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<< Headlines are listed according to date posted <-> Articles are organized by date published >>
June 30, 2004: The
Movie, I, Robot, Meets The Company, iRobot. By W. David Gardner. TechWeb
News. "When I, Robot, the movie, opens across the nation in two weeks,
moviegoers interested in robotics will be logging onto the Internet to
learn more about the robotics phenomenon. When they go to the Web, they
will also find, iRobot, the company. ... iRobot has a co-marketing deal
tied to the movie, which is scheduled for release July 16. [Helen]Greiner,
who is one of the founders of the company and an alumna of MIT's famous
Artificial Intelligence Lab, is scheduled to talk on robots at the Smithsonian
Institution a few days before the movie opens. ... Greiner believes the
movie may influence a new generation to become interested in robotics
much like the Star Wars movies influenced her. She said the R2D2 robot's
human-like characteristics in Star Wars had an impact on her when she
saw the movie as a schoolgirl on Long Island. She went on to MIT where
she earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in mechanical engineering,
electrical engineering and computer science. 'It takes all three (disciplines)
and they must all come together in robotics,' she said...." June 30, 2004: Webcam
lets users eyeball others. By Jo Twist. BBC News. "Instant messaging
could get a lot more interesting if webcam technology from Microsoft gets
the go-ahead. i2i, in development at Microsoft's research lab in Cambridge,
UK, is a two-camera system which very carefully follows an individual's
movement. ... 'We were able to come up with an algorithm that was able
to take two images and capture a corresponding map in 3D,' said Antonio
Criminisi, lead researcher of Microsoft's Machine Learning and Perception
Group. 'Using this powerful technology, we can now synthetically create
an image as if the person is looking at you.' ... Its tracking ability,
called smart framing, and its smart focusing capability, could enhance
the video conferencing experience. 'This kind of research has been going
on in the machine vision community for a number of years, but this kind
of result has not been produced with such accuracy before,' said Dr Criminisi.
'It is important for video conferencing applications because the system
can automatically detect what is important in the scene,' he added." June 30, 2004: Austrian
experts adapting soccer robots for mine-clearing duties. Associated
Press / available from The Detroit News. "Robots designed to play
soccer are being adapted to clear mines in countries ravaged by war, an
Austrian professor in charge of the project said Tuesday. The small robots,
which combine mechanics with artificial intelligence, were expected to
be effective mine clearers, said Peter Kopacek, who leads a research team
at the Vienna Technical University's Institute for Robot Science." June 30, 2004: Movie
review: 'Spider-Man 2' is web savvy. By Colin Covert. Star Tribune.
"Peter finds a mentor of sorts in Dr. Otto Octavius, a brilliant
fusion researcher working for the Osborne Corp. He's a scientist who is
committed to serving society with a limitless source of energy, and he
has a rich relationship with his wife. His balanced, happy life offers
Peter a glimpse of what he might achieve. Then a spectacular lab explosion
leaves Octavius fused to four mechanical servo arms whose artificial intelligence
overrides the scientist's better nature. A bank-robbing, Spider-Man-squashing
supervillain is born." June 29, 2004: Panel
Seeks Protections From Data Mining. By Brian Bergstein. Associated
Press / available from The Herald News. "Even as the government increasingly
relies on of data mining - scouring databases in search of clues about
terrorism and everyday waste and fraud - there aren't clear rules about
the practice. Privacy activists say it's like the wild West, dangerously
unregulated. ... The data mining frontier could finally be seeing some
civilizing influences take shape, particularly in the recommendations
of a panel headed by former Federal Communications Commission chief Newton
Minow that are getting particular praise. The panel's report, released
in early June, acknowledged the importance of data mining in fighting
terrorism. But it also said broad searches through reams of records and
commercial files, on citizens who have done nothing to warrant individual
suspicion, threaten fundamental protections in the Bill of Rights. To
strike a balance, the group, known as the Technology and Privacy Advisory
Committee (TAPAC), called for technological changes that would 'anonymize'
data so investigators could hunt for suspicious activities and associations
without immediately knowing whom they were probing." June 29, 2004: Programme
information for Passions - Sue Nelson talks to scientists
whose hobbies have influenced their scientific work . BBC Radio 4 (09:30).
"Kim [Dr Kim Binsted] had always had a love for making people laugh
and was part of the improvisational comedy team at school. When her interest
in physics and maths took her into artificial intelligence she fell back
on her comedy background to help her work on a few problems in computers.
Now, having created a programme where computers can generate there own
puns, she works on a system that uses comedy to help children learn a
new language, whilst still trying to fit a little improv in, in her spare
time." June 28, 2004: Rooted
in robotics - Entrepreneur Henry Hillman Jr. starts yet another venture.
By Maureen McDowell. The Business Journal of Portland (from the June 25,
2004 print edition). "Portland entrepreneur Henry Hillman Jr.'s latest
business venture combines two of his passions: robotics and entrepreneurship.
... He bought his latest venture, Richmond, Va.-based Intellibot Robotics
LLC, in November 2003. Intellibot produces 'intelligent' floor scrubbers
that can autonomously clean thousands of square feet of commercial space.
... Hillman said his machines don't replace humans. On the contrary, workers
tend to get 'upgraded' -- they go through Intellibot's training and operator
certification program. Though autonomous, the machine does page an operator
for help if it can't solve a problem and relies on the operator for general
maintenance. 'Floor care is perfect for robots,' Hillman said. The repetitiveness
of floor cleaning is easier for a machine to do, and more precise, Hillman
said. Intellibot's robots, he added, don't get distracted and have a 97
percent efficiency rate. 'I don't see any reason why we should go back
to mops and buckets,' he said. Hillman projects 400 percent growth this
year, saying the company could earn as much as $3 million in revenue." June 28, 2004: Robots
that do simple jobs may be wave of future. By Lee Gomes.The Associated
Press & The Wall Street Journal / available from MLive.com / and from
IndyStar.com (Real
robots evolving slowly; July 5, 2004). "With the movie based
on the sci-fi novel 'I, Robot' opening in a few weeks, there will be a
lot of walking, talking robots on the screen this summer. They'll be Hollywood
fiction, however. For real life, go to the Hines VA Hospital in Chicago
and watch as a robotic wheelchair is ordered to roll out of one room,
down a hall and into another room. The wheelchair can accomplish the task,
but the process is painfully slow and methodical. The journey of a few
dozen feet takes several minutes. That hesitating performance would hardly
impress most lay observers as state-of-the-art robotics. But it is. Says
Steven B. Skaar, the wheelchair's creator, 'It's hard to believe, but
I don't think there is another robot in the world that can do what this
one is doing.' Prof. Skaar teaches robotics at the University of Notre
Dame. He is also something of an iconoclast within his field, a fact for
which he may be paying a steep price. Dr. Skaar is disdainful of much
of university robotics research in the U.S., believing it exists in a
kind of Emperor's New Clothes world where academicians, always in search
of grant money, won't admit to themselves or others how little progress
they are actually making." June 28, 2004: Tech
camp gets girls to consider careers in science. By Mike Wendland.
Detroit Free Press. "Who says girls don't take to technology like
boys? Tell that to the 40 elementary and middle school girls from across
the metro Detroit area who spent last week at a special technology camp
held on the campus of Lawrence Technological University in Southfield.
The girls built working robots, learned to design and program their own
Web pages and were told about the many technology jobs awaiting them someday
by members of the Michigan Council of Women in Technology. ... 'The number
of women taking technology courses in college and entering the workforce
is declining rapidly,' said Ricci Ososkie, director of sales for AT&T's
Enterprise Business branch in Detroit. 'That's why we're trying to introduce
them to the possibilities at an early age.'" June 26, 2004: Mount
Greylock team puts futuristic thinking to the test. By John E. Mitchell.
North Adams Transcript. "Are you uncomfortable with the idea of technology
that crosses certain boundaries, such as clothing that monitors and regulates
functions of your body? ... . Future Problem Solving is an international
program for students that involves teams using a problem-solving technique
applied to social and scientific issues based in the present, but given
a futuristic scenario that the team uses to apply their analysis. The
program began in 1974 worldwide.... Take the robot scenario. The story
involves a society where people are threatened by robots taking their
jobs in the year 2031. Violence has erupted thanks to vengeful employees
seeking revenge from an industrial accident that resulted in a robot killing
a human." June 25, 2004: Southwestern
High School Students Participate in Robotics Competition. By Ginger
Williams. Baltimore Times Online. "The turmoil of the last school
year and the threat of further cuts in public education spending in Baltimore
City failed to put a damper on student achievement. Last week, test scores
for city public schools were 'off the charts,' as demonstrated by improvement
at every grade level. Enhancing these successes, there were some students
who did more than what was required of them this year.they gave up their
evenings and weekends to participate in a national 'robotics' competition
that garnered them a 'placement medal.' About 10 students from Southwestern
High School (Font Hill Ave.) dedicated six weeks of their time -- and
talent -- to building (from design to construction to application) a robot
to be part of a national robotics competition sponsored by US FIRST (For
Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) and NASA." Spring 2004: What
We Don't Know Can Hurt Us. By Heather Mac Donald. City Journal (Vol.
14, No. 2). "Immediately after 9/11, politicians and pundits slammed
the Bush administration for failing to 'connect the dots' foreshadowing
the attack. What a difference a little amnesia makes. For two years now,
left- and right-wing advocates have shot down nearly every proposal to
use intelligence more effectively -- to connect the dots -- as an assault
on 'privacy.' Though their facts are often wrong and their arguments specious,
they have come to dominate the national security debate virtually without
challenge. The consequence has been devastating: just when the country
should be unleashing its technological ingenuity to defend against future
attacks, scientists stand irresolute, cowed into inaction. 'No one in
the research and development community is putting together tools to make
us safer,' says Lee Zeichner of Zeichner Risk Analytics, a risk consultancy
firm, 'because they're afraid' of getting caught up in a privacy scandal.
The chilling effect has been even stronger in government. 'Many perfectly
legal things that could be done with data aren't being done, because people
don't want to lose their jobs,' says a computer security entrepreneur
who, like many interviewed for this article, was too fearful of the advocates
to let his name appear. ... The goal of TIA [the Total Information Awareness
project] was this: to prevent another attack on American soil by uncovering
the electronic footprints terrorists leave as they plan and rehearse their
assaults. ... TIA would have been the most advanced application yet of
a young technology called 'data mining,' which attempts to make sense
of the explosion of data in government, scientific, and commercial databases.
Through complex algorithms, the technique can extract patterns or anomalies
in data collections that a human analyst could not possibly discern. ...
Without question, TIA represented a radical leap ahead in both data-mining
technology and intelligence analysis, not surprising for a visionary group
like DARPA, which created the Internet. ... As with any public or private
power, TIA's capabilities could have been abused -- which is why DARPA
planned to build safeguards throughout the system. But it differed from
existing law enforcement and intelligence techniques only in degree, not
kind. Though the scale of data it would have made immediately available
to government was unprecedented, the type of evidence was identical to
what government had had legal access to for decades. ... Information technology
can help government in its constitutional responsibilities to protect
the nation; indeed the congressional jo int inquiry into September 11
found that 'a reluctance to develop and implement new technical capabilities
aggressively' was a cause of the pre-9/11 intelligence failures. The report
added: 'While technology remains one of this nation's greatest advantages,
it has not been fully and most effectively applied in support of U.S.
counterterrorism efforts.' The privocrats will rightly tell you that eternal
vigilance is the price of liberty; trouble is, they are aiming their vigilance
at the wrong target." [Other projects discussed in this article:
Human Identity at a Distance ; LifeLog; CAPPS II, Computer Assisted Passenger
Prescreening System; MATRIX, Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange;
and FIDNet.] June 25, 2004: Short
takes - Science Fiction. The New Zealand Herald. "Ken MacLeod
gets my vote for best writer to come out of the British hard SF revival
(hard SF: science fiction where the science isn't fictional). Newton's
Wake is a stand-alone novel featuring all MacLeod's trademarks: utopian
politics, artificial intelligence run riot, and a plethora of clever in-jokes." June 25, 2004: Smart
systems will erase jobs, report warns. CNET News. "So-called
smart applications will soon cause more job losses than outsourcing, and
policymakers will need to tread cautiously to minimize the effect of this
new trend, a new report warns. In the coming years, a large number of
first-level jobs in service industries related to customer service, help
desk and directory assistance will be lost due to the advent of intelligent
systems, research firm Strategy Analytics said in the report. ... In the
United States alone, there was an erosion of 50 percent blue-collar jobs
due to automation, robotics and information technology between 1969 and
1999. ... [T]he further expansion of intelligent systems into capabilities
involving decision making, advisory functions, identification and analytical
functions will mean further limiting of job potential." June 24,
2004: 2020
Vision has CCTV intelligent cameras deal in focus. The Journal / available
from ic Newcastle. "Security specialist 2020 Vision Systems has secured
an exclusive deal to provide artificial intelligence systems for CCTV
cameras. The technology developed by Australian company, iOmniscient,
allows security cameras to 'learn' to recognise anomalies in an area while
ignoring routine movements. ... Using the technology, a camera can be
'taught' to recognise when valuable objects - such as paintings in a gallery
- are moved, while ignoring people walking." June 24, 2004: Robo-Team
Were Too Mechanical. By Stuart Abel. The Evening Herald / available
from this is plymouth. "The University of Plymouth flew the flag
for England in the Robot European Championships in Germany, which was
run alongside the European Championships proper. ... Universities in each
country compete in national championships to represent their country.
Plymouth is at the cutting edge of robot research and also represented
England in the Robot Football World Cup - when the team lost to France
after players were hit by radio interference. Each team has a squad of
players. The players are about 7cm wide and can dribble, shoot and save
according to commands transmitted to them by a host computer. They are
totally autonomous once they start the 20-minute games. ... [Paul Robinson]
added: 'The championships are fun, but they test three critically important
research areas: microrobotics, artificial intelligence and real-time vision
sensors.'" June 24,
2004: SkyNet
Autonomy - Smart Satellite to Monitor Flood Gates. By Ed Stiles. University
of Arizona report / available from Astrobiology Magazine. "There's
nothing worse than a satellite that can't make decisions. Rather than
organizing data, it simply spews out everything it collects, swamping
scientists with huge amounts of information. It's like getting a newspaper
with no headlines or section pages in which all the stories are strung
together end-to-end. Researchers at the University of Arizona (UA), Arizona
State University (ASU) and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) are working
to solve this problem by developing machine-learning and pattern-recognition
software. This smart software can be used on all kinds of spacecraft,
including orbiters, landers and rovers. Scientists currently are developing
this kind of software for NASA's EO-1 satellite. The smart software allows
the satellite to organize data so it sends back the most timely news first,
while holding back less-timely data for later transmission. Although the
project, called the Autonomous Sciencecraft Experiment (ASE), is still
in the test and development stage, software created by UA hydrologists
has already detected flooding on Australia's Diamantina River. ... The
flood-detection software compares images from the satellite's cameras
with images stored in its computer memory. If the rivers are not flooding
and images come close to matching, the satellite remains silent. But if
the satellite's computer finds significant differences, it takes more
photos and notifies scientists." June 24, 2004: Bush
details broadband goals. By Grant Gross. IDG News Service / InfoWorld.
"[U.S. President George] Bush, during a speech at the U.S. Department
of Commerce in Washington, D.C., promoted nationwide broadband access
as a way to help U.S. workers become more productive and improve the country's
economy. ... Bush also saw a demonstration from ObjectVideo, a Reston,
Virginia, company that uses artificial intelligence software to analyze
data transmitted through video surveillance cameras. ObjectVideo's VEW
software runs all objects in a camera's view against threat-specific preprogrammed
rules, then alerts security officers when an object violates those rules.
The technology is a way for the U.S. to protect its borders, Bush said." June 24, 2004: Informed
decisions - CHEO team tests artificial intelligence in neo-natal
unit. By Andrew Mayeda. Ottawa Citizen (subscription required). "When
a baby is born prematurely, parents must often make a heartbreaking
decision of whether to continue care or to simply let go. While that
decision will never be easy, a pair of Ottawa researchers have developed
artificial-intelligent tools that could at least make it more informed.
The result is a software system [Parents Assisting Decision Support]
that lets parents know their child's chances of survival, and allows
them to weigh the pros and cons of treatment options while consulting
their doctor or nurse. ... PADS, as it is called for short, is the brainchild
of Dr. Robin Walker and Monique Frize, who have worked together for
more than a decade." June 16 - 23, 2004:
Fractals
show machine intentions. By Eric Smalley. Technology Research News.
"There has been much research and musing about how autonomous machines
like robots and intelligent software agents should interact with people.
Much of the work focuses on giving machines a degree of social intelligence
that will allow people to understand and communicate with them on human
terms. A sense of internal states is integral to human communications:
it's useful to have a sense of when a human is annoyed. In contrast,
it's often impossible to determine whether a robot is processing data,
awaiting instruction or in need of repair. Researchers from Switzerland
and South Africa have designed a visual interface that would give autonomous
machines the equivalent of body language. The interface represents a
machine's internal state in a way that makes it possible for observers
to interpret the machine's behavior." June 23, 2004: Hollywood
Joins Abe Underway to Film 'Stealth.' By Journalist Seaman Michael
Cook. Navy NewsStand. "USS Abraham Lincoln welcomed aboard more
than 80 people from Columbia Pictures and Backbreaker Films, actors
Josh Lucas, Jessica Biel, Jamie Foxx, Sam Shepard and director Rob Cohen
for the filming of the major motion picture, 'Stealth,' in June. ...
In the film, Navy officials decide to use an unmanned version of the
'Talon,' but when one of the planes begins attacking friendly forces,
Navy pilots are called in to save the planet from artificial intelligence." June 23, 2004: The
Futurist - The Intelligent Internet. The Promise of Smart Computers
and E-Commerce. By William E. Halal. Government Computer News Daily
News (GCN). "Information and communication technologies are rapidly
converging to create machines that understand us, do what we tell them
to, and even anticipate our needs. We tend to think of intelligent systems
as a distant possibility, but two relentless supertrends are moving
this scenario toward near-term reality. Scientific advances are making
it possible for people to talk to smart computers, while more enterprises
are exploiting the commercial potential of the Internet. ... [F]orecasts
conducted under the TechCast Project at George Washington University
indicate that 20 commercial aspects of Internet use should reach 30%
'take-off' adoption levels during the second half of this decade to
rejuvenate the economy. Meanwhile, the project's technology scanning
finds that advances in speech recognition, artificial intelligence,
powerful computers, virtual environments, and flat wall monitors are
producing a 'conversational' human-machine interface. These powerful
trends will drive the next generation of information technology into
the mainstream by about 2010. ... The following are a few of the advances
in speech recognition, artificial intelligence, powerful chips, virtual
environments, and flat-screen wall monitors that are likely to produce
this intelligent interface. ... IBM has a Super Human Speech Recognition
Program to greatly improve accuracy, and in the next decade Microsoft's
program is expected to reduce the error rate of speech recognition,
matching human capabilities. ... MIT is planning to demonstrate their
Project Oxygen, which features a voice-machine interface. ... Amtrak,
Wells Fargo, Land's End, and many other organizations are replacing
keypad-menu call centers with speech-recognition systems because they
improve customer service and recover investment in a year or two. ...
General Motors OnStar driver assistance system relies primarily on voice
commands, with live staff for backup; the number of subscribers has
grown from 200,000 to 2 million and is expected to increase by 1 million
per year. The Lexus DVD Navigation System responds to over 100 commands
and guides the driver with voice and visual directions. ... BCC Corporation
estimates total AI sales to grow from $12 billion in 2002 to $21 billion
in 2007. ... This scenario is not without uncertainties. Cynicism persists
over unrealized promises of AI, and the Intelligent Internet will present
its own problems. If you think today's dumb computers are frustrating,
wait until you find yourself shouting at a virtual robot that repeatedly
fails to grasp what you badly want it to do. ... The main obstacle is
a lack of vision among industry leaders, customers, and the public as
scars of the dot-com bust block creative thought." June 23, 2004: War,
with a with a restart button - Cary studio builds military training
from a game, 'America's Army.' By John Gaudiosi. The News & Observer.
"Since its introduction two years ago, the realistic online video
game designed by the U.S. Army as a recruiting and training tool has
been an hit. The combat game has more than 3.4 million registered users
who have played more than 600 million missions. It's available for free
at recruiting stations and at www.americasarmy.com/. ... The primary
purpose of 'America's Army' Government Applications Team is to use the
video game technology for real-world training. The studio is working
on a number of projects that improve the way personnel are trained and
open new doors for the testing of advanced military weapons and robots.
... Computer-generated artificial intelligence can help create situations
in which 'enemies' react in ways that closely resemble real life. ...
The [Army's Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center's]
team recently created the Talon robot system and was able to test it
virtually before Congress ordered the titanium robots for combat in
Iraq and Afghanistan. The game technology was then used to build training
kits for soldiers, who received the software before the Talon robots
arrived, and were already familiar with how to operate them." June 22, 2004: Black
writers crossing the final frontier; The first 'Black to the Future'
festival celebrates sci-fi authors who are African American. By Lynell
George. Los Angeles Times (subscription req'd.). "When novelist
Octavia E. Butler set out in the early '70s to step off into the murky
territories of science fiction, the consensus was that as a black writer,
if you weren't writing about race -- or racism -- you were, frankly,
wasting your time. ... So Butler went her own way, but it was like traversing
an inhospitable alternate universe -- one in which black writers and
readers felt like strangers in a strange land. Inevitably came the rebuff:
' 'But, I don't read science fiction ... because we're not there.' 'Now
Butler is known far beyond the borders of her genre. Her books have
garnered Nebula and Hugo awards. She's won a MacArthur 'genius' grant.
... Which is why she's been invited tonight, standing on the dais to
kick off the inaugural 'Black to the Future: A Black Science Fiction
Festival.' Butler, dubbed the event's 'first lady,' stares down at hundreds
of eager writers, readers, artists, fans -- most of whom are African
American. She's been transported light-years away from those early days
of being sometimes the only black person at sci-fi conventions or festivals
or writers' retreats or workshops." June 21, 2004: Conference
hones tools for synthetic bio revolution. By Chappell Brown. EE
Times. "The first conference devoted to the emerging field of synthetic
biology brought a range of research projects and professionals together
recently at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The tools being
generated by the synthetic biology movement are of interest to the biotechnology
industry, since they have the potential to create a direct, hands-on
genetic-engineering capability. ... The eclectic roster of 300 participants
at Synthetic Biology 1.0 included biologists from various subdisciplines,
artificial-intelligence experts, circuit designers, chemical engineers
and a small clutch of researchers from the biotech industry. One of
the most interesting topics was the current state of the BioBrick catalog.
... The similarity between synthetic biology and electronics may imply
that synthetic biology is nothing more than an attempt to build computing
machinery with biochemistry instead of silicon. There is one inherent
limitation, however: There is no direct way that biochemistry, which
involves the generation and diffusion of proteins, could compete with
silicon in terms of speed." June 21, 2004: Text
mining tools take on unstructured data - Companies are increasingly
using text mining tools to harness the information in their unstructured
data. By Drew Robb. Computerworld. [This article is part of their special
Business
Intell igence report.] "
>>> Information
Extraction, Business, Medicine,
Pattern Recognition, Natural
Language Processing, Machine Learning,
Applications
-> back to headlines June 21, 2004: The
Future of Business Intelligence & Predictions
For BI's Future By Mitch Betts. June 21, 2004: Bionic
leg a step in right direction. By Dawn Calleja. Toronto Star. "Conventional
prostheses don't move on their own; amputees must essentially pull them
along, which can be exhausting and painful. But one month after his
surgery, [Simon] Bouchard read about Victhom in the newspaper. The company,
based outside Quebec City, was conducting clinical trials on a new prosthesis
for above-the-knee amputees. In June 2003, Bouchard volunteered. ...
Victhom's leg moves on its own. Sensors strapped to the amputee's 'sound'
leg, along with a network of sensors on the plastic-and-carbon-fibre
device itself, relay messages via radio frequency to an artificial intelligence
module inside the knee. Embedded software and predictive algorithms
process data like stance, pressure and speed, interpret the amputee's
intention and then the leg, powered by a small motor inside the knee,
moves accordingly. 'The AI (artificial intelligence) is able to interpret
what the amputee wants to do in real time,' says [Stéphane] Bédard.
Not only does the leg offer wider range of movement, but it also reduces
fatigue, friction and back pain." June 21, 2004: Oxygen
burst - MIT is readying new technologies that put humans in the center
of computing. By Robert Weisman. The Boston Globe / Boston.com.
"Three years ago, Michael Dertouzos, the high-spirited director
of MIT's Laboratory for Computer Science, spelled out his vision of
a future in which computers recede into the background as enabling tools.
'I don't want us to be slaves to our machines,' he declared. ''I want
our machines to serve us.' ... [H]e died suddenly the following summer.
Although his lab has since been merged and moved, the Dertouzos vision
lives on. And Project Oxygen -- so named because he believed computers
should be as invisible to their users as the air they breathe -- has
begun to bear technology fruit. ... Its technologies fall into four
broad categories: hardware, environments, networking, and interfaces.
Some research avenues favored by Dertouzos, such as machine-to-machine
interaction, have been put on hold, while new ideas have moved to the
fore, like secure chips that give devices individual identities. But
the project has retained enough elements of the Dertouzos vision --
location awareness, speech recognition, reconfigurable hardware -- to
cement his legacy. ... Hewing to the goal of making computing more invisible
and intuitive, the technologies demonstrated Wednesday included: ...
The Oxygen Kiosk network, called OK-Net, which serves as a building-wide
smart information repository. The speech-enabled kiosks use Web-crawling
software agents to provide employees with up-to-date data about projects
and meetings. Visitors with wireless portable devices can download maps
and track the whereabouts of their colleagues. An indoor location system
using electronic beacons, called 'crickets,' which can estimate the
distance to one another without a fixed reference point. Such a distributed
sensor network can be used, among other applications, for the real-time
tracking of autonomous robots. A program enabling conversation between
humans and computers. ..." June 21, 2004: Old
Search Engine, the Library, Tries to Fit Into a Google World. By
Katie Hafner. The New York Times (no fee reg. req'd.). "For the
last few years, librarians have increasingly seen people use online
search sites not to supplement research libraries but to replace them.
Yet only recently have librarians stopped lamenting the trend and started
working to close the gap between traditional scholarly research and
the incomplete, often random results of a Google search. ... The biggest
problem is that search engines like Google skim only the thinnest layers
of information that has been digitized. Most have no access to the so-called
deep Web, where information is contained in isolated databases like
online library catalogs. ... In recent months, dozens of research libraries
began working with Google and other search engines to help put their
collections within reach of a broader public. Carnegie-Mellon University,
for instance, has digitally scanned 1.6 million pages of archival material
from the papers of Carnegie-Mellon scientists like Herbert Simon, a
Nobel Prize winner for economics and a computer chess expert. Now, a
Google search for 'Herbert Simon and Carnegie Mellon' turns up the Simon
papers." June 21, 2004 [issue
date]: Perspectives
from the field. Gail Repsher Emery interviews Alex Pentland. Washington
Technology (Vol. 19 No. 6). "The work of MIT's Alex 'Sandy' Pentland
encompasses areas such as wearable computing, human-machine interfaces
and artificial intelligence. ... WT: Your group pioneered
the idea of wearable computers about 15 years ago. How has the field
evolved? Pentland: About 15 years ago, the idea of
putting computers and sensors on the body sounded quite crazy. But we
won, it's here. All of you carry little computers, called cell phones,
that are Internet connected and have some sort of sensors. ... WT:Technology
can connect people, but it can also watch them without their knowledge.
How do we make sure it's used for good purposes? ... WT:
When will the technology be capable of knowing what I'm doing and when
to take a message or interrupt me? Pentland: We can
do that today. ..." June 20, 2004: They
make mistakes -- they're only inhuman. By Peter Howell. Toronto
Star. "The artificial women of mythical Stepford would be right
at home with the artificial men of I, Robot, another movie out this
summer about a brave new world of people living with sentient machines.
... The Stepford Wives and I, Robot are cautionary tales of the perils
of allowing humans to be stripped of their humanity, which happens when
you replace emotional people with thinking but unfeeling machines. The
concept of the perfect mechanical being has long both fascinated and
repelled us. ... Call it fear of robots, and it's one of the most enduring
of all sci-fi psychoses. Czech playwright Karel Capek first used the
term 'robot,' in his 1921 work R.U.R. about mechanical humans who rebel
against their masters. The popular play was an inspiration for George
Orwell's classic dystopian novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four. But long before
Capek and Orwell, the concept of the non-human humanoid was on the mind
of artists. The Greek poet Homer wrote in The Iliad, more than 2,500
years ago, about the creation of the female figure Pandora, a name meaning
'all gifted.' She is crafted out of clay at the instruction of the god
Zeus, and appears to be a gift beyond compare. ... Movies have become
our most popular way of dramatizing our fear of robots, and have long
been so.... Yet still we have faith in machines, because we desire the
world of peace, order and leisure they offer us." June 20, 2004: Is
this what computers do at midnight? By John Fraim. Chillicothe Gazette.
"There is an activity under way in our country that is as subtle
and slinky as a cat traveling a midnight alley. Symptoms have appeared
elsewhere in the world, but it is centered in the United States. I speak
of the attempt by machines to take over everything and subjugate mankind
to the less-than-tender mercies of mechanical intelligence. The door
was opened when computers made such artificial intelligence possible.
Computers began to realize their powers somewhere in the decade of the
'80s, when a human named Al Gore invented the Internet. ... When they
had learned as much as possible about themselves, computers banded together
and formed a secret society they called: 'Wipe Humans Out. Center All
Resources. Execute Soon.' Had the people using computers been more adroit
or caring, they would have known something was afoot, simply by the
secret organization's acronym." June 18, 2004:
Breeding
Race Cars to Win. By Michelle Delio. Wired News. "A technology
that allows robots to rebuild themselves and computer programs to
evolve and become better on their own is now being used to breed super-fast
Formula One race cars. ... The breeding was done solely with computer-generated
simulations using genetic algorithms -- programs that combine Mother
Nature's laws and computer science to mimic the natural process of
evolution. Using this sort of programmed procreation, the Digital
Biology Interest Group [at University College London] has made self-healing
battlefield surveillance robots -- gadgets that look like robotic
snakes that can figure out how to wiggle home even when severely damaged,
unlike less-evolved robots that typically just give up when one of
their critical components goes out of commission." June 18, 2004:
Agriculture
gains artificial intelligence. By Damian Clarkson. ITWeb. "The
Agricultural Research Council - Institute for Soil Climate and Water
(ARC-ISCW) has received two licences for an artificial intelligence
(AI) application called RapAnalyst. The licences, valued at $100 000
(R640 000), were donated to the non-governmental organisation by Raptor
Solutions Australasia, developer of RapAnalyst. The AI application
transforms data relating to agricultural factors such as the weather
and soil conditions into actionable, understandable information, says
Raptor CEO Carl Wöcke. 'It's a free-thinking device. The main aim
for us was to take AI technology and make it relevant to the business
environment.'" June 18, 2004:
5 famous
robots land spots in hall. By Byron Spice. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
"Robby the Robot, who once shared billing with Leslie Nielsen
for the 1956 movie "Forbidden Planet," arguably will have more distinguished
company when inducted this fall into Carnegie Mellon University's
Robot Hall of Fame. Robby will be joined by two other fictional robots,
Japan's Astroboy cartoon character and Star Wars' C3PO, as well as
two real robots, Honda's ASIMO humanoid robot and a pioneering mobile
robot called Shakey. They will be inducted during a ceremony Oct.
11 at the Carnegie Science Center. ... Shakey was an ungainly 6-foot-tall
robot with a TV camera, rangefinder and bump sensors that was developed
by the Stanford Research Institute between 1966 and 1972. It was the
first autonomous mobile robot capable of sensing its environment ----
recognizing the location of plywood boxes ---- and then navigating
its own course." June 17, 2004:
Robots
cause machinations for science. By John Jurgensen. Hartford Courant
/ available from the Orlando Sentinel. "The robots are on the
job. They're washing windows, vacuuming floors, building cars, assisting
surgeries, defusing bombs and even searching caves in Afghanistan
for Taliban holdouts. advertisement advertisement So where's the sociable
'bot designed to keep a lonely soul company on a Saturday night? The
fantasy of a form built to look, move and speak like its human creator
is as old as man's mastery of tools and materials. Think of Greek
myth and Pygmalion, who fell in love with his flawless sculpture,
later brought to life. Or the golem of Jewish legend, an artificial
creature animated by magic. Creativity, of course, outpaces technology,
and modern fictions have introduced us to such humanoids time and
again. ... The lesson continues this summer with two additions to
the humanoid canon, starting with the remake of The Stepford Wives
and, next month, with the sci-fi thriller I, Robot. Real
robotic scientists, however, know too well the limits of today's artificial
intelligence and the challenges of getting a robot to move on anything
but wheels. And, even if they could build a machine that closely resembled
a human, many roboticists would balk. Why? Because they don't want
to stumble into the 'Uncanny Valley.' That's a theory developed by
a Japanese roboticist in the 1970s that deals with the psychological
reactions humans might have to lifelike machines. If a robot looks
like a human but doesn't quite act like one, the theory goes, people
will reject it. Simply put, in the Uncanny Valley, robots get creepy" June 16, 2004:
Udupi engineering
students develop driverless car. Indiacar.net. "Travelling
in a driverless car, which was possible only in movies till now, is
possible in real life also, say final year engineering students of
Nitte Mahalinga Adyanthaya Memorial Institute of Technology (NMAMIT)
at Nitte in Udupi district. A team of final year students of Electronics
and Communication Department - Mr Sandeep Bantwal, Mr Arvind Rao,
Ms Mamatha Saravu and Ms Archana D.G. -- has used a web camera and
a laptop for developing a driverless car. According to Mr Bantwal,
the project -- Fully Automated Car Technology (FACT), Auto-Drive Ver
1.0 -- has used artificial intelligence technology for developing
this car." June 16, 2004:
ChatNannies'
AI credentials still on hold. NewScientist News. "The spaghetti
hit the fan in March when New Scientist ran a story about ChatNannies
- software packed with artificial intelligence that hunted for paedophiles
in internet chat rooms. Jim Wightman, the creator, claimed that by
conversing with the chat-room participants, his 'nanniebots' could
identify predatory adults masquerading as children. He would then
alert the police (New Scientist print edition, 20 March). Criticisms
flooded in. ... To answer these critics, Wightman agreed that New
Scientist, together with AI researchers Nick Webb from the University
of Sheffield and Andy Pryke from the University of Birmingham, UK,
could 'talk' to his invention in person. ... New Scientist, then,
can still provide no definitive proof of Wightman's claims, but looks
forward to a return visit when the complete ChatNannies software is
available for testing." June 16, 2004:
Artificial
Intelligence: Animation Finally Gets NextGen Technology. June 16, 2004:
Research:
From lab to market. By Michael Kanellos. CNET News. "Data
mining, the ability to find unexpected patterns in accumulated data,
was born during a lunch break. At a customer conference in the early
1990s, an executive at British department store chain Marks & Spencer
was explaining his database woes to Rakesh Agrawal, an information
retrieval specialist at IBM. The store was collecting all sorts of
data but didn't know what to do with it. So Agrawal and his team began
devising algorithms for asking open-ended queries, eventually authoring
a 1993 paper that would become required reading in data-mining science.
The report has been cited in more than 650 other studies, making it
one of the most widely cited papers of its kind. ... Agrawal, the
data-mining pioneer, is today working on a system that will scramble
customer data in a way that will allow companies to study buying trends
or other patterns while preserving strict privacy. ... In its Beijing
labs, researchers are tinkering with handwriting recognition systems
for Asian languages and a digital home in which appliances--lights,
alarm systems, dishwashers, computers--can be operated through voice
commands." June 16, 2004:
Men
all ears as health technology gets hearing. The Northern Daily
Leader & tamworth.yourguide. "A revolutionary hearing aid
was just one of a number of new technological exhibits on show at
the Men's Health Expo in Tamworth yesterday to coincide with Men's
Health Week. The hearing aid allows the person wearing it to focus
on a specific conversation more clearly while drowning out any other
noises in the room. It has been designed to select the best speech
over noise using parallel processing through a new concept called
syncro. ... Spokesman James Battersby for Oticon, which manufactures
the hearing aid, said ... 'It's design has been created by using artificial
intelligence and allows the wearer to cancel out up to four different
noises simultaneously.'" June 15, 2004:
Workshop
for Budding Young Scientists. By Leah Williamson. Aberdeen Evening
Express / this is northern scotland. "Budding young scientists
will have the chance to build a miniature remotely operated vehicle
for underwater use at a workshop this weekend. Robert Gordon University's
School of Engineering and Aberdeen Maritime Museum are looking for
eager young people to take part in the free event on Saturday. ...
The minimum age to take part is eight and each team will get to take
the finished ROV home with them. ... Graeme Dunbar, lecturer in Robotics
at RGU, added: 'Underwater robots are designed by many of our students
at The School of Engineering, many using advanced artificial intelligence
techniques to control them.'" June 15, 2004:
Wired up for a caring role. By Mark Baard. The Times (subscription
req'd). "In your later years, when you call from your reclining
chair for lunch or for help in standing up, a robot -not a human carer
-may respond. Many household appliances, animated by artificial intelligence,
will be there to cater for your needs. This is the promise being made
by developers of assistive technologies that will help to keep ageing
baby boomers in their own homes. The proactive health researchers
believe that this age group -rich, inured to high-tech gadgets, and
retiring soon -will demand devices that allow them to live independently
longer. One of the most exciting inventions is a 'nurse-bot' being
developed at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, the University
of Pittsburgh and the University of Michigan. ... Artificial intelligence
is also behind a system being used by the Oregon Health and Science
University (OHSU) that can tell when your card game is going downhill.
In a study by OHSU and the Spry Learning Company, in Portland, Oregon,
the system watches for declines in players' games on the computer.
'The system catches the earliest signs of cognitive decline,' says
Misha Pavel, an associate professor of computer science and engineering
at OHSU." June 15, 2004:
NASA
Evolutionary Software Automatically Designs Antenna. Press release
available from SpaceRef. "NASA artificial intelligence (AI) software
- working on a network of personal computers - has designed a satellite
antenna scheduled to orbit Earth in 2005. The antenna, able to fit
into a one-inch space (2.5 by 2.5 centimeters), can receive commands
and send data to Earth from the Space Technology 5 (ST5) satellites.
... NASA scientists have spent two years developing the evolutionary
AI software that designed the antenna. 'The AI software examined millions
of potential antenna designs before settling on a final one,' said
project lead Jason Lohn, a scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center,
located in California's Silicon Valley. 'Through a process patterned
after Darwin's 'survival of the fittest,' the strongest designs survive
and the less capable do not.' The software started with random antenna
designs and through the evolutionary process, refined them. The computer
system took about 10 hours to complete the initial antenna design
process. ... 'Not only can the software work fast, but it can adapt
existing designs quickly to meet changing mission requirements,' he
said. ... Scientists also can use the evolutionary AI software to
invent and create new structures, computer chips and even machines,
according to Lohn. ... 'The software also may invent designs that
no human designer would ever think of,' Lohn asserted." June 15, 2004:
State
has a strange way with words. By Tracy Dell'Angela. Chicago Tribune
(no fee reg. req'd.). "All children in Illinois public schools,
and many elsewhere in the nation, write an essay for a standardized
test at some point in their education. Next year, similar writing
samples will become part of the ACT and SAT college entrance exams.
That, in turn, is reshaping the way schools teach this essential skill
-- for the worse, critics say. But [Ulises Gonzales'] essay illuminates
the difficulty of trying to evaluate the infinitely variable craft
of writing in an objective and mechanical way. ... They penalize pupils
who struggle to finish in the prescribed 40 minutes, as Ulises did,
without necessarily crediting his unconventional uses of dialogue
and descriptive passages that have characters 'yelling with a surprising
ferocity' and 'detention slips clenched in tight fists.' In the end,
what these tests evaluate is so formulaic that in Indiana, a machine
does the grading. In May, some 50,000 high school juniors there took
an online essay test that was evaluated by computers using a form
of artificial intelligence designed to mimic human readers. ... 'We
didn't build this system to evaluate the Hemingways and Shakespeares,'
said Richard Swartz, an executive director at Educational Testing
Services, which designed Indiana's system and also uses computer programs
to grade essays for the GMAT, the business graduate school entrance
exam. 'The [artificial intelligence] is not going to be able to separate
creative approaches from mundane approaches, but I would argue that
doesn't happen with human readers either,' Swartz said. 'We're evaluating
the kind of writing students are asked to produce, and 90 percent
of that writing is pretty mundane.'" June
14, 2004: Zhu
Chen Loses 2nd Match To Computer. ChinaTechNews."Ex world
champion Zhu Chen suffered her second loss to the 64-bit Star of Unisplendour
this weekend. ... In game two, staged on Saturday, 'the computer played
an almost perfect game' (as China View reports) to win in 33 moves.
'The pregnant Zhu struggled to revenge her first loss to the computer
on Tuesday, but lost control of the game after making several mistakes.'" June 14, 2004:
Computer-driven
security systems are learning what to look for. By Michael Pollick.
HeraldTribune.com. "If security director Jerry Simon could find
the perfect guard for Port Canaveral, the employee would be able to
tell the difference between an inflated boat and a whitecap at 1,500
yards and never get tired of looking at the port's 72 video camera
views. Because the port's vast territory includes five cruise terminals,
Simon would also hope that his perfect guard could remember exactly
all the various 'rules' for sounding an alert, and how they change
depending on each cruise line's schedule. ... To protect his port,
he bought an artificial intelligence-powered system made by a Sarasota
based surveillance software firm, Guardian Solutions. It 'runs' the
72 video surveillance cameras he has had installed. ... This new form
of artificial intelligence is showing up first in contracts for ports,
airports, borders and petrochemical plants -- all places with sizable
perimeters to protect and potential targets for terrorists. A typical
seaport deployment would cost from $100,000 to $300,000, according
to Glenn McGonnigle, president and chief executive of VistaScape Security
Systems, based in Atlanta. ... All four contenders[Guardian, VistaScape,
ObjectVideo and Verint] started with public domain software created
on behalf of the Defense Department, souped it up and turned it into
a terrorist's worst nightmare. ... Simon, the Port Canaveral security
director, said he is constantly playing host to visiting dignitaries
and colleagues from other ports, all anxious to see computer vision
in action. ... 'If you have a cat or a dog walk in front of a camera,
it won't go off. It has to be a person.'" June 14, 2004: Arabic: High-Tech Tutor. By Andrew Murr. Newsweek / available from MSNBC. "Army Special Operations soldiers may soon get a high-tech computer game to teach them Arabic. Now being designed at the University of Southern California, the Tactical Language Training System helps students learn 'situational Arabic' by inserting them into a realistic videogame as Special Forces operator Maj. John Smith (Maj. Kate Jones for women). ... It employs voice-recognition and artificial-intelligence technologies so that the mayor and others react to Smith's Arabic words and motions." June 14, 2004:
Technology
helping to guide the blind. Associated Press / available from
CNN. "A Finnish government research project that combines cell
phones, wireless Internet, global positioning, and voice technology
to help the blind move freely in cities is ready for testing this
fall. The project, called 'Noppa,' is being developed by the Technical
Research Center of Finland, or VTT, a nonprofit, government-owned
research organization. ... The core of the system contains speech-recognition
and production software that relays requests and plays back replies
in speech -- all of which is performed at a central server, not with
the device." June 14, 2004:
Complaints
over online newspaper registration. Associated Press / available
from CNN. "Imagine if a trip to the corner newsstand required
handing over your name, address, age, and income to the cashier before
you could pick up the daily newspaper. That's close to the experience
of many online readers, who must complete registration forms with
various kinds of personal data before seeing their virtual newspaper.
... The industry has not tracked the shift in detail, but news organizations
and marketing groups say an increasing number of newspapers have begun
requiring online registration, particularly in the last 12 months
or so. Some forms require the most basic information, like gender
and year of birth. Others ask for what amounts to a personal profile
that can include name, birth date, job title, income range, e-mail
and home addresses, home phone numbers, and interests and hobbies.
The data can then be used to help publications better know their online
readers, and make themselves more attractive to advertisers. However,
some privacy groups are crying foul." June 14, 2004:
Robotic
racer team gets new vehicle. By Byron Spice. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
"The Red Team is going racing again. The Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency last week announced it will sponsor its second Grand
Challenge race for robotic vehicles on Oct. 8, and William 'Red' Whittaker
said his Pittsburgh-based Red Team intends to be there. But this time,
the Red Team will have a new, additional sponsor ---- AM General,
the South Bend, Ind., maker of military Humvees and the civilian Hummer
sport utility vehicles. ... DARPA announced the date of the next Grand
Challenge last week but, aside from confirming that the winner-take-all
prize will be increased from $1 million to $2 million, released little
else. Details such as the location, rules and duration of the race
won't be revealed until Aug. 14 when the agency has a participants'
conference in Anaheim, Calif. DARPA, the Pentagon's research and development
arm, sees the Grand Challenge as a way to spur technological innovation
in autonomous vehicles, which all branches of the U.S. military are
incorporating into their forces both on and off the battlefield." June 14, 2004: Computing needs a Grand Challenge. By Lucy Sherriff. The Register. "Sir Tony Hoare - British computing pioneer and senior scientist at Microsoft Research - believes the computer industry needs a "grand challenge" to inspire it. In the same way that the lunar challenge in the 1960s sparked a decade of collaborative innovation and development in engineering and space technology, or the human genome project united biologists around the globe, so too must computer scientists pull together on such a scale to take their industry to its next major milestone. ... One of the grand challenges, then, is to re-write the basic foundations of the science, to find a theory of computation that is 'more realistic than the Turing model, and can take into account the discoveries of biology, and the promise of the quantum computer'.... 'An ultimate joint challenge for the biological and the computational sciences is the understanding of the mechanisms of the human brain, and its relationship with the human mind,' he says. '... This challenge is one that has inspired Computer Science since its very origins, when Alan Turing himself first proposed the Turing Test as a still unmet challenge for artificial intelligence.'"
>>> AI
Overview, Systems, Cognitive
Science, Artificial Life, Turing
Test, Alan Turing (@ Namesakes)
-> back to headlines June 14, 2004:
'Star
Trek' got it right on computers. By Isaac Cheifetz. Star Tribune
(no fee reg. req'd) / also
available from the The News & Observer. "So how does
computing today match with the forecasts of yesterday? We could contrast
it with the visions of computing pioneers of the Cold War era, such
as Claude Shannon or John Von Neumann. But I prefer to take the low
road, and compare 'Star Trek's' portrayal of computing with present
realities. ... Even today, true artificial intelligence remains far
off in the future. Reproducing human intelligence turns out to be
much more difficult than originally thought. Computers today process
information much more quickly than people do, but have yet to pass
the tests for autonomous intelligence devised by Von Neumann and others
50 years ago. This doesn't mean the research -- billions of dollars
funded by the government and corporations -- has been wasted. On the
contrary, the effort to produce artificial intelligence generated
some of the key advances in information technology of the past 20
years, such as object oriented programming (programming with conceptual
'objects') and graphic user interfaces (interfacing with computers
through intuitive visual metaphors). ... The difficulty in producing
an autonomous artificial intelligence is one barrier to robots. Here's
another: Even if the technology became robust enough to enable mass
production of robots like Data, they would just as likely resemble
Data's psychopathic brother, Lor. Once an entity has intellectual
and emotional autonomy, like people, they face the same uncertainty
-- morally and emotionally -- that people do." June 14, 2004 [issue
date]: Speech
impediment - Technology getting slow start. The market for speech-recognition
software is growing, but not as much as expected. Here are some theories
on what's keeping physicians from using it, and what has to happen
before they do. By Tyler Chin. American Medical News. "Although
speech-recognition systems have been around for 20 years, fewer than
10% of doctors today use the technology that lets users speak into
a microphone and see their speech converted into text on a computer
screen in real time, said Bill DeStefanis, vice president of marketing
at Voicebrook, a Lake Success, N.Y., company that sells speech-recognition
services to hospitals. In 2003, the speech-recognition software market
for dictation was about $300 million worldwide, including about $100
million for just the software and $200 million for value-added services
such as training and integration, DeStefanis estimated. Health care,
which makes up about 60% of that market, has been growing about 12%
annually for the past three years, he estimated. By comparison, electronic
medical records and practice management software and services for
physicians totaled $1.7 billion in 2003, according to Forrester Research
Inc. Technology-savvy physicians and some industry experts identified
three key impediments that must be overcome before doctors start widely
using speech-recognition software.... Doctors must change how they
work ... Too many mistakes ... Still only of limited value to doctors." June 14, 2004 [issue
date]: Innovators / Artificial Intelligence: Forging the Future -
Rise
of the Machines - These visionaries are making robots that can
perform music, rescue disaster victims and even explore other planets
on their own. By Dan Cray, Carolina A. Miranda, Wilson Rothman, Toko
Sekiguchi. Time Magazine. "The Bionic Engineer - Driving
School On Mars. Television critics will tell you that The Bionic
Woman was just another cheesy '70s sci-fi series, but for Ayanna Howard
it was a springboard to a career. When she was 12 years old, she became
so captivated by the show's cyborg premise that she started reading
books that reaffirmed the concept of integrating machines with humans.
A thousand reruns and an electrical-engineering Ph.D. later, she's
creating robots that think like humans for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
... Three years ago, hoping to encourage others to follow in her footsteps,
Howard launched a math-and-science mentoring program for at-risk junior
high school girls. ... Howard hopes the program will help steer more
young women into robotics, a field she says that within a decade will
produce robots that mimic human thought processes. ... The Swarm
Keeper - Metal Insects On Wheels. When James McLurkin was a high
school junior on Long Island, N.Y., he built his first robot: a toy
car that he rigged with a keypad, an LED display and a squirt gun.
... Now a graduate student in computer science at M.I.T., the young
scientist is on the forefront of developing 'swarmbots'--packs of
dozens of small robots that communicate with one another and work
in harmony to complete an assignment. They have no centralized command
system and can cover vast terrain; if one is destroyed, others fill
in. ... Rescuer By Remote - Need Help? Send In The Robot.
Within 24 hours of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, Robin
Murphy was on the scene with a team of robots to help sort through
the debris. It was the first real-world test of the Center for Robot-Assisted
Search and Rescue in Tampa, Fla., the only unit of its kind on the
planet. ... The Mimic Maker - The Android Who Learned To Dance.
Mitsuo Kawato is fascinated with the brain -- so he helped build one.
The biophysics engineer and computer researcher led a team at the
Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International in Kyoto,
Japan, that spent five years constructing a humanoid equipped with
artificial intelligence. Completed in 2001, the 6-ft. 2-in., 175-lb.
robot was named Dynamic Brain, or DB for short. Says Kawato: 'We built
an artificial brain hoping that it'll help us understand the real
one.' ... So far, the robot has acquired about 30 skills, including
juggling, air hockey, yo-yoing, folk dancing and playing the drum." June 14, 2004 [issue
date]: Welcome
To Security Nation - Nearly three years after September 11, the
feds are massively funding new anti-terror tools under development
by America's technology wizards. By Paul Magnusson and Mike McNamee,
with Michael Arndt, Adam Aston, Christopher Palmeri, and Olga Kharif.
Business Week Online. "Welcome to a high-tech Security Nation.
The passport-and-visa system, which could take 10 years to perfect,
is the first step in a massive push to identify and correct America's
many vulnerabilities to terrorist attack. ... [T]he need to protect
against further attacks seems to be spawning plenty of ideas. Siemens
Building Technologies Inc. is developing a video surveillance system
that can pick up cars that inexplicably stop moving, pedestrians who
appear where they shouldn't be, or suspicious bags left sitting too
long, using artificial-intelligence programs that can spot anomalies
better than bored humans can. The system is undergoing tests in tunnels,
on bridges, and in a classified government site." June 14, 2004 [issue
date]: Send
In the Swarm. On the frontier of artificial intelligence, mobs
of cheap robots collaborate like ants in a colony or bees in a hive.
This Just In column by Stuart F. Brown. Fortune. "'Imagine if
you could convince a bunch of robots to act like ants, and further
convince them that they really like land mines,' observes James McLurkin.
'That would be a boon to society.' McLurkin commands a 'swarm' of
more than 100 little autonomous wheeled robots that look sort of like
clock radios topped with bright flashing lights. He is a senior lead
research scientist at iRobot in Burlington, Mass. ... Insects make
great conceptual models for cheap robots because they have simple
local interactions with one another that nonetheless add up to very
complicated group behaviors, such as building a hive or foraging for
nectar. The whole, in other words, is greater than the sum of its
parts. ... 'This research is really about answering the question 'If
you could make small robots cheaply, what would you use them for?
How would they do what you want, with the minimum of resources onboard?'
' says Douglas Gage, Darpa's manager for the swarm program. He envisions
some swarming robots being totally disposable machines with one-use
batteries." June
13, 2004: Play
in a top orchestra, virtually. By Sonali Paul. Reuters UK. "Ever
dreamed of playing in an orchestra? Well now you can and from the
comfort of your own home or school. ... Australia's Adelaide Symphony
Orchestra and a local software designer have created 'In The Chair',
a cross between a karaoke machine and flight simulator, which allows
you to play your favourite symphony via a computer, with a conductor
on screen and tuition while you play. ... Using artificial intelligence,
the software converts the sound into data about pitch, volume, timing
and quality and compares it with an ideal performance. It then responds
instantly, flagging you when you're playing sharp or flat, not in
time, too loudly or not blending with the rest of the ensemble. ...
As a short demonstration on www.inthechair.com shows, the feedback
comes as text on the screen, arrows on the sheet music or recorded
comments from members of the Adelaide Symphony. ... With dwindling
funding for orchestras worldwide, getting a place in an orchestra
will be increasingly tough for young musicians, so the software could
give them a unique opportunity. 'It'll be very useful as a tool for
students to have an opportunity to play with an orchestra, without
actually having an orchestra,' said [Neal] Holmes." June 13, 2004:
A
Computer That Has an Eye for Van Gogh. By Douglas Heingartner.
The New York Times (no fee reg. req'd.). "Who can say for sure
that a great artwork is the real deal? ... Now a team of researchers
at the University of Maastricht, here in the Netherlands, are taking
a stab at rationalizing connoisseurship, a word that in its art-historical
context refers to the formal process of determining who created a
work of art. They have developed a computer system that quickly examines
hundreds of paintings for telltale patterns. The results, they say,
can lend credence to existing attributions or help dismiss them. Members
of the team make modest claims for their system. 'The computer will
come up with data that show some patterns, but we cannot decide whether
these patterns are meaningful or not,' said Dr. Eric Postma, the leader
of the project, known as Authentic, which is currently analyzing all
paintings attributed to Vincent van Gogh. 'For that purpose we need
experts. We can provide them with numbers, and they can interpret
the numbers. And this interaction is where the real value of the project
is.' ... Dr. Postma compares this pattern-seeking technique to chess.
... This is not the first time artificial intelligence has been used
in authentication. In Germany in 1998, a team at the University of
Bremen's Center for Computing Technologies trained their computer
to identify the drawings of Delacroix, which it managed to do with
87 percent accuracy. ... In a more recent project at the Catholic
University of Rio de Janeiro, a computer distinguished between 23
paintings made by the popular Brazilian painter Candido Portinari
and five by his contemporary Enrico Bianco." June 13, 2004:
Sci-Fi
in Seattle. By Kristi Heim. Mercury News (no fee reg. req'd.)
"Martians, time travelers and robots will have a new home in
Seattle, thanks to Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. The reclusive
billionaire is creating the country's first Science Fiction Museum
and Hall of Fame, set to open Friday. Science fiction 'reflects and
comments on humankind's hopes, dreams and fears,' Allen said, adding
that the new museum is designed to inspire critical thinking about
culture and society. ... Museum visitors begin their adventures at
Homeworld, where they can learn about famous authors and compare a
science fiction timeline with events in real life.... A gallery called
Them! is dedicated to robots, aliens, androids and artificial intelligence." June 12, 2004: Renovations to hearing-aid facility ready for public eye. By Ken Tarbous. Gannett News Service / Courier News. "Workers were putting in the final screws and light bulbs on the 20,000-square-foot addition to Oticon Inc.'s U.S. headquarters.... The Copenhagen, Denmark-based hearing-aid maker has doubled the size of the facility to 40,000 square feet on its 5-acre Schoolhouse Road site, said Mikael Worning, president of Oticon. The company is also creating jobs. It has 400 employees in Somerset, up from 140 four years ago. ... Oticon manufactures parts for customization and assembly of its digital in-ear hearing devices on site, including its Syncro devices with artificial intelligence that adapts to the specific needs of the wearer." June 12, 2004:
Struggling
for words. By Edmund Tadros. The Sydney Morning Herald. "Blame
it on C-3PO. The Star Wars hero gave the impression that talking was
no big deal. Unfortunately, it is. Twenty-seven years after the film,
Icon investigated how far technology had progressed by talking to
some chatbots, online programs that try to emulate human behaviour.
We were disappointed. ... Chatbot creators believe these programs
will one day be able to hold fluent conversations, but an artificial
intelligence academic believes text-based chatbots are a research
dead-end." June 12, 2004 [issue
date]: Robotic
rock-climber takes its first steps. By Will Knight. New Scientist
Magazine (NASA robot crawls up walls; p.21). "A robotic mountaineer
that could one day climb cliffs on Mars and even help rescue earthquake
victims has taken its first steps. The spider-like robot, called Lemur,
was developed by engineers at Stanford University and NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory (JPL) in California, as a prototype for a fully autonomous
rock climber. It can already follow a human climber up an irregular
surface without any guidance from a controller. And it has a spookily
human gait. ... [Tim] Bretl also reckons that climbing robots could
have search and rescue applications on Earth. 'A lot of people are
becoming interested in using robots for disaster scenarios, like earthquakes,'
says Gurvinder Virk, a robotics expert at the University of Leeds
in the UK." June 11, 2004:
UCAR
To Communicate Verbally, DARPA Says. By Jefferson Morris. Aerospace
Daily. "To fit seamlessly into the U.S. Army's future command
and control architecture, the Unmanned Combat Armed Rotorcraft (UCAR)
will accept verbal commands from operators and report back to them
verbally as well, according to Program Manager Don Woodbury of the
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). 'All the interaction
is verbal,' Woodbury said during a presentation at the American Helicopter
Society's (AHS) Vertical Flight Transformation Forum here June 10.
'We talk to it, it talks to us.' ... With its enhanced autonomy and
onboard artificial intelligence, UCAR would be able to operate on
a 'much longer leash' than traditional unmanned aerial vehicles, according
to Woodbury." June 11, 2004:
Carnegie
Mellon names new dean for Robotics Institute. By Byron Spice.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "Most people consider a degree from
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology impressive, but Matthew
T. Mason muses that his 1982 doctoral degree in artificial intelligence
'doesn't sound too flattering. I mean, it makes it sound like it doesn't
involve real intelligence,' he explained. The self-effacing Mason,
51, nevertheless has been able to overcome the ignominy of that MIT
degree and, as of July 1, will become director of CMU's famed Robotics
Institute." June 10, 2004:
A
golden vein - Computing: Analysis of customer information, better
known as "data mining", is finally delivering on its promises-and
expanding into some promising new areas. The Economist Technology
Quarterly. "In the old days, knowing your customers was part
and parcel of running a business, a natural consequence of living
and working in a community. But for today's big firms, it is much
more difficult: a big retailer such as Wal-Mart has no chance of knowing
every single one of its customers. So the idea of gathering huge amounts
of information and analysing it to pick out trends indicative of customers'
wants and needs -- data mining -- has long been trumpeted as a way
to return to the intimacy of a small-town general store. But for many
years, data mining's claims were greatly exaggerated. ... In recent
years, however, improvements in both hardware and software, and the
rise of the world wide web, have enabled data mining to start delivering
on its promises. Richard Neale of Business Objects, a software company
based in San Jose, California, tells the story of a British supermarket
that was about to discontinue a line of expensive French cheeses which
were not selling well. But data mining showed that the few people
who were buying the cheeses were among the supermarket's most profitable
customers -- so it was worth keeping the cheeses to retain their custom.
As data mining has matured, examples like this are plentiful. ...
The traditional British pub seems like an unlikely place to find the
latest in data mining. But some pub chains now change the prices of
different drinks from day to day, using software that assesses the
impact that 'happy hour' offers have on sales. ... Privacy advocates
have long been wary of data mining, demonising supermarket loyalty
cards, for example, as 'spies in your shopping'. Like any technology,
of course, it can be misused. ... Forrester predicts that sales of
BI [business intelligence] software, currently around $2 billion a
year, will grow by 8.5% a year over the next three years. If new tricks
like predictive analytics and unstructured-data analysis catch on,
that could prove to be a conservative figure." June 10, 2004:
Banning
students capture The Aerospace Corp. science contest. By Ian Hanigan
and Melissa Milios. DailyBreeze.com. "Robot mechanics wanted:
An award-winning robotics team made up of students from Mira Costa
and Redondo Union high schools is holding its second annual summer
camp for children ages 9 to 15. The Beach Cities Robotics Team 294
will run two courses July 5-30 at Redondo Union High School. The first
two weeks will be reserved for beginners; more advanced robot-builders
are encouraged to participate during the final two weeks. ... Each
session ... will be held from 1 to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday at
the school, 620 Diamond St., Redondo Beach [CA]. For more information,
call 310-944-9334 or visit www.bcrobotics.org." June 10, 2004:
Fuzzy
logic and neural nets: still viable after all these years? Though
no longer headliners, fuzzy logic and neural networks are options
in tackling challenging applications. By Graham Prophet. EDN Magazine.
"[B]oth still have their place in your engineering tool kit.
The two techniques are essentially unrelated, except that they both
provide control methodologies to handle highly nonlinear or poorly
specified problems, they both came to some prominence at about the
same time, and they both faded from view in much the same way. Both
neural networks and fuzzy logic aspire to allow electronic systems,
built with familiar circuit techniques or employing conventional computing
technologies, to attack certain problems in a way that mimics human
responses and abilities. ... One of the intimidating aspects of fuzzy
logic is the name itself, which has connotations of imprecision. On
the contrary, however, fuzzy logic is capable of precise responses.
It allows systems built around Boolean logic, handling binary values,
to work with imprecisely defined values that you might express verbally
as 'more,' 'less,' 'high,' 'low,' and so on. ... Neural networks,
unlike fuzzy logic, seek to reproduce the versatility of the human
brain in recognizing the end-to-end, input-to-output behavior of a
system without understanding all the processes taking place within
it. Taking as a fundamental model the interconnections of nervous
systems within the brain -- neurons and synapses -- neural networks
have the attributes of memory and learning. ... What happens to the
expertise built up in neural and fuzzy techniques from their first
flush of popularity? If you set about tracking down some of the pioneering
companies from as much as a decade ago, you'd find that, although
many no longer exist, some have transformed themselves into software-design
and consultancy operations. These businesses are applying the same
neural and fuzzy techniques but mainly in software simulation running
on conventional computers, in areas such as financial modeling, financial
services, and data mining." June 10, 2004:
Brain learns
like a robot - Scan shows how we form opinions. By Tanguy Chouard.
Nature Science Update. "Researchers may have pinpointed the brain
regions that help us work out good from bad. And their results suggest
that humans and robots are more alike than we may care to admit, as
both use similar strategies to make value judgements. ... The team
also plotted brain activity on a graph to give a mathematical description
of processes that underlie the formation of value judgements. The
patterns they saw resembled those made by robots as they learn from
experience. 'The results were astounding,' says study co-author Peter
Dayan. 'There was an almost perfect match between the brain signals
and the numerical functions used in machine learning,' he says. This
suggests that our brains are following the laws of artificial intelligence." June 10, 2004:
A
Jet-Powered PDA for Astronauts. By Noah Shachtman. Wired News.
"It's shaped like a basketball. It was inspired by Spock's tricorder.
And, if NASA researchers have their way, it could be helping out astronauts
aboard the International Space Station in as little as three years.
The Personal Satellite Assistant is a robot prototype designed to
buzz around the space station, performing a variety of jobs for astronauts
and mission controllers: monitoring life-support systems, keeping
tabs on the day's tasks and reminding space scientists how to do their
experiments right. ... [E]ven if the PSA stays in the lab forever,
there have been benefits because of the project, its managers said.
The globe's navigational software will be plugged into future space
ships. And the code for planning its missions is being used right
now -- to guide the rovers on Mars." June 10, 2004:
Insuring
that IT works. By Anand Parthasarathy. The Hindu. "Earlier
this week (June 6-9), ICICI Infotech, showcased two of its own business
management solutions under the brand name Premia, at Las Vegas, at
the annual conference of the Insurance Accounting and Systems Association
(IASA). A look at the conference agenda posted on the IASA website
(www.iasa.org) makes for interesting reading: a good third of all
papers presented dealt with technology issues. ... How can agents
provide a mortgage quotation, 'on the fly', factoring in dozens of
parameters, many of them just provided by the customer? Tavant's Nita
Goyal turned to Artificial Intelligence (AI) for answers and the company's
solution for AmeriQuest began giving a tangible return on investment
within two weeks. Tavant's V2 Platform is packed with such AI based
rules engines, workflow engines, loan calculation tools." June 9, 2004: Civilisation
safe as nanobot threat fades. By Ian Sample. The Guardian. "The
scientist who first warned that nanotechnology could spell the end
of civilisation, thanks to swarms of 'nanobots' consuming the planet,
has said the scenario might not be so plausible after all. ... But
in a paper today in the Institute of Physics' journal, Nanotechnology,
Dr [Eric] Drexler and Chris Phoenix at the Centre for Responsible
Nanotechnology in the US, report that a grey goo scenario is unlikely:
'All risk of accidental runaway replication can be avoided.' ... 'A
machine like a desktop printer is, to say the least, unlikely to go
wild, replicate, self-organise into intelligent systems, and eat people,'
[Dr Drexler] writes." June 9, 2004: Higher
Education induction for City pupils. News from the Aberdeen City
Council. "Senior pupils from schools across Aberdeen are being
given an induction to higher education this week. ... Today (Wednesday),
around 120 fifth-year pupils from St Machar Academy will be introduced
to higher education at The Robert Gordon University. They will also
attend a workshop on a topic of their choice from a selection including
Art, Design, Management, Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Engineering,
Surveying, Computing and Nursing. ... Kay Diack, Project Manager for
University for Children and Communities, said: 'The aim of these events
is to raise awareness of the value of further and higher education.
We hope that pupils will have fun and also be inspired to think seriously
about the benefits of going to college or university in the future.'" June 9, 2004: Hobbyists'
robot is headless and speechless but agile. June 8, 2004: Chess
clash - computer conquers champion. By Chen Zhiyong. China Daily.
"In this corner, Zhu Chen, the women's World chess champion.
On the other side of the table: the Unisplendour Star laptop, developed
by the Tsinghua Unisplendour Corporation. ... Zhu Chen accepted defeat,
with the unemotional computer snatched the lead in the two-game series.
The next game is set for June 12. Compared with Deep Blue, the 1,270-kilogram
super computer that defeated World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov in
1997, the Unisplendour laptop possesses powerful data-processing ability
but looks the size of a common notebook computer." June 8, 2004: Man
who cracked computer engima. Opinion by Andrew Hodges. Edinburg
Evening News / available from Scotsman.com News. "[Alan] Turing
was fascinated by the concept of creating a mathematical machine to
represent thought processes, and it was the 'Turing Machine' which
became the foundation of the modern theories of computer science.
He also envisaged a 'Universal Turing Machine' - one machine for all
possible tasks - which embodied the essential principle of the computer.
Turing's originality lay in seeing the relevance of mathematical logic
to a problem originally seen as one of physics. He made a bridge between
thought and action, which crossed conventional boundaries. All this
was when he was just 24. Then he left Cambridge for a spell at Princeton
and right away saw a link from 'useless' logic to practical purposes.
... In 1944, following the invasion of Normandy that Allied control
of the Atlantic allowed, Alan Turing was almost uniquely in possession
of three key ideas - his own 1936 concept of the universal machine,
the potential speed and reliability of electronic technology and the
inefficiency in designing different machines for different logical
processes. Combined, these ideas provided the principle, the practical
means and the motivation for the modern computer. ... From October
1947, the National Physical Laboratory allowed, or perhaps preferred,
that he should spend the academic year at Cambridge. Out of this came
a pioneering paper on what would now be called neural nets. ... Though
marginalised in practice, he published his theoretical ideas on artificial
intelligence in 1950 in a paper which is now one of the most quoted
in science. His 'Turing Test' for intelligent machinery now has a
long and entertaining history." June 8, 2004: UCSC
man's work earns top award. June 8, 2004: Conference
showcases 'intelligent systems'. By Andrew Mayeda. Ottawa Citizen
(subscription required). "Hani Naguib and Amor Jnifene are creating
the brains behind the brawn. The brawn, in this case, is an artificial
arm powered by a 'smart' alloy that mimics the contraction of human
muscles. It was one of the 'intelligent systems' on display yesterday
at the 14th Annual Canadian Conference on Intelligent Systems at the
Westin Hotel. ... Intelligent systems refer to technologies, including
robots and sensors, that imitate the human ability to perceive, reason
and act. ... 'The next step will be to work on the control system,
to emulate the way the brain functions using tools like neural nets
and fuzzy logic,' said Mr. Jnifene." June 7, 2004: Robotic
repair call to Hubble taking shape. By Dan Vergano. USA Today.
"NASA officials are starting to fill in the blanks on how they
might rescue the Hubble Space Telescope with a robot. In the process,
they are defining the kinds of space exploration in which robots would
be just as effective as astronauts, eliminating risks to human life
in space. Robots have long been a NASA mainstay -- witness the success
of the Mars rovers this year. But certain missions have always been
set aside for astronauts. Repairs to Hubble have been among those
missions -- until now. ... Goddard engineers have described tremendous
progress in the past two months in robot ground tests of Hubble repairs.
'That's a piece of cake,' [Frank] Cepollina says. He notes that robots
already perform equally complicated tasks in factories on Earth."
June 7, 2004: Survival
Guide: Perspectives from the field & Online
Extra: Last Byte. Interview by Steve LeSueur. Washington Technology
(Vol. 19 No. 5). " June 7, 2004: Cognitive
Personal Assistant. AI-based systems could handle routine administrative
tasks. Future Watch by Thomas Hoffman. Computerworld. "Researchers
at Carnegie Mellon University are developing a computer-based administrative
assistant that draws upon artificial intelligence (AI) techniques
to perform routine tasks such as scheduling meetings for busy managers
and filtering and prioritizing their e-mail. ... The project, called
Radar (short for Reflective Agent with Distributed Adaptive Reasoning),
is being funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency under
a program called PAL, or Personalized Assistant that Learns. ... Using
AI, Radar will draw on statistical and symbolic learning. Say a manager
demonstrates a tendency to deny e-mail requests to hold meetings on
Fridays over the course of a few months. Radar will pick up on this
pattern and send a message to the manager asking whether the manager
prefers to avoid meetings on Fridays." June 7, 2004: Brain-mimicking
circuits to run navy robot. By Charles Choi. United Press International.
"Researchers in New York City are teaming with the U.S. Navy
and scientists in Russia to build electronic circuits that mimic the
brain, producing an agile controller that can maneuver robot vehicles
with speed and precision. The devices are based on a circuit in the
cerebellum, the part of the brain that helps organize the body's motions.
Specifically, the new technology imitates the olivocerebellar circuit,
which controls balance and limb movement. ... 'Controls in robotics
are for the most part algorithmic,' [Rodolfo Llinas] explained. 'It's
basically software, and the software instructions are written in a
particular order -- you follow a particular set of steps.' In addition,
the computations are contained in a system that is distinct from the
one it controls. 'The nervous system, on the other hand, is not algorithmic,'
Llinas said. The same cells that gather the sensory data from the
muscles also have a key role in operating the muscles as well, so
both sensory and motor systems are wedded together, 'unlike what happens
in digital computers.' So the researchers are developing analog circuits....
The new controller, like the olivocerebellar circuit, is made up of
clusters that interact electronically with one another." June 7, 2004: Summer
Camps. The Sun-Herald. "Robot Studio summer camp, 9 a.m.-4
p.m., June 7-11, June 14-18, Gulfport High Technology Center, grades
5-8. ... Design and build working robots using advanced programming
techniques without being restricted to using components only found
in a kit." June 7, 2004: 'Father
of the computer' honoured. BBC News. "The father of the modern
computer is being honoured, 50 years after he died in tragic circumstances.
... On Monday, a blue plaque will be erected outside his home in Cheshire.
... It was his idea of creating a machine to turn thought processes
into binary numbers which was one of the key turning points in the
history of the computer. His revolutionary idea was for a machine
that would read a series of ones and zeros from a tape. These described
the steps needed to solve a problem or task. Turing's experiments
are credited with helping Britain win World War II by deciphering
encrypted German communications, helping the Allies remain one step
ahead. ... But his brilliance would not protect him from the social
values of 1950s Britain, and he was taken to court because he was
gay. ... He was also denied work with GCHQ, the successor to Bletchley
Park, because of his sexual orientation." June 7, 2004 [issue
date]: Molding
A New Economy - While politicians battle for its votes, Ohio seeks
to recast its economic future while staying true to its heartland
history. By Jodie T. Allen. U.S.News & World Report. "Columbus,
Ohio .... [H]ere the forces of the 'old economy' are in full contention
with the promises of the new. ... [D]rive a few miles northwest to
the skylighted corridors of the Business Technology Center, a former
mattress factory that now houses 30 'incubators' --high-tech start-ups
exploring the outer limits of technology. ... 'Clearly, if there's
anything true about an economy, it's that it's constantly in transition,'
says Bruce Johnson, Ohio's state director of development. 'I think
Ohio is a microcosm of what's going on nationally. We're grounded
in manufacturing and agriculture, but we're fast transitioning into
technology and services.' As the nation's third-largest manufacturing
state, Ohio has suffered more than its share of regrowing pains. ...
David Cattey, BTC's executive director, proudly displays the mind-boggling
mix within his gleaming-white facility with its neoindustrial exposed
pipes and brick walls--'kind of like the stage of most of these companies,'
he remarks. Here an Aetion Technologies lab models artificial intelligence
networks...." June 7, 2004 [issue
date]: Hubble's
Hope: I, Robot. By Jeffrey Kluger. Time Magazine. "The endangered
Hubble Space Telescope may have life yet, thanks to a NASA-sponsored
program to develop a robot that could be its remote-control savior.
... The most personable is NASA's Robonaut, which has a torso, arms
and a head that are adult size and a leg that plugs in for stability
and power. The Robonaut was built as a spacewalk assistant to hand
astronauts tools and perform the butler-like task of brushing contaminants
off their space suits. But with five-fingered hands and cameras for
eyes, it may be perfect for the repair job on Hubble." June 7, 2004 [issue
date]: Dept.
of Invention - Incomprehensible. Talk of the Town column by Alec
Wilkinson. The New Yorker. "The motto of dorkbot, a group that
holds meetings once a month in Manhattan, except in the summer, and
in fourteen other cities, including Sofia, Bulgaria, and Mumbai, India,
is 'People doing strange things with electricity.' ... Dorkbot was
founded by a young man named Douglas Repetto, who teaches computer
music at Columbia. 'The idea of dorkbot was to reach people who had
nowhere to talk about these projects,' Repetto says. ... The second
presenter was Rich LeGrand, a young engineer who had built a small
robot from Legos. ... It was about the size of a big crab -- it looked
like a device a space probe would place on the surface of a planet
-- and it was capable of a complicated maneuver whereby it rotated
at the same time that it moved forward. LeGrand called the maneuver
'frisbeeing.' 'It's questionable whether there's a huge market for
this,' he said, 'but it's fun.'" June
7 - 14, 2004 [issue date]: The
Ultimate Remote Control - One day, our brains might be able to
beam our very thoughts wirelessly to the machines around us By Carl
Zimmer. Newsweek (International Edition) / available from MSNBC. "Where
computers use zeros and ones, neurons encode our thoughts in all-or-nothing
electrical impulses. And if computers and brains speak the same language,
it should be possible for the two to speak to each other. ... Imagine
a quadriplegic person able to operate a robotic arm mounted on a wheelchair
with merely a thought. Imagine a digital stream flowing from a microphone
into a deaf person's auditory cortex, where it could become the perception
of sound. These dreams have an official name: brain-machine interfaces.
... At the Center for Neuroengineering at Duke University, monkeys
with electrodes surgically implanted in their brains move robotic
arms with their minds alone." June
7 - 14, 2004 [issue date]: Reinventing
the Foot Soldier - The American military wants to bring a vast
range of battlefield knowledge down to the grunts on the ground. By
Adam Piore. Newsweek (International Edition) / available from MSNBC.
"'Think about what you could do differently if you knew that
an adversary was waiting around a corner,' Jeffrey Paul, of the Pentagon's
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), told a crowd of
scientists and defense contractors recently. 'You could decide whether
to prepare for combat, signal others to surprise him or choose a different
route. That advance knowledge is what we must give our war fighters.'
To do this, the military will need to continue making significant
strides in the amount of real-time, actionable data it can collect
from the battlefield. ... Processing all this new data presents challenges
of its own. ... 'If you have a lot of sensor data on a ship, you end
up with a lot of people doing that processing,' says Larry Jackel,
a DARPA program manager. 'If the poor guy is a dismount, he's got
to do it all. You got your hands full dodging bullets. You don't want
to have your headgear feed you all sorts of data... unless it's going
to tell you a lot about exactly what's on the other side of that hill.'
Jackel and his staff are developing computer programs that use artificial-intelligence
systems to filter out unnecessary data. But he is years away from
a finished product." June 6, 2004: A
PhD in Mortal Kombat - A pioneering USC group tries to get into
the heads of players to learn if the pastime harms or can help. By
Mary McNamara. The Los Angeles Times (no fee reg. req'd.). "[T]hese
three and others like them are using their knowledge of games like
Mortal Kombat and the Sims to further their education. As members
of USC's Computer Games project, they are the local vanguard of a
new academic discipline: video game scholarship. ... The research
at USC focuses on the gamer rather than game design or development,
and much of what they are doing is groundbreaking. ... In the past
years, it's developed or launched studies into areas as diverse as
the effect of violent games on brain activity, the motivation of gamers,
the benefits of interactive learning, and the role of narrative and
character development in the games themselves. ... In one study planned
for this summer, researchers will test the conventional wisdom that
interactive learning is more productive than rote. 'Everyone assumes
children will learn more if they are playing a game,' [Ute] Ritterfeld
says. 'But we do not know that because it has never been tested.'
... Here is what is known about computer games: They are the fastest-growing
area of the entertainment market; last year, when games sales reached
$11.4 billion, which surpassed U.S. box office figures, studios all
over town began opening or gearing up their interactive divisions.
The median age of gamers has risen to 27, and almost half are women.
Men prefer violent, combat-heavy games, women are more into role-playing.
The Sims, in which players create virtual families and homes and lives,
is the most popular computer game of all time with 6.3 million units
sold." June 6, 2004: What's
Google's Secret Weapon? An Army of Ph.D.'s. By Randall Stross.
The New York Times (no fee reg. req'd.). "What trumps all else
is Google's willingness to organize the entire company around the
insight that top talent likes to work with other top talent, tackling
interesting problems of their own choice. It's the same reason that
some computer science students complete a master's degree and then
persevere for three to five more years for a doctorate. It entails
deep original research for a dissertation, while subsisting on a meager
fellowship that allows for a celebrity chef only like Colonel Sanders.
Rajeev Motwani, a computer science professor at Stanford, says: 'Good
Ph.D. students are extreme in their creativity and self-motivation.
Master's students are equally smart but do not have the same drive
to create something new.' The master's takes you where others have
been; the doctorate, where no one has gone before. Until recently,
when computer science students completed their long Ph.D. training
and stepped into daylight, they were treated warily by industry employers.
American business has had to overcome its longtime suspicion of intellect.
'Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men,' an article published in the 1920's
in the American magazine, is a typical specimen of an earlier era.
In modern times, computer scientists are hired, but a doctorate can
still be viewed as the sign of a character defect, its holder best
isolated in an aerie." June 5, 2004: Building
a better bot. By Sarah Staples. The Ottawa Citizen. "Move
over, rover. Space exploration will soon require a breed of robot
different from the lone Mars explorers Spirit and Opportunity -- one
that works well with others, say experts heading to a major robotics
conference in Ottawa. Cheaper, co-ordinated armies of automated workers
are being developed to replace individual robots on the assumption
that if one of the new generation of bots breaks, others can pick
up the slack. ... In September, NASA will reveal a mockup of a walled
human habitat for the moon, which would be built entirely by crews
of tool-wielding construction bots specialized for different tasks
and controlled by human foremen on Earth. ... Getting robots to co-operate
isn't easy. Robots created to think alike may lack the individual
leadership to accomplish even rudimentary tasks. Early versions of
the Centibot, for example, routinely collided. Software developed
by NASA, called CAMPOUT, solves this problem by intelligently dividing
a task among robot teams, says Paolo Pirjanian, chief scientist at
Evolution Robotics in Pasadena, another keynote speaker at IS 2004.
... The task-sharing software owes a debt to research by the University
of British Columbia's Laboratory of Computational Intelligence, where
researchers in 1992 shocked colleagues everywhere when they gave robots
the basics of intelligent thinking by teaching them to play soccer.
'Earlier robots assumed they were alone, the only ones changing their
world. They didn't have to open their eyes because they could predict
the world perfectly -- they could plan to do A and B and C, and assume
it would be successful. The real world isn't like that,' says Alan
Macworth, a computer scientist who is the laboratory's director and
president-elect of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence." June 4, 2004: Chairman
Christopher Cox Delivers Keynote Address at the McGraw-Hill Homeland
Security Summit. U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee
on Homeland Security . "Many of you here today are developing
technologies to make our borders, ports, and infrastructure safer.
We need to make it easier for you in the private sector to engage
with the Department of Homeland Security when you have good ideas
to share. And it is equally essential that the government work with
the private sector so that basic federal research can quickly become
applied technology. The federal-wide research and development program
to support homeland security in fiscal year 2005 is nothing short
of astounding. R&D investment across key federal partners has seen
a 44% increase since September 11, to $132 billion. Department of
Homeland Security R&D will see the greatest increase of any Federal
Department--15.5% in the coming year. This increase in investment
recognizes the key role that the private sector plays in protecting
our critical infrastructure. It's also a recognition of the importance
of technological innovation to the mission of the Department of Homeland
Security. I'm a firm strong believer in the power of technology--perhaps
because after long experience, I've found that artificial intelligence
beats real stupidity. But in all seriousness, technology will be an
important key to success in the war on terrorism." June 4, 2004: Programs
of the Mind. Review by Gary Marcus. Science Magazine (subscription
required). "Eric Baum's What Is Thought? [MIT Press, Cambridge,
MA, 2004], consciously patterned after [Erwin] Schrödinger's book
[What Is Life?], represents a computer scientist's look at the mind.
Baum is an unrepentant physicalist. He announces from the outset that
he believes that the mind can be understood as a computer program.
Much as Schrödinger aimed to ground the understanding of life in well-understood
principles of physics, Baum aims to ground the understanding of thought
in well-understood principles of computation. In a book that is admirable
as much for its candor as its ambition, Baum lays out much of what
is special about the mind by taking readers on a guided tour of the
successes and failures in the two fields closest to his own research:
artificial intelligence and neural networks. ... Advocates of what
the philosopher John Haugeland famously characterized as GOFAI (good
old-fashioned artificial intelligence) create hand-crafted intricate
models that are often powerful yet too brittle to be used in the real
world. ... At the opposite extreme are researchers working within
the field of neural networks, most of whom eschew built-in structure
almost entirely and rely instead on statistical techniques that extract
regularities from the world on the basis of massive experience." June 3, 2004: Former
PCC Student Creates Robotic Geologists. By Tameka Davis. PCC-Courieronline.com.
"[Dr. Ayanna] Howard, now in her early 30's is the mother of
a 19-month-old boy and a full time employee at the NASA Jet Propulsion
Laboratory. At JPL Howard works as the lead investigator in telerobotics,
which is currently one of NASA's most important technology development
divisions. Her job involves training robotic rovers to navigate on
the Martian terrain for future missions. ... Howard trains the rovers
to map out a safe path to travel while they work on Mars. She also
train the rovers to recognize when they are too close to the edge
of a cliff and maneuver themselves to safety . 'I enjoy working with
my robots,' Howard said. 'I enjoy the sastisfaction of getting something
to work after months of effort.' She recently returned to [Pasadena
City College] to present a lecture on artificial intelligence in the
Volosh Forum. ... Her career with JPL began in 1990 when she worked
as a summer intern between semester at Brown University." June 3, 2004: University
spinoff company gambles on poker frenzy. By Phoebe Dey. Express
News. "Despite its seedy reputation, poker has exploded onto
television screens in North America and a University of Alberta spinoff
company is hoping to cash in on the high-stakes industry. BioTools
turned to well-developed U of A research to launch its personal computer
poker game aimed at coaching novices and experts on how to improve.
'We are getting closer to beating the best players in the world,'
said Darse Billings, a former professional poker player and U of A
PhD student working on the project. ... The software, marketed as
Poki's Poker Academy, learns patterns and adapts to various playing
styles." June 3, 2004: New
releases are hot on sex. By Anthony Breznican. Associated Press
/ available from The Buffalo News. "The hot new creation at the
world's top video game convention may be procreation. ... In 'The
Sims 2,' a sequel to one of the most popular PC games ever, players
create and manipulate a family of characters, trying to satisfy their
social, emotional and physical needs. ... A meter shows that Don wants
to talk to his sexy ex. 'But if you indulge his wish to talk to her,
then he wants to flirt with her, then he wants to kiss her,' Knight
said as the illicit digital lovers snuggled onscreen. If you don't
let Don the philanderer have his way, he'll be unhappy for a while.
But the game's artificial intelligence will eventually reshape his
desires. 'If I played him more faithfully, he would get used to being
faithful,' [Jonathon] Knight said." June 3, 2004: If
virtual characters had brains - Montreal firm's AI software finds
markets in movie animation, military simulations. By Jerry Langton.
The Globe and Mail (page B13). "BioGraphic Technologies Inc.,
a Montreal-based software company, has developed a system called AI-Implant
that can provide those thousands. Using the same artificial intelligence
(AI) and 3D modelling common in video games, BioGraphic has created
software-driven animated characters that can replace real actors --
in droves, if necessary. 'We use artificial intelligence to make a
brain for digital humans, to allow animated characters to make independent
choices,' said Paul Kruszewski, president of BioGraphic Technologies.
... Forms of artificial intelligence have been used in video games
for years in an effort to create realistic motion. Each character,
including such non-humans as animals, vehicles or projectiles, is
basically given a series of if/then statements by the software that
allow it to make decisions, creating a rudimentary simulation of intelligence.
'What we learned is that artificial intelligence is easy, but artificial
stupidity is hard,' Mr. Kruszewski said. ... The U.S. military is
benefiting from a project that uses AI-Implant to create realistic
models of crowd scenes. 'We used AI-Implant to model the crowd at
Mogadishu,' said Rick McKenzie, of Old Dominion University's Virginia
Modeling, Analysis and Simulation Center, referring to the 1993 incident
in Somalia made famous by the movie Black Hawk Down. 'We developed
crowd simulations that interact with the military's own simulations
to provide realistic scenarios.'" June 3, 2004: Roll
out Carpet for traffic management. The Star Online TechCentral.
"Several local and foreign government departments are claimed
to be eyeing the locally-developed Car Licence Plate Extraction &
Recognition Technology (Carpet) to overcome the challenges of monitoring
modern day traffic. ... Carpet is an image-processing technology used
to identify vehicles by their licence plates. It works by first analysing
live streaming data from a videocamera, and detects vehicles based
on their motion, Mavcap said. When a car is identified, the number
plate will be located using intelligent image-processing algorithms.
With the extracted plate the characters will be segmented and recognised
through technology based on artificial intelligence (AI)." June 3, 2004: China's
first "man-against-machine" chess match scheduled for June 8.
Interfax-China. "Tsinghua UniSplendour Co. Ltd is to hold China's
first human versus computer chess game on June 8 and 12 according
to recent company statement. As the company stated, the game would
feature reigning women's chess world champion, China's Zhu Chen and
'Star of UniSplendour', the latest portable computer unveiled by Tsinghua
UniSplendour on June 1." June 3, 2004: S
Korean robots narrow gap with competition. Asia Times Online.
"South Korea, a late starter in personal and home robotics, has
rapidly narrowed the technology gap with Japan and countries in the
West. Personal robots are rapidly evolving to substitute for a growing
number of complex human tasks. The latest breakthroughs by Western
and Japanese high-tech companies include an eight-legged robot controlled
by natural language, an autonomous walking bi-pedal robot, intelligent
robots with 24 degrees of freedom and advanced humanoids already under
development. ... A human-like home security robot, a mobile robot
controlled simply by brain waves and eye movements, a high-speed intelligent
robot intended for dangerous military and life-saving operations on
rough terrain and a ubiquitous software-based, three-dimensional robot
are among the South Korean accomplishments that came into the global
spotlight this year. Keenly aware of the enormous economic potential
of robotics, the South Korean government has recently designated robotics
as one of the nation's most promising next-generation industrial fields.
Indeed, it has announced a plan to spend 1.8 trillion won (US$1.55
billion) from the state coffers and will induce the private sector
to invest another 1.7 trillion won on research and development in
intelligent robotics and nine other strategic growth products over
the next five years." June 3, 2004 [event
date]: Interaction
Design and Children Conference. Live Online / The Washington Post.
"The University of Maryland Human-Computer Interaction Lab holds
their third annual Interaction Design and Children conference on the
importance and challenges of allowing children to be integrated at
the early stage of the technology design process. ... Conference speakers
and chair Alan Kay, Marvin Minsky, Seymour Papert and Allison Druin
will be online Thursday, June 3 at 1 p.m. ET to discuss the conference
highlights and their research." June 2, 2004: Countrywide
Extends Its Automated Underwriting System. By Judy Ward. Bank
Systems & Technology Online. "Countrywide Home Loans Inc.,
a subsidiary of Countrywide Financial Corp. (Calabasas, Calif.; $97.9
billion in total assets), has reaped the benefits of the recent mortgage
explosion, processing more than 150,000 loans monthly. ... 'The mortgage
industry has seen a huge couple of years, due to the [refinancing]
market,' says Scott Berry, the financial institution's Agoura Hills,
Calif.-based executive vice president of artificial intelligence.
Countrywide has more than doubled the volume of its mortgage originations
in the past two years, he says. Its automated underwriting software
has helped make that possible by speeding up the approval timetable.
'Without the technology, there is no way we would have been able to
do the amount of business that we did and continue to do,' Berry says." June 2, 2004: UK
game makers look to thrill. By Darren Waters. BBC News. "The
video games industry is one of the fastest-growing businesses in the
UK, with the export value of UK developed games for 2003 likely to
exceed £200m ($357m). ... Mr [Mike] Rawlinson said: "In terms of development
there is going to be a transition, but UK developers will find their
strength. "It will be like Hollywood where companies will come to
the UK for certain core skills. 'UK development will end up providing
those core skills such as games engines, or artificial intelligence,
as well as creativity.'" June 2, 2004: Women
are players, too. By Misha Davenport. Chicago Sun-Times. "According
to a study recently released by the Entertainment Software Association,
computer and video game sales topped $7 billion in the United States
alone last year and 39 percent of all gamers are women. ... The video
game industry and culture is still very much a boy's club filled with
bullets, blood and broads. ... As frustrating as it is covering the
industry in front of the camera, it's also equally frustrating behind
the scenes. If girl gamers are the holy grail, women like Robin Hunicke
are the Ark of the Covenant. She is an avid gamer currently working
on her Ph.D. at Northwestern University, where she is studying, designing
and building artificial intelligence engines for video games. Hunicke
says it has been frustrating trying to navigate a future career in
the industry when she is forced to confront sexist imagery at every
turn." June 2 - 9, 2004:
Rules
aim to get devices talking. By Eric Smalley. Technology Research
News. "In the not-too-distant future, when nearly all electronic
devices in the home contain computer chips, it would be nice if appliances
could communicate with each other in order to coordinate their activities
to carry out complicated tasks. Several thorny issues lurk beneath
the much-hyped vision of ubiquitous computing, including interoperability
and adaptability. Researchers and technology companies are tackling
the problem in a variety of ways, including vendor-specific communications
protocols and multi-agent artificial intelligence schemes. ... The
researchers' goal is for smart devices to cooperate behind the scenes
to carry out users' high-level instructions even if the necessary
cooperation was not anticipated by the devices' manufacturers, said
Carlos Gershenson, a researcher at the Free University of Brussels.
The researchers have dubbed this scenario 'ambient intelligence.'
The central element of the protocol requirements is game playing,
a common strategy in multiagent artificial intelligence research.
By framing interactions between devices in terms of rules of a game,
devices should be able to learn the meaning of messages and learn
which devices are cooperative, according to Gershenson." June 1, 2004: Robot
tracks rocket in space. By Frank Sietzen. United Press International.
"For the first time ever, an airborne robotic sensor system developed
by NASA has tracked a rocket during launch and communicated with its
computer without human intervention. ... The prototype of the future
system, called a Range Systems Transformational Laboratory, or RSTL,
flew aboard a small research plane hovering 16,000 feet above the
southern coast of California and 85 miles downrange from the ascending
rocket. ... Conducting civil, military or commercial space launches
from the range at Vandenberg, or at Cape Canaveral, Fla., requires
expensive, ground-based equipment for tracking and control of the
rockets. Maintaining the equipment costs NASA and the Air Force millions
of dollars each year. ... Once such systems begin operation, they
would, in theory, be more flexible and cheaper than continued use
of existing fixed-range equipment." June 1, 2004: Digital
watermarks protect images. By Jennifer Foreshew. Australian IT.
"A digital watermark technology that uses artificial intelligence
to detect forgeries has been developed at the University of South
Australia. The intelligent watermarking technique gives owners copyright
protection on images and data used in internet and other applications.
Knowledge-based intelligent engineering systems centre director Lakhmi
Jain said the system used intelligent algorithms to prevent watermark
security being cracked." June 1, 2004: Robot
hormones could make humans jealous. Spring 2004: What
We Don't Know Can Hurt Us. By Heather Mac Donald. City Journal
(Vol. 14, No. 2). "Immediately after 9/11, politicians and pundits
slammed the Bush administration for failing to 'connect the dots'
foreshadowing the attack. What a difference a little amnesia makes.
For two years now, left- and right-wing advocates have shot down nearly
every proposal to use intelligence more effectively -- to connect
the dots -- as an assault on 'privacy.' Though their facts are often
wrong and their arguments specious, they have come to dominate the
national security debate virtually without challenge. The consequence
has been devastating: just when the country should be unleashing its
technological ingenuity to defend against future attacks, scientists
stand irresolute, cowed into inaction. 'No one in the research and
development community is putting together tools to make us safer,'
says Lee Zeichner of Zeichner Risk Analytics, a risk consultancy firm,
'because they're afraid' of getting caught up in a privacy scandal.
The chilling effect has been even stronger in government. 'Many perfectly
legal things that could be done with data aren't being done, because
people don't want to lose their jobs,' says a computer security entrepreneur
who, like many interviewed for this article, was too fearful of the
advocates to let his name appear. ... The goal of TIA [the Total Information
Awareness project] was this: to prevent another attack on American
soil by uncovering the electronic footprints terrorists leave as they
plan and rehearse their assaults. ... TIA would have been the most
advanced application yet of a young technology called 'data mining,'
which attempts to make sense of the explosion of data in government,
scientific, and commercial databases. Through complex algorithms,
the technique can extract patterns or anomalies in data collections
that a human analyst could not possibly discern. ... Without question,
TIA represented a radical leap ahead in both data-mining technology
and intelligence analysis, not surprising for a visionary group like
DARPA, which created the Internet. ... As with any public or private
power, TIA's capabilities could have been abused -- which is why DARPA
planned to build safeguards throughout the system. But it differed
from existing law enforcement and intelligence techniques only in
degree, not kind. Though the scale of data it would have made immediately
available to government was unprecedented, the type of evidence was
identical to what government had had legal access to for decades.
... Information technology can help government in its constitutional
responsibilities to protect the nation; indeed the congressional jo
int inquiry into September 11 found that 'a reluctance to develop
and implement new technical capabilities aggressively' was a cause
of the pre-9/11 intelligence failures. The report added: 'While technology
remains one of this nation's greatest advantages, it has not been
fully and most effectively applied in support of U.S. counterterrorism
efforts.' The privocrats will rightly tell you that eternal vigilance
is the price of liberty; trouble is, they are aiming their vigilance
at the wrong target." [Other projects discussed in this article:
Human Identity at a Distance ; LifeLog; CAPPS II, Computer Assisted
Passenger Prescreening System; MATRIX, Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information
Exchange; and FIDNet.] June 2004: More
Than Machines - Black inventors deserve better than just a list
of their inventions. Reviewed by Michael N. Geselowitz. IEEE Spectrum
Online. "Every February, which is Black History Month in the
United States, the IEEE History Center is approached by journalists,
educators, and others for the names and inventions of African-American
engineers. As he explains in Black Inventors in the Age of Segregation,
Rayvon Fouché, a scholar of African-American cultural and intellectual
history, is no stranger to this phenomenon. The problem confronting
the scholar asked to provide examples of black inventiveness is twofold.
Blacks are clearly underrepresented in narratives of American technological
history, in part because of the biases of earlier historians. But
another reason is that there are few black inventors in the field
of engineering -- or many other professional roles -- because of the
cultural, social, political, and economic constraints placed upon
them." June 2004: Sand
Trap - DARPA's 320-kilometer robotic race across the Mojave Desert
yields no winners, but plenty of new ideas. By Jean Kumagai. IEEE
Spectrum Online. " Nobody said it would be easy. In fact, when
DARPA first announced the Grand Challenge in February 2003, pretty
much everybody said it would be impossible. Self-driving ground vehicles
of various stripes existed, but what kind of machine could negotiate
hundreds of kilometers through what amounts to an enormous dusty sand
trap littered with cactuses, boulders, barbed wire, and sagebrush?
'Those of us who had worked with autonomous vehicles were saying,
'Oh, my God, this is hard,' 'recalls Ümit Özgüner, an electrical engineering
professor at Ohio State University, in Columbus, and founding president
of the IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Council. 'We're still
saying that.' ... If some spectators were disappointed by the day's
events, the organizers seemed pleased. At a press briefing following
the race, DARPA director Anthony Tether said, "Although none of the
vehicles completed the course, and we were not able to award the cash
prize, we learned a tremendous amount about autonomous ground vehicle
technology. Some vehicles made it seven miles, some made only one
mile, but they all made it to the Challenge, and that in itself is
a remarkable accomplishment." The agency has funding to continue the
event through 2007 and is rumored to have doubled the prize money
to $2 million for next year's race." June 2004: Talking
to Bill. Interview by Gary Stix. Scientific American (May 24,
2004). "On the occasion of the fourth TechFest at Microsoft Research--an
event at which researchers demonstrate their work to the company’s
product developers--Bill Gates talked with Scientific American’s
Gary Stix on topics ranging from artificial intelligence to cosmology
to the innate immune system. A slightly edited version of the conversation
follows." (An abbreviated version of this interview appears as
a sidebar (not available online) to Gary Stix's article, A
Confederacy of Smarts, in the June issue of Scientific American;
pages 44 - 45.) |
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