April 27, 2004: Seniors Need Robots And New Technology To Help At Home. By Ellen Beck. United Press International / available from SpaceDaily. "Elder advocates from academia and industry urged Congress on Tuesday to fund research and nudge reluctant companies to re-imagine existing technologies to help seniors live high-quality, independent lives. 'Our biggest problem nationally is an imagination problem, not a technology problem,' Eric Dishman, director of Proactive Health Research for Intel Corp., of Hillsboro, Ore., told the Senate Special Committee on Aging. 'There are hundreds of technologies sitting in the labs of American universities and technology companies today that could save billions of dollars in our nation's healthcare bill, if we could only focus some of our nation's ... innovation and investment dollars on the needs of our aging population.' ... Dishman said some companies have told him they do not want their brand associated with the aging demographic. Also, researchers complain elder-tech projects fall through the cracks of existing government-sponsored research and developers are afraid of being sued. Such barriers, real or perceived, pervade technology development. Martha Pollack, a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, testified that advanced technology should not replace but supplement human caregivers in the home. For example, her team has developed a device that helps seniors remember to eat or take medicines. It is a 'glorified alarm clock' that does more than sound an alarm on schedule. She said the device, called an auto-minder, can recognize when a person is eating and then simply note that they should the medication they need to take with meals. Another device, called Coach, developed by Canadian researchers, will guide a senior through a single activity -- such as hand washing -- by giving cues to each step in the process, Pollack explained. ... [Joseph] Coughlin said assistive technology is crucial for baby boomers who are searching for solutions to help them care for aging parents. There is a $29-billion-a-year loss in productivity to business and industry because of time away from the job needed by workers to care for aging parents, he said."

April 18, 2004: Humans vs. Computers, Again. But There's Help for Our Side. By James Fallows. The New York Times (no fee reg. req'd.). "We've seen this pattern before in the computer world: many companies scrambling at the same time to solve the same problem. Sometimes the concentration of effort mainly ends up underscoring how hard it can be to solve a given problem, like controlling spam.... But often such races result in true breakthroughs that make computers much more useful and creates countless opportunities for follow-on innovations and products. ... A current race for a solution goes by the deceptively blah name of 'knowledge management,' or K.M. It is an effort to bring Google-like clarity to the swamp of data on each person's machine or network, and it is based on the underappreciated tension between a computer's capacity and a person's. Modern computers "scale" well, as the technologists say - that is, the amount of information they can receive, display and store goes up almost without limit. Human beings don't scale. ... The current creative struggle is important because, when it yields a victor, it will leave everyone less frustrated about using a computer. ... On the conceptual level, it raises basic questions about what knowledge is. ... The underlying intellectual question about knowledge management is whether people actually think of knowledge as a big heap of laundry just out of the dryer, or as neatly folded pajamas, shirts and so on, all placed in the proper drawers."
>>> Knowledge Management, Information Retrieval, Web-Searching Agents, Applications
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April 17, 2004: The semantic engineer - Profile: Daniel Dennett. By Andrew Brown. The Guardian. "It was at Oxford, too, that he first became interested in computers and the brain. The Oxford philosopher John Lucas had published a paper - still famous - arguing that Gödel's theorem disproved any theory that humans must be machines, and that human thought could be completely simulated on a computer. This is the position Dennett became famous for attacking. ... The essential doctrine that Dennett took from Quine was that knowledge - and philosophy - had to be understood as natural processes. They have arisen as part of the workings of the ordinary world, which can be scientifically studied, and are not imposed or injected from some supernatural realm. So there is nothing magical about human brains - no ghost in the machine, to use Ryle's phrase. When we talk about 'intelligence' we are describing behaviour, or a propensity towards certain behaviour, and not the exercise of some disembodied intellect. How these propensities arise is an empirical question, to be answered by looking at the engineering involved in brains (or computers) and philosophers who don't do this can't be serious.... He's famous among philosophers as an extreme proponent of robot consciousness, who will argue that even thermostats have beliefs about the world. ... 'Somehow, you've got to reduce the [inner] representation, and the representation understanders, to machinery. And a computer can do that. That's the great insight. Turing saw that AI [artificial intelligence] might not be the way the brain did it in many regards. But it was a way of reducing semantic engines to syntactic engines. Our brains are syntactic engines. They have to be, because they're just mechanisms. But what they do is they extract meaning from the world. Hence they're semantic engines. Well, how can they be semantic engines? How could there be a semantic engine?' ... What matters to him is that consciousness arises from what the brain does - its work as a 'syntactic engine' - not from what it is made of. ... 'Conscious robot is not an oxymoron - or maybe it was, but it's not going to be for much longer. How much longer? I don' t know. Turing [50 years ago] said 50 years, and he was slightly wrong, but the popular imagination is already full with conscious robots.'"
>>> Philosophy, Nature of Intelligence, Cognitive Science, AI Overview, Representation, Turing (@ Namesakes), Robots
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April 16, 2004: Robot games draw thousands of teenagers from around U.S. By Elliott C. McLaughlin. Associated Press / available from USA Today. "About 7,000 high school students will butt brains Friday and Saturday at the Georgia Dome to see which of more than 300 student-designed robots will earn their teams a piece of the $4.5 million scholarship kitty. The 13th annual Robotics Competition is sponsored by FIRST, For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, which inventor Dean Kamen said he founded as a way to promote careers that society often overlooks. ... The prospect of funding future engineers is prompting several corporate sponsors to devote money and manpower to the competition, and they aren't shy about it. WildStang is sponsored by Motorola, and four former WildStang members are now engineers for the telecommunications giant. Other sponsors include DaimlerChrysler, General Motors, Lockheed-Martin and NASA. Dave Lavery, NASA's program executive for solar system exploration, said the space administration is FIRST's biggest supporter, sponsoring 180 teams this year. Like the corporations, NASA has a self-serving interest. 'We're concerned about the supply of future engineers and scientists,' said Lavery, who oversaw the Mars-rover project. 'This is a wonderful way to fill the pipeline again from the bottom up.'"
>>> Careers in AI and Competitions (@ Resources for Students), Robots, Space Exploration
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April 16, 2004: How cutting-edge computer techniques can be used to develop drugs. News-Medical.net. "Leading international experts will gather at the University of Bradford's Institute for Pharmaceutical Innovation (IPI) for a conference looking at how cutting-edge computer techniques can be used to develop drugs. ... Over the last two decades developments in the use of computational chemistry and automated experiments have been used mainly to help discover new drugs. ... The IPI, opened by Science Minister Lord Sainsbury in October 2003, uses the latest artificial intelligence and computer simulation technology together with advanced analytical techniques to predict how drugs will behave in the body and to research new methods for the development of better drugs."
>>> Bioinformatics, Scientific Discovery, Medicine, Applications
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April 15, 2004: Contest seeks to foster social blending of blind. Ophthalmology Times. "Madrid-Researchers specializing in technologies for the blind have until May 31 to submit entries in the third ONCE International Research & Development Competition in Biomedicine and New Technologies for the Blind. ... Areas of research eligible include engineering, artificial intelligence, information technology, telecommunications, biotechnology, and biomedicine."
>>> Competitions (@ Resources for Students), Assistive Technologies
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April 15, 2004: Summer of Science - In outdoors-oriented camps, learning goes on after school's out. By Melissa DeVaughn. Anchorage Daily News. "Science is a recurring theme in this year's Daily News list of summer camps, and for good reason. It's a tough topic that is often difficult to comprehend in a classroom setting. Yet it is an astonishing topic, and what better way to learn more about it than by hands-on experimentation. ... Academy Charter School will teach robotics, and the Anchorage School District's gifted program will host an Invention Camp."

>>> Summer Camps (@ Resources for Students), Robots
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April 15, 2004: Condition Zero has its good points but is a bit overpriced. By Dwight N. Odelius. Houston Chronicle. "Decades before the invention of the microprocessor, late mathematician and philosopher Alan Turing proposed that we would be able to identify intelligence in a computer system through its successful imitation of human behavior. This assessment became known as the Turing Test, and it is still widely cited in artificial intelligence and cognitive science research. In Counter-Strike: Condition Zero, a PC game based on the venerable Half-Life engine, players fight terrorism alongside computer-controlled allies and opponents, known as 'bots.' Condition Zero's bots behave in such a lifelike fashion that you might mistake them for the real thing. Artificial intelligence is usually the weakest point of a PC game. In most, enemy bots wander around aimlessly, ignore the player even when they're within a few feet of them, have little or no awareness of their comrades and fall off ledges to their death. Allies run off and never come back or get themselves shot while stuck on a piece of game geometry. In Condition Zero, the artificial intelligence far exceeds anything I've played."
>>> Video Games, Multi-Agent Systems, Agents, Applications, Turing Test
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April 14 - 20, 2004: The Neural Approach to Pattern Recognition. Artificial neural networks could surpass the capabilities of conventional computer-based pattern recognition systems. By John Peter Jesan. Ubiquity (Volume 5, Issue 7). "For example, when we see a dog, first we recognize that it's an animal....This recognition concept is simple and familiar to everybody in the real world environment, but in the world of artificial intelligence, recognizing such objects is an amazing feat. The functionality of the human brain is amazing; it is not comparable with any artificial machines or software. Let us go deeper and analyze what is recognition and how it is done through machines. ... In this article, I am concerned with recognition of concrete items. Applications include finger print identification, voice recognition, face recognition, character recognition, signature recognition and classification of objects in scientific/research areas such as astronomy, engineering, statistics, medical, machine learning and neural networks."
>>> Pattern Recognition, Image Understanding, Neural Networks, Machine Learning, Vision, Applications
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April 13, 2004: A Post-Privacy Future for Workers - Futurist Faith Popcorn says productivity-obsessed companies will soon monitor everything from your health to your emotional needs. Interview conducted by Olga Kharif. Business Week Online. "Q: People already don't use half the functions in their software. Why would employees want all of this new technology you talk about? A: The problem with technology today is, in many cases, you have to read through instructions to figure out how to use all the features. What we need is voice controls. For instance, you should be able to say, 'Bring my car around in front.' Or "I miss my mother. I want to see her.' ... Q: What do you think can be done by robots? A: Almost anything. The robots' intelligence will be very high. Of course, that's a little further out because of ethical issues. But many of the key technologies needed to make wide use of robots possible are already here. Carnegie Mellon University has already developed the world's first robot receptionist, with its ability to detect motion and greet visitors. Others have developed robots that could complete simple tasks like fetching documents or coffee. And, of course, more robots will be used in manufacturing."
>>> Interfaces, Robots, Natural Language Processing, Speech, Business & Manufacturing, Ethical & Social Implications, Applications
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April 13, 2004: All-girl team stars in student robotics competition. By Connie Skipitares. Mercury News / available from SiliconValley.com. "Who says girls don't excel in science and technology? ... The team -- the Super Nova Girls [Castillero Middle School] -- is the only all-girls team to take the top prize at a statewide robotics competition for middle school students in the five years contests have been held. The girls won the prize -- called the Director's Award -- and the right to go to the international competition last December in San Jose. They'll compete Thursday through Saturday at the Georgia Dome against other teams from the United States, Canada, Korea, Scandinavia and Britain in the First Lego League Invitational International. The girls competed in December against 63 other teams of five to six players, almost all of them boy teams or coed teams. Only a handful of the 48 teams competing in Atlanta are composed entirely of girls. ... [Kristen Petruzzelli, 12] says the more science and technology competitions girls join and win the more it will debunk the notion that girls can't be scientists and engineers. ... Experts say that girls are just as smart and as interested in science and technology as boys, but they often shy away from those subjects because they don't think they will be good at them or they feel intimidated by boys in classes."
>>> Equality & Diversity and Competitions (@ Resources for Students), Robots
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April 13, 2004: Area firm's surveillance gear sent to Middle East - The product can detect and track intruders remotely in real time. By Matt Griswold. Bradenton Herald / Bradenton.com. "Using its high-tech, computer-vision technology, Guardian Solutions says it has developed the world's first portable wireless and GPS-enabled video-surveillance system - and the military is buying. ... ThreatSTALKER can automatically detect and track intruders - whether human, vehicle, or sea and air vessels - at ranges greater than 700 meters within woods, grasslands, coastal and urban areas, and in ever-changing environments such as various weather and lighting conditions, the company said. Immediately upon detection, the real-time video and location of the intruder is securely transmitted to a monitoring station within a 2-kilometer range. The technology is a spin-off of Guardian's first security software application: GuardianWATCH. Software engineers have developed cutting-edge, computer-vision technology - artificial intelligence that Guardian officials hope will revolutionize the security monitoring industry. ... In addition to military applications, the new portable hardware could be used to protect expensive sea vessels or airplanes sitting overnight at seaports and airports."
>>> Image Understanding, Vision, Military, Law Enforcement, Applications
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April 13, 2004: Working on next generation of robot warriors. By Robert Weisman. The Boston Globe / Boston.com. "Over the past two and a half years, the remote-controlled PackBot has been deployed to search for survivors in the World Trade Center wreckage, for live ammunition in Afghanistan caves, and for explosives under abandoned vehicles in Iraq. But those missions may be only the beginning for Army robotics, and for a company with roots at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology -- if they can reduce the robot's weight. ... 'We're putting the PackBot on the Atkins diet,' said Robert A. Bell, iRobot's executive director for the Army's Future Combat Systems program. ... 'The unmanned aircraft, like the Predator, got a lot of attention in Afghanistan,' Corbin said. 'But, to me, they won't be as important as the ground vehicles. There are few countries that can challenge our Air Force. But anyone can challenge our ground forces in urban warfare. It's a type of combat with a lot of casualties on both sides, and the only easy answer may be robots. If we continue to occupy foreign countries that don't like us very much, the role of these robots will be key.' ... [T]he company has delivered about two dozen of the advanced PackBot models, equipped with extension arms, to US troops in Iraq. One was destroyed detonating an explosive device. 'We had one blown up last week,' Dyer said yesterday. 'And it was cause for celebration. Because a robot was sent in harm's way and saved the life of an American soldier.'"
>>> Robots, Autonomous Vehicles, Military, Hazards & Disasters, Applications, Ethical & Social Implications
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April 13, 2004: Robots May Fight for the Army. By Mark Baard. Wired News. "Lightweight, super-strong robots will lead human soldiers into battle within 10 years -- at least according to iRobot. The robots, called small unmanned ground vehicles, or SUGVs, will detect the presence of chemical and biological weapons, identify targets for artillery and infantrymen, and ferret out snipers hiding inside urban buildings. Today, humans mainly perform these tasks, often becoming the first casualties of battle while looking for snipers or explosives. ... SUGVs will be one of 18 networked components in the U.S. Army's $14.7 billion Future Combat Systems program, which will include manned and unmanned ground and aerial vehicles, as well as new sensor systems. ... Some of the robots that are being developed may also be used to shoot at human targets, iRobot suggested. But the company said SUGVs will provide advanced reconnaissance first. The company does not want to be seen as putting human soldiers out of business. Robot vision systems have serious limitations, and the risk that a robot might kill an innocent civilian is too great, said iRobot CEO Colin Angle. But Angle did not rule out the eventual use of weapons on robots, and noted that Raytheon is developing a targeting system for the SUGV. 'We're not using these robots to hand out flowers,' Angle said." [A link to a video simulation of the SUGV in combat is provided.]
>>> Robots, Autonomous Vehicles, Military, Hazards & Disasters, Applications, Ethical & Social Implications
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April 12, 2004: U.S. Company Cheers Loss of Its Robot in Iraq. By Greg Frost. Reuters. "A U.S. robot manufacturer on Monday hailed the destruction of one of its units in Iraq and said it showed how valuable the machines have become for the U.S. military. iRobot Corporation learned last week from the Pentagon that one of its units, called a PackBot, was 'destroyed in action' for the first time. Its destruction meant the life of a U.S. soldier may well have been saved, the company said. 'It was a special moment -- a robot got blown up instead of a person,' said iRobot CEO Colin Angle. ... Between 50 and 100 PackBots are now being used in Iraq and Afghanistan for battlefield reconnaissance, search-and-destroy missions of explosives and ordnance disposal, while the soldiers who control them keep out of harm's way."
>>> Robots, Autonomous Vehicles, Military, Hazards & Disasters, Applications, Ethical & Social Implications
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April 12, 2004: Scholarship aids study in France. Shanghai Daily. "A Sino-French scholarship fund will provide money to 20 to 30 Chinese students to do their post-doctorate research and study in France this year. ... The scholarships are mainly targeted at students working in pioneering fields like nanotechnology, artificial intelligence and biological safety, [Jacques] Caen said. ... French post-doctorate students can also apply for the scholarships to do research in China, officials said."
>>> Resources for Students
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April 12, 2004: UAF attempting to build robot vehicle - $2 million prize offered for robust, autonomous, robotic transport that drives itself over 142-mile obstacle course. By Robert Howk. Alaska Journal of Commerce / available from Juneau Empire Online. "Slow and steady wins the race. And the Arctic Tortoise has a chance at victory - next time. That's the philosophy of Rick Ruhkick, team leader of a project at the University of Alaska's Geophysical Institute in Fairbanks which is preparing for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency 'Grand Challenge.' ... The team now has its sights on a similar event in September, also in California, sponsored by the International Robot Racing Federation. ... Ruhkick is more serious about pursuing the DARPA Challenge when is held again in another 16 to 18 months. Revised plans for the race raise the prize from $1 million to $2 million for the winner, but he said that's just a 'drop in the bucket,' compared to the potential for snagging lucrative military contracts. The Pentagon wants to convert many of its vehicles to be autonomous within the next decade, and the Tortoise will be in the running if enough financial and in-kind support for the project is available, he said."
>>> Autonomous Vehicles, Robots, Military, Applications, Competitions (@ Resources for Students)
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April 12, 2004: Hive Means Business - Tsunami Research's hive computing is a cluster technology that puts the smarts in software. By John Soat. Information Week. "In the computer industry, the right metaphor counts. Consider the term client-server computing: It's simple, appropriate, easily understandable. Not so Web services, which has suffered a good deal of confusion, in part because of its unwieldy designator. While Web services is likely to overcome that, the list of failed metaphors is long: artificial intelligence, expert systems, and neural networks, to name a few."
>>> AI Overview, Reference Shelf
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April 12, 2004: Noble Vision's 'scarebot' picks up seed round. By Scott Foster. Ottawa Business Journal. " The product is the iScarecrow, a robotic device that detects birds and deters them from poaching winery grapes. The 'scarebot' relies on artificial intelligence software to alert it to birds. Running on a wire, it swoops toward winged intruders and wards them off. ... [T]he team's testing time has been limited to the harvest season, which has slowed the scarebot's development. ... The new funds could allow the company to test indoors.... Noble Vision's seed round announcement comes after D'Andrea presented to potential investors in Calgary and received calls from oil patch workers in that province. The workers wondered whether the scarebot could be used to stop birds from taking fatal flights into tar ponds."
>>> Robots, Agriculture, Petroleum Industry, Applications
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April 12, 2004: America's Best Graduate Schools 2005. U.S.News & World Report. New ranking for 2004: Engineering Specialties: Computer Engineering.
>>> Graduate Schools (@ Resources for Students)
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April 11, 2004: Computers Learn to Understand Sefrican - Scientists develop software to recognise local languages - and accents. By Gill Moodie. Sunday Times / available from allAfrica.com. "Thanks to South African boffins, computers have been taught to understand the many languages and accents used in South Africa. The voice-recognition system, which will one day enable South Africans to speak to machines for routine tasks such as banking and booking flights and hotels, can converse in Xhosa, English (with a range of local accents) and Afrikaans. 'Essentially, we're trying to emulate what happens in the human brain,' said Professor Justus Roux, director of the Research Unit for Experimental Phonology at the University of Stellenbosch. ... The next step is for the team to convert the speech-recognition system into a translation system. ... 'It has even more value in South Africa as it can help us preserve African languages. Technology is neutral but it could overrun other languages if it forces people to interact in English,' [Dr Daniel Mashao] said. But Professor Mohlomi Moleleki, chairman of the Pan South African Language Board, had reservations. 'I understand it will play a very important role in multilingualism,' he said. 'But if such a system is not managed properly it could become an end in itself and deter people from learning each other's languages.'"
>>> Natural Language Understanding & Generation, Machine Translation, Customer Service, Smart Houses, Speech, Natural Language Processing, Applications, Ethical & Social Implications
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April 11, 2004: Machine rage is dead ... long live emotional computing. Consoles and robots detect and respond to users' feelings. By Robin McKie. The Observer. "Computer angst - now a universal feature of modern life - is an expensive business. But the days of the unfeeling, infuriating machine will soon be over. Thanks to break throughs in AI (artificial intelligence), psychology, electronics and other research fields, scientists are now creating computers and robots that can detect, and respond to, users' feelings. The discoveries are being channelled by Humaine, a £6 million programme that has just been launched by the EU to give Europe a lead in emotional computing. As a result, computers will soon detect our growing irritation at their behaviour and respond - by generating more sympathetic, human-like messages or slowing down the tempo of the games they are running. Robots will be able to react in lifelike ways, though we may end up releasing some unwelcome creations - like Hal, the murderous computer of the film 2001: A Space Odyssey . 'Computers that can detect and imitate human emotion may sound like science fiction, but they are already with us,' said Dr Dylan Evans, of the University of the West of England and a key Humaine project collaborator. ... A key breakthrough has been the discovery that cool, unemotional decision-making is not necessarily a desirable attribute. In fact, humans cannot make decisions unless they are emotionally involved. 'The cold, unemotional Mr Spock on Star Trek simply could not have evolved,' said artificial intelligence expert Professor Ruth Aylett of Salford University, another Humaine project leader."
>>> Emotion, Interfaces, Applications, Cognitive Science, Assistive Technologies, Robotic Pets, Video Games, Robots, Reasoning, Systems
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April 11, 2004: Korea as king of tech is ministry ambition. By Chung Sun-gu. JoongAng Daily. "Relying on his experience in leading a large private company, Information Minister Chin Dae-je is setting forth a broad and ambitious strategy aimed at making Korea a world leader in technology. The Ministry of Information and Communication recently launched a project to identify and aid growth industries for the future. Mr. Chin, the former head of Samsung Electronics, coined a slogan, '839 project,' for the strategy. The slogan refers to eight telecommunications services ... three infrastructure components ... and nine growth information technologies on which Korea will stake its future, such as wearable personal computers or robots with artificial intelligence. Based on the project, the ministry wants to raise the scale of the information technology industry in Korea from 209 trillion won ($183 billion) in production and $57.6 billion in exports last year to 380 trillion won in production and $110 billion in exports by 2007. The information technology industry's share in gross domestic product would then grow from 15.6 percent last year to 19.3 percent."
>>> Applications, Robots, Industry Statistics
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April 10, 2004: Photo recognition software gives location. By James Randerson. New Scientist Magazine (Take a pic to find out where you are; page 23). "You are lost in a foreign city, you don't speak the language and you are late for your meeting. What do you do? Take out your cellphone, photograph the nearest building and press send. For a small fee, photo recognition software on a remote server works out precisely where you are, and sends back directions that will get you to your destination. That, at least, is what two researchers at the University of Cambridge in the UK hope their software will one day be used for. Roberto Cipolla and Duncan Robertson have developed a program that can match a photograph of a building to a database of images. ... The software can match two images even when they are taken at a different times of day, from different angles and with clutter such as pedestrians and vehicles in the way. 'That's an easy problem for a human, but it's very difficult for a computer,' says Robertson."
>>> Image Understanding, Vision, Machine Learning, Applications
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April 10, 2004: In gadget-loving Japan, robots get hugs in therapy sessions. By Yuri Kageyama. Associated Press / available from The San Diego Union-Tribune & SignOnSanDiego.com / also available from the Sun Herald (Robots Seen As Companions for Elderly). "The elderly patients suffer from severe dementia, but their faces light up when they see the dog-shaped robot, swaddled in soft clothing, waddle around the hospital floor. ... This is one in a budding series of robot-therapy sessions at Japanese hospitals and senior citizens' homes. To some scientists, robots are the answer to caring for aging societies in Japan and other nations where the young are destined to be overwhelmed by a surging elderly population. These advocates see robots serving not just as helpers ­ carrying out simple chores and reminding patients to take their medication ­ but also as companions, even if the machines can carry on only a semblance of a real dialogue. The ideal results: huge savings in medical costs, reduced burdens on family and caretakers, and old and sick people kept in better health. 'This technology is really needed for the global community,' said Russell Bodoff, executive director at the Center for Aging Services Technologies in Washington, D.C. ... And while proponents say robot therapy is no different from pet therapy, in which animals offer companionship, the idea of children and older people becoming emotionally attached to machines unnerves many people. ... [Toshiyo] Tamura and colleagues recently published research that found that some patients' activity, such as talking, watching and touching, increased with the introduction of the robot in therapy sessions. ... Tamura also found that introducing a stuffed animal shaped like a dog got almost the same effect from patients. But a stuffed animal can't be programmed to, for example, help an Alzheimer's patient remember the names of their visiting children. Neither, of course, can real animals. ... [H]ow robots will change people remains to be seen. Will robots make people lazy if they can do mundane chores? Will they make us more callous or more humane? ... Ranges of appropriate behavior toward robots will have to be socially defined, [John] Jordan said. Might it be weird to pat a robot for bringing a drink? 'Humans are very good at attributing emotions to things that are not people,' Jordan said. 'Many, many moral questions will arise.' ... 'People aren't going to be able to throw away robots even when they break,' [Yasuyuki] Toki said. 'These are major issues that researchers must keep in the back of our minds.'"
>>> Robots, Assisitve Technologies, Robotic Pets, Ethical & Social Implications, Cognitive Science, Applications, Systems
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April 10, 2004: NTU gets serious on games - Game lab to boost Singapore push into new areas of technology. By Ho Ka Wei. The Straits Times Interactive. "The immediate focus of the lab will be to further research and development on gaming applications and interactivity projects that are already going on at NTU [Nanyang Technological University]. ... According to computer engineering dean Seah Hock Soon, the areas for exploration over the long term include artificial intelligence, mobile and wireless technologies and applications, robotics, simulations and e-learning. ... [Ms Sarah Fay Krom] noted that one of the possible areas Singapore can excel in is 'serious gaming' - where simulation and virtual technologies are employed to solve challenges in areas such as education, health and public policy. ... The global electronic games market was worth US$31 billion (S$52 billion) in 2003, according to Britain's Informa Media Group, an outfit that gathers business information."
>>>AI Labs (@ Resources for Students), Video Games, Applications, Industry Statistics, Games & Puzzles, Education
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April 9, 2004: Artificial Intelligence' opens in Lower Lake. Clear Lake Observer. "The performance represents a full-scale production of the winning script in LCRT's 'Playing by the Lake' contest, held earlier this year. Playwright Robert Frankel came from Minnesota to see the staged reading of his farce. In 'Artificial Intelligence,' a college professor faces ruin when a computer program named Alice crashes on the very day he is supposed to demonstrate it for a major investor."
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April 9, 2004: Striking Far Cry sets new standard. By Alfred Hermida. BBC News. "Now Far Cry, the first of a new generation of first-person shooters, has raised the bar, with its gorgeous graphics, fluid action and engaging story. In the game, you play the character of Jack Carver, who washes up on a tropical island where danger lurks around every corner. ... The artificial intelligence of the enemies is to be commended, with their behaviour being startlingly realistic. The mercenaries will work as a team and use the jungle for cover."
>>> Video Games, Applications
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April 9, 2004: Health informatics ready for next stage. By Charles F. Moreira. The Star Online TechCentral. "Three years ago, few local doctors had even heard of the term "health informatics." Efforts to create an awareness of it has been successful enough that Malaysia is now ready for the next stage, said an expert in the field. Health informatics is a relatively new sub-speciality of medicine which uses information technology to manage clinical information. ... Globally, health informatics includes change management, artificial intelligence, messaging, mobile technology and so on. However in Malaysia it mainly involves hospital management. MHIA organised eHealth 2004 with two primary objectives. ... 'The first aim was to encourage the use of IT to minimise problems caused by improper prescription of drugs,' said MHIA council vice-president Datuk Dr A. Jai Mohan. ... The second objective was to capture the knowledge and methodologies of local and foreign medical experts and incorporate them into the workflow in medical diagnostic and decision support systems."
>>> Medicine, Applications, Expert Systems
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April 8, 2004: Robotics gains in prestige, in part due to military conflicts. By Charles Sheehan. Associated Press / available from USA Today / also available from the Oakland Tribune Online (April 10th: Formerly arcane research gets new respect - Pentagon, corporate world take renewed interest in robotics.). "Researchers in robotics have traditionally faced two debilitating obstacles: terribly expensive parts and difficulty attracting funding from anyone outside of a small corps of true believers. But the field could be in line for a major jolt. Robotics experts see a 'perfect storm' heading their way, thanks in no small part to the human ravages of war. Just as the constant march of technology is driving down the cost of key components, top universities in robotics are reporting major increases in federal funding, with the Defense Department the biggest spender. ... The Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University has seen federal funding jump 48% since 2000, and by 117% since 1994. ... Other universities, such as the California, Virginia and Georgia institutes of technology, say funding for robotics is up at least 50% or more in recent years. At the same time, the materials that comprise the most technologically advanced components in robots, from optics to software, are becoming 'dirt cheap,' said Dan Kara, who covers the industry for Robotics Trends. Technology that lets robots perceive and overcome obstacles has made unparalleled bounds largely because the cost of charge-coupled devices (the core of every camera), microprocessors and varied sensors has fallen away as rapidly as computing power and memory have expanded. ... Robert Michelson, a principal research engineer at Georgia Tech, is holding the fourth annual International Aerial Robotics Competition in July. Robotic aircraft will be required to fly three kilometers (1.8 miles) to an urban setting, find a building, then enter it via a window or a hole in the roof to find a target inside. The robot must then transmit an image back to base -- all without human interference."
>>> Autonomous Vehicles, Robots, Military, Systems, Applications, Industry Statistics, Competitions (@ Resources for Students), Agriculture
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April 8, 2004: Pharmacy focuses on hospital patient and convenience. By Lisa Grzyboski. The Daily Journal.com. "Walk into the health system's Newcomb Hospital in Vineland and automated dispensing machines -- like ATMs, except they distribute medications instead of cash -- are in use. ... By 2006, a pharmacist will be able to do a computer search for a patient, view her X-rays and lab results, then determine if the drug and dose prescribed are correct, Alessandrini said. On top of this, the computer software the pharmacist will be using has a degree of artificial intelligence and can detect problems that could arise if a patient is given a particular drug. Right now, only six percent of all hospitals nationwide have such a system, called Computerized Physician Order Entry, or CPOE, according to Douglas Scheckelhoff of the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists. However, 40 percent of the country's hospitals want to phase in CPOE within the next two to three years, particularly because watchdog organizations are pressuring them to make it a standard practice, he added. Reports have shown that CPOE dramatically reduces medication errors, a leading cause of extended hospital stays."
>>> Medicine, Applications, Expert Systems, Knowledge Management
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April 7, 2004: Flood Risk Management Research Consortium (FRMRC) launched by Environment Minister Elliot Morley and Environment Agency chair Sir John Harman. Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) news release. "A new floods consortium staffed by some of Britain's leading engineers and scientists and launched today by Environment Minister Elliot Morley and Environment Agency chair Sir John Harman, will invest more than £5.5m to develop more accurate flood forecasting and warning and modelling systems and improve flood management infrastructure. Its work will help reduce risk to people, their property and the environment. The new group, known as the Flood Risk Management Research Consortium (FRMRC) will pull in staff from a number of universities to work with industrial partners and operational bodies on integrated research projects, including: ... Using intelligent systems, neural networks, fuzzy set theory, artificial intelligence evolution computation (genetic algorithms), decision support tools and expert systems - to help predict the likelihood of flooding."
>>> Natural Resource Management and the Environment, Applications, Expert Systems, Neural Networks, Genetic Algorithms, Fuzzy Logic, Machine Learning, Reasoning
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April 7, 2004: Autominder Serves as Computerized Caregiver for Elderly. SeniorJournal.com. "[Martha] Pollack, electrical engineering and computer science professor, leads the team developing the software. 'The growing shortage of health care providers, ballooning population of aging baby-boomers and increasingly longer life spans mean computers could be invaluable aides in caring for people with cognitive disorders,' she says. 'We're always going to need human caregivers,' she said. 'With the increased percentage of older adults, there won't be enough adults to provide full-time care.' The future of the aging population is such a concern that on April 6, Pollack will testify before the Senate Committee on Aging about the challenges of developing such technology, and about how increased government support for such research is critical to its success. ... Autominder uses artificial intelligence technology tailored to each user to issue personalized reminders from data it interprets about what the person has done and is supposed to do."
>>> Assisitve Technologies, Applications
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April 6, 2004: Springer set for polluted waterways. e4engineering.com. "Work has begun in the UK to build 'Springer', an unmanned surface vehicle (USV) that will operate in shallow water to track water pollution and carry out environmental surveys. Funded primarily by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), this vehicle will be built at the University of Plymouth by a multidisciplinary team including engineering and artificial intelligence experts. ... Conventional methods of tracking these pollutants to their source such as boat sampling and airborne sensing are said to be expensive and limited in effectiveness because they can not be used easily in shallow water. These systems also have to be manned by operators, making them more expensive to run than a remote controlled device. ... Designed to work autonomously or under remote manual control, the electrically powered Springer will use a wireless link to communicate with its operator and transmit collected data."
>>> Natural Resource Management and the Environment, Autonomous Vehicles, Applications, Robots
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April 6, 2004: Japan Sees High-Tech Toilets, Robots in Future Home. By Nathan Layne. Reuters. "Imagine getting home from work to be greeted by the family robot, which recognizes your voice and reminds you that you've forgotten your spouse's birthday before alerting you that the hospital has just called. ... This may sound like a scene from 'The Jetsons,' the popular science-fiction cartoon from the 1960s that provided a glimpse of what the home and society could look like in 2062, but your home might look more like the Jetsons' in just a matter of years. ... 'Since the amount of information available will grow tremendously, much will depend on the ability to search intelligently,' said Tetsuji Miyano, head of the new business planning office at Matsushita Electric Works (MEW). ... Sit down for dinner and a jellyfish known as an 'agent' swims your way. Each family member has his or her own 'agent,' which contains personal information and can be commanded with a simple device to download text or images from the Web. ... 'The agent knows each family members' hobbies and tastes...and you don't have to use the PC directly,' said Nao Kurosawa, a guide at Matsushita's Panasonic Center where the showroom is housed. 'Many elderly and children aren't that comfortable using the (keyboard-operated) PC,' she said. ... Indeed, protecting the private information of consumers will be a major legal issue for manufacturers like Toto and electronics firms looking to outfit the future networked home."
>>> Smart Houses, Agents, Natural Language Processing, Robots, Assistive Technologies, Information Retrieval, Applications, Interfaces, Ethical & Social Implications
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April 6, 2004: Robot Guided by its Voice. Technology Research News from Technology Review. "The robot, which has a motorized base and speakers that play pre-recorded phrases at appropriate locations, had trouble accurately navigating to the locations. The problem spurred the researchers [at the University of Toronto Artificial Perception Lab] to devise a relatively simple robot navigation system. Instead of mimicking human sight-based methods, they turned to sound. As the lab's revamped robot tour guide explains the importance of various stations on a lab tour, every phrase it says is recorded by 24 microphones embedded in the wall that determines the sound's location. The system requires about two seconds of sound to get enough information to the robot's location."
>>> Robots, Speech
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April 6, 2004: An ideal fall schedule - not a simple task. By Evelyn Rusli. The Daily Princetonian. "So how does the average Princetonian pick out the best classes? The fall 2004-2005 course selection guide may be an intimidating 154 pages, but a few courses already stand out as interesting choices for next semester. ... Finally, for the tech-savvy, there is COS 402: Artificial Intelligence, with Robert Schapire, a specialist in the field. The course will expose the 'fundamental principles, algorithms and techniques of modern artificial intelligence research and practice,' according to the student course guide. 'Schapire is a great professor and the possibilities of artificial intelligence [were] really interesting,' Ryan Teising '04 said of the class."
>>> AI Courses (@ Resources for Students)
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April 6, 2004: Kids science competeion held at PSU Stott Center - Top prize includes PSU scholarships. By Katie Leonard. Daily Vanguard. "The Intel Northwest Science Expo (NWSE), held last Friday, showcased some of the best and brightest middle and high school students in the Northwest. Over 600 students participated in this year's competition. Each qualified through participation in a series of local science fairs, and the students from fifth grade through high school had some remarkable exhibits for young scientists. The event was sponsored by local high-tech giant Intel, which provided scholarships and hosted the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF). Winners of the NWSE move on to the international competition, which draws students and science projects from all 50 states and over 40 countries around the globe. ... Exhibits ranged from 'Frog Cloning' to 'Effects of Caffeine' to 'Optimization of Video Game Artificial Intelligence.'"
>>> Competitions (@ Resources for Students), Video Games
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April 5, 2004: The rise of the spam exterminators. By Dan Lee. Mercury News. "Spammers aren't the only ones who see profits in the torrent of unsolicited e-mail pitches sent around the globe each day. A growing number of businesses see big money in wiping out the junk e-mails that have become a scourge of the Internet age. ...'It's complicated, and the most effective approach to combat spam is a cocktail approach,' said Tumbleweed Chairman and Chief Executive Jeff Smith in a conference call March 18 announcing the Corvigo deal. Corvigo's appliance, which plugs into an organization's network, uses artificial intelligence. It makes a judgment whether something is spam by using filters for keywords such as 'Viagra' or looking at past frequency of words in junk e-mail."
>>> Filtering. Applications
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April 4, 2004: Robo-Cars Make Cruise Control So Last Century. By Danny Hakim. The New York Times (no fee reg. req'd.) "The modern car does not have to guess your weight. It already knows. It watches how you drive and it can pull a Trump. Skid, and before you can blink, you're fired -- the car is driving for you, if only for a moment. Cars today can decide when to brake, steer and can park themselves. They can even see. In short, the back-seat driver now lives under the hood. And it does more than just talk. This is all technology on the road now, if not in a single country or car. But industry engineers and executives view it as the start of a trend that will play out over the next decade, in which automobiles become increasingly in touch with their surroundings and able to act autonomously. ... Which raises a chicken-egg question: What comes first, the car that drives itself? Or the car-driving robot?"
>>> Autonomous Vehicles, Transportation, Systems, Applications, Robots
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April 4, 2004: Rise of the machines - Students test robotics skills at tournament. By Greg Moran. Union-Tribune / available from SignOnSanDiego.com. "Over the years the campus of Poway High School has been the scene of some memorable athletic moments: last-second touchdowns, buzzer-beating three-pointers, a forehand winner on match point. Yesterday, on the floor of the school gymnasium whose walls are draped with championship banners, the robots took over. The robots and their creators, that is. More than 250 junior high and high school students, with laptop computers, sodas and robots in tow, spread out across the floor for an all-day Botball tournament. Botball is a unique, educational program designed to get students to use computing, engineering, design and math skills to build a robot. ... Making matters more difficult is the fact the robots have to run autonomously ­ no radio-controlled gizmos or other directional devices."
>>> Robots, Competitions (@ Resources for Students)
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April 4, 2004: Humanoid robot conducts Beethoven symphony. By Will Knight. New Scientist News. "The latest human activity to be mastered by robots was demonstrated recently when Sony's QRIO bot successfully conducted an entire orchestra. The 58-centimetre-tall humanoid robot led the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra in a unique rendition of Beethoven's 5th symphony during a concert held at the Bunkamura Orchard Hall in Tokyo on 15 March."
>>> Robots, Music
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April 4, 2004: A Pearl for the elderly - Robotic walker is in the works. By Gary Rotstein. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "If the future isn't now, it is getting closer all the time. With an explosion of the senior population due in two decades, researchers are looking for ways to match the technology that science-fiction writers anticipated years ago with the practical benefits a frail, elderly person living alone might need to continue living at home. So instead of focusing on robots that work on lunar surfaces or ocean floors, a research team from Carnegie Mellon, the University of Pittsburgh, University of Michigan and Stanford University has spent the past four years tinkering with devices that trek across carpets and kitchen floors. ... [Judy Matthews] and others leading the project have become convinced that the new-wave walker, one that knows how to move itself out of the way when unneeded and return to its user when summoned, will be the first practical result of Pearl-related work. Offering guidance as well as support to users, once it has mapped out the rooms, halls and other features of its location, the IMP can free up attendants in a long-term care facility for more important things than walking someone to a dining room. Matthews stressed that such an invention was meant to supplement what professional or family caregivers do, not replace them. The original term for the project, Nursebot, attracted chagrin from some members of the nursing profession who didn't see the robots as their equivalent, and Matthews has shied away from using that term. 'We describe them now as intelligent assistive devices for the elderly,' she said."
>>> Assistive Technologies, Robots, Applications
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April 3, 2004 [issue date]: Snapshot chat creates automatic captions. By Anil Ananthaswamy. New Scientist Magazine (Computers sort out digital photos; page 21). "A new system that can caption your digital photos by listening to you and your friends chat about them is being developed by Hewlett-Packard in California. ... 'This is the weak link for digital photo collections,' says Margaret Fleck at HP's lab in Palo Alto. 'In 10 years' time, finding something amongst them will be very difficult.' Fleck's answer is to tap into the wealth of information in the conversations we have when we talk about our photos with friends. She says the stories we tell do not merely describe the photo, but also talk about the events that happened before and after the picture was taken. To harness this information, Fleck has developed software that records these conversations to hard disc, converts the speech to text using a speech-recognition program, and then extracts keywords with which the photos are captioned and indexed. ... 'Probably any good solution is going to use several different approaches,' she says, pointing to work at the University of California in Berkeley. Researchers there have developed software that can identify key elements in photos, such as types of animal, flowers, geographic features like rivers and mountains, and use them to index pictures."
>>> Information Retrieval, Natural Language Processing, Image Understanding, Applications, Vision, Interfaces
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April 2, 2004: Help wanted, say Canada's booming game developers - Edmonton's Bioware plans 20 new hires in 2004. By Steve Makris. The Edmonton Journal. "'Game writers are different from other computer programmers,' said Ubisoft's spokesman Martin Carrier. 'They work with sound, artificial intelligence and need to have a very wide cultural scope.' An estimated 3,000 people are actively working in about 90 gaming studios across Canada. EA is the top employer with 1,250; Ubisoft's next with 750."
>>> Careers in AI (@ Resources for Students), Video Games, Software Development, Industry Statistics
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April 2, 2004: Lawn Mowing for Lazybones. By Mark Baard. Wired News. "First came the wave of robot vacuum cleaners, led by Roomba from Burlington, Massachusetts-based iRobot. Now engineers in the fast-growing consumer robotics market are selling autonomous machines designed to give residential lawns that professionally manicured look, which only professional landscapers could offer in the past. .... And one contraption for trimming that precious Kentucky bluegrass goes way beyond the needs of the owner of a typical quarter-acre residential lot. An industrial-grade robotic mower from Carnegie Mellon University is trimming golf-course fairways and greens, as well as the training field for the Pittsburgh Steelers football team. (Toro is sponsoring the robot project, called the Automated Turf Management system.) Golf-course owners who use robots to cut grass at night will be able to reduce labor costs and accommodate more players on their courses during the day. At home, seniors and those with bad backs and allergies can watch from the comfort of their screened-in porches as their robotic mowers do the work."
>>> Household Appliances, Autonomous Vehicles, Robots, Applications
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April 2, 2004: Inspiring Science. By Patrick Mcgee. Star-Telegram. "University of Texas at Arlington alumnus Kanna Rajan returned to campus Thursday to talk about his work on two NASA robots that are exploring Mars. ... Rajan's software, MAPGEN, became a success. It has been guiding Spirit's journeys since Jan. 15 and Opportunity's since Jan. 31. The six-wheeled robots are more than 6,000 miles from each other taking pictures, drilling into rocks and sometimes making mile-long journeys to collect data. Rajan said MAPGEN is a mix of artificial intelligence and human intelligence, which means NASA technicians can check and change what the robots are doing."
>>> Space Exploration, Planning, Robots, Applications
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April 2, 2004: Robot footballers shoot to score. BBC News. "A robot football match being hosted next week could provide solutions to real world problems, as well as showcasing British robotic talent. The first National Student Robot Football Championship will see bot teams show off their skills ahead of the European Championships in June. ... 'Researchers in artificial intelligence and robotics set the challenge of developing a team of football-playing robots capable of beating humans by 2050,' said Dr [Ken] Young. 'There's still a long way to go before the world's footballing robots are up to the 2050 challenge, but tournaments promote autonomous robot development and facilitate ideas exchange to further the robotics industry.'
>>> Robots, Competitions (@ Resources for Students), Sports
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April 1, 2004: A is for avatar. By Wendy Leavitt. Fleet Owner. "William E. Halal, professor of management in the Dept. of Management Science at George Washington University and director of the TechCast Project, has been anticipating just such developments in intelligent computers and communications for some time. 'Information and communications technologies are rapidly converging to create machines that can understand us, do what we tell them to do and even anticipate our needs,' says Halal. 'Technology scanning conducted under the TechCast Project at George Washington University indicates that advances in speech recognition, artificial intelligence (AI), powerful computers, virtual environments and flat wall LCD monitors are creating a conversation human-machine interface that should be part of mainstream business by about 2010. It will transform how we use computers and what they do for us.' ... If all this sounds far-fetched, consider the list of current artificial intelligence applications and initiatives Dr. Halal cites in his recent article for the Futurist ('The Intelligent Internet: The promise of smart computers and e-commerce,' March-April 2004). His long list includes Amtrak's virtual salesperson, which permits customers to do everything from order tickets to discuss complaints, to a female robot that delivers the weather reports in Japan. The U.S. Dept. of Energy is also creating an intelligent computer designed to infer intent, remember prior experiences, analyze problems and make decisions."
>>> Applications, Business, Customer Service, Interfaces, Natural Language Processing, Systems
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April 1, 2004: Revenge of the Killer Drones. By Noah Shachtman. Wired News. "In just five years, the U.S. military wants a handful of battle-ready fighting drones. ... The next step will come in a few days, when a prototype unmanned combat aerial vehicle (or UCAV, for short) will soar over the Navy's China Lake testing range in California's Mojave Desert and drop its first smartbomb. ... [T]he Pentagon wants the UCAVs to be able to do more than chat with one another. The unmanned planes should be able to take off, fly and defend themselves as a group without a human telling them what to do. Darpa is working on a 'decision aid system' that will automatically handle the many tasks of directing a UCAV team, explained Marc Pitarys, a deputy program director at the agency. Let's say there's a problem with the route a drone is following. The decision-aid system would pick a new one and upload it to the UCAV -- or it would enable the vehicle to 'make up one on its own,' Pitarys said. Such a system has already been demonstrated in the lab, noted Michael Francis, Pitarys' boss. And, within the next few months, it will be loaded onto the planes themselves. ... Even if the system's autonomy climbs higher, that may not be an entirely beneficial thing, some outside analysts say. 'We already have in this country a predisposition that the world is a set of problems with military solutions. One of the only checks on that is the threat of American boys coming home in body bags,' said GlobalSecurity.org director John Pike. Unmanned systems could remove one of those final checks. Pike asked, 'What happens when we can resort to violence, when we can hurt others, without being hurt in return?'"
>>> Autonomous Vehicles, Robots, Military, Applications, Ethical & Social Implications
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April 1, 2004: A robot in every home by 2010. By Lester Haines. The Register. "Today is 1 April, which means two things: newspapers, websites and press releases are full of ridiculous stories designed to fool readers into believing that, for example, Samsung has invented a roboservant which can do the washing up, mow the lawn and clean the car; and newspapers, websites and press releases are full of ridiculous stories designed to fool readers into believing that within ten years Samsung will invent a roboservant which can do the washing up, mow the lawn and clean the car. The former is, of course, a manifestation of April Fool's Day. The latter, however, is something far more sinister. In the trade we call it 'Spring Cyclical Cyberpunditry Syndrome' - a phenomenon whereby teams of analysts, awoken from a Winter dormant state by the distant fragrance of daffodils, begin the time-honoured ritual of predicting a future of technology-assisted domestic bliss for humanity."
>>> Household Appliances, Industry Statistics, Robots, Applications; also see the next article ->
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April 1, 2004 [April Fool's Day]: Spam is out of this world. By Adam Turner. The Sydney Morning Herald. "A torrent of interplanetary spam has been found responsible for crippling the onboard computer of NASA's Spirit rover in January. Spirit lay crippled on the Martian surface for two weeks after a glitch in its onboard spam filtering saw countless offers of pornography and cheap drugs choke its flash memory, according to NASA spokeswoman Shirley Knott. ... 'The rover's limited onboard artificial intelligence was foolish enough to apply for an shonky online marketing diploma. Soon after offers of cheap WD40 and antenna enlargements began clogging the link between Mars and NASA's Deep Space Network....' Technicians solved the problem by upgrading the artificial intelligence on both Spirit and its twin Opportunity. 'The rovers now have enough sense not to respond to spam or open unknown email attachments, which makes them smarter than your average person,' says Knott."
>>> AI Humor
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April 2004: The Reality of Video Games. By Laurie Vaughan. Stanford Graduate School of Business News. "'Ten years from now, we'll be spending as much time in the virtual world as the real one. We'll log in to a metaverse created by game developers, where we'll explore and play in a personalized way,' Microsoft Home/Entertainment VP Peter Moore told a Business School audience in April. ... That's the heady future of electronic games, according to a panel of industry leaders who shared visions and worries at this year's Future of Entertainment Conference held April 3. In the meantime, innovations like wireless control and voice control will give people new ways of playing existing types of games, predicted Jeff Brown, VP for corporate communications at Electronic Arts. Electronic games, he said, 'are the only form of entertainment where we cede authorial control to the user.' By 2010, players will determine most of the challenges and plot twists from their experience. 'The AI [artificial intelligence] is going to be just that much better,' said Brown. 'It won't be like the movie you walked out of because you didn't like the ending -- you'll get to decide the ending.' ... Recent figures show videogames are a $10 billion industry in the United States."
>>> Video Games, Industry Statistics, Careers in AI (@ Resources for Students), Ethical & Social Implications, Applications
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April 2004: What's new in artificial lift. Part 1 - Fifteen new systems for beam, progressing-cavity, plunger-lift pumping and gas lift. By James F. Lea, Herald W. Winkler, and Robert E. Snyder. WorldOil.com (Vol. 225 No. 4). "Improved well automation software. The XSPOC software from Theta Enterprises, Brea, California, offers advanced well automation capabilities for the oil field. While the product has been available for several years, recent enhancements have made it more powerful. The new system uses artificial intelligence to not only monitor, but also perform detailed analysis of rod pumping systems; and it is the only automation package to offer the developer's XDIAG diagnostics module. This module uses pattern recognition and complex logic algorithms to arrive at accurate conclusions about the performance of rod-pumped wells."
>>> Petroleum Industry, Applications, Pattern Recognition, Reasoning, Machine Learning
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