ZeroCon22: Documentary premiere: How to drive a Formula 1-car with your thoughts

welcome to the final session of today's program here uh in the press room um it's going to be a special one uh since we as the zero project have produced a documentary together with a great team that i'm going to introduce you uh in a few moments it's a it's a it's a prim it's a documentary and it's a premiere and it's called how to drive a formula one car with your thoughts i'm having great people together with me uh in this uh in this session all of me are virtually with with with us here uh except myself i'm sitting in the in the room here in in vienna uh in the united nations building the people here with us in this next hour are mallory regimen who is an american paralympic swimmer and gold medalist and this uh if i'm correct and correct me from wrong mallory is part of the nbc moderator team covering the paralympics team and as you can see on the screen uh the the next person i'm going to introduce is uh is her husband uh it's uh jeremy chase neither uh he is the co-ceo and co-founder of tfa productions which is the producer of this documentary then we have with us here the star of the documentary which is rodrigo mendez hubner rodrigo is the founder of the rodrigo mendez institute which is an institution focusing on uh education and technology we have with us tan lee who is um an entrepreneur uh on who has developed this technology that is used uh to steer this formula yamaha one car with your thoughts the company is called emotive neurotech and it's based in the united states and finally we have with us hasim abdel kawi he works for toyota europe and he's in this team that works for toyota on the mobility and accessibility strategy so without any further ado i suggest we watch the video together and then we take it from there [Music] i am rodrigo jobin hernandez the ceo of rodrigo mendez institute [Music] i'm tan lee founder and ceo of emotiv i wanted to create new technologies that would allow us to measure the brain so that we can start to build models that allow us to understand how the brain functions across all of the diverse ways that the brain is used every single day throughout all of the facets of life being able to control devices in our homes and to being able to communicate more indefinitely and have a tremendous power of giving more life quality to throughout the segment of people with disabilities [Music] when i was finishing high school and preparing myself to enter the medical school i went through a car robbery i was leaving my home when two armed robbers approached me and shot me through the neck and the consequence was the paralysis below my shoulder but luckily i had the best support someone can get from physicians family and friends so nowadays i run an institute that is focused on guaranteeing that every child with a disability can have access to quality education at mainstream schools that we call inclusive education when i was a child every sunday we had a moment of watching the race car some years ago i received a call from tv global inviting me to participate in a high-tech project their goal was to allow paralyzed person to drive a car using his mind [Music] at its surface we can start to restore function we can start to help people who have been impacted by injury or have certain neurological conditions and so that's the first aspect where neurotechnology can can have a very transformative impact on a person's life but neurotechnology can also go beyond just restoring function it can also pave the way for actual human enhancement i was supposed to be the consultant of the project and i went to a meeting with the project directors and after they heard that the last thing i did before being shot was to drive a car they immediately decided that i had to be the pilot so that's how this this amazing experience began i went to a race track where a team with more than 100 people were waiting for me when i realized i was inside a race car that had no pedals and no steering wheel and i was wearing a helmet specially designed for me to drive with my thought the project team used a brain computer interface produced by emotiv and this device had electrodes that capture the brain electricity and allow us to associate a certain thought or a certain brain pattern with a specific command in order to accelerate i thought about celebrating a soccer goal which refers to vision to turn right i thought about eating a delicious meal which leads to tasting and to turn left i thought about holding a bicycle handlebar which refers to touch [Music] interestingly this opportunity was something that was created independently of us in many respects i only found out about it after rodrigo had had that moment around the race car we were part of the world economic forum community called the young global leaders and i happened to be sitting across the table from rodrigo not knowing that he had had this experience with our technology the project brings us two important methods first it highlights the importance of technology in the search for the elimination of barriers and second the project also gives us an opportunity to remember that technology by itself is not enough to promote and include societies they have to do with our attitude with our judgments and and our limitations in dealing with human differences i feel that this technology has tremendous potential around that that axis of access and inclusion um and to really celebrate life this technology allows us to to really do all of that right it allows us to celebrate our differences it allows us to to be more resilient when you can do something like that with technology when you can use that to enhance the human experience i think that's that's technology executed in the best possible way [Music] yeah well so thanks to everyone involved in that and um i'm honored and pleased also that the syria project here could uh play a convening role in bringing um all of these great people together to produce this documentary so a great thank you to everyone involved in that but it's not only a great documentary for the purpose of producing a documentary it's uh it's a part of the zero project idea of promoting accessibility and this session is about more a visionary approach so what the future might bring what maybe in five or ten years time will hopefully be a a product of the shelf and the service of the shelf and this is what we are going to discuss in this session so the the way we are going to do it uh the running order will be that i'm first asking uh jeremy and mallory about uh their experience their background uh their learnings from this documentary uh and uh ask them first to also introduce themselves and give us a little more background uh the quality and the insights of the producers have definitely uh added what's what was necessary to uh to produce that we will follow up with uh rodrigo and ask him about his experience and his his his perspective on on east is the future or in order what would what would be needed so that it becomes uh the future we could then move on to to tan lee who will give us an insight on the technology that is used how this works how this could develop into this into the future and we're going to end up with hazim from toyota who gives us let's say the uh the grounding again and uh and they put our feet together back on the on the ground and uh and tells us uh how a mainstream uh motor producer like toyota sees it and where this is embedded in the in the future accessibility and mobility strategy of toyota so then over to you uh jeremy and mallory so i suggest you start by introducing yourself briefly and then have a discussion between yourselves and me how this came upon uh how you approach this what your learnings and your experiences were when you produced that your experience in that field you're doing this similar kind of documentations all the time but i trust and hope it was also for you something special so mellow and jeremy over to you well thank you so much it's been an honor to uh to work with you and share this story with the world i'm jay schneider i'm a co-ceo and executive producer at tfa group a social impact agency and production studio and this is my partner in life she's also my wife but a partner in business as well and i'm mallory wegman i am the other part of the co-ceo for tfa group and as he said his wife and i'm also a three-time paralympic swimmer for team usa and so you know i think for jay and i we our passion really comes in in utilizing the power of sport and media and where they intersect to change perception of disability in our society and really spark that conversation we talk a lot about the fact that in the disability community here domestically in the us but worldwide we all have one fundamental desire and that is to have equal access to the human experience and so our question that we ask ourselves every day is how do we play a part in being a part of that solution and for us media is a big piece of this because as you see we have the opportunity to highlight remarkable stories but in that we are able to spark a conversation about how technology can really serve as a catalyst to create a more inclusive society for all jeremy you want to maybe give us one or two more insights on on how you did this production it was uh during kobe time so it was also not so easy to produce no it was it was a unique production to say the least i think we were envisioning being able to be in person in san francisco with tan and rodrigo to bring this all to life and the recent surge uh made us adapt and i think we're all used to that over the last two years and and we adapted and quickly pulled this remote production uh in brazil and in san francisco and mallory had the honor of uh virtually interviewing both tan and rodrigo a couple weeks ago and pulling this video together so for us it was a it was a unique challenge but we were up to the challenge and wanting to share this story uh as mallory mentioned to spark that conversation i think for us utilizing this story to hopefully also change that perception of disability in our society and what viewers who may not have seen this or been aware of a motive or rodrigo's story or the ability to drive an f1 car with your own thoughts it's pun intended mind-blowing i think people people literally are watching it and we've shared it with our own network and it just it exposes them to something they would not have been exposed to and that's what's so invigorating about what we get to do yeah it was a um pulling that production together was was very special for for a lot of reasons for us and and i had a moment when when speaking with rodrigo where i realized that him and i share some some personal elements that are fairly close in the fact that we are both injured at the same age in our life and then speaking with tan and just hearing about neuroscience and technology and as i just said earlier i mean it's that human desire and that we just have fundamentally ingrained in all of us to have equal access to that experience whatever it is and so to see what rodrigo was able to do utilizing emotive technology just opens the door for the conversation of what else can we utilize technology to do to create more access and a more inclusive society for all thank you mary thank you jay for uh and um from my side also thank you for this great partnership that we have also developed in the production of that over to you rodriguez so we saw a lot of your experiences and of your emotion already uh in in the video but i think there's more to it so what can you tell us on top of that uh i remember we had some uh conversations also about some plans of of yours taking this into the future and and the the direct formula one connection that you might want to mention yeah hi michael tan jay mallory uh hussein and and all friends from from zero project um always a pleasure to participate in this magnificent conference that have been i can say spreading a powerful message of equality around the world over the last years well michael many things to share so so going straight to the point i first i never had so much fear in my life the the engine was very very powerful and the car jumped like a horse so uh after starting uh i had a long straight ahead and the first turn was to the left and i think that was the first big test if the car didn't turn god knows how big that the impact would be uh so i just before the end of of the straight i i stopped thinking about the first command which was uh as as i told in in the video the celebration of a soccer go and started thinking about the the bicycle handbook the second command i trained for and and the car slowed down but it started to turn before the the the point so i ended up going a little off the edge of the track but i completed the turn and then i went straight ahead and and on the second on the next curve i broke into the gravel trap and and the car's engine died but but i move forward uh a bit bumpy and what i did until the third lap when when i really started uh uh feeling that i had the control of the car it's a pity that the experience was so short but well taking advantage of the fact that toyota is here with us represented by hussing who knows as in in the near future we will have the this available to to anyone yeah yeah thank you rodrigo um um just one additional question in um we had uh several conversations before and then one of them you also showed me this uh uh this uh this brief meeting with lewis hamilton and and the bet against him so can you share this again with us okay michael that happened one year after uh that that shooting i went to dubai i was i was a speaker in uh education conference and and during that conference i i was informed that lewis hamilton was at that hotel because he was going to be the surprise of the final of the final scene when when many teachers would receive an important prize so a friend of us uh took me to the press conference and and they put me in the first line of the audience so after after uh talking to the interviewer and and sharing his story and so on uh the the leader of that event which is a friend of us said well hamilton i would like to pass the mic to the to the audience starting by rodrigo who had just experienced a very unique uh opportunity and uh maybe you have heard he he he he has driven a formal one can with his thoughts and so on well then the mic came to me and and there were like 30 30 uh important media journalists or everyone looking at me and i thought what can i say to louise ramitha after so many so many interesting things he he explained well then i just i just uh said well hamilton was great pleasure you know that the brazilian pilots are are famous famous of being good good professionals so don't get me wrong but i would love to challenge you to to race against me sometime was kidding but but he answered immediately yes let's do it and on the next day like 100 portals of about formula one was communicating that lewis hamilton accepted to run against me so that that was was was that was what happened in haiku yeah so since he prolonged his career uh we you should come back to him at some point and uh and uh and ask him that it's the time not to do it um tan over to you so it's your technology that rodrigo was using uh when he uh drove this family of anchor formula one car so um could you give us a background of what your organization is what your technology is and what you're what you're up to yeah michael you know i have to say that this is such an incredible experience to see the documentary um and that storytelling come to life and then to hear rodrigo's narration of what he experienced in in that moment as he went through the turns is just really really incredible as the founder and ceo of a company that is trying to advance understanding of the human brain through electroencephalography or eeg for short you know we're looking at ways to measure the brain in context so the brain is made up of billions of neurons and when you when these neurons interact with each other there's a chemical reaction that takes place that emits an electrical impulse and what we're able to do is that we can measure these voltage fluctuations non-invasively at the surface of the scalp in order to start to analyze how these patterns basically change in order to derive models that allow us to discern different types of insights different cognitive states different mental states we're not reading your mind so we're a very long way from being able to read your mind think about um a football stadium for another for an analog right if we had microphones all around the stadium we can't zone into an individual conversation between two you know individuals in that stadium but we can see when a goal uh you know someone hits the shoots a goal we can see whose side the ball is width because you know they're making noise we can see if the audience is doing a mexican wave those are things that we can see but we can't go down to the granularity but that alone provides us with a lot of information already at the dynamics of the system and that's a window into the human brain that we otherwise wouldn't have and what's really exciting about this technology is that we're making it easier and easier for everyday people to access we've taken the technology you know when i first started in this space the technology was in the tens of thousands of dollars and we've taken it down to less than you know just a few hundred dollars so anyone can afford one of these devices and so one of the core goals at emotive is to democratize access to this technology because we believe that by democratizing access to technology by enabling more people to get their hands on it and to shape where this technology can go we can usher in a revolution in terms of how we can understand and interface with the human brain in ways that we never thought would be possible before so it's a very exciting frontier that's what we're trying to pave and you know a big big thanks to rodrigo to jay and mallory and to the xero project for bringing this to life um because i think it's so important for for us to on the one hand you know understand like as technologists we work on the technology every day but to bring it to life in a way that's really transformative um and and touches people's hearts that's when you know i i think technology you know you really breathe life to it in a way that captivates people's imagination and fires their heart as to the possibilities and i think that's that makes me very excited and inspired tan this is extremely exciting um you said you have brought the price down to that where which products and services would you see have currently the biggest potential that it will become products and services off the shelf so at least mainstream usage is this accessibility disability at all is this something else so where you're heading where you see the biggest potential currently yeah michael i think that's a really great question so we um are creating a technology platform that covers the many many different modalities of how we measure the brain using electroencephalography so for the the system that rodrigo was using is a 14 channel system we have a 32 channel system and you probably see this has seen stuff is not using emotive tech but there are some more elaborate systems that give you more high resolution high fidelity so we have a 32 channel system we also have a five channel system but what i'm really excited about is our latest two channel system it's a more narrow use case but it's embedded in headphones and so you can imagine a technology that takes this format where everyone can actually wear one right so you you don't look like you're wearing a spider on your head for like another description right uh you you don't look unusual you're just like every other person walking around with a pair of headphones but now with the advancements in sensing technology with the advances in machine learning and computing power we can bring the technology into a form factor that everyday people can use and consume to understand their their cognitive states you know and we'll see this in homes in everyday life in learning applications in some limited use cases for for commands the mental commands will be very limited it will be rudimentary but it's a starting point that will allow us to democratize access to this technology and bring it into everyday use cases and i think that's where it's really exciting while at the same time with all of these other form factors we will continue to advance to science and that's where it's really exciting with a large scale machine learning model a data model that allows us to look at data at all of these different dimensionality and permutations we can start to build models that will become more sophisticated that will access many many more use cases because the human brain is used in every single facet of our life whether we're sleeping whether we're interacting with friends whether we're studying we're you know going out and driving a car whatever it is that we're doing it's going to involve the human insulin and the brain in some capacity and and whether you're abled bodied where you whether you have a neurological impairment as long as your brain is still intact there's a chance that we can tap into it and give you an opportunity to have that access to normalize that experience to give you extend your autonomy give you more independence and i think that's where the magic of this hap this technology can can happen and so we're very excited about the form factor the evolution of the technology the enablement that's been that's been made possible through uh large-scale data and the advancements in machine learning that we can now generate on our data and i'm excited by what has gonna be sharing because we're seeing companies real large corporations take on this technology in a meaningful way to explore how it can be used in in in ways that will impact you know a billion people in in the next few years which is really really exciting um done before i'm moving over to haseem there's one more question that i have to ask you how what's your background what's your development how did you uh you're the entrepreneur behind the emotiv how did that happen so i in 2003 i had just sold my company in um it's telecommunication technology so it was a middleware platform for telcos and i was looking around to decide what i would do next with my life i had been a lawyer i had been a euro a telecommunications entrepreneur and i said i am done with these five years six years stints uh i really want to invest my time and energy and a lot into a lifelong endeavor and i wanted to find an area that was sufficiently green field that would captivate my imagination um and my passion for decades i wanted something that i could really really spend time on and i you know what once i started on the brain it has been a never-ending journey because it gets harder and harder every day that ever at every inflection point you see a new opportunity a new advancement that you didn't know before because we are only just scratching the surface so um yeah it's really exciting i've been in this field now for it'll be 20 years next year so it's a long time to be working in this field by now but um yeah it's pretty amazing it's it's definitely kept me going for for two decades already and hopefully many more thank you tan now over to you haseem so let's hear another perspective of of of um i think if i don't know if it's the biggest but definitely one of the biggest motor companies in the world what what's your approach on uh on on accessibility and uh and and mobility over to uh yeah thank you thank you so much i'm going to share my screen i prepared it okay so actually um hello everybody i'm hazim abdulkawi i'm a senior engineer in in toyota motor europe i'm really glad to join you today to share our progress in integrating advanced neuroscience with different mobility services to deliver better mobility for all and next slide please actually in fact toyota is now in the transformation process from a car manufacturer company to a mobility company which aim to deliver ever better mobility services for all people with zero barriers actually next slide please uh toyota started to work closely with the international olympic and para olympic committees through to 2024 to provide sustainable mobility solutions for the games to help with safer and more efficient mobility including intelligent transportation systems urban traffic systems and vehicle-to-vehicle communication system next slide please and for example here there is like the e-pellet and accessible people mover and actually walking area pev which are low speed and short distance battery based electric vehicle which is suitable for transportation investors besides that as you can see here there is a human support robot which can provide cognitive and physical support for dependent people next slide please this is really amazing but actually to deliver more human centric mobility services we should think about creating more intelligent machines by including human brains in the loop and by doing this integration we can create more emotional intelligent machine and this is will enable the machine to understand human desires and anticipating their intentions and providing more proactive assistive services actually next slide please and towards this goal actually in team e we started to develop a new artificial intelligence models to decode human brain signals to select an option like a call or a radio or even to open an option from the hmi screen but without touching the hmi screen actually just by thinking and and to validate that that models actually we did our first real-world driving experiment in in in the driving track as you can see here and actually we we got a very nice validation performance in this experiment next slide piece this was actually the first driving experiment that we did and the second uh the second experiment that we did is to how to control a robotic action the human support robot actions actually only by thinking and that's can be achieved by integrating and transmitting the human brain signals to the robot and the robot can actually translate those uh signals into a specific actions there is a video here so um can you open the video please or if it is not can i share my screen just to show you the video okay it's not possible yeah okay okay i'm going to share my screen and can you see my screen yes we can okay so this is myself actually here and no no we cannot oh really okay now we can then the video is on now so you can give it a try okay so uh actually uh i did the experiment i was in brussels and i was wearing the helmet to read my brain signals and the robot was in parma in italy and we transmitted the brain signals over the internet communication and we we we had a successful experiment by controlling the robot in in parma in italy and i was in brussels and this was like the first human brain uh communication between a human and a robot overseas in two different countries and yeah so this is actually the second experiment uh that we did and uh to achieve actually uh uh zero barriers like any kind of barriers like social physical and mental uh we think that mobility for all is essential and the research in into human brain interfaces is really crucial to achieve inclusive support independent of physical and mental abilities we know actually that the road is long but we believe that this research area is really crucial to have a truly mobility for all society yeah thank you thank you so much thank you hasim that was really impressing uh maybe just one question to follow up and then i would go over a little discussion on on technology then end up with a discussion about the the human touch again um this um please give us a little background i think this is all in a kind of experiment stage or pilot stage do you expect any of that that you showed us to be a a a real market product soon or did i get that wrong actually this is like a very early experimental stage let's say because it is really complicated to understand human brains right and we need time to understand which signals that we can read which signals that we can interpret and how can we integrate those signals to achieve and to to to do some specific tasks actually like what uh rodrigo just did here he was thinking about something to control the car to go straight something else to to turn right or turn left so this is really important and this needs actually a long time of training let's say to to to to bring it to the market so we are trying to discover now that uh let's say the potential of the brain signals to to to select some options in the car to support some autonomous functionality in in the car but this is actually in the very early stage of research thank you one more question i think your focus of toyota is is the olympics and and the paralympics 2024 in paris is that right and i trust this will be also a showcase of of your mobility concept for the future yeah actually we are trying now to integrate some of those let's say demos and in paris 2024 and that's why we started to investigate those let's say potential application early to to validate that the different applications that we can show in paris 2021. thank you um tan uh back to you um when when you saw this uh this approach from from toyota is this related to what you were working on and developing is this something very different this is basically the same thing about what is your first take away from when you look at the toyota uh strategy and approach yeah so i think that it's it's um it's using the same underlying technology electroencephalography so it's a very um non-invasive way to measure the brain so that that's where the commonality exists in terms of the models um it's slightly different it looks like it's using as a form of um evoked potential which is a little different way to train the model than what we're using um so essentially with evoked potentials you're essentially flashing a number of things and just depending on the brain's response which is an involuntary response it's very distinctive in the brain you can define that signal and you can see what what the brain is saying yes this is what i i want and therefore you can use that as a trigger whereas with our technology what we're using is a statistical model that allows the user to train the model in real time so um you're actually looking at um obviously we can't uh we can't read your brain your thoughts but what we we're looking for is two distinct states um when you're thinking about a specific action so rodrigo can think about um you know moving forward with the soccer goal he can and then essentially the training happens within a relatively short space of time so we're updating the models in real time so for example for a new layman first person that's never touched the equipment before there's a eight-second baseline that we take which is a neutral state that allows us to calibrate the system and then we train for eight seconds of one action state which allows you to have the first action so it's a relatively short training sequence from that standpoint however as you add more actions the performance starts to degrade substantially because the capacity to distinguish between different ideas and distinct thoughts and the person the individual user's capacity to get back to the same idea is also important in this regard and so rodrigo's ability to have a very distinct idea in his mind that's reproducible that he can go back to in a reliable repeatable fashion is very very important in order to re to train the machine learning model because we're building using a statistical basis um and partial real time um algorithm for the individual at the use case so it is more flexible and more agile but it also requires a little bit of given you know give and take from the user as well the machine is not that smart right if it's looking for a very specific pattern it can recognize very my very tiny changes in the patterns but unfortunately it requires the human to be able to come back to that very very same state another question you're based in california is the market that you're in uh is this a a kind of startup driven market with a lot of money coming from silicon valley investors is this this kind of market or is it a different market that that you're in a trusted there's more than one technology in in in an in an early development or pilot a pilot phase so neurotechnology is getting a lot of interest at the moment one of the big reasons for that is because elon musk has announced that he is moving into this field albeit with a form of invasive technology uh so some many people would would have heard of neuralink and since elon musk has started to announce his participation and interest in this and since the um some of the early demonstrations that we saw with monkeys last year there's definitely been an uptick in interest in the general area of neurotechnology but neurotechnology has many dimensions so we have elon musk's neural link which is an invasive technology at one end of the spectrum we have something in between which is kernel which is brian johnson's company that's looking at a functional near infrared system still very expensive but exquisite engineering to really allow you to look at the brain in real time with different ways of imaging the brain with a good temporal and spatial resolution and then you have companies like emotiv which is looking at an in a same sort of goal which is to really unlock the brain as a platform but using a very ubiquitous technology that's much more mature at this point it's been around for a long time we've already got it out to 140 countries we have researchers and individuals um you know really all over the world and so there's a there's a level of maturation of this sort of non-invasive technology that allows us to get to a we're closer to the tipping point in terms of this where this technology can go with respect to eeg however um there are limitations there are clear limitations you know it's not it's never going to be the same as having a mesh embedded in the brain um you know so 10 20 years from now when that technology becomes realized for the people that can have access to that technology that will be something that will be quite breathtaking however for the many billions of people who don't have access to that level of technological development and the price point that those technologies will come at these technologies are very important to create usher in a world that allows more people to participate in neurotechnology so we believe that and that's why our mission and vision has always been to ensure that this technology is universally affordable we need to drive the cost down the accessibility down the usability of this technology into the hands of end users because and to get it out there globally in a very diverse manner so that our machine learning models are also not biased um by a very limited data set that's coming from the us for example or western educated countries um that's very important to us and so we we have a we have a very slightly different approach because we know that other forms of neurotech are are also on the cusp of development we'll get to a and this sort of inflection point around neurotechnology and neurotechnology adoption as as a human species and what does that mean for access and inclusion for seven billion people on this planet that all have a brain and need to have ways to you know improve its resilience to understand how we function uh better and then also to interface with the different environments you know the internet of things and all of the ask the tools that we have available to us every day thank you so much tan this was really uh give a lot of insights into where we are with uh with this uh new technologies i want to take another full circle back to uh to rodrigo and then to uh to marin and and che and ask more for the for the human for the user side of it so uh rodrigo is this something uh that you actually wish for is this something that you would like to have to uh in the middle of your life or uh maybe ask differently under what circumstances uh do you would like to have that or is it something where you even see a lot of dangers uh so how do you see this is this do we wish for that or um under what circumstances do we wish for it yes i do michael very much because i think it's important to to reinforce here that although technology has aggressively advanced over the last years there are there are many uh demanded solutions that have not been created yet for example in my case if i want to uh to to command my wheelchair uh the only device that is is available for me so far is something like uh a a device that that is put beside my face and that i can with the movement of my my head uh control the movement of my wheelchair which is very in my case it's very uncomfortable i don't feel safe and and and that that device disturbed me so it's something like a joystick all the time put beside my head so if if that technology we we are discussing here can uh help me in this basically a routing of my my life that can profoundly modify my routine so we are really talking uh about uh something that can bring us to a new level of accessibility of autonomy and of dignity so uh we i will i will be uh looking for what what comes next and i'm glad that people like tan and people like hazim are working for that thank you uh rodriguez uh almost for the closing words back to you uh mallory and and jay uh you're not so much involved in in the in this technology and this usually usage but you have a very broad view of of potential users and uh and of having heard and seen a lot of uh of of people um what are your takeaways from from what you uh heard and saw today is it something that you will see also extremely positive for any other takeaways yes michael you know well i was in tokyo for the 2020 paralympic games this summer i had the honor of using the toyota accessible people movers while we were in the village and i will say as an individual with paralysis i'm much like rodrigo look to the world around me and realize how much technology can even the playing field as as an individual where you know i've lost my ability to drive at different points due to ancillary injuries after my paralysis where i haven't been able to utilize my hand controls and that independence that i lost in those years during that transition or simple tasks around the home and you look at how technology even in a time like the past two years has brought us all together and reduces geographical barriers and brings us in as a community and so when you look at that from the disability perspective technology really has the power to break down barriers in a way that can increase education can increase jobs can create more mobility and can really start to as we talk about level out that access to the human experience for individuals and the one billion people worldwide living with a disability and i think for us as we look to storytelling as storytellers and producers we get so excited to look at how can we utilize technology even in the work that we're doing you know we did this this documentary virtually because through the pandemic and the surge that was the safest way to do it and so i think that's something jay and i have have long really been interested in and this past few years has taught us a lot about just our craft and how technology comes in um aside from our lifestyle with with me living with a disability and how excess how technology plays into accessibility yeah and just to add to that i think coming off of last year's conversation michael you and i talked about some of the challenges with technology and storytelling and one of the things i said that i was going to try very hard at is how to create greater accessibility within our own programming so you know not only with captioning with asl with with audio description and i'm excited to share that this this documentary will be audio described and will be out within the next week so through technology we are creating greater accessibility for our our programming and getting our programming out to as many people as possible and i think that's just such a an amazing entree and you know for us and everything that we're doing thank you so much everyone uh we are almost uh at the at the finish of this of these great sessions uh let me just add uh that also for this year project this was not a one-off documentary one-off production uh so we we will continue work uh hopefully also with uh uh chair and well and continue this great corporations and uh you said you're in the storytelling business we're also in the storing tailing business so i think there's some great things to to tell stories in a way that enlighten people encouraged to do something solution kind of journalism so to tr to great connections uh to share knowledge uh and i think uh this is a great way uh to to move on with that so we will take this experience with you and with this documentary definitely to a next step in the in this year thank you mallory and jay thank you rodrigo thank you tan uh and and thank you hasim it was a great session and i hope we stay connected and uh yeah you can already see this uh this uh session it's been recorded and it it's on demand uh live uh also half an hour after we recorded this now so uh please also share the news share the link i think it's definitely a session worth re-watching thank you and this closes this session [Applause]