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<< Headlines are listed according to date posted <-> Articles are organized by date published >>
July 31, 2004: 'I,
Robot?' Not yet ... Research seeking ways to ease our workloads. By
Kimm Groshong. Pasadena Star-News. "Moving away from the notion of
robots that amount to a pile of metal boxes such as the Jetsons' maid
"Rosie,' robotics and artificial intelligence researchers at the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory are working to develop robust yet flexible robots capable of
helping humans. And even though a fully capable mechanical nanny is not
likely to grace store shelves any time soon, researchers at the lab are
already beginning to consider which tasks robots should be used for and
which they should not. And for those 'robo-phobes' out there, they suggest
understanding the technology behind robots can help dispel worries of
movie-style global take-overs by artificial beings. Ayanna Howard, a senior
robotics researcher at JPL, said the technology in 'I, Robot' won't be
feasible for at least 30 or 40 years. However, in the future 'robots will
be a part of life,' she said. And the idea of robots completing tasks
that humans find too boring or too dangerous is certainly not far-fetched.
... Equipping robots with the fluidity and freedom of motion coupled with
the strength and durability desired of android helpers to complete the
prescribed duties is a goal Yoseph Bar-Cohen works toward in his lab at
JPL." July 31, 2004: Nuts,
Legos of robotics - UCLA sponsored program teaches youths math, science.
By Kevin Butler. Press-Telegram. "For most people, Lego pieces are
meant simply to be pressed together to form shapes. They aren't supposed
to, all by themselves, lift a soda can, follow a square pattern or pick
up animal pen. But Lynwood Middle School students, thanks to some mechanical
and computer know-how, built robots from Legos to do just that, as part
of an innovative program sponsored by UCLA. Forty-eight kids, including
elementary, middle and high-school pupils, spent three weeks at the school
learning how to construct and program Lego-made robots to perform specific
tasks. 'What it does is give them hands-on experience, and they are engaged
in learning,' said Principal Mark Newell." July 29, 2004: Tinkering
with their minds - Program aims to get students into scientific research
early. By Emily Anthes. The Boston Globe. "Kim Reinhold gave up a
summer of swimming and dancing in her home in Hawaii to hole up in a lab
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Over the past five weeks,
Reinhold, 16, has pursued her interest in artificial intelligence by spending
some 40 hours of daylight a week in front of a computer screen. ... 'I
love it,' said Reinhold, who developed a computer algorithm that scientists
in her lab hope will be useful in teaching machines common sense. ...
Reinhold is one of 53 rising high school seniors participating in a summer
program at MIT that allows them to work on research projects in Boston
labs. The Research Science Institute aims to sell some of the nation's
most talented science students on research careers at a time when there
is a shortage of US-trained scientists. ... The number of US jobs requiring
science and engineering skills is increasing almost 5 percent a year as
the number of Americans in those fields is declining, according to a report
released this year by the National Science Foundation's National Science
Board. The United States has been able to sustain its science and engineering
workforce by relying on foreign-born scientists. In 1990, 24 percent of
scientists and engineers working in the United States with doctorates
were foreign-born. By 2000, that proportion had increased to 38 percent,
the report says. But as other countries develop science programs that
compete with the United States for students and as tightened security
makes it more difficult to get US visas, the number of foreign scientists
in the United States is expected to drop. ''The nation's economic welfare
and security are at stake,' the report warns." July 29, 2004: Organic
PC goal of UK project. By Harry Yeates. Electronics Weekly. "In
the future, alongside the box of lifeless silicon you call your PC, you
might find a little tub of living tissue. For particular specialist tasks
involving complex, non-linear problems your inorganic circuits would find
daunting, you would turn to the box of organics. That's the ultimate aim
of a new £1.2m, four year research project involving the universities
of the West of England (UWE), Leeds and Sussex. 'For fifty years AI has
been trying to build systems that have got complicated behaviour, with
some success,' said Dr Larry Bull from UWE, who will lead the project.
'But given this complex behaviour seems to be easy in the natural world,
networks of neurons and chemical systems, why don't we try to build AI
systems out of that stuff, rather than try to write clever programmes?'" July 29, 2004: Mean
machines. By Dylan Evans. The Guardian. "Looking for a good domestic
robot? According to www.ns-5.com, the world's first fully automated domestic
assistant is about to go on sale. The Nestor Class 5 robot is six foot
tall, looks vaguely human, and can do all sorts of housework, from washing-up
to managing your finances. There's just one catch: the website promoting
this amazing gadget is just a tease, a clever bit of advertising from
20th Century Fox to promote its movie, I, Robot, which is released in
the UK next month. ... The sobering conclusion that emerges from these
stories is that preventing intelligent robots from harming humans will
require some thing much more complex than simply programming them. In
fact, programming a real robot to follow the three laws would itself be
very difficult. ... But what about conflict between multiple applications
of the same law? ... To enable robots to avoid getting caught on the horns
of such dilemmas, they would need some capacity for moral reasoning -
an 'ethics module', perhaps. That would be hideously complex compared
to Asimov's three laws. If these speculations seem far-fetched, the day
when they become pressing issues may be closer than you suspect. Computer
scientist Bill Joy is not the only expert who has urged the general public
to start thinking about the dangers posed by the rapidly advancing science
of robotics, and Greenpeace issued a special report last year urging people
to debate this matter as vigorously as they have debated the issues raised
by genetic engineering." July 28, 2004: Amplified
Intelligence - The AI Problem. Interview with Ken Ford. Astrobiology
Magazine. "Astrobiology Magazine (AM): The IMHC [Interdisciplinary
Study of Human & Machine Cognition] research agenda broadly seems to cover
robotics, cognition and simulations. Are there parts of machine intelligence
that your research institute doesn't cover today, but that you see as
growth areas? Ken Ford (KF): Don't forget that second letter
is 'H'. Although a lot of our research could be categorized as AI, and
five of our researchers are AAAI (American Association for Artificial
Intelligence) Fellows, IHMC is not a traditional machine intelligence
laboratory. The focus and theme of our research is what has become known
as human-centered computing which, in a nutshell, is about fitting technology
to people instead of fitting people to technology. The human is part of
the system, and it is the performance of the whole system, including the
human, that we are interested in. This requires that machines should be
designed to fit us physically, cognitively, and perhaps even socially.
We think of AI as meaning 'Amplified Intelligence.' The interesting thing
is that many traditional AI technologies in fact are being used in just
this way. We like to refer to it as building cognitive prostheses, computational
systems that leverage and extend human intellectual capacities, just as
eyeglasses are a kind of ocular prosthesis. Building cognitive prostheses
is fundamentally different from AI's traditional Turing Test ambitions
-- it doesn't set out to imitate human abilities, but to extend them.
... AM: In your opinion, how well do the machine intelligence
problems (like navigation, data-mining, or simulations with agents) map
to the basic computer science [CS] problem of efficient 'search'? KF:
Wow, efficient search is a 'basic computer science problem'? Not long
ago, search was being suggested as a defining characteristic of AI to
distinguish it from 'mainstream' CS. But to return to the question: search
is certainly a central technique in AI, but the search spaces arising
in AI are often impossibly huge, and a more interesting aspect is not
so much how to search them efficiently as how to re-cast problems so that
the search space itself is reduced in size. Searching is what you do when
you can't think of anything smarter." July 27, 2004: 5
new funds for your watch list. By Russel Kinnel. Morningstar.com /
available from The Sun News & MyrtleBeachOnline.com. "American
Century EmVee ... is American Century's latest quantitative mutual fund.
It uses an artificial intelligence model developed by James Stowers III
to identify stocks with price momentum." July 27, 2004: Oticon
hearing aid thinks before it acts. By Linda A. Johnson. Associated
Press / available from nj.com and The Star-Ledger. "Since George
Pankey began using his new hearing aids, he can understand his 4-year-old
grandson, he gets involved in conversations at family gatherings and he's
resumed taking his wife to the noisy pizza restaurant she likes. ... Pankey,
who lost 85 percent of his hearing from a nearby explosion while serving
in the Korean War, is among the first customers to get Oticon's new Synchro
hearing aids. Hailed as the first-ever hearing device powered by artificial
intelligence, it 'listens' to the area around the user 20,000 times each
second, continually making adjustments to produce the optimum sound --
much like the way the brain works in someone with good hearing. ... The
system's two tiny microphones automatically and continuously pick up nearby
sounds, evaluate them and apply settings to boost the volume of speech
and reduce background noise...." July 26, 2004: Mind
Over Matter. July 26, 2004: University
lab researches advanced fields of video game development. Workers
from varied backgrounds all aid in lab research. By Matt Wright. The Daily
Texan. "It sounds like a kid's dream come true: a college lab devoted
solely to researching video games. But at the University's Digital Media
Collaboratory, the work is hardly child's play. At the lab tucked away
in West Campus, professors, graduate students and undergraduate volunteers
from an assortment of disciplines work together on research in the most
advanced fields of game development. Many projects at the DMC are rigorously
academic, such as computer sciences Ph.D. candidate Ken Stanley's work
on the NeuroEvolution of Augmenting Topologies. His project applies the
latest developments in artificial intelligence to 'evolve' simple networks
into adaptive and ever more complex networks." July 26, 2004: Fighter
pilots could command drone 'swarms.' By Will Knight. New Scientist
News. "Jet fighter pilots could command a whole swarm of planes from
the air, using a system developed by a British aerospace company. QinetiQ
- formerly the UK government's Defence Evaluation and Research Agency
- has developed technology that would allow a pilot to control up to five
aircraft during a mission, without needing to constantly keep a check
on them. ... The unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) under the pilot's control
use software 'agents' to carry out their mission. These agents are given
a goal - to find enemy targets, for example - and can independently deal
with the various variables involved." July 25, 2004: Scientists
develop socially skilled robots. Asian News International / available
from Kerala News & newkerala.com. "Researchers from the Carnegie
Mellon University, the Naval Research Laboratory and Swarthmore College
have developed a pair of interactive robots that will participate as a
team in the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) annual
Mobile Robot Competition and Exhibition at the San Jose Convention Center
in San Jose, Calif from July 27-29. The robots named Grace and George
will complete AAAI's Open Interaction Task, which involves interacting
with conference attendees in an unstructured environment." July 24, 2004: I,
Pool Shark - Real science still lags behind the sci-fi fantasies of
I, Robot, but android power is on the rise. By Anne McIlroy.
The Globe and Mail. "In a hot, stuffy lab at Queen's University,
half a dozen engineering students hunch over their computers, seemingly
oblivious to the distraction offered by the pool table in the corner.
Their ability to resist temptation may have something to do with the cue-wielding
contraption that hangs over the table. A metal frame suspended from the
ceiling supports a mechanized arm, which is guided by a camera that helps
it to 'see.' With a satisfying whir, the arm pulls back and then crisply
whacks a billiard ball into a pocket. Meet Deep Green, the brainchild
of Queen's robotics expert Michael Greenspan. ... Dr. Greenspan and his
students are determined to turn the computer-driven mechanism into the
world's best pool shark -- a machine capable of humbling the greatest
human player. ... Deep Green may lead to advances in artificial vision
systems, including ways to help robots better interpret colour, but the
project itself is part of a trend toward making robots that entertain
humans. ... Canada already has a good reputation when it comes to man-versus-machine
encounters. Three years before Deep Blue's triumph, Chinook -- a computer
program for playing checkers written by Jonathan Schaeffer and a team
at the University of Alberta became the first 'machine' to beat a human
at a world championship in any game. The feat attracted a lot of attention
outside North America, and Dr. Schaeffer says he is now looking for a
chance to prove that a poker program he has produced can also beat a world
champion player. According to Dr. Schaeffer, the artificial intelligence
work that he and Dr. Greenspan do involves fun and games, but other researchers
take it seriously. 'I could have chosen something that was more academically
correct, like a medical diagnosis system, but games are fun, and if you
can't solve these problems in the simple domain of a game than you can't
hope to solve them in the more complicated real world.'" July 23, 2004: The
essence of a science career - July 21, 2004: Robots
get bookish in libraries. By Jo Twist. BBC News. "Robots have
disappointed humans so far in their ability to mix and help people in
their everyday lives. Other than industry and research, they have mostly
been for entertainment. But a group of robotics researchers at University
Jaume I in Spain is working on a robot librarian which could deliver the
promise of a helpful bot. The prototype has cameras, sensors and grippers
so it can locate and collect a book. The hope is that one day teams of
service robots could work in libraries. ... Because the database will
only give an approximate location, the robot will navigate its way to
the bookshelf, using its infrared and laser guidance system, and scan
books within a four-metre radius. 'Once it is in there, it starts using
its cameras. By moving the arm with the cameras, it takes an image of
the bookshelf,' said Professor [Angel del] Pobil. 'It can read the labels
and the position of the book using its image processing and optical character
recognition software,' the professor said." July 21, 2004: A
long way from science fiction. By July 21, 2004: Software
program helps track terrorists. By Kristi Heim. Mercury News / available
from SiliconValley.com. "Like a super search engine, the technology
behind TimeWall filters vast amounts of unstructured information from
a variety of sources -- such as e-mail or Internet reports -- in two dozen
languages. It also uses natural language processing to find phone numbers,
names and other data to identify relationships, patterns and trends. 'Rather
than an intelligence analyst reading all this stuff to decide what is
interesting, the software pulls it out automatically and puts it on the
wall,' says Ramana Rao, Inxight's founder and chief technology officer." July 21, 2004: Company
confident in growth of robots - Devices expected to take on more complex
jobs. By Julie Dunn. The Denver Post. "In last weekend's $52 million
box-office smash 'I, Robot,' robots are employed to do all sorts of menial
jobs, including walking dogs and picking up garbage. Bernd Liepert, chief
executive of Kuka Roboter, Europe's largest manufacturer of industrial
robots, envisions a higher calling for robots - from protecting America's
borders to performing emergency surgery. ... This fall, DU will become
the first U.S. university to offer undergraduate and master's-level degrees
in mechatronics, which integrates mechanical, electric and computer software
engineering, according to dean Rahmat A. Shoureshi." July 20, 2004: Trinity
Professor's Book Wins National Award. By Melissa Pionzio. The Hartford
Courant / ctnow.com. "Dan Lloyd, a professor of philosophy at Trinity
College in Hartford, has won a national award for his book 'Radiant Cool:
A Novel Theory of Consciousness,' which is billed as a metaphysical thriller
that centers on a new interpretation of functional brain imaging. ...
MIT Press recommends 'Radiant Cool' 'for anyone who works in artificial
intelligence, stays up too late in the library, or just wants to give
their gray matter a very unusual experience.'" July 19, 2004: The
evolution of movie robots. By Chris Heard. BBC News. "I, Robot,
starring Will Smith, has gone to the top of the US box office. Based on
Isaac Asimov's classic robot novel, it joins a proud tradition of androids
in the movies. The granddaddy of them all was Fritz Lang's 1927 sci-fi
masterpiece Metropolis, in which a robot in the shape of beautiful female
union leader Maria (Brigitte Helm) leads a revolt against their oppressors
in a future dystopia." July 19, 2004: Robots
have a lot to learn - "Mechatronics" field is making big strides,
but it'll be a while before Hollywood's techno-futuristic visions become
reality. By Jack Cox. The Denver Post. "The participants in the five-day
Robocamp at the School of Mines, one of many offered across the country
each summer, don't get into anything [as adventurous as the Pentagon's
Grand Challenge]. But as they prepare to map a Mars- like landscape that
only their robots will actually explore, they get a feel for the many
roadblocks strewn across this particular path of progress. Despite the
formidable challenges, the field of 'mechatronics,' as some call it, is
developing so quickly that some researchers believe robots could well
become household fixtures within a generation - or by roughly 2035, when
the action in 'I, Robot' takes place. 'A lot of what we see in the movies
are things roboticists are working on. It's not like they've invented
some huge leap in technology,' says Reid Simmons, an expert on social
robots at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, a center of robotics
research. ... Steve Richards, founder and president of Acroname Robotics,
a 10-year-old Boulder firm that promotes such technology, says Americans
already make use of many systems that could be defined as robotic. 'Your
cellphone, your ABS brakes, your bread maker are all highly automated,
and many people would say they are examples of robotics - they are small,
they operate autonomously, and they adapt to their environment,' he says." July 19, 2004 [issue
date]: Ready To Buy A Home Robot? -- C-3PO they're not -- yet -- but more
smart devices are available than you might think. By Ian Rowley, Andrew
Petty, Ariane Sains and Adam Aston. Business
Week Magazine (subscription req'd.). "Can you run to the store
and buy a robot? Chances are, you already have. By the definitions of
many engineers, your TiVo digital video recorder and microwave oven are
robotic simply because they contain sensors, microprocessors, and rudimentary
artificial intelligence that allow them to do repeated tasks without human
intervention. ... For a glimpse into the future, BusinessWeek checked
out some of the most intriguing robotic developments -- things your digital
home could grow to love. Many are still laboratory fantasies costing millions
of dollars to make. But researchers say costs will come down rapidly over
the next decade or so as engineers perfect and mass-market the devices." July 18, 2004: Face
of the future? Some scientists think robots will do domestic tasks
and be as common as TVs. By Robin McKie and David Smith. The Observer.
"Among those who enthusiastically endorse the imminence of the robot
age is the industry analyst, Future Horizons, which has noted that applications
currently under discussion include the development of baby robots for
mother training, robots for house cleaning, support for the old, disaster
rescue, fast-food serving staff, nursing, opponents in board games, security,
and window cleaning. The report predicts that total robot revenue will
grow from $4.4 billion (£2.3bn) in 2003 to $59.3bn in 2010. 'A robot will
be like a TV or a washing machine - almost every home will have one,'
said Malcolm Penn, chairman of Future Horizons. 'They are clumsy now but
it won't be long before the technology marches on. In five to 10 years
you'll have a robot doing chores like dispensing medicine, feeding the
cat, making cups of tea, taking food out of the freezer and cooking it
in a microwave. We could see the first humanoid robot football match in
five years' time'. Jonathan Elvidge, founder of The Gadget Shop chain,
agrees. He travels the world to sample cutting-edge technology for consumers.
'Next year we can expect miniature robots that wander around your desk,
or a robot head you can talk to and which talks back to you. 'In the future
you might have a robot that can follow you around and you can ask it to
pay bills or ask what time a film is on and get it to order your tickets.'
... Household chores are the domain of domestic appliance robots such
as self-navigating lawnmowers or vacuum cleaners. Sales reached 39,000
units in 2003 and are forecast to hit 20 million by 2008." July 17, 2004: Polite
computers win users' hearts and minds. By Celeste Biever. New Scientist
Magazine (People prefer computers that say sorry; page 20). "Computer
glitches would be a lot less annoying if the machines were programmed
to acknowledge errors gracefully when something goes wrong, instead of
merely flashing up a brusque 'you goofed' message. ... But Jonathan Klein,
who builds robotic toys at iRobot in Sommerville, Massachusetts, warns
that any apology will eventually cease to sound sincere if it is repeated
too often. He believes the answer is software that will ask users to vent
their frustration by typing a message, to which the computer provides
empathetic feedback, using artificial intelligence to come up with the
appropriate response. [Jeng-Yi] Tzeng argues that until AI can accurately
detect users' emotions, Klein's approach will fail." July 16, 2004: I.T.
May Help Clean a Polluted Sea, Say Researchers. By Mike Martin. NewsFactor
Network. "If an article in this week's journal Science is on target,
air pollution fouls not only our skies but our oceans as well. ... But
software and information technology may play an equally important role,
claim the authors of a study published in a recent special issue of the
journal Management of Environmental Quality, which is devoted to 'information
technologies in environmental engineering.' 'Rapid environmental changes
call for continuous surveillance and online decision-making -- two areas
where I.T. can be valuable,' say study authors Ioannis Athanasiadis and
Pericles Mitkas. Both are computer science researchers at the Informatics
and Telematics Institute Center for Research and Technology in Thessaloniki,
Greece. In their study, entitled 'An Agent-Based Intelligent Environmental
Monitoring System,' the researchers 'present a multi-agent system for
monitoring and assessing air-quality attributes, which uses data coming
from a meteorological station.' Their system, the study explains, uses
a 'community of software agents to monitor and validate measurements coming
from several sensors to assess air-quality.' Software agents are computer
systems to which an operator can delegate tasks. Like the robots in the
new movie 'I, Robot,' software agents are more autonomous, proactive and
adaptive than the everyday software we normally use. ... Using agents
to monitor the environment is a branch of 'enviromatics -- the research
initiative examining the application of information technology in environmental
research, monitoring, assessment, management and policy,' Athanasiadis
explains. ... 'In O3RTAA, several software agents operate in a distributed-agent
society in order to monitor both meteorological and air pollutants, to
evaluate air quality and, ultimately, to trigger alarms' about environmental
damage, Mitkas explains, adding that the system uses machine-learning
algorithms and data-mining methodologies for 'extracting knowledge.'" July 16, 2004: Robots
a pervasive presence in film history. By James Verniere. The Boston
Herald. "Everybody loves robots - until they run amok and sometimes
we love them even then, if not more. Now the subject of the summer movie
'I, Robot,'' robots and their kith and kin have fascinated adults and
children alike for hundreds of years. However limited, clockwork dummies
or puppets, also known as 'automata'' and 'simulacra,' could appear human
and ape human movement. The medieval alchemists had their fabled 'homunculi'
- ickily created humanoid miniatures - and the Cabbalists their Golem,
a legendary clay giant brought to unnatural life using magical signs and
rituals." July 16, 2004: Movie
tests Asimov's moral code for robots. By Will Knight. New Scientist
News. "The possibility of developing truly intelligent machines,
and their potential to be friend or foe to humanity, gets the Hollywood
treatment in a new blockbuster film I, Robot, which opens in the US on
Friday. At the heart of the movie are Isaac Asimov's 'Three Laws of Robotics',
invented as a simple, but immutable moral code for robots. ... [R]obotics
and artificial intelligence experts admit they are a long way from having
to worry about such rules yet. 'The difficulty is building something that
would understand them,' says Alan Bundy, at Edinburgh University's Artificial
Intelligence Institute in the UK. 'That is well beyond the state of the
art at the moment.' Bundy notes that simple safety measures are already
a crucial part of the design of industrial robots, which have in rare
cases caused the death of people. ... 'Asimov's laws are about as relevant
to robotics as leeches are to modern medicine,' says Steve Grand, who
founded the UK company Cyberlife Research and is working on developing
artificial intelligence through learning. 'They stem from an innocent
bygone age, when people seriously thought that intelligence was something
that could be 'programmed in' as a series of logical propositions.'" July 15, 2004: All eyes on Blinkx - Victor Keegan spoke to the woman taking on Google. The Guardian. "Less than a month ago, Kathy Rittweger went to the office of the technology magazine Business 2.0 in San Francisco to demonstrate Blinkx, a late entrant to the search engine market. ... This week, the site - which is only launched today - has been recording 6m links or hits a day solely from word-of-mouth publicity. ... Blinkx (http://www.blinkx.com) has two selling points. First, it doesn't only search the web but simultaneously scours news sites, emails, attachments and your own hard disk. ... The second selling point is that, unlike Google, it uses artificial intelligence to rate stories, not page rankings. 'What it is trying to say,' she explains, 'is that all words are not equal in a sentence... Quite critically, if you are looking at a document and trying to figure out what it means, Blinkx reads everything you are reading and sorts out what are the key ideas.'"
>>> Information
Retrieval, Applications July 15, 2004:
For
Asimov, Robots Were Friends. Not So for Will Smith. By Edward
Rothstein. The New York Times (no fee reg. req'd.). "But in
his book, Asimov also declared war on those who think about robots
with fear and trembling, dreading the dangers of technological change.
The new movie [I, Robot], though, often seems to oppose Asimov's
view. Spooner hates robots, and he may have good reason. ... In
1956 Asimov explained that before beginning his robot stories he
had tired of the typical robot plot about 'the creature that turned
against its creator, the robot that became a threat to humanity.'
That plot was there with the very invention of the word in Karel
Capek's 1921 Czech play, 'R.U.R.' and became disturbingly perverse
in Fritz Lang's 1927 film, 'Metropolis.' 'I didn't see robots that
way,' Asimov wrote. 'After all, all devices have their dangers.'
For him robots were 'machines, not metaphors.' So the Frankenstein
question was irrelevant for Asimov. In his stories fear of robots
is irrational; it impedes understanding and leads to robotics researchers
being called 'blasphemers and demon creators.' The robot, for Asimov,
was humanly designed and had built-in safeguards. ... Asimov kept
exploring how complex these [Three Laws of Robotics] were, how much
they depended upon interpretation, and how unpredictable robotic
intelligence could become." July 15, 2004:
Sizing
up robots. By Julie Moran Alyerio. The Journal News.com. "In
the new movie 'I, Robot,' thinking machines are a part of everyday
life -- watching the kids, walking the dog and cleaning the house.
... Science fiction writers have created dozens of intelligent robots,
from Robby the Robot to R2-D2 to Data on 'Star Trek: The Next Generation,'
but scientists haven't mastered the art of building human-like mechanical
beings to do our bidding. But to a degree that would surprise many
people, robots are part of our lives in ways that aren't always
visible. ... What do these fantasy robots have that real robots
don't? ... Robot scientists call [intelligence] the missing element,
the juice, the spark, said Jonathan Connell, an IBM researcher and
graduate of the famous artificial intelligence program at Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. 'The question is, 'What is this magic juice
that's missing?' 'he said. 'Once we understand what human-like thought
is, we'll be able to make it.' Intelligence isn't just number crunching,
which computers can easily do today. The first tasks A.I. researchers
tackled were highly cerebral, such as chess and taking the SATs.
'They solved those. Those were easy. It's the stuff like tying a
shoe or understanding a newspaper article that turned out to be
so much more difficult,' Connell said. ... 'Asimov always said he
was really tired of reading stories about robots where they turn
into Frankenstein's monster. He wanted to write different stories
about robots that were more logical puzzles,' said Connell, who
worries the new movie will stray from Asimov's view of robots. Robotics
pioneer Joseph Engelberger, a friend of the late Asimov and founder
of the first company to make industrial robots, is more concerned
that scientists are adrift from the author's vision of robots playing
a positive role in people's lives." July 14, 2004:
Computer
brains. e4engineering.com. "A team of computer scientists
and mathematicians at Palo Alto, CA-based Artificial Development
are developing software to simulate the human brain's cortex and
peripheral systems. As a first step along the way, the company recently
disclosed that it has completed the development a realistic representation
of the workflow of a functioning human cortex. Dubbed the CCortex-based
Autonomous Cognitive Model ('ACM'), the software may have immediate
applications for data mining, network security, search engine technologies
and natural language processing." July 14, 2004:
Films
Such as 'I, Robot' Affirm Human Superiority. Duke News &
Communications. "'I, Robot,' which opens Friday, revisits one
of science fiction's common themes: A creation that develops a will
of its own and turns against its creator. But why is that idea so
appealing? It speaks to our society's deep fears that, as robots
become more apparently human, we discover how machinelike we are,
said Priscilla Wald, a Duke University English professor who studies
how science is represented in popular culture. ... People feel anxious
when they learn how easy it is to program a computer to appear to
have emotions. This is possible because we follow predictable patterns,
she said. 'Our sense of our uniqueness is threatened by the idea
that we are predictable,' she said. 'The farther we go with artificial
intelligence and the more human our machines become, the more we
understand how machinelike we are. Many people find that deeply
disturbing.'" July 14, 2004:
Robots
(Probably) Won't Turn Against Humanity, Experts Say in Their Defense.
By Eric Wolff. The New York Sun. "The trailer for 'I, Robot'
shows a tidal wave of superior mechanical androids attacking
humanity en masse. It's a sinister vision of the future, but
that doesn't
seem to concern the world's leading robot makers. ... Only movie
critics have seen the film so far,but some robotics experts feel
the trailer alone could be a public relations fiasco for their
mechanized friends. ... 'It puts things in a fairly bad light,'
said a Carnegie Mellon University computer science professor who
specializes in artificial intelligence, Reid Simmons. ... People
ultimately learn,Mr.Simmons said, that this is not a realistic
fear. ... [A]ll of the experts interviewed for this article agreed
that robots with intelligence levels found in 'I, Robot' aren't
just possible -- they're inevitable.
'Robots today are at about the same place computers were 40 years
ago,' Mr. Simmons said. The movie takes place in 2038 -- just
34 years away." July 14, 2004:
Attack
of the killer vacuum cleaners. By Charles Arthur. The Belfast
Telegraph Digital. "Things are about to happen with robots,
because the element they need to make them truly useful - the software,
which needs to be able to adapt to a wide range of situations -
is getting cheaper all the time. Future Horizons, a semiconductor
analyst based in Kent, forecasts that by 2010 there will be 55.5
million robots, in a world market worth £30bn - up from £2.4bn last
year. 'The electronics industry is on the cusp of a robotics wave,
a period in which applications are aimed at labour-saving and extending
human skills,' it reports. Of those, it says that 39 million will
be domestic robots, and 10.5 million 'domestic intelligent service'
robots. That is because there's a growing need for robots to help
the elderly and handicapped. ... But the real explosion in robotics
is coming among the 'immobots' - or, more simply, just 'bots'. These
are bits of software that are incorporated into larger objects,
and that remove a lot of the strain of having to decide what to
do next. We're getting glimpses of how good these could be at present:
the tiny number of Britons with a TiVo personal video recorder have
something that decides, based on the programmes they choose to record,
what other programmes they might like to see, and records those,
too. ... The reason why we can't yet declare 'The Year of the Robot',
however, is that researchers are still fundamentally split about
how robots should behave and learn. One group favours the 'top-down'
approach, in which all the behaviour of the robot is mapped out,
and its software is written to fill out that behaviour. The Roomba
vacuum cleaner is a classic example.... The alternative is something
assembled from smaller, self-contained units, which creates a gestalt
of behaviour based on that. Thus the system that controls the legs
learns to 'walk' independently.... Sony's Aibo draws on a form of
this.... " July 14, 2004:
I, robot psychiatrist. By
Rachel Sauer. PalmBeachPost.com. "Aibo accidentally lurched
into Roomba and didn't know what to do. The circuits in his small
robo-canine brain fired. Stumble on? Turn back? Weave around? ...
So here's the thing to know about the Boca Raton home that Joanne
Pransky shares with her husband and 7-year-old daughter: It is a
nest for robots.... In her home -- unlike in the movie I, Robot,
which opens Friday -- robots are not feared. They are beloved. They
serve a purpose, whether it's work or entertainment. They are physically
and mentally healthy. This is because Pransky is the world's first
robotic psychiatrist. Yes. It is a term she coined for herself,
tongue firmly in cheek (see her Web site at www.robot.md), when
she began working with robots more than 20 years ago, having gotten
into electronics through computer sales and training. ... So she
has a thing or two to say about robots and our relationship with
them. ... Q: Why do we need or want robots? ... Q: Then why are
robots so often villains in movies? ... Q: But is it OK to treat
them like humans? ... Q: Could robots evolve and take over, like
in the movies? ... " July 13, 2004:
The rise of 'Digital People.'-
Tales about artificial beings have sparked fascination and fear
for centuries; now the tales are turning into reality. Excerpt from
"Digital People: From Bionic Humans to Androids" by Sidney Perkowitz,
the Charles Howard Candler professor of physics at Emory University.
MSNBC Science News. "There is, however, considerable debate
about the possibility of achieving the centerpiece of a complete
artificial being, artificial intelligence arising from a humanly
constructed brain that functions like a natural human one. Could
such a creation operate intelligently in the real world? Could it
be truly self-directed? And could it be consciously aware of its
own internal state, as we are? These deep questions might never
be entirely settled. We hardly know ourselves if we are creatures
of free will, and consciousness remains a complex phenomenon, remarkably
resistant to scientific definition and analysis. One attraction
of the study of artificial creatures is the light it focuses on
us: To create artificial minds and bodies, we must first better
understand ourselves. While consciousness in a robot is intriguing
to discuss, many researchers believe it is not a prerequisite for
an effective artificial being. In his 'Behavior-Based Robotics,'
roboticist Ronald Arkin of the Georgia Institute of Technology argues
that 'consciousness may be overrated,' and notes that 'most roboticists
are more than happy to leave these debates on consciousness to those
with more philosophical leanings.' For many applications, it is
enough that the being seems alive or seems human, and irrelevant
whether it feels so. ... And yet ... there is the dream and the
breathtaking possibility that humanity can actually develop the
technology to create qualitatively new kinds of beings. These might
take the form of fully artificial, yet fully living, intelligent,
and conscious creatures -- perhaps humanlike, perhaps not. Or they
might take the form of a race of 'new humans'; that is, bionic or
cyborgian people who have been enormously augmented and extended
physically, mentally, and emotionally." July 13, 2004:
Is
I, Robot Our Future? Opinion by Lance Ulanoff. PC Magazine.
"I'll admit it, I'm a robot snob. This has little to do with
knowledge and virtually everything to do with my insistence that
I think I know what makes a true robot. At least I thought I did,
until recent conversations with robotics experts -- the people in
the trenches building, developing, and programming robotics technologies.
Some new robot developments and a glimpse of this summer's anticipated
blockbuster I, Robot got me thinking that I may need to broaden
my definition, or better yet, step back and reconsider the whole
thing. ... I was beginning to come to terms with the fact that a
robot is less a concrete set of characteristics than an 'I know
it when I see it' kind of thing. Why? Movies. Television. Books.
Robots were a part of our fantasy world long before we had the technology
to actually produce them. ... But here's the really exciting thing
I learned during my panel discussion: The dream and the reality
are beginning to converge. This became evident when MIT's Cynthia
Breazeal opened her brief introduction with a handful of remarkable
videos, featuring her social-robot project, Leonardo. Developed
in conjunction with movie special-effects impresario Stan Winston,
Leonardo is one of the most remarkable robots I've ever seen. ...
[The movie I Robot is] the future we've always dreams of
-- sort of: robots everywhere, helping us do everything we never
wanted to do (or could do). But does it have any relation to reality?
Are we actually on a trajectory that will take us from Sony's QRIO
and Honda's Asimo straight to I, Robot's stunning central robotic
character, Sonny? Again, I turned to our experts. Will robots like
Sonny exist in roughly 30 years? ... Our robotic destinies will
be as varied as the world's many tongues. I will continue to try
to set expectations by examining and discussing all robotics developments.
I will also embrace all forms of robots and accept the small (Robosapien)
and large (Leonardo) advances with equal enthusiasm and prepare
for the day when I, Robot's Sonny is as real as the iRobot
Roomba." July
13, 2004: Children
learn how to program robots using Lego pieces. By Simon Capstick-Dale.
Cape Times. "A robotics expert is using the basic building
blocks of many childhood games - Lego - to teach Cape Town youngsters
about computer programming and mechanical engineering. Rand Afrikaans
University graduate Johan Benade has taught children in Denmark,
Britain, America and South Africa and is hosting holiday workshops
at the MTN Scien Centre for the fifth time. ... The Advanced Lego-Robolab
workshop takes place today and Thursday and lasts all day. ... [T]he
workshops ... are aimed at children aged 11 and older...." July 13, 2004:
Robotic
space endeavors lack creativity of humans. Opinion by Mark R.
Whittington. USA Today.com. "While human beings remain stuck
in low-Earth orbit, Cassini-Huygens has become the latest robotic
explorer to examine another world. ... The mission is an example
of both the strengths and weaknesses of robotic endeavors. Robotic
space missions are cheap, relative to those with human explorers,
and do not place human beings at risk. They are useful for the remote
observation of other worlds and for measuring phenomena such as
radiation levels. Nevertheless, robotic probes, for all of their
technological sophistication, can give us only a hint of what conditions
really are like on other worlds. Human explorers must, sooner or
later, follow their robotic precursors if we are to fully understand
the unknown places beyond the Earth." July 13, 2004:
New
world computer chess champ crowned. By Will Knight. New Scientist
News. "A new world computer chess champion was crowned at the
2004 finals in Israel on Monday. The new champ is the latest version
of a particularly aggressive and human-like software program called
Junior. ... The contest ended in a thrilling finale. Junior and
the defending champion, a program called Shredder, both stood a
chance of winning with just one game to play. But the title was
handed to Junior when Shredder could only draw with a lower ranked
program called Falcon while Junior demolished the program ParSOS.
[Frederic] Freidel says each competing program has its own character.
He recounts a recent telephone call from Gary Kasparov, considered
by many the greatest chess player of all time, who wondered why
Junior was unable to predict the outcome of a particular end game
move, while another popular program, Fritz, could. Freidel says
emphasis on different factors in the program's algorithms result
in these diverse 'personalities'. ... Chess programs have grown
increasingly sophisticated in recent years. Older programs used
to perform exhaustive analysis of potential moves, while today's
leading software uses smarter algorithms to reduce the amount of
positional searching needed." July 13, 2004 [issue date]: Pushing The Limits. By Carol Levin. PC Magazine (Volume 23, Number 12). "As PC Magazine editors and analysts, we spend our days staying ahead of the curve so our readers can be the first to learn about the latest technology products for their homes and offices. But once a year, we turn our attention not to products you can buy today but to those technologies that are gathering momentum, poised to make an impact on the future. The past twelve months have delivered an ample assortment of candidates. For our first story, 'Top Ten Tech Trends,' we take you on a tour of what we think are the most promising technologies. ... Technological advancement and cultural change go hand in hand, so this year we explore the intersection of technology and society in four essays. ... In 'The New Geek,' Steve Lohr, a technology writer at The New York Times, speaks with several of the new-generation high-tech workers about computer science as the new liberal-arts degree. Along the way, he shows how technology's impact on productivity is changing. In 'Nowhere to Hide,' business reporter Alan Cohen takes on the emerging collision between privacy and security."
>>> AI
Overview, Computer Science, Assisitive
Technologies, Machine Translation,
Natural Language Understanding, Resources
for Students, Ethical & Social Implications,
Natural Language Processing, Applications July 12, 2004:
Mini-robot
helps surgeons operate on spine. By Charles Choi. United Press
International / available from MedlinePlus / also
available from SpaceDaily. "A miniature robot designed
to help surgeons operate more precisely and successfully on the
spine is expected to enter the market sometime near the end of this
year, researchers told United Press International. SpineAssist,
as the soda-can-sized machine is called, attaches directly to the
patient's body. Surgeons insert surgical instruments such as drills
or needles through the arm of the robot, and the device helps position
the surgeon's hand. The hope is to minimize the risk of nerve damage,
blood loss and infection. 'Another advantage of the robot is that
it helps make such surgery minimally invasive,' Moshe Shoham, creator
of the device and director of the robotics lab at Technion-Israel
Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel, told UPI. 'You don't have
to perform an operation along the entire back. With the robot guiding
a surgeon, you can just perform through a keyhole lesion.' Robot-assisted
surgery is a steadily growing field, with a few dozen surgical robot
prototypes developed since the early 1990s. The most prominent is
ROBODOC, from Integrated Surgical Systems in Davis, Calif., as well
as Da Vinci and Zeus, from Intuitive Surgical in Sunnyvale, Calif." July 12, 2004:
Computer,
heal thyself - Why should humans have to do all the work? It's
high time machines learned how to take care of themselves. By Sam
Williams. Salon.com (no fee reg. req'd.). "For at least three
decades now, programmers have joked of 'heisenbugs' -- software
errors that surface at seemingly random intervals and whose root
causes consistently evade detection. The name is a takeoff on Werner
Heisenberg, the German physicist whose famous uncertainty principle
posited that no amount of observation or experimentation could pinpoint
both the position and momentum of an electron. 'A lot of the bugs
we're seeing in modern systems have been plaguing programmers from
the beginning of time,' says [Armando] Fox, the head of Stanford's
Software Infrastructures Group. 'The only difference now is machines
just crash faster.' ... 'Today's systems have too many dials to
watch; people can spend their whole lives figuring out how to make
a database run well,' [Steve] White says. 'We want to stand this
notion of systems management on its head. The system has to be able
to set itself up. It has to optimize itself. It has to repair itself,
and if something goes wrong, it has to know how to respond to external
threats. If I can think about the system at that level, I'm using
humans for what they're good at, and I'm using the machines for
what they're good at. That's the idea here.'" July 12, 2004:
We,
Robots July 12, 2004:
The
Coming Robot Revolution - They could fight wars, drive cars
and patrol data centers. Future Watch by Lucas Mearian. Computerworld.
"Robots, from mechanical dogs that can learn new tricks to
automated vacuum cleaners that avoid furniture, are steadily becoming
a part of everyday life. But the real robot boom lies just ahead,
experts say. In the future, robots could help determine the outcome
of wars and identify problems in data centers. Office buildings
may come to life as they use Wi-Fi to dispatch robots to control
human access, test heating and cooling systems, and fetch tools
for workers. Computerworld recently spoke about the future of robots
with three experts: Chuck Thorpe, director of Carnegie Mellon University's
Robotics Institute; Jeanne Dietsch, CEO of MobileRobots.com in Nashua,
N.H.; and Vijay Kumar , a professor in the Department of Mechanical
Engineering and Applied Mechanics at the University of Pennsylvania.
Here's what they said: ... " July 12, 2004: New Roomba Vacuum Finds Its Way Home - IRobot updates its high-tech tool for cleaning your house. By Tom Krazit. IDG News Service / PC World. "The newest generation of the Roomba robot vacuum cleaner has learned how to charge itself at a docking station, detect the best cleaning pattern for a given room, and seek out dirt particles the size of finely ground pepper. If only it could take out the trash and wash the windows."
>>> Household
Appliances, Robots, Applications,
Military, Hazards & Disasters, Assistive Technologies July 11, 2004:
Sunday
Profile - Seymour Papert. Presented by Geraldine Doogue. ABC
Online. "Seymour Papert, a mathematician and pioneer in artificial
intelligence, has radical ideas about how the education system should
be overhauled. ... Geraldine Doogue: You were involved
in the cutting edge of artificial intelligence in the 1960s, what
were your ideas then about how far computers could go in replicating
human intelligence? Seymour Papert: There's a huge difference
between the way people thought about artificial intelligence then
and now. In those sixties, people in AI really thought in sort of
galactic cosmic terms. We were interested in the possibility of
some kind of artificial entity that would be as intelligent as a
person and/or more intelligent. It was obvious, it still is obvious
to me though, if you could make something as intelligent as a human
it would be much more intelligent because there are many limitations
that we have that a machine wouldn't have. And if it could have
all the things that we have it would have much more. ... Geraldine
Doogue: Well, do you now think that as an elder of the tribe?
Do you look back now and think 'goodness that was the folly of youth'?
Seymour Papert: Oh, I don't think it's the folly of youth;
I think it will come. What I think has become clearer is that we
need some great new insights. Geraldine Doogue: Into artificial
intelligence? Seymour Papert: John McCarthy, who is one of the other
people involved in this, proposed a measure of greatness of idea,
like one Einstein, is one of these ideas that happens once or twice
a century. And the idea that you could use computers to do some
things that the brain does -- that the mind does -- is maybe an
Einstein's worth of insight. And McCarthy guessed we need, at least,
maybe one Einstein's worth or maybe two Einstein's. . Seymour
Papert: Here's a little curious thing that I've recently become
intrigued by. I worked during the 80s developing a way of children
doing robotics using LEGO and eventually LEGO made this thing that
they marketed under the name of my book Mindstorms which is build
LEGO but instead of LEGO just being an architectural passive thing
you make things it can do that can act to have behaviour. So you've
got motors and gears and sensors and a little computer in it, so
you can program it to do things. LEGO marketed this for a pre-teen
boys which annoyed me a lot. ... Interesting thing that we stumbled
on was whenever we get a group of these kids working with this technology,
there’s always some, a kid or two who drifts up as the expert.
The one that everybody looks to for more knowledge -- it’s
always a girl." July 11, 2004:
New
Hires Give Virtual Edge to Two Lakeland Businesses - Computer-generated
employees interact with consumers via company Web sites. By Adrian
Zawada. The Ledger Online. "Abby and Gigi recently found jobs
in Lakeland, and they don't ever call in sick, take breaks or need
health insurance. They work for two prominent Lakeland entities
that have taken their Web sites to the cutting edge by hiring computer-generated
virtual employees. ... Hired as the virtual customer service representative
for www.michaelholleychevrolet.com, [Abby] relies on a sophisticated
natural language processing program and learns by artificial intelligence.
'If there is a question not known or off-the-wall, and if artificial
intelligence and natural language doesn't cover it, the administrator
can enter it into the knowledge base,' said Wayne Scholar, co-founder
of Pittsburgh based Eidoserve, which created Abby for Michael Holley
Chevrolet. Abby and Gigi provide more than just amusement for visitors
to their respective Web sites. A virtual employee has the ability
to turn a casual Web surfer browsing for cars into a bona fide customer,
Scholar said. After all, he estimates 82 percent of automobile customers
research the Web before they come in to buy." July 11, 2004:
Robots on film.
By Craig Outhier. East Valley Tribune Online. "Educator and
science fiction author Gregory Benford is all man -- except for
the titanium and steel joint that surgeons recently implanted in
his left shoulder. While this hardly puts the University of California
at Irvine physics professor in the same league as Darth Vader, famously
described as 'more machine than man' by arch-nemesis Obi-Wan Kenobi,
it does give Benford pause. 'I think it's inevitable that human
beings will start to incorporate more robot technologies into their
bodies,' Benford predicts, citing recent advances in prosthetic
limbs and artificial retinas. 'Even the current technology is pretty
amazing, like something out of a movie.' Frequently, it is. Since
the days of Fritz Lang and his landmark science fiction opus, 'Metropolis'
(1926), filmmakers have been fascinated with the idea of shaping
machines into artificial people, and vice versa. Ranging from visionary
('Blade Runner') to the downright laughable ('Heartbeeps'), these
specimens of cybernetic cinema often function as social mirrors,
reflecting mankind's anxieties, aspirations and feelings about itself.
... With many so-called 'smart' homes equipped with programmable
vacuum cleaners and centralized security systems, even the middling
Tom Selleck vehicle 'Runaway' (1984) -- involving deadly accidents
caused by malfunctioning domestic robots -- seems eerily prescient." July 10, 2004:
All
too human. By Martin Levin. The Globe and Mail. "Felipe
Fernández-Armesto is a worried man. He's worried about the future
of humanity. More particularly, he's worried about how, in this
brave new world, we are to continue to think of ourselves as human.
... Humankind: A Brief History (Oxford, 190 pages, $29.95). This
is a deceptive book, with implications that are disturbing, if stimulating.
It is not a history of humanity, but one of how we have over the
centuries conceived of being human. ... He sees six distinct sources
of threat, although several clearly overlap: ... the development
of robotics and artificial intelligence calls into question traits
we take to be fundamentally human, such as consciousness and imagination;
..." July 8, 2004:
Embedding
With A Lisp. By William Wong. ED Online (Volume 2004, Number
5). "Lisp stands for List Processing, but there have been many
other descriptions provided such as Lots of Irritating Superfluous
Parentheses. Experienced programmers without Lisp exposure normally
go into shock when looking at a Lisp program for the first time,
but after a little work Lisp coding becomes natural to the point
where other languages now start to look arcane. Trust me. Lisp code
is not really totally foreign. Take this little snippet for example....
Assuming you have made it this far, you might be wondering why Lisp
has not taken the world by storm. Lisp is actually very old. It
is only preceded by Fortran in terms of age for high-level languages.
Along the way, Lisp has seen a number of myths built up around it.
For example, many consider Lisp to be a language for "artificial
intelligence" (AI). While it is true that Lisp is a key language
for AI applications, AI is not the only realm for Lisp. Lisp has
been used in a range of applications from transportation scheduling
to web scripting applications. Emacs was a popular text editor that
was based on Lisp." July 8, 2004:
Chinese
gov't backs Web search for global business. By Eric Auchard.
Reuters / available from USA Today. "A crack software development
team backed by the former head of Compaq Computer and China's information
ministry will unveil plans Thursday for a Web search system that
can locate 30 million businesses worldwide. China Communications
Corp. of Hoboken, New Jersey, will detail a search system it calls
Acoona that mathematically calculates links between search terms
and words with similar meaning in order to increase the likelihood
of finding relevant results. ... In contrast to general search technology
from Google, Yahoo or Microsoft -- which relies on matching searches
to keywords in a database -- Acoona uses so-called artificial intelligence
software that can be trained to locate related information. ...
Acoona doesn't depend on Internet search systems known as spiders
to 'crawl' across Web sites to locate fresh information. Instead
it has signed commercial deals with private information providers." July 7, 2004:
Build me a robot that can bend it like Becks. - A footballing challenge
is stimulating interest in artificial intelligence. By Emma Burns.
The Times (subscription
req'd.). "Give most adults a pile of Lego, some sensors, motors
and a laptop and ask them to build a robot and they would look at
you blankly. But there is a whole swath of children who can take
those materials and turn them into astonishingly effective pre-programmed
machines -capable of dancing in time to music, seeking out victims
in a disaster and even (don't tell David Beckham) scoring goals.
Some of the best, selected through a process of regional and national
finals, have just taken part in the junior league of an international
competition in Portugal, RoboCup 2004. The aim of the contest, which
is held every year, is to stimulate children's fascination with
technology and their ability to overcome problems in artificial
intelligence." July 7, 2004:
Software
aids future tennis stars. BBC News. " As Britons bemoan
another year without a Wimbledon hero, there could be some hope
in a computer model being worked on at Kingston University in London.
... It will create a computer-generated competitor which rival players
can pit themselves against. The system will analyse video footage
of champions and allow other players to explore tactics to beat
them. ... The research will focus initially on tennis but will move
on to look at more complex sports such as football and basketball.
'As well as helping specialised sports training, the technology
we are developing could have benefits in fields such as realistic
computer gaming, virtual reality and surveillance,' said Dr Ahmed
Shihab of the School of Computing and Information Systems at Kingston
University." July 7, 2004:
Will Spam
Render E-mail a Useless Productivity Tool? By Grant Buckler.
TechNewsWorld. "Some spam-fighting ideas are even more imaginative
-- such as a suggestion from Andrew Odlyzko, director of the digital
technology centre at the University of Minnesota. He suggests a
contest to develop an artificial intelligence program that could
reply to spam convincingly enough to engage the spammer in a time-wasting
e-mail exchange." July 6, 2004: Robots may scout fields on farms of the future. By Doug Peterson, University of Illinois Extension. @griculture Online. "Farm equipment in the future might very well resemble the robot R2D2 of Star Wars fame. But instead of careening through a galaxy far, far away, these ag robots might be wobbling down a corn row, scouting for insects, blasting weeds and taking soil tests. University of Illinois agricultural engineers have developed several ag robots, one of which actually resembles R2D2, except that it's square instead of round. The robots are completely autonomous, directing themselves down corn rows, turning at the end and then moving down the next row, said Tony Grift, University of Illinois agricultural engineer. The long-term goal, he said, is for these small, inexpensive robots to take on some of the duties now performed by large, expensive farm equipment. ... Robots have been a part of industrial environments for decades now, but Grift said the time may be right for robots to adapt to the more rugged environment outdoors. His partner, [Yoshi] Nagasaka, has had considerable experience with ag robots, developing autonomous rice planters for the challenging landscape of rice paddies in Japan."
July 6, 2004:
Courier
robots get traction in hospitals after fits and starts. By Mike
Crissey. Associated Press / available from USA Today. "Near
a pair of swinging doors at a local hospital, a cart sits apparently
abandoned. Yet at the push of a button, it perks up to say, 'thank
you' and rolls itself out the door toward the pharmacy. The 50-pound
machine, which looks like a vacuum cleaner mated to a cabinet, is
designed to autonomously ferry loads of linens, medical supplies,
X-rays, food and other materials. In a push to lower costs and free
up workers for more critical tasks, hospital officials are turning
more and more to robots like TUG to ply their hallways. Other robots
include the RoboCart -- a motorized table -- and the droid-like
HelpMate, a 4-foot tall cabinet with flashing lights and turn signals
that would be welcome in any sci-fi movie. ... [TUGs'] 'brains'
are packed with detailed maps of hospitals and computer programs
to help them keep track of where they are, where they're going and
the right time to jump on an elevator. ... They aren't problem-free,
however. On a recent run in the University of Pittsburgh's Magee
Women's Hospital, a TUG en route from the pharmacy to another floor
went silent and idle for several minutes while waiting for an elevator.
The robot's behavior baffled Aethon president Aldo Zini, but after
a call to headquarters, he figured it out. The TUG was being too
cautious. It won't get on an elevator if it thinks the elevator
is too full. ... [H]ospitals could soon turn to self-guided robots
to counteract financial and staffing shortages." July 6, 2004:
Germans
win 2004 football title - for robots. Reuters. "German
soccer fans, smarting over the nation's failure at Euro 2004, had
a little to cheer this week after German teams scooped two footballing
titles at the world robot championships, organisers have said. German
teams won the soccer titles for four-legged and small-sized robot
teams at the 'RoboCup 2004' held in Lisbon, where the Euro 2004
final was held on Sunday." July 6, 2004:
Virtual
Camp Trains Soldiers in Arabic, and More. By Margaret Wertheim.
The New York Times (no fee reg. req'd.). "Sergeant Smith is
not a real soldier, but the leading character in a video game being
developed at the University of Southern California's School of Engineering
as a tool for teaching soldiers to speak Arabic. Both the game's
environment and the characters who populate it have a high degree
of realism, in an effort to simulate the kinds of situations troops
will face in the Middle East. Talle is modeled on an actual Lebanese
village, while the game's characters are driven by artificial-intelligence
software that enables them to behave autonomously and react realistically
to Sergeant Smith. The Tactical Language Project, as it is called,
is being developed at U.S.C.'s Center for Research in Technology
for Education, in cooperation with the Special Operations Command.
... One of the tools the Carte team has developed is a virtual tutor
that uses artificial intelligence software to coach individual students
through the minefield of pronunciation. To do this, the researchers
have had to design speech recognition software tailored specifically
for language learners. ... Developing so-called intelligent agents
is currently a hot research topic and U.S.C.'s Information Sciences
Institute, where Carte is based, is home to world leaders in this
field. Two institute scientists, Dr. David Pynadath and Dr. Stacy
Marsella, have developed a program called PsychSim to model individual
and group behavior among agents." July 6, 2004:
Programmer
seems to have a technology that does everything. By Rachel Melcer.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch / STLtoday.com. "Steven Thaler, founder
of Imagination Engines Inc. in Maryland Heights, says he has a unique
challenge: figuring out what to do with a technology that does everything.
He and his supporters say his creation, a computer program called
the Creativity Machine, has huge economic potential. It could be
the first successful form of artificial intelligence, a machine
that learns and thinks by simulating the human brain's activity.
... Imagination Engines also is experimenting with spinoff companies
that license the core technology and adapt it for specific uses.
... The first spinoff, Synaptrix Financial Prediction LLC, was created
last year as a partner for Stann Financial. It aims to analyze a
real-time flow of information on trades in the financial markets
to predict the best time to buy or sell a particular stock. The
project showed early promise, reaching a 60 percent to 65 percent
accuracy rate, but it stalled over problems with the information
feed and the need to refine its programming, [John] Stann said.
... Synaptrix Parts Inspection LLC, another of his spinoffs, combines
an ordinary video camera with the Creativity Machine's neural network
and custom software to perform quality-control checks in manufacturing.
The system is 'shown' a variety of objects that it can learn to
instantly identify for sorting or to use as an ideal to spot defects
and variations. ... On the government side, Imagination Engines
is part of a consortium developing an airport-security system for
the Department of Homeland Security. The group recently got an 18-month,
$800,000 grant to design and test a series of smart sensors at an
airport in Butte, Mont. The system would be able to identify vehicles
on airport property, monitor them, spot and warn of suspicious activity,
Thaler said." July 6, 2004:
Evolution
could speed net downloads. By Will Knight. New Scientist News.
"Transferring popular data across the internet repeatedly can
be inefficient and costly, so networking companies have developed
ways of temporarily storing, or 'caching', data at different locations
to reduce costs and increase download speeds. But figuring out where
to store data and for how long is a complex problem. One solution
might be to have caches 'talk' to each other repeatedly, but this
is inefficient as it takes up a lot of bandwidth. To tackle the
challenge, Pablo Funes of US company Icosystem and Jürgen Branke
and Frederik Theil of the University of Karlsruhe in Germany used
'genetic algorithms', which mimic Darwinian evolution, to develop
strategies for internet servers to use when caching data. Using
a simulation they were able to improve download speeds over existing
caching schemes. ... Funes told New Scientist the scheme could eventually
be used to allow caches to automatically 'evolve' their configuration." July 5, 2004: Knowing
Their Politics by the Software They Use. By Steve Lohr. The New
York Times (no fee reg. req'd.). "The Web sites of Senator John
Kerry and the Democratic National Committee run mainly on the technology
of the computing counterculture: open-source software that is distributed
free, and improved and debugged by far-flung networks of programmers.
In the other corner, the Web sites of President Bush and the Republican
National Committee run on software supplied by the corporate embodiment
of big business - Microsoft. The two sides are defined largely by
their approach to intellectual property. Fans of open-source computing
regard its software as a model for the future of business, saying
that its underlying principle of collaboration will eventually be
used in pharmaceuticals, entertainment and other industries whose
products are tightly protected by patents or copyrights. ... Microsoft
and other American companies, by contrast, have long argued that intellectual
property is responsible for any edge the United States has in an increasingly
competitive global economy. ... For technology experts, like Mr. [David]
Brunton, software may have a political cast. But there is little evidence
that it has become an issue for front-office political operatives." July 5, 2004: Can
Computers Argue? Innovations Report. "The effectiveness of
argumentation-based negotiation (ABN) for computer agents operating
in multi-agent systems is assessed in a new paper co-authored by Professor
Nick Jennings of the School of Electronics and Computer Science at
the University of Southampton. Professor Jennings will be presenting
the paper next week in New York, at AAMAS 2004, one of the largest
conferences in the world of computer research. Agents are autonomous
computer systems increasingly used in a wide range of industrial and
commercial domains, including robotics, e-commerce, computer games,
and information retrieval. They are regarded as one of the most significant
new technologies in computer science--not only a promising new technology,
but also a new way of thinking, fundamental to the successful development
of the next generation of distributed, open and dynamic computer systems.
... 'Conflicts are inevitable in a multi-agent system,' says Professor
Jennings, 'in which autonomous entities pursue their own goals. If
the agents are to be able to resolve these problems -- which can arise
due to pressure on resources or as a result of conflicts of information
-- then ABN provides a meaningful interaction, enabling the agents
to work towards the best result.'" July 5, 2004: Real robots evolving slowly. By Lee Gomes. The Wall Street Journal / available from IndyStar.com. See: Robots that do simple jobs may be wave of future (June 28, 2004). July 4, 2004: Programming
doesn't begin to define computer science. By Jim Morris ["professor
of computer science and dean of Carnegie Mellon University's West
Coast campus"]. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "The tech meltdown
affecting computer jobs as well as stock prices, and the stories about
off-shoring of programming jobs, have caused a decline in computer
science enrollments at colleges and universities across the country.
This wouldn't happen if people understood the real goals of computer
science. ... The current approaches to computer science education
fail to teach the science of computing. As a result, they fail to
inspire the very best and brightest young minds to enter the field.
Computer science is faced with scientific challenges that rival any
in history, yet are relevant to practical problems of today. Computer
science involves questions that have the potential to change how we
view the world. For example: What is the nature of intelligence, and
can we reproduce it in a machine? ... Or, how can one predict the
performance of a complex system? ... Or, what is the nature of human
cognition.... Or, does the natural world 'compute'? ... Computer science
education is not just training for the computer industry. A computer
science program is a great preparation for many careers: business,
law, medicine, biology -- any field touched by computing. ... How
does computing fit into the world? The computer is becoming the interface
between people and their world. Computer scientists must know enough
history and social science to chart and predict the impact of computers
on the intersecting worlds of work, entertainment and society. To
do this, they must understand the modern world and its roots. To participate
in today's debates about privacy, one must understand both computers
and society." July 4, 2004: His
quest - Do Disney in a day. By Larry Bleiberg. The Dallas Morning
News / available from Mickey News. "Rich Vosburgh worked out
hard, spending four months with a personal trainer. He scrutinized
maps and a detailed timetable. He even deployed a secret weapon: artificial-intelligence
research to chart a course through death-defying drops, torrents of
water and fiery heat.And when this Texas adventurer clambered out
of a floating log a year ago, he had reached his holy grail: visiting
- in a single day - each of the 41 operating rides, attractions and
shows at the Everest of theme parks, Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom.
His time: a record 10 hours, 40 minutes. ... At heart, the challenge
is an enduring and perplexing quandary: What's the most efficient
way to route someone to multiple places, taking into account constantly
changing conditions? Logistics and timing Mathematicians call it the
Time Dependent Traveling Salesman Problem. The answer could help fighter-jet
pilots chart bombing targets or freight companies schedule package
deliveries." July 3, 2004: Hallowed
halls open to tomorrow's leaders. By Andy Cheng. South China Morning
Post (subscription req'd.). "An increasing number of university
faculties are running workshops and even residential camps in order
to entice future students to their particular subjects. ... Primary
students will benefit from various university offers. A total of 104
will take part in the five-day 'Super Summer 2004' to be held at Baptist
University beginning on July 19, which includes lessons in artificial
intelligence, drama, sports and joining an outdoor camp on Lantau
Island." July 3, 2004 [issue
date]: Let
software catch the game for you. By James Randerson. New Scientist
Magazine (Computers that understand the action are compiling highlights
packages - page 24). Software that can identify the significant events
in live TV sports broadcasts will soon be able to compile programmes
of highlights without any help from people. The technology will save
broadcasters millions in editing costs - and should eventually lead
to new generations of video recorders that will let people customise
their own sports highlights packages. But developing software that
understands sport is no easy task. ... Anil Kokaram and colleagues
at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland are among the teams trying to
turn the idea into reality. ... The Trinity team's PC-based software
uses the edges of the table and the positions of the pockets to work
out where the balls are on the table. The software has the rules of
the game programmed in, so it can track the moving balls and work
out what has happened. ... Carlo Colombo and colleagues at the University
of Florence, Italy, are trying out another idea. They found that they
can compile highlights from soccer footage without tracking the ball
or the moving players. ... Ahmet Ekin, a computer scientist from the
University of Rochester in New York, may be close to solving that
problem. He has designed software that looks for a specific sequence
of camera shots to work out whether a goal has been scored." July 3, 2004 [issue
date]: Robotic
wheels that just keep rolling. By Will Knight. New Scientist Magazine
(Shape memory keeps robots rolling - page 22). "A gaggle of miniature
robots are falling over themselves in a Japanese lab. But they are
not malfunctioning: it is the way they have been designed to move.
The wheel-shaped robots, which are just 4 centimetres in diameter
and 1 centimetre thick, were built by Shinichi Hirai and Yuuta Sugiyama
at Ritsumeikan University in Kusatsu. The robots propel themselves
along by continuously altering their shape. ... For now, the Japanese
team is happy to have demonstrated deformability as a new form of
robot locomotion. Their main aim was to show that you do not need
rigid bodied crawler robots or wheeled vehicles to move over rough
ground." July 2, 2004: In
Czech, 'robot' means drudgery. By Dan Kincaid. The Arizona Republic
/ available from deseretnews.com. "Question: Where do
the terms 'robot' and 'robotics' come from? Answer: In 1921,
as social upheavals shook Europe in the aftermath of World War I,
Czech playwright Karel Capek's play 'R.U.R.,' for 'Rossum's Universal
Robots,' premiered in Prague. The play told of artificial humans,
or robots, created solely to be slave workers. 'Robot' comes from
the Czech word 'robota,' meaning 'forced labor, drudgery, servitude.'
... The late Isaac Asimov (1920-92), the prolific author of science
fiction and books popularizing science, claimed credit for 'robotics'
as a term for the science and technology of robots." July 2, 2004: SUNY
Oswego To Host First-Ever Technology Camp. Baldwinsville Daily
News. "The first-ever SUNY Oswego Technology Camp, Aug. 9 to
13, will aim to help fifth through eighth-grade students plug into
problem-solving exercises while learning about advanced technology.
Sponsored by the SUNY Oswego department of technology, the camp will
offer daily sessions on topics including robotics, digital imaging,
flight and computer-aided design. ... 'Robotics: Machines in Action,'
taught by Mark Hardy from 9 a.m. to noon, will allow students to build
robots and learn about how robots see and work. ... There are multiple
goals behind starting this program at Oswego. 'One is to introduce
as many children as possible to technology to make them more technologically
literate,' [Judith] Belt noted. 'The second is that we want to introduce
both genders to technology. From some reason, many girls feel that
technology is not for them. So we're trying to show this is not the
case and to create some diversity.'" July 2, 2004: The
shape of things to chomp on ... By Craig Brown. Evening News /
available from Scotsman.com. " Also, according to Frank Shaw,
chairman of independent think-tank the Centre for Future Studies,
the change in the UK's population demographic over the coming decades
will have a profound effect. 'We are becoming an older society, which
brings more affluence and sophistication and people will exercise
their wish for more choice and convenience. ... The next 50 years
will see a more accelerated rate of change and, in the long term,
technology will change things seriously. You are talking about artificial
intelligence, we'll have robotics and nanotechnology that will allow
us to create unthinkable products. It takes us into the realms of
science fiction. For instance, it could come to the point where your
kitchen is run by robots, who carry out all the food preparation and
take care of your dietary needs, or ovens that prepare food purely
on your say-so.'" July 1, 2004: EDA
and AI - How automated can EDA get? By Geoffrey James. Electronic
Business. "Ten years ago, if you had asked a panel of EDA [electronics
design automation] pundits whether we'd still be doing hand layout
and hand tuning in 2004, they would have laughed in your face. Back
then, artificial intelligence (AI) was expected not only to fully
automate layout but also to automate all stages of the chip development
process. ... This is not to say that AI isn't useful for chip design.
Today's automated layout and placement programs use sophisticated
variations of maze routing, an AI technology that's also used in computer
games to navigate nonhuman opponents through virtual battlefields.
... Rather than chasing the rainbow of full automation, EDA vendors
have focused on incremental improvements to existing techniques." July 1, 2004: Battlefield
Robots Leap From Science Fiction to Reality. By Brian Handwerk.
National Geographic News. "Once the fantasy of science fiction,
battlefield robots are now a reality. 'The whole idea is to take the
war fighter out of harm's way,' Robin Laird said. Laird is supervisor
of the Unmanned Systems Branch of the U.S. Navy's Space and Naval
Warfare Systems Center (SPAWAR) in San Diego. 'In my mind, someday
we'll be doing battle with robots -- not killing people,' said Laird,
whose program serves all four branches of the U.S. military. ... Military
robots can be used for disposing of explosives, combat engineering
tasks like clearing mines or placing explosives, reconnaissance, detecting
nuclear and biological agents, and hazardous materials cleanup, among
others tasks. ... Though the goal is to disarm explosives without
detonating them, the loss of a U.S. $50,000-robot is seen positively.
'We have lost robots because we [were] doing inspections -- and that
makes us ecstatic,' Laird said. 'That means somebody didn't lose an
arm. That's why were doing this. So those losses are successes.'" July
2004 [issue date]: Homeland
Security as Catalyst - Innovative software firms are answering
the call from U.S. government agencies for advanced analytics to help
combat terrorism and criminal activity. What's the potential of this
software for strategic business applications? By Jesus Mena. Intelligent
Enterprise Magazine. "Ever heard of NORA? Or how about these
guys: InferAgent, CopLink, NameHunter, Bladeworks, and Sentinel? These
ominous-sounding fellows are products from tiny software firms that
are developing some of the most advanced analytic technologies today
for homeland security. Some provide solutions for the conversion of
garbled text into knowledge discovery. Others tend to the unearthing
of associations of individuals to actions, locations, and events from
hundreds of thousands of internal and external records. Still others
offer innovative methods for detecting fraud, categorizing foreign
names, and virtual, remote analysis of data or text from any database
in the world for agencies such as the U.S. Department of Homeland
Security's Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC). Given the growing
diversity and globalization of business enterprises, is it possible
that these innovative technologies, finding clear purpose for homeland
security, could also be of interest to private business enterprises?
In this article, I will describe some of these new technologies and
how they may be applied to your company today and tomorrow. Who
Are These Guys? Innovative products I mentioned at the beginning
are commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software -- a term favored by
military and government agencies -- originating from such companies
as Attensity, InferX, Infoglide, Knowledge Computing Corp. (KCC),
Language Analysis Systems (LAS), Searchspace, System Research & Development
(SRD), and others. Almost all have developed applications based on
artificial intelligence technologies to meet demand from first military
and intelligence communities, and now from the emerging homeland security
market." July 2004: Securing
the Space Arena. By John A. Tirpak. Air Force Magazine. "The
Air Force -- with mounting urgency -- is seeking new ways to protect
and preserve the nation's assets in space. ... Air Force leaders have
set a near- term goal of increasing the service's awareness of what's
happening in space at any given moment. This will enable it to know
whether a spacecraft is, in fact, under attack. At the same time,
the service has begun planning to field defensive and offensive space
systems to protect US satellites against an enemy assault and to disable
those of an adversary. ... USAF has proposed three different steps
to improve space situational awareness, said [Col. Susan J.] Helms.
... A third element in USAF's situational awareness approach would
aid the attempt to differentiate between natural phenomena and a man-made
attack but it is also 'characterized as a defensive counterspace program,'
she said. It is called Rapid Attack Identification, Detection, and
Reporting System (RAIDRS). The system is not a separate spacecraft.
Rather, it is a program to develop 'decision-making tools specifically
for the goal of recognizing an attack on a satellite,' said Helms.
RAIDRS would be integrated on an existing satellite or those in development
to provide 'extra artificial intelligence elements' to the data available
to the satellite controller, she explained. USAF plans to have the
capability ready in 2007." July / August 2004:
Computing
Gets Physical - Gadgets that let you control computers with a
wave or a nod could offer an escape from keyboards and mice. By David
Kushner. Technology Review. "This is GestureStorm -- a software
system Cybernet developed to let weather broadcasters run through
their forecasts with simple flicks of the hand. No wires. No buttons.
No geeky audiovisual control panels. Move a hand one way, and you
paint raindrops on-screen. Move it another, and you stir up a tornado.
The interface is completely a matter of gesture. And if a lot of people
have their way, this is only the beginning. Gesture recognition technology
aims to become this millennium's remote control -- a fluid, freeing
means of interacting with all the digital stuff around us. Think Minority
Report. In that film, Tom Cruise stands before a futuristic digital
display, pointing and waving his way through a cascade of images and
documents. This stuff, once the domain of science fiction, is finally
creeping into the real world." July 2004: I,
Robocop - Will Smith raps about busting bot outlaws, his secret
geek past, and the future of thinking Machines. By Jennifer Hillner.
Wired Magazine (Issue 12.07). "Will Smith is science fiction's
leading man. ... In July, the high tech bad boy goes back to the future
in I, Robot as a police detective investigating a murder allegedly
committed by a bot. Driving through Manhattan's West Village in his
black SUV, the former Fresh Prince admits he's all about getting geeky
with it. ... [Q] Like when you were recruited by MIT, but didn't
apply. [A] Yeah. I never had any intention of going. My mother
graduated from Carnegie Mellon. She was very serious about college,
but I wanted to rap. [Q] Can you imagine what your life would
have been like if you had gone? [A] I would have made a billion
dollars and been broke by now. ... [Q] I understand Proyas asked
the entire cast to read Ray Kurzweil's The Age of Spiritual Machines.
What did you think of the book? ... [Q] Where do you think
robotics is headed? [A] I think that machines will definitely
get to the point that they become intuitive. Or they become what appears
to be intuitive. In some 7-Elevens, they have intuitive programming
for the surveillance cameras. They recognize the mannerisms of people
who steal and become intuitive with who they follow. That's very scary.
Some people could say, That's not intuition, that's programming. But
at some point, after it catches nine out of ten people who are stealing,
something works. [Q] Do you worry about Big Brother watching you?
..." July 2004: Rise
of the Machines - Isaac Asimov turned androids into pop culture
icons - and invented the science of robotics in the process. Now his
classic I, Robot hits the big screen. By Cory Doctorow. Wired Magazine
(Issue 12.07). "This July, [Alex] Proyas turns again to his favored
genre with I, Robot , an adaptation of Asimov's nine-story
collection of the same name. "This is the definitive movie about robots,"
says Proyas. 'It's the most faithful cinematic reworking of Asimov's
stories to date, true to the spirit and ideas, yet reenvisioned.'
The film takes place in Chicago in the year 2035, just as the NS-5
automated domestic assistant comes to market. The all-purpose personal
robot is expected to have such wide appeal that it will shift the
ratio of humans to bots from about 15 to 1 to 5 to 1. But the release
is tarnished when an NS-5 named Sonny is accused of murder. Detective
Del Spooner, played by Will Smith, is assigned to track down the killer.
As with all of Asimov's stories, the movie revolves around his Three
Laws of Robotics, a set of rules governing android behavior. The central
mystery: How could a robot programmed not to harm a human actually
commit murder? Isaac Asimov wrote some 500 novels and short stories
in his lifetime, and more than a thousand nonfiction essays. ... He
penned dozens of stories devoted to androids with positronic
brains, a term he invented to suggest an intelligent being, and coined
the neologism robotics in the process. ... [H]e set out to
reform the robot's bad rap, by making machines an example of how the
world could be bettered through the mastery of technology. It embodied
his hope for a rational, humanist way of being - the best and the
worst of what it means to be a hairless ape. The robot was artificial
intelligence in a man's shape, a foil for asking what it means to
be human and what rules should govern us. With optimistic flourish,
he believed robots could serve as an example of man's potential."
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