesture like this, and i can programme a number of them, it will come up on the screen in front of me, a number of different options. i have to say, looking at a screen takes away from that idea of looking ahead. slightly worrying. but don't worry, i will sort out the music. that is even more worrying. if i move this around i am getting ha ptic feedback. there is vibration on the screen. in three different sections, that feels totally different. so it is almost like having physical buttons because you can actually feel what you are touching. but i still would not want to do it while driving. if only there was a self—driving mode. if only. as it happens, this particular vehicle has one. all i have to do is press my thumbs against the panels for three seconds. automatic driving engaged. there we go. once i put this down, fold it down... here we go. amazing. now we can relax! yet, while bosch are more about creating parts, the car manufacturers themselves have some similar ideas. like the bosch car, this bmw concept vehicle also uses ultrasonics. it means i can interact in mid air. as i moving my finger, i am moving towards a hologram being projected through this mirror on the panel here on a little projector. it is giving a futuristic appearance to things like text messages or even video calls coming in. it is a very narrow field of view which means the only the driver can see it, making it a personal experience. it is notjust about the driver, though. the entire car has been thought about. even in the back there is more space in this car and it really is comfortable, giving a living room kind of feel. in fact, let's play some music. the best thing is everyone can play their own music so you don't have to contend with other people's dodgy playlists. there are speakers built into individual seats. meanwhile, toyota's concept car wants to get to know you and find out your interests. popular routes are flat and good for speed work. it will answer questions. it is beautiful out and a perfect day for a drive. it will track your emotions to try to learn how to keep you happy. great. you seem very happy. why are you speaking to him and not me? and probably more importantly, it will provide warnings of any hazards on the road. sorry. i've activated guardian system to avoid accidents. so, this is the connected home part of the whole connected world. from the connected car we will look at the connected fridge and... the one thing they all have in common, though, is that your car can be a truly connected part of your truly connected life. hello and welcome to the week in tech. it was the week facebook announced it would start trialling ads in the middle of videos, and norway became the first country in the world to turn off its analogue radio signals. it was also the week the us military released footage of a test in california where it launched a swarm of 103 mini drones into the sky from fighterjets. the unmanned aerial vehicles were deployed to operate autonomously. it's thought the system could potentially be used to carry out surveillance operations in the future. and with al systems one of the hot topics at the moment, it was only a matter of time before something went a bit wrong. amazon's echo went rogue and started ordering dollhouses. a tv station in america that was covering the story about a young girl using the device to purchase a house was inundated with complaints after viewers' own echo devices apparently overheard the network's reporters saying alexa, buy me a... oh, better not say. and for years we've been hearing all about the wonders of graphene. well, engineers at mit have decided to kick off the year by actually doing something about it. using a 3d printer they fused flakes of graphene into a spongelike object, and in doing so have created one of the strongest 3—d materials ever. it's thought the newfangled product could be used in the construction of aeroplanes or buildings. hello, i'm charles martinet and i'm the voice of... it's a me, mario! woo—hoo! and luigi too! haw—haw! and wario! and baby luigi! and baby mario! let's go! ya—hoo! and that was charles martinet, the voice of mario, nintendo‘s most famous character. and he's helping us to introduce ninty‘s brand—new games console. it's a little bit different as you might expect and marc has been trying it out. nintendo switch is an unusual games console because it does a couple of different things. firstly it's a portable machine. it's got this tablet like touchscreen with a 720p resolution, it can be played out and about on the move and then when it docks in this little station here, like mario after he has chowed down on those power—boosting mushrooms, it supercharges the machine graphics capabilities up to 1080p full hd and can be played using a normal television becoming a home console. the controllers, which nintendo has dubbed joycons, can slide off the side of the portable unit and they can be configured in a couple of different ways. the individualjoycon parts can be used for multiplayer and when it's docked, the player can use a separate controller or plug them into a battery pack, turning them into this beast. now, thejoycons have got a number of different motor control features that can be demonstrated in this mini game here. it's called quickdraw and weirdly what it does is it pulls the player away from the screen and towards one another. so to that end i have a cowboy opponent here and we're going to have a shootout. so let's load our weapons, get ready. this is where you get your best clint eastwood on. and i live to fight another day! but what that ably shows is that the designers are thinking differently about the kind of games that can be played using this device. as far as games are concerned, in the works is a new title for the portly italian plumber, the real—world set super mario odyssey and the legend of zelda: breath of the wild. nintendo‘s last console, the wii u, had a bunch of issues from day one. there was an additional controller for their already wii console, where in fact it was a brand—new console. with the switch they have the same issue again but this time they have to nail down the third—party support and getting more of the core gamer back on board with their product. perhaps the biggest hurdle for the switch is its price. at £279, the switch might have a tough time against its rivals from microsoft and sony. we'll find out when it's released on march the third. bbc click, here we go! everybody, meet archibald. archibald, meet everybody. archibald is living in a box for a couple of days to help demonstrate a phone attachment that can see through walls. this is vayyar, which translates from the hebrew "as to see," and that's what this israel company is helping us to do. it's taken a large radar imaging system that's previously been used in breast cancer screening to shrink it into a tiny box. using an app to tidy up the image, its ability to see through walls might be useful for stopping you accidentally drilling through a pipe when you're trying to put up a picture. in fact, it can detect more than just pipes, it can actually detect people who may be approaching on the other side of a wall. viar is pitching this as a single sensor for the smart home, which can sense very subtle movements and detect which direction they're coming from. up there on the ceiling there's an array of 20 antenna which are scanning the room for movement in great detail, and crucially they can detect movement in different parts of the room. for example, gail's on that bed over there, if she was to stay really still you will see her graph on the left go very quiet. while i'm making it go completely crazy. if i now hold my breath... you can see how this type of sensor could alert someone if someone else stops breathing. hence this is being pitched as something that could act as an alert system for elderly people, although it can also monitor the quality of anyone‘s sleep by measuring how active you are during the night. as we move towards a world where we want to monitor everything, this is an interesting alternative to putting up cameras. today the world is going toward connected living, so we have connected houses and cars but people don't appreciate having a camera inside their bedroom or inside their bathroom, so basically our radar doesn't provide a visual image like a camera does and it is applicable in privacy sensitive situations. that directional nature of the sensing means a system can detect when a high thing like a person standing up in the shower suddenly becomes a low thing, like someone who has fallen over in the shower... at which point, you can sound the alarm. as well as preserving privacy, this system has other advantages over a camera. the radar can see through a steamy bathroom and even in the dark. although, if you're showering in the dark, well, you can expect to fall over sooner or later. see, now, lara here would have been much more careful. i would have put down a nonslip shower mat for a start! mind you, there are plenty of devices at this year's ces looking to make the home a safer place. this home robot even wants to become part of the family. i love you! for a start it's creators told me in no uncertain terms that kuri must be referred to he or she rather than it. i'm going for she. she is part nanny and part playmate because you could use her to keep an eye on the children but at the same time she could entertain them. she has four microphones around her head, so she has directional sound, she's also got a high—resolution camera in her left eye. she has facial recognition so she can identify if the kids have come home from school but haven't gone straight into the kitchen or whatever room the family are in. she knows about it if she bumps into things. look at this! hey, kuri, can you read me a story? and as well as never tiring of rereading the same bedtime story, she can do this. hey, kuri, go hide! one, two, three, four, five... all a bit of fun if you put aside the idea that parenting would be a rather worrying job for robots to take over. and for when there's no robot nanny around, here's a way keep things safely out of reach. ijust need to unlock the cupboard. that's it. this smart lock connects to a mobile phone app which means you can decide who has access to the cupboard, as well as opening it and closing it via your phone. it also means you can keep things safely away from kids or any visitors if you don't want them getting their hands on something in your cupboards. and if anyone who isn't meant to open the cupboard does then you will receive a tamper alert on this. it can also be set to simply unlock whenever you're in the vicinity. but what can be a trickier issue to overcome is how to keep the whole family safe online without blocking out the things they need. this is the prototype of a wi—fi router that aims to bring together powerful internet, antivirus and parental controls across the whole network. each member of the family will have their own profile so it means for kids you can choose what times of day they can or can't get online so at home work time they can't be tempted to go online if they're not meant to. and you can also pause the internet so if you want to get everyone to the table, it might be a little bit easier. if a child tries to look at a website they shouldn't actually be looking at then it will come up with this page. from there they can make a request to look at the page if they think it's something important to them and then that request will go to the parents, who can make a call on whether it is suitable. there's also a crowd ranking function which is a way of parents saying they find the website appropriate or not and that will be shared with other users as well. meanwhile, with so much talk of alexa and other virtual assistants at this year's ees, this prototype was... woohoo isn't very functional heart the moment but when ready it aims to provide a cloud based virtual assistant as well as full control over your smart home. but not everyone can walk into the room to operate it. to add a bit of safety into the mix it has to know you and it will either recognise you using this camera for face recognition or know your voice before it carries out any commands you request. it can create scenarios like when your activity tracker knows you've just done a run, the heating will be turned down. ok, i get that's not idealfor other people in the house! but while all this may make it appear gadgets can safely take control of our gadgets and our homes, it does beg the question of whether we actually want them to. that was lara and i've been out of bed for precisely the length of that report. about time i turn in for the night but oh, no, i've forgotten to make the bed. fortunately i've got a smart duvet, which means that from anywhere in the world i can click the app and the thing makes itself. it's got an inflatable sheet inside and the idea is you programme it to do this at any time you want on any day you want. yes, it is a bit noisy but the idea is you're not meant to be here when it does it. it might scare the cat mind you. but that's not the end of the story. if you're a snorer or you sleep with a snorer then pay attention because tonight i am sleeping on nora, which is an anti—snoring device you put under your pillow. if this microphone detects the sound of snoring during the night, it will activate this silent fan which inflates nora, moving the pillow and your head just enough to reactivate your throat muscles, open your airways and stop you from snoring. you can track how many times it's been activated during the night on the app if you want, or you canjust have a good night's sleep, safe in the knowledge that whoever else is in the room with you is also getting a good night's sleep. night night. there is definitely a pattern emerging with our weather. i will say that much for the weather over the last few days. here is monday's satellite picture. a lot of cloud across the uk underneath building high pressure. spot the difference on tuesday. a bit of sunshine coming into south—east of england. otherwise it was cloudy. and yesterday's satellite picture also shows a lot of cloud. again, the south—east poking out in the sunshine. can you guess what the forecast will be for thursday? yes, today will be another cloudy day for much of the country. the cloud will be thick enough as we go through the first part of the morning to give a spit of rain in the midlands, maybe west england and wales. but under this blanket of cloud it's a mild start for most. perhaps a touch of frost in aberdeenshire. and certainly for southern wales and southern counties of east anglia it will be a cold start to the day. underneath relatively clear skies a widespread frost. but just as we've seen for the past couple of days there will be sunshine working across southern counties of england. cold, but bright. a weather front continues to dangle across central portions of wales and england, where the thickest cloud is. that's where we could see the odd spit of morning drizzle. but temperatures about 6—9 celsius as we push into northern parts. in scotland, the cloud thick enough for a few spots of rain. this is the picture through the rest of the day. a cloudy day weatherwise for most of the uk, but again some faring better for sunshine than others. southern counties of england will keep the sunshine. breaks in the cloud across scotland. the best in eastern areas. generally the cloud is a little bit higher in the sky across the northern half, compared to yesterday, so at least it will look brighter underneath those cloudy skies. that's thursday's picture. through the night we're stuck with this cloud through thursday night. again there could be a few mist and fog patches forming, a bit of drizzle through the night. with those clearer skies across southern england and wales we will have pockets of frost. maybe a bit of frost for northern ireland and eastern areas of scotland, but where it stays cloudy temperatures about 5—7 degrees overnight. into friday and the high pressure is still with us and so is the cloud for a good part of the country. again, some breaks in the cloud. the best of these towards southern england and parts of scotland. where sunny it's cold. underneath the cloud temperatures near normal for the time of year. as we go through the weekend and into the start of next week, don't expect any major changes. we keep a lot of cloud, but at least there will be bright or sunny spells and a little bit cooler through the weekend as well. that's the forecast. welcome to bbc news, broadcasting to viewers in north america and around the globe. my name is mike embley. our top stories: a final farewell to the white house press corps — but barack obama says he will still speak out to defend his "core values". i think we are going to be ok. we have to fight for it and we have to work for it. we cannot take it for granted and i know you will help us do it. troops mass on the border of the gambia — ready to force presidentjammeh to accept electoral defeat and step down. britain's foreign secretary appears to compare the french government to nazis. european leaders say brexit won't be easy. and until very recently a frontline in the syrian civil war, now deathly quiet. we have a special report from the city of aleppo. foreign intervention has transformed this war, and the way it's looking right now, foreigners, not syrians will dictate