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December 31, 2006: Shaping our future along with robots.
Interview by Tomoko Otake. The Japan Times Online. "Yoshiyuki Sankai is a professor of engineering at Tsukuba University in Ibaraki Prefecture and a front-runner in the field of "cybernics," which combines robotics with a wide array of academic disciplines, including neurology, information technology, behavioral science and psychology. ... [Q] What do you think will happen to Japan's robotics in the mid-term? [A] I think by 2020, robots and robotic technologies will be fully integrated in our lives. In 2008 and 2009, the first waves of new technologies will arrive, which will make people feel like, 'Wow! Is this happening already?' ... [Q] In the mid- to long-term future, some experts say Japan's population will fall so much that robots and immigration will not compensate enough for the loss in output. What is your view on that? [A] In most manufacturing businesses, robots are already doing the work of humans. ... ... [Q] How do you foresee robotics in, say, 2050? ... " December 31, 2006: Mike Myers: Intentional Man of Mystery. By Ed Leibowitz. The New York Times. "Mike De Luca, who approved 'Austin Powers' while president of production at New Line Cinema, is producing the third and perhaps most tentative of the current [Mike] Myers projects. Titled 'How to Survive a Robot Uprising,' it is an adaptation of an obscure tongue-in-cheek survival guide by Daniel H. Wilson, who wrote it while a Ph.D. candidate at Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute." December 31, 2006: Creators of computer program that estimates 'criminality' win prize. By Rebecca Anna Stoil. Jerusalem Post. "Recognizing the potential impact of computer technology on the criminal justice system, Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter awarded the ministry's 2006 prize to a research team that developed a program to aid judges in sentencing fairly. Professors Uri Schild and Ruth Kanai created the program which uses artificial intelligence to present a criminal's entire history and estimates his relative 'criminality' while his sentencing is being discussed." December 29, 2006: Robots That Fill an Emotional Vacuum. By Joel Garreau. The
Washington Post (page C01). "Comes now the minor miracle of The Week After Christmas, 2006.
These are the days when liberal-arts majors finally crossed the line, falling into an emotional relationship with a real robot. Not one on a movie screen, but one that scoots around their ankles, scaring the bejesus out of their cats -- isn't that fun to watch -- while actually being quite useful. ... It's a Roomba, an artificially intelligent floor-vacuuming 'bot, and this is the year mountains of them rumbled off the shelves not just of nerdistans like the Sharper Image and Brookstone, but of mainstream players like Costco, Sears and Target. ... No less an authority than Bill Gates announces in the current issue of Scientific American that 2007 is the year the robotics industry will take off the way the personal computer industry did 30 years ago. 'Some of the world's best minds are trying to solve the toughest problems of robotics,' he writes. 'And they are succeeding.' ... [T]he vast majority of Roombas get named, according to [Colin] Angle." December 28, 2006: Completing the mentor circuit - Tech entrepreneurs give back by supporting their alma mater's robotics team. By Larry Rulison. Times Union. " [Brendan] Brader and [John] Reyes, both 25, are graduates of Shenendehowa and were members of the school's robotics team, known as Team 20: The Rocketeers. Founded in 1992, it was one of the first robotics teams created through FIRST, or For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology. Now that they've become successful in business -- Brader and Reyes say their two homegrown ventures make millions of dollars each year -- they help support the Shen team, donating $20,000 this year and a lot of their time. Since 2004, they have given a total of $80,000. 'It's just kind of cool to be on the other side of the program,' Reyes said. 'Now we're the mentors.' The two friends say the robotics team helped them develop the skills that allowed them to start their businesses. HostRocket.com hosts Web sites for businesses and individuals; ViaTalk is an Internet phone business. 'It definitely helped steer us in that direction,' Brader said. And at a time when U.S. academic and political leaders are decrying a lack of interest in math and science by high school students, the two say robotics teams can help reverse that trend." December 27, 2006: Robots to 2006: Domo Arigato. Year in Review: It was a year of more ups and downs as robotic potential increased. By Eydie Cubarrubia. Red Herring. "[T]here were an awful lot of studies and discoveries -- and even a few products -- that showed robots are getting closer to the sci-fi ideal of aids to humans’ daily living. Sure, some beloved 'bots were put to pasture. And some so-called news was more silly than scintillating. Furthermore, the year 2006 began and ended on less-than-stellar reports. But advances in toys, teaching aids, and military tech showed that the pursuit of artificial intelligence, and mechanical sensors that can put that intelligence to use, continues to advance. What follows is a timeline of robots in this year’s news -- the good, the bad, and the silly. ..." December 26, 2006: Artificial Intelligence Gets City Students Real Results. By Sara Stefanini. City Limits Weekly. "Sitting at a cafeteria table in Harry Truman High School in Co-op City, surrounded by his teammates as they waited for their turn to compete next door in the gym, 13 year-old Andy Dujon enthused about the life of a robotics contestant. 'Oh, I love it,' said Dujon, an eighth-grader at Pablo Casals Middle School in the Bronx. 'I love the competition, the technology, being able to look at something you created. It’s satisfying to see it do what you want it to do.' ... In his second year on the Lego robotics team, Dujon competed earlier this month in a Bronx-wide FIRST LEGO League tournament, part of an increasingly popular afterschool program in which students team up to build robots. ... Brandeis University researchers interviewed current and alumni team members from high schools in lower-income areas of New York and Detroit, including Morris Academy. The 2005 study, More than Robots, showed that 99 percent of participants graduated high school and 89 percent went to college, whereas only 65 percent of students nationwide go on to higher education. The program also encourages the study of math, science and engineering." December 26, 2006: Robots take over science contests - More than 30,000 students from five nations competed this year. By Steve Tarter. PJStar.com. "Robots aren't just toys found under the tree. They are also at the heart of the fastest-growing science competition in the world. The battle for the best 'bot began in 1992 with 28 teams duking it out in a New Hampshire high school gym. This year, 1,700 teams with more than 30,000 students representing the five countries and for the first time, Peoria, competed. The FIRST Robotic Competition was the brainchild of Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway human transport. ... It's not just high schoolers who are competing for technical recognition. Even the elementary and middle schoolers can get in on the fun with Lego League, a junior version of FIRST Robotic Competition. Rather than using metal parts, they use Lego pieces." December 26, 2006: Real robots - Researchers move ever closer to making mechanical versions of us. By Jen Gerson. TheStar.com. "[M]ost researchers can envision functional robots within a decade, even if they're only available to the very rich. They'll be able to open our doors, prepare our meals, answer the phone. They'll be able to care for the sick, clean up toxic waste, fly military aircraft and search for mines. They'll work for us. ... More roboticists are working on mechanical brains over silicon beauty. And as our understanding of our own intelligence develops, researchers are finding ways to make our robots smarter and more useful. Roboticist David Hanson of Texas says that giving robots human features is necessary, for our sake and for the sake of the souls of our creations. For baby boomers, who will soon be requiring quality nursing care and will also have the added income to purchase help around the house as they age, the picture of a human-friendly robot can't come soon enough. 'The computational and software capabilities (of robots) are going to be beyond human capability by 2025,' Hanson predicts. Robots now may be idiot savants, but '20 years from now, they're going to be a very effective member of the human family.'" December 25, 2006: Korean Will Go Into Space in 2008 - 2 Astronauts Picked for Training. By Kim Tae-gyu. The Korea Times. "In 2008, either a male Samsung researcher or a female Ph.D. student will travel into space, something no Korean has done before. In a gala ceremony broadcast nationwide on SBS television Monday, the Ministry of Science and Technology picked a pair of candidates, one of whom will rocket to the International Space Station 15 months from now. The winning pair are Ko San, 30, a researcher at the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology, and Yi So-yeon, 28, who is working on a Ph.D. at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). 'I am charged with such an important a task. I will do my utmost to complete the mission,' said Ko, who specializes in artificial intelligence at the Samsung institute." December 24, 2006: Rights for robots. Editorial. STLtoday.com [St. Louis Post-Dispatch]. "Did you yell at your computer the last time it crashed? Did you bang on the keyboard or slap it upside its big one-eyed head? Well, you'd better apologize to it. Such behavior is so 20th century. Get ready for the day when your computer may charge you with harassment. A new study commissioned by the British government sees the day coming when computers will have legal rights. ... With all respect to the British government, we don't think we'll ever find ourselves lining up at the voting booth behind an intelligent weed-whacker chatting with a vacuum cleaner. Still, computers today judge our credit worthiness, help diagnose illnesses and pilot airplanes and automobiles." December 24, 2006: 2006 - a vintage year for ideas that will change our world - Thanks to some truly original thinking - on subjects as diverse as the web and global warming - mankind stands on a glorious threshold. Comment by Will Hutton. The Observer / Guardian Unlimited. " ... This is but the precursor of web 3.0, when the architecture will become yet more sophisticated. Search engines will no longer list data; they will answer your questions. ... Machines and human beings, [Ray Kurzweil] argues, are on a convergent course. Machines will increasingly assume human characteristics and humans the facilities of machines. Kurzweil even dares to believe that via three 'ibridges' - bio-engineering, artificial intelligence and new foods - human beings will keep death at bay. Chips in our brains and bodies will freeze the ageing process and via the successors to web 3.0 ensure that everyone will be at the frontier of knowledge." December 24, 2006: TV trivia. By Jay Bobbin. Chicago Tribune Metromix. "10) Spielberg completed 'A.I.: Artificial Intelligence' (2001) for another noted filmmaker who initiated the project before his death. Name him." December 23, 2006: But is it (robot) art? By Celeste Biever. New Scientist (Issue 2583; subscription req'd). "Max Chandler art studio is more chaotic than most. It's not that he is disorganised: the mess is down to the team of brush-wielding robots that help him paint his pictures. ... 'It's a new form of art,' says Sherry Turkle, a sociologist and psychologist who studies the impact of technology on culture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 'It can be partly shaped by human intentionality and partly be an elaborate dance, a negotiation with a robot.' Robotic art dates back to 1973, when Harold Cohen, a British artist who is now professor emeritus of visual arts at the University of California, San Diego, developed a computer program called AARON that composed portraits of people and objects without human help. ... Still, some people might find the idea of robotic art disconcerting, says Douglas Irving Repetto, curator of the annual ArtBots exhibition in New York and an artist at the city's Columbia University. He thinks it will continue to be accepted by galleries and museums, though." December 23, 2006: Will robots ever become just like humans? Asked by Chuck Schroeter, answered by Dr Stephen Juan. The Register. "We are getting very close to building an almost human-like robot. However, we will never be able to build a completely human-like robot since robots will never be able to biologically reproduce. Other than this, theoretically, robots could look, act, think, and feel like humans in every way. There are only technical problems that need to be overcome in achieving this. ..." December 23, 2006: We'll all be cyborgs someday, scientist says - British professor foresees day when most people will be implanted with computer chips. By Don Melvin. The Austin American-Statesman. "A cyborg is a mixture of man and machine. And cybernetics is the study of communication and control between humans and computers. [Kevin] Warwick, 52, presides excitedly over the apparent chaos at the university's MAD lab. (The name stands not for madness but for Mobile Autonomous Devices.) ... Warwick acknowledges that the technology raises ethical questions. In the hands of a malign government, he said, it could be used to horrendous effect. But it can be used to good effect as well, he said." December 23, 2006: Robotics team draws interest - Trojans seek to top last year's regional runner-up finish. By Amy Bartner. IndyStar.com. "Sure, Center Grove High School is known for its athletics. But there's a new team with a budding reputation at the high school. It's the Red Alert Robotics Team, and after landing a second place at Purdue's regional robotics competition with a goal-shooting robot, Revolver, it's hoping for more this year. ... Team adviser Summer Ehresman, who also is a computer programming teacher, was approached two years ago by parents wanting to start a robotics team. ... Ehresman and the team applied for a two-year grant from NASA. Team Red Alert won the grant and received $6,000 last year and another $6,000 this year for competition fees and the robot's basic kit." December 23, 2006: Learning center coming to town. By Rick Stouffer. Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. "'Two years ago, we had a handful of people, now we have 30, and by the end of 2007, we should have 50 to 60,' [Louis A.] Piconi said. 'Today, 30,000 school students in 14 states and 175 school districts are using our products.' ... Apangea [Learning]'s hybrid tutoring utilitzes a software program that uses artificial intelligence to pinpoint learning problems, which is reinforced by a human tutor." December 22, 2006: Robots of the Future - There's much in store for our artificially intelligent friends next year. By Duncan Graham-Rowe. Technology Review. "Robot racers. First there was the DARPA Grand Challenge, a robotic contest for building a driverless car capable of successfully completing a 132-mile off-road course. In November 2007, DARPA will throw down the gauntlet once again in the form of the Urban Challenge. ... Safety. Safety will likely be high on the agenda for roboticists in 2007. As the number of robots entering our homes, either as service robots or for entertainment purposes, increases, so, too, do the chances that these droids might advertently harm us. ..." December 21, 2006: Readers' Q & A with David Deutsch. NewScientist.com news. "Thank you for sending so many excellent questions for David Deutsch. His answers to the best questions are below. See the original interview, here. ... From: Jeff L Jones ... 4) Do you think we will ever have conscious computers, whether quantum or classical? If so, how long do you think it will be? I am sure we will have them, I expect they will be purely classical, and I expect that it will be a long time in the future. Significant advances in our philosophical understanding of what consciousness is, will be needed." December 21, 2006: How Much Does SETI Require Robots? By Adrian Brown. SPACE.com. "A compelling theme in science fiction is the potential of humanity to create life and the hazards arising from such an endeavor. Perhaps Frankenstein was the first popular tale of a mad scientist creating havoc when the beings he created went haywire. ... In each artificial life creation story, there is always a cautionary line - questioning the right of humankind to create a consciousness that would otherwise not be present in our universe. Let us inspect that theme philosophically to gauge its true value to us today. ... How is this relevant to SETI? Of course, it has been stated by many authors (even in this column) that when we make contact with alien beings, they may be the robotic progeny of beings similar to ourselves." December 21, 2006: Robots are honored in Japan. By Hiroko Tabuchi. The Associated Press / available from The Mercury News. "A feeding machine and a furry, therapeutic seal - both designed to make life easier for older people - were among robots honored at a government-sponsored robotics award ceremony in Japan on Thursday. ... Also awarded Thursday at the lavish Tokyo ceremony was a mammoth, automatic vacuum-cleaner-on-wheels that uses elevators to travel unaided between floors, designed by Fuji Heavy Industries. ... Robots are seen in Japan as one way to deal with a rapidly aging population and combat an impending labor shortage."
>>> Robots, Assisitive Technologies, Applications December 21, 2006: Defence Minister to Inaugurate New Campus of CAIR in Bangalore. Press release from the Press Information Bureau, Government of India. "The Defence Minister Shri AK Antony will inaugurate the new campus of the Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (CAIR) at Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) complex, Bangalore tomorrow. ... The Intelligent Systems technologies development at CAIR primarily helps it in keeping abreast of technological advances in the fields of Artificial Intelligence & Neural Networks, Computer Vision, Signal Processing, Robotics, and Virtual Reality. The CAIR is also working on core technologies for unmanned and autonomous navigation of mobile systems. Both wheeled/tracked and legged miniature mobile robots have been developed. ... CAIR has also developed and provided a number of technological solutions/products for the civilian sector. Some of these are Automatic processing of handwritten application forms, Intelligent wheel chair for the physically challenged persons, SCARA Robots for educational institutions, Laparoscopic surgery trainer and Robots for non destructive testing." December 20, 2006: WPI to offer robotics engineering degree. Boston Business Journal. "Worcester Polytechnic Institute will offer the nation's first bachelor's degree program in robotics engineering starting next fall. The major will be a joint effort of the computer science, electrical and computer engineering, and mechanical engineering departments, involving 20 faculty and staff members. The program is expected to attract 40 to 50 students a year." December 20, 2006: Vision of life in the middle of the century. By Clive Cookson. Financial Times [FT.com]. "The Horizon Scan covers a vast range of science and technology, politics, economics and society - from internet crime to robotics, banking to the computer-brain interface, stem cell research to 'grey power' in an ageing population. And it is intended to do far more than feed a human curiosity about what life may be like for our children or grandchildren. Sir David King, the government's chief scientist, argues horizon scanning will have a powerful influence on policy-making - and not only in Whitehall. 'Although it was designed as a tool for government, I believe it will also have a broader use across the private sector,' he adds. ... Although the future is not predictable, 'government can't just sit back and wait for it to happen', he says. 'Government has to identify opportunities and risks at least five to 10 years ahead when making policy. It can then make decisions that might move us from an unfavourable to a favourable scenario.'"
>>> The Future, Robots, Ethical & Social Implications, Science Fiction; also see this related article December 20, 2006: U.S. turns to tech for translators - Government seeks to bolster thin ranks of language specialists. By Richard Willing. USA Today. "Intelligence agencies and the military are turning to technology developed for call centers, sporting events and television shopping channels to compensate for an ongoing shortage of qualified translators, interviews and public documents show. In Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, the Defense Department's research arm is testing portable translation devices that allow English-speaking soldiers to hold conversations with Iraqis. ... Much of the spending is classified, but available public contracting and budget documents show that the Pentagon has at least $22 million to spend this year on research. In November 2005, the Pentagon announced $26 million worth of contracts for translation software." December 19, 2006:
I think, therefore I am, I think. The Economist. "Darwin XI can do a lot. It can, for example, learn to navigate mazes in search of rewards, in the way that a laboratory rat does. It can develop preferences, thanks to a pleasure centre that generates what Dr [Gerald] Edelmann calls good taste in response to those rewards. And it can forget those preferences if they are no longer rewarding.
...
So is Darwin XI conscious? Well, it cannot speak, so no one can ask it. But the answer probably depends on whether you think a rat is conscious. That illustrates a big part of the problem of consciousness: no one can agree on who has it, let alone what it is. In fact, the questions are linked. There is a general feeling that what is special about humans is to do not with their being clever, but their being conscious in a different way from most other animals.
One feature of human consciousness that students of the field suggest might be unique is an awareness of self." December 19, 2006: Pluggd: A Google for Podcasts. By Eliot Van Buskirk. Wired News. "Pluggd has found a way to index podcasts, talk shows and other spoken-word content. The company's service then allows users to search the audio files for specific words. ... Acoustic speech recognition technology has been around for years -- companies such as Podzinger, blinkx and Podscope have used it to build similar products -- but it's only part of the Pluggd picture. To understand Pluggd's potential, you need a quick peek under the hood. ..." December 19, 2006: Sligo students in robot design competition. Sligo Weekender. "Students from Ursuline College, Sligo are one of 44 teams across the country who will participate in ‘RoboCup Ireland 2007’. ... RoboCup, which has been running internationally since 1997, challenges students to foster artificial intelligence and robotics research in order to prepare their robot to take part in one of the three disciplines." December 19, 2006: UK report says robots will have rights. By Salamander Davoudi. Financial Times [FT.com]. "Far from being extracts from the extreme end of science fiction, the idea that we may one day give sentient machines the kind of rights traditionally reserved for humans is raised in a British government-commissioned report which claims to be an extensive look into the future. Visions of the status of robots around 2056 have emerged from one of 270 forward-looking papers sponsored by Sir David King, the UK government’s chief scientist. The paper covering robots’ rights was written by a UK partnership of Outsights, the management consultancy, and Ipsos Mori, the opinion research organisation. ... The idea will not surprise science fiction aficionados. It was widely explored by Dr Isaac Asimov, one of the foremost science fiction writers of the 20th century. He wrote of a society where robots were fully integrated and essential in day-to-day life. ... Robots and machines are now classed as inanimate objects without rights or duties but if artificial intelligence becomes ubiquitous, the report argues, there may be calls for humans' rights to be extended to them."
>>> Robots, The Future, Ethical & Social Implications, Science Fiction; also see this related article December 19, 2006: Face-hunting software will scour web for targets. By Tom Simonite. NewScientist.com news. "A search engine that uses sophisticated facial recognition to allow users to identify and find people in online images will launch next month. But civil liberties groups say the biometric-style tool could compromise the privacy of anyone who has their picture online."
>>> Information Retrieval, Biometrics (@ Image Understanding), Ethical & Social Implications, Applications, Chatbots (@ Natural Language Processing) December 18, 2006: What if your laptop knew how you felt? Researchers train computers to 'read' emotions, which could help with teaching, security, people with autism -- and cranky users. By Cristian Lupsa. The Christian Science Monitor. "Faces reveal emotions, and researchers in fields as disparate as psychology, computer science, and engineering are joining forces under the umbrella of 'affective computing' to teach machines to read expressions. If they succeed, your computer may one day 'read' your mood and play along. Machines equipped with emotional skills could also be used in teaching, robotics, gaming, sales, security, law enforcement, and psychological diagnosis." December 18, 2006: Conscious computing debated at MIT anniversary event - Will there ever be such a thing as artificial intelligence? That question was argued by two prominent US ICT industry figures recently. By Nancy Weil. Computerworld. "Inventor Ray Kurzweil and Yale University professor David Gelernter spent much of the session debating the definition of consciousness as they addressed the question, 'Are we limited to building super-intelligent, robotic "zombies," or will it be possible for us to build conscious, creative, even "spiritual" machines?' ... Kurzweil and Gelernter ... focused on how Turing’s test could be applied. Kurzweil’s position was that machines will, in fact, some day pass the Turing Test, because modelling of parts of the brain is already leading to the ability to replicate certain human functions in a machine. ... [Gelernter's] not buying it because logically any machine that is programmed to mimic human feelings, which are an aspect of consciousness, is programmed to lie because a machine cannot feel what a human feels." December 17, 2006: Nature inspires maker of 'Robosapiens.' By Kevin Voigt. CNN. "[Mark] Tilden found fame as head of robotics research for the Los Alamos National Research Lab in the United States, doing robotic designs for NASA and mine-sweeping robots for the U.S. military. ... He has gone on to develop the most popular line of high-tech toys in recent years: Robosapiens, interactive robots that react to their environment and even communicate -- and spontaneously attack -- one another. ... Tilden talked to CNN about his newfound toy success and the future of robotics. ... CNN: Will your robots grow smarter in the future?Tilden: All of our robots are completely hackable. We have designs that make robots walking, talking and seeing -- but thinking? I'm hoping my smart AI friends or someone out there will find a way to marry the two. ... CNN: What are you working on in the future? Tilden: ... Robots have a bad rap, they're either evil creatures in movies or something you blow up in video games. We're hoping the Robosapiens will change that attitude and pave the way for larger robots." December 17, 2006: Caught in the swarm - How Hanoi's chaotic traffic system fascinated, and almost killed, MIT computer-science guru Seymour Papert. By Matt Steinglass. The Boston Globe [boston.com]. "The fields of computer science and education suffered a blow on Dec. 5, when Seymour Papert, the 78-year-old cofounder of MIT's Artificial Intelligence Lab, was struck by a motorbike in Hanoi. Papert, who had come to Hanoi for a conference on teaching math with computers, remained in a coma as of Friday. Strangely, shortly before the accident, Papert had been discussing how to build a computer model of Hanoi's notoriously chaotic traffic. He found it an interesting instance of a theme closely associated with his work: 'emergent behavior,' or the way that large groups of agents following simple rules, with no central leader, can spontaneously create sophisticated systems and activities. ... Papert's involvement in emergent behavior grew out of Logo, a child-friendly programming language he invented in the 1970s for teaching math."
>>> Multi-Agent Systems, Education, Transportation, Agents, History, Languages; also see these related articles December 17, 2006: Mind Over Matter - Is the human brain a beautifully calibrated computer? Richard Restak reviews The Emotion Machine, Commonsense Thinking, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future of the Human Mind, by Marvin Minsky. The Washington Post (page BW12). "Writers about the human mind generally fall into three camps: philosophers, psychologists and others who weave elaborate theories about the mind without any reference to the brain; neuroscientists who attempt to link mind matters with brain states; and, finally, members of the computer science and artificial intelligence (AI) communities who suggest that it's possible to replicate human thinking in a machine. Marvin Minsky, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an early pioneer in developing artificial intelligence, is an eminent denizen of the third camp."
>>> Cognitive Science, Common Sense, Emotion, AI Overview, Philosophy, Neuroscience, Nature of Intelligence December 17, 2006: Impersonal History - Are your past, present and future a figment of someone else's imagination? By Joel Achenbach. The Washington Post (page W11). "Back when I was a kid, the future was so much simpler, because we knew we were going to be space travelers. ... But now I'm looking at the 50th anniversary issue of New Scientist, which is full of big thinkers making predictions about the next 50 years. They don't talk much about space. Their future is more radical and, literally, mind-blowing: What we call the mind will be just another thing to manipulate. ... There are many predictions involving artificial intelligence. ..." December 16, 2006: Do androids dream of electric cars? By Erin Baker. Telegraph. "Asimo, Honda's androgynous little android, which is appearing in its own TV commercial to extol the wonders of Honda technology. ... Few Britons were even aware of Asimo until yesterday, but it's actually a 20-year-old work in progress.... [W]hat's the point of Asimo? Why doesn't Honda simply stop messing around with robots and pour all that time and money into making its cars even better and cheaper? The answer is that if it wasn't for Asimo, the new CR-V wouldn't have its collision mitigation or adaptive cruise systems, because both came of engineers playing with their mechanical friend. ..." December 16, 2006: Man and Machines - 'Robotics' exhibit to open today. Display at Science Museum to demonstrate types of robots and the mechanisms that help them function. By David Rogers. PalmBeachDailyNews.com. "Robots are everywhere -- hiding in plain sight. That's reality, not the plot of a cheesy B-movie from the 1950s. While robots are commonly perceived as machines with the shape and mannerisms of humans, most robots bear no resemblance to Lt. Data, the android in 'Star Trek: The Next Generation' or to David, the eternally young robot in Steven Spielberg's 'AI: Artificial Intelligence.' ... Robots come in many shapes and sizes. They assemble cars in Detroit, allow people with vocal damage to communicate, dispose of bombs for police SWAT teams, test thousands of potential drugs simultaneously for biotech firms, vacuum floors without supervision and, in the form of a red fuzzy toy named Elmo, tickle children's funny bones." December 15, 2006: Gifts for an Eight-Bit Holiday - Working replicas of vintage computers speak to the geek in us all. By Evan Koblentz. Technology Review. "The newest offering is VintageTech's Linux-powered reproduction of the legendary Digital Equipment Corp. PDP-1 minicomputer. There are free online emulators, but that won't give you the full experience. Before computers had monitors, a machine's main form of output was a panel of blinking lights, or 'blinkenlights,' in geek parlance. This model doesn't disappoint. You could program the computer to teach your child algebra, but it's far more festive to play the 1961 classic game SpaceWar! First developed by MIT artificial-intelligence researcher Steve 'Slug' Russell, SpaceWar! is widely considered the first two-player digital computer game." December 14, 2006: New system solves the 'who is J. Smith' puzzle. Penn State Live. "Penn State researchers have developed an automated system that can determine which 'J. Smith' is authoring papers on computer science -- the one who teaches at Penn State or the one who teaches at M.I.T -- as well as whether 'J. Smith' is John Smith, Jane Smith, Joanna L. Smith or James H. Smith. ... 'The system works by using machine-learning methods to cluster together names that the system believes to be similar. If you think there’s another parameter that's relevant, you can change the algorithm and include it,' [ C. Lee] Giles said. The system is explained in a paper, 'Efficient Name Disambiguation for Large-Scale Databases,' presented at the recent 17th European Conference on Machine Learning and the 10th European Conference on Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Databases in Berlin. ... The algorithm will be a part of the next generation CiteSeer, the largest academic search engine for computer and information-science literature. Giles was co-creator of CiteSeer when he was at NEC." December 14, 2006: Our Sixty Minutes with Bill Gates. Steve Rubel's Micro Persuasion blog. "Q) What would you be looking at today if you were an independent entrepreneur? A) Something dramatic like artificial intelligence. Biology. Energy." December 14, 2006: The Most Human Game. By Fred Waitzkin. Forbes.com. "[I]n 1997, Kasparov played his rematch against Deep Blue, the strongest chess computer on the planet. Kasparov had beaten the machine one year earlier.... The match was held in New York City and was billed as the contest that would ultimately answer the big question: what is the most intelligent thinking machine on the planet? Chess, with its great beauty, layered strategies and psychological gambits, was the testing ground to resolve this issue. At the time, many of us were uncomfortable or even incredulous at the prospect that a machine might actually beat a man at this uniquely human game. The machine won, of course. ... Going in, Kasparov had recognized that in a test of sheer calculating power he would lose, so he guided the computer into openings and unclear positions where intuition and strategy would decide games more than number crunching. ... The computer killed Kasparov with patience and psychology more than brute force--or at least that was how Kasparov experienced his beating. ... The fact that the new World Champion Vladimir Kramnik blundered terribly and lost his million-dollar match last week against the Deep Fritz laptop computer...." December 14, 2006: V-Reps To Takeover Jobs Of Agents - Evolving virtual representatives pose threat to call centre agents as they take away standard jobs. By Priyanka Bhattacharya, EFYtimes.com. "Call centre companies are constantly looking to reduce expenses and improve margins. They may have just found a way. Or a virtual personality to be precise. There is an emerging trend in the call centre industry where more and more companies are employing what are called the V-Reps or Virtual Representatives. They are automated online personalities (software) that emulate the best in human customer service by providing personalised and immediate answers to customer questions via two-way natural language dialogue. ... Globally, companies like Convergys, GlaxoSmithkline, Ford Motors, Amtrax, Deutsche Telecom, Coca-Cola, Bank of America and others have been using v-reps to handle certain customer queries. ... Whether or not they are assigned human names, these v-reps are actually robots or, more specifically, human-relationship-emulating bots that are powered by artificial-intelligence software." December 14, 2006: New surgical center is a big technological cut above the rest. By Erin Bryant. Capital News Service / available from Gazette.Net. "The movie magic that allowed Gollum to lurch across the screen in the Lord of the Rings films or capture the great ape’s naturalistic movements in the remake of King Kong is now being used in operating room research and training. This special technology used by animators to record movement is just one of the high-tech advances being used at the new Maryland Simulation Training and Innovation Center that was due to open Dec. 7 at the University of Maryland Medical Center. ... The center is a product of the collaboration of a variety of experts -- computer scientists, electrical and biomechanical engineers, artificial intelligence experts, cognitive psychologists and medical personnel from the U.S. military. The motion-capture technology used in the center is so new that is has never before been used in a medical setting; was created for the center by the Lord of the Rings team." December 14, 2006: Robo-music gives musicians the jitters - Realtime has never played Broadway, but touring shows and 'Les Miz' in London use it. By Gregory M. Lamb. The Christian Science Monitor. "The Venice (Fla.) Little Theater has a tiny orchestra pit, with room for only a handful of players, and a modest budget. So when it mounts a big musical like "Beauty and the Beast," it brings in an electronic ringer. A laptop computer, loaded with a program called OrchEXTRA, serves as a 'virtual orchestra,' from strings to woodwinds, drums to horns, giving the music such a rich sound that audience members may wonder how a full Broadway orchestra fits into the tiny pit. ... Virtual orchestras - computer programs that can vary dynamics and tempo and follow the singers on stage and the music director's baton - are changing the music world. ... Music students benefit, too. ... [Christopher Raphael's] Music Plus One system, under development for 13 years, begins with a recording of an orchestra playing the piece, minus the solo. Computer programming allows the orchestral accompaniment to 'listen' to the soloist and follow. The program also uses predictive programming, based on the player's previous playing style and past rehearsals, to anticipate what to do next. ... Virtual orchestras have yet to pass the musical version of the 'Turing test' - Alan Turing's 70-year-old test for how to tell when a computer's artificial intelligence has become indistinguishable from that of human intelligence. ... Concern about virtual orchestras, [Vicky Smolik] says, is 'a big thing' with her union members, 'from New York to Los Angeles ... and everywhere in between.' ... Raphael, a former member of the musicians' union, says he's 'totally opposed to the musicians' union position' against the virtual enhancement of orchestras. 'Ultimately, what they do ends up giving the world less music, not more music,' he says." December 13, 2006: Robotic hand has a built-in 'slip sense.' By Tom Simonite. NewScientist.com news. "An artificial hand built in the UK has fingertip sensors that let it grasp delicate objects without crushing or dropping them." December 13, 2006: Kevin Warwick - The ITWales Interview. By Sali Earls. ITWales.com. "[Q:] The idea of cybernetics sounds a bit like science fiction to many. How would you define your subject?[A:] Cybernetics is historically defined as controls and communications in humans and machines, and for me in the subject that really involves humans and technology interacting in many ways. Particularly in biomedical areas - the use of technology for medicine, and helping people in one way or another - but also looking at all sorts of technological entities from a systems point of view, and how it operates when a human is in the loop. So, this includes things like robotics and artificial intelligence - one of my main interests. It does overlap with science fiction. I think science fiction in this area particularly is looking to the future, to the world of intelligent machines, and questioning how that compares with human intelligence; and the world of cyborgs - cybernetic organisms - part human, part machine which is tremendously exciting and something I'm keen to get involved with more and more." December 13, 2006: When computers write obits. By Jonathan Skillings. News.blog from CNET News.com. "Ilya Yashin is very much alive, despite the best efforts of an AI program that wanted him dead. Not that the software had malicious intentions, mind you. It was really all a big misunderstanding, you see. The trouble started with a pun in a headline in a Russian newspaper, according to the blog VeryRussianTochkaNet. The linguistic trickery was misread by the artificial intelligence program used by Russian search engine Yandex to analyze news stories and then automatically generate profiles of politicians and other notable folks." December 13, 2006: Robots at the Olympics. By Jeni Bone. Cosmos Online. "The Olympics have come to the Gold Coast - the Robot Olympics, that is - where school-age prodigies from around the world have converged to show off their skills in making metal, plastic and circuitry race, dance and play soccer. ... It's fun and it's frenetic. The competition is ferocious, and it's not solely about robots as toys. 'Children are our future and we need to start them early with the logic, the principles and programming associated with robots so that their interest in technology grows with them,' explains Julia Chang, spokesperson for the Korean sponsor company, Kaimax. ... Jun Jo, from local Griffith University's School of Information and Communication technology, says the Australian Federal Government must invest more in robotics and fostering an understanding of the jobs that require them. ... 'People think robots are a thing of the future, but they are all around us now,' says [Peter] Turner. ... RoboCup, an international project aimed at universities and industry to promote artificial intelligence and robotics, is another forum where fun is converted into practical applications for the future." December 13, 2006: Instant messaging goes intelligent advertisement. By Liz Tay. PC World. "'Is it possible to train machines to understand the way humans write and speak naturally, and to be able to then visualise people's ideas?' asks Sydney start-up Morf Interactive Communications when designing its artificial intelligence technology. The company answers its own question with the MOJI Intelligent Messenger (MOJI IM), a three dimensional instant messaging application with intelligent virtual pets to enhance users' communication online. Built from artificial intelligence technology initially developed by researchers at the University of New South Wales, MOJI IM uses an interactive heuristic engine to extract meaning, emotional nuances and syntax from what users type or say." December 13, 2006: Hong Kong's Immigration Department is a paragon of high-tech. Bangkok Post. "Apply for a work permit or residency visa in Hong Kong in the near future, and your application will be processed using artificial intelligence rather than a human being. It's all thanks to the continuing high-tech wave that is sweeping through Hong Kong, particularly with regard to e-government. Assistant director for information systems at Hong Kong S.A.R.'s Immigration Department Raymond Wong explained in an interview how a series of high-tech solutions that had allowed his department's head count to remain constant at around 8,000 over the last 10 years -- despite a four-fold increase in the number of people entering and leaving Hong Kong. ... And by the end of 2006, Wong's team will have rolled out APPLIES -- the Application and Investigation System. All applications for visas and work permits will be filed digitally, with the processing done by an 'e-brain' that uses both artificial intelligence and case-based learning, just like a human brain. Initially, difficult cases will be handled by an officer, but the computer will learn and the next time the case could be approved automatically."
>>> Law Enforcement, Machine Learning, Case-Based Reasoning, Expert Systems, Biometrics (@ Image Understanding), Applications December 12, 2006: Microsoft unveils public robotics software - Software giant takes the wraps off its first commercial operating system for robots, with ambitions of taking a central role in a broader robotics industry. By Stefanie Olsen. CNET News.com. "Microsoft on Wednesday plans to take the wraps off its first commercial operating system for robots, with hopes of paving the way for a broader robotics industry and taking a central role in its development. The technology, called Microsoft Robotics Studio, is a Windows-based software platform designed to make it relatively simple to program robots--real or simulated. Compatible with several different pieces of hardware, like iRobot's Roomba or LEGO Mindstorms NXT 'tribot,' the software lets enterprising gadget hounds command a device to communicate, send alerts or perform scheduled tasks." Also see the related photos.
>>> Robots (@ Software & Hardware), Robots, Resources, Industry Statistics December 12, 2006 [print date]: Manufactured Marines follow digital orders - Swarms of digital extras use artificial intelligence systems. By Peter Debruge. Variety.com. "[S]oftware pioneered for 'The Lord of the Rings' and 'Troy' can create swarms of convincing digital extras (or 'autonomous agents') using artificial intelligence systems that make their own decisions. 'We're not trying to micromanage the exact behavior of thousands of sentient beings,' says Digital Domain vfx supervisor Matthew Butler, who used a program called Massive to re-create the amphibious assault on Iwo Jima by 30,000 Marines, for Paramount's WWII film 'Flags of Our Fathers.' 'What you're doing,' Butler explains, 'is creating a brain that makes lower-level decisions on when to activate specific strategic maneuvers and how to blend between them.'" December 12, 2006: Microsoft Research goes to school - Technology alone won't solve U.S. tech education woes, says Rick Rashid, head of Microsoft Research. Newsmaker interview by Martin LaMonica. CNET News.com. "At a panel discussion, [Microsoft Research chief Rick] Rashid said that it's 'reasonable to start panicking' about the low number of computer science engineering students graduating from U.S. colleges and universities. During the conference, Rashid spoke to CNET News.com about how Microsoft's work with universities casts some light on how technology can enhance learning through social experience and hands-on participation."
>>> Computer Science, Education, Resources for Educators, Interfaces, Interviews December 11, 2006: Of Ants, Dolphins, And Search Technology. By Autumn Davis. webpronews.com. "Cambridge-based search technology group Autonomy is 'thinking beyond the spider', with it's newly developed tools that mimic the behavior of army ants. ... The new IDOL software mimics the behavior of ants by leaving a trail of information, allowing future searches to find the most recent and relevant results, said Autonomy's Chief marketing officer Nicole Egen. Egen also stated that, 'We hope that our combination of spider and ant technology will bring together the efficiency of spiders with the ant's capacity to bring back fresh data.' ... Using the knowledge gained from research with dolphins and their uncanny ability to locate and recognize objects, 'DolphinSearch set the standard for accuracy in electronic document discovery,' according to representatives of the site." December 11, 2006: Top tech movies - baseball bots and more. By Tom Simonite. NewScientist.com news. "Ball-batting bot - A robot arm with impressive baseball batting skill has been demonstrated by Japanese researchers. Two videos show the arm hitting any ball pitched by a human.... Voice-directed animation- Software that lets animators bark commands at virtual actors - just like Hollywood directors do to human actors - is being developed by Canadian computer scientists. The system lets an operator direct animated characters through a combination of voice commands and mouse clicks. A video shows characters responding.... Crowd counter- Software capable of counting the number of individuals within a crowd, be they people or insects, has been developed by UK researchers. Videos show the system...." December 11, 2006: Students having fun with science and technology. By John Anderson. The Baxter Bulletin. "Fourth- to eighth-grade students came from across Arkansas and neighboring states to Mountain Home Saturday for a test of science ability -- and they liked it. To host the FIRST LEGO League regional championship tournament, The Bomb Squad robotics team of high school students transformed the Mountain Home High School Gymnasium into a futuristic setting for the event. Each of 33 teams had spent months refining a robot's design so it could perform six tasks more efficiently than the other groups' machines. ... The robots, made with a combination of toy Lego blocks, gears, wheels and a computerized "brain," navigated around a table filled with the six challenges. No remote controls were necessary, as computer programming directed the machines. ... [T]eams that hoped to advance to the world championship event this June in Atlanta had to demonstrate knowledge of nanotechnology, this year's topic, in a group presentation." December 11, 2006: From Reuters, Automatic Trading Linked to News Events. By Jeremy W. Peters. The New York Times. "Today, the Reuters Group begins selling two trading services that allow subscribers to set up automatic trading orders based on the news. ... The mining and sifting of news take place in computers dedicated to algorithmic trading; that is, automatic buying and selling based on complex mathematical formulas that aim to pick the optimal time to trade a stock. ... A third of all stock trades in the United States were driven by automatic algorithms last year, some studies estimate." December 11, 2006: Software ferrets out likely fraud in on-line auctions. The program seeks patterns that suggest the likelihood that certain transactions will not be carried out in good faith. By Joe Mandak. The Associated Press / available from The Los Angeles Times / also available from USAToday.com. "Carnegie Mellon University researchers are using an old adage to develop anti-fraud software for Internet auction sites like EBay: It's not what you know, it's who you know. ... The CMU software looks for patterns of users who have repeated transactions with one another, and alerts other users that there is a higher probability of having a fraudulent transaction with them. ... Online auction fraud -- when a seller doesn't deliver goods or sells a defective product -- accounted for 12% of the 431,000 computer fraud complaints received last year by Consumer Sentinel, the Federal Trade Commission's consumer fraud and identity theft database. Auction fraud was the most commonly reported computer fraud on the database." December 11, 2006: NIH Funds Are for Research. By Brandon Keim. Wired News. "'It's a mistake not to fund the long-term research,' said Elisa Eiseman, a senior scientist at the nonprofit RAND Corporation. 'It's that blue-sky, high-risk research that yields very amazing discoveries.' Private-sector scientists tend to focus on quick payoffs, so it's up to the NIH [National Institutes of Health] to support research that may take decades to yield results. And while many scientists say too much NIH money goes to safe, short-term research, there's still enough left over for the cutting edge. Much experimental work involves making new tools for inspecting living bodies at the cellular level, where processes remain mysterious. Below is a summary of promising science.... National Cancer Institute researchers also used an artificial intelligence program to analyze the protein patterns of finger-prick blood samples for early signs of ovarian cancer -- an endeavor that private companies wouldn't likely have the luxury of pursuing." December 11, 2006: Computers to fix themselves. By Anna Salleh. ABC Science Online. "The next time you email the IT help desk, you may find yourself dealing with a computer, not a human. If a new system that Australian researchers are developing takes off, 'intelligent' computers will generate their own answers to your queries. The research by computer scientists Dr Yuval Marom and Professor Ingrid Zukerman of Monash University in Melbourne will be presented at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Hyderabad, India next month. 'Help desk operators are generally dealing with the same thing over and over again,' says Marom. And he says many emails can be answered by mixing and matching parts of generic responses, which the researchers' software will generate." December 11, 2006: Celebrating the creator of Cobol. By Mark Ward. BBC News. "The 100th anniversary of the birth of programming language pioneer Grace Hopper was celebrated on 9 December. Widely credited as being the 'mother' of the Cobol [COmmon Business Oriented Language] computer language her work was hugely influential. Even now if you take cash from an ATM, renew the MoT on your car or file your taxes, a Cobol program will handle some of the work involved. ... Her inspiration was to create a computer language that read more like real English rather than the tortuous machine code used by many other programming languages of the time." December 10, 2006: The 6th Annual Year in Ideas. The New York Times Magazine. "This month, as in the past five Decembers, the magazine looks back on the passing year from a distinctive vantage point: that of ideas. ... :"
>>> Cognitive Science, Robots, Smart Houses, Vision, Image Understanding, Assistive Technologies, Sports, Applications; also see these related articles: Device warns you if you're boring or irritating, and Elevators get smart December 10, 2006: Yes, in fact, there is accounting for taste - Web sites strive to cater to your likes. By Chris Emery. baltimoresun.com. "Sometimes you find a video-store clerk who knows exactly what movie you'll like. Or a clerk in a music store who senses your taste in bands. Or a bookworm who can deliver one terrific novel after another from the shelves. Marc Pickett wants to take luck out of that equation. And win a million dollars in the process. ... In October, [Netflix] offered a $1 million prize to anyone who could develop a program 10 percent more accurate than its current recommender, known as Cinematch. A chance at that chunk of change set thousands of programmers around the country, including Pickett, to work on the problem. ... The UMBC team hopes to submit the results of its first trial by the end of the year. 'Winning the $1 million would be nice,' Pickett said, 'but we're really after the bigger prize: artificial intelligence.'" December 10, 2006: Thinking about the human mind. Book review by William S. Kowinski. San Francisco Chronicle (SFGate.com). "Science may begin with wonder and strives ultimately for understanding, but as a practical matter, science is interested in how to do things. Physics formulated a few simple laws (governing how falling bodies behave, for example), which enabled engineering and technology to develop. So when some scientists set out to create intelligent machines -- 'machines to mimic our minds' -- Marvin Minsky writes, they looked for simple laws that govern how our brains work. They didn't find them, he argues, because our brains are 'complicated machinery' and we need 'to find more complicated ways to explain our most familiar mental events.' Humans adapt to different environments and situations because our brains are resourceful -- we have lots of different ways to solve problems, and if one doesn't work, we can switch to another. This book is about what Minsky believes those processes are." December 9, 2006: N.H. company's smart robots are on patrol around the world. By David Tirrell-Wysocki. The Associated Press / available from Boston.com. "A growing army of 'relentlessly reliable' robots is at work around the world, patrolling warehouses -- with eyes in the backs of their heads that can 'see' in the dark -- carrying items in a steel plant, helping make computer chips and even acting as museum tour guide in London. Varied as those tasks are, they barely scratch the surface of the possibilities, as MobileRobots Inc. CEO Jeanne Dietch sees it. ... Unlike reconnaissance robots that police or the military direct by watching video images and operating a joystick, MobileRobots units can patrol an area continuously and return to a docking station to wait for new tasks or to recharge. ... Dan Kara, who keeps tabs on the newest developments for Robotics Trends Inc., in Upton, Mass., said Dietsch's company is a leader in the move away from robots that act merely as machines to those that act as co-workers. The goal is building robots that not only interact with people, but with other robots or home networks." December 9, 2006: Robots express their artistry - Hopkins students create machines that create art. By Brent Jones. baltimoresun.com. "About 19 [Johns Hopkins University] engineering students did their part to break down the wall, building machines that could watercolor with the best 9-year-olds, spray-paint like a graffiti artist, and design, as M&M proved, with the precision of a graphics artist. It was the second time in the past three years that Allison Okamura, an instructor in the school's engineering department, had asked her students to use robots to create art. She wanted them to pursue the idea that machines are capable of creation - which, apparently, many of the students have come to believe. ... '[Can Dinsky] was created to express itself,' said [Jonathan] Lasko, a senior. 'It's controlled in the sense that we programmed it, but it is not controlled in the sense that we have no idea what it is going to do.'" December 8, 2006: DARPA raises stakes for urban robot race. By Stefanie Olsen. CNET News.com. "DARPA has granted prize money of $3.5 million for its milestone urban robotics race next November, a far cry from its previously planned trophies. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has approved prize money for the first three finalists of its 2007 Urban Challenge after a confusing twist in the government agency's right to grant monetary awards, organizers said Friday. DARPA will now grant $2 million for first place, $1 million for second and $500,000 for third. ... Despite the prize money, the teams will undoubtedly have a hard time finishing the 2007 Urban Challenge, the first race of its kind."
>>> Autonomous Vehicles, Transportation, Grand Challenges, Robots, Competitions (@ Resources for Students) December 8, 2006 [release date]: Transcript of a Speech Given by NASA Deputy Administrator Shana Dale at the AIAA 2nd Space Exploration Conference (December 5, 2006). Available from SpaceRef. "[W]e see the Moon not as a brief rendezvous, but as an outpost. Our objective is to create an enduring, sustainable human and robotic presence that will open up vastly greater opportunities for science, research and technological development. ... Clearly, a sustained presence will mean refining the science of recycling bio-waste to near 100% efficiency. I mentioned the water that we may find in permanently shadowed craters on the Moon. These craters are located in polar areas and have temperatures that hover around a chilly 40 degrees Kelvin. How do you extract the water, if it is there, under such conditions? One assumes with robots. But such daunting terrain, with temperatures close to absolute zero, will demand extraordinary advances in robot technology, including artificial intelligence. The terrestrial market for robotics is just beginning to take off. The need for lightweight, autonomous robots for support of the elderly and handicapped, industrial applications, and rescue and hazardous conditions is clear, but the applications for near-intelligent robots are really almost infinite." December 8, 2006: Robot Navigation - Interview with Raja Chatila. Talking Robots podcast. "Dr. Chatila is a professor at the Laboratoire d'Analyse et d'Architecture des Systemes (LAAS) in Toulouse, France, which is part of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientific (CNRS). He is very well known for robot control and navigation, and has designed robots that walk, drive and fly in outdoor environments, on factory floors, inside the home, and on extra-terrestrial planets. His research interests include robot understanding of space, objects and situations, robot decision making, and robot learning and interaction. He is currently working on projects that involve assistant and companion robots (COGNIRON) and on planetary rovers (EDEN)." December 8, 2006: Rise of the robots. By Therese Poletti. The Mercury News. "Rosie the Robot, the friendly housecleaning bot in the 'Jetsons' TV cartoon, is still a wistful dream for those who hate housecleaning. This holiday season, though, some consumers may get their first glimpse of what a here-and-now household robot can do when they see the Roomba robot vacuum on sale in many stores. ... IRobot, founded by three roboticists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for now has a significant advantage. The company started out developing military robots. Its autonomous mobile robots now search buildings and caves and other dangerous areas in war zones such as Iraq and Afghanistan. From there, after a brief flirtation with the toy market, iRobot went into the home. In 2002, it launched the Roomba. As the cost of sensor chips fell, the company added more sensors for better dirt detection and a base so the Roomba can return to recharge. In October 2004, units surpassed 1 million. A year later, iRobot went public. IRobot will not disclose much about the technology used in its home bots, but the company has developed its own navigation and artificial-intelligence software." December 8, 2006: Man v machine (and guess who won). By Stephen Moss. The Guardian | Guardian Unlimited Sport. "When the Deep Blue supercomputer beat world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997, it was seen as a huge blow for the human race. Some say Kasparov never recovered from the defeat, and he lost his title three years later to his protege, Vladimir Kramnik. Now Kramnik himself has been beaten by a computer and, if anything, the defeat should be even more humbling for mankind. ... [H]e has lost to a program which in its basic form retails at £36.50. Surely this really is the end of chess, and possibly the beginning of the end for the human race too. ... In any case, the reality is that this is not the end for chess. As John Saunders, editor of British Chess Magazine, has suggested, it could be a new beginning." December 7, 2006: Lederberg receives Presidential Medal of Freedom. Rockefeller University Newswire. "President Emeritus Joshua Lederberg is one of 10 recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civil award, President George W. Bush announced today. ... In 1947 Lederberg joined the faculty of the University of Wisconsin, and in 1959 he moved to the Stanford University School of Medicine, where he founded the genetics department and also served as a professor of biology and computer science, pioneering the area of artificial intelligence. ... In addition to the Nobel Prize and the Medal of Freedom, Ledeberg has received numerous awards, including the 1989 National Medal of Science." December 7, 2006: New stealth plane for BAE. Blackpool Today. "Aerospace bosses today unveiled the latest unmanned stealth plane to be developed on the Fylde. Staff at BAE Systems in Warton are celebrating after clinching a £124m contract with the Ministry of Defence to develop the Taranis. It is the latest Unmanned Air Vehicle (UAV) to be developed by BAE. ... It will be equipped with stealth equipment and an 'autonomous' artificial intelligence system." December 7, 2007: I, Robot Bartender. By John Borland. Wired News. "[T]his week's Roboexotica Festival, which bills itself as the world's leading exploration of cocktail robotics. ... What's happening here is not just art, not wholly technology, but an intoxicating mixture of the two that manages to comment on both while still pouring a (sometimes) decent drink. ... Roboexotica is the brainchild of a group of Viennese techno-artists called Shifz, which started the event in 1999 reasoning that if robots were ultimately supposed to interact with humans in everyday life, then turning them into bartenders was a natural step. ... Roboexotica isn't a directly practical event, [David] Calkins says. Consumers who want an automatic drink-pouring machine can already get one. But the problems and techniques that students and hobbyists confront here help move the field forward, he argues. 'The goal is to make robots that are interesting, as well as do something interesting,' Calkins said. 'Once all the robotics researchers here and elsewhere have worked out all the basic problems, that's when it takes off, and robots wind up in every household.'"
>>> Robots, Applications December 7, 2006: From sci-fi to sci-fact - What do mobile phones, the internet and Nasa's announcement that it plans to build a moon base have in common? They were all foretold by science fiction. By Steve Tomkins. BBC News. "Science fiction has had a mixed record in predicting the present - or 'the future' as they called it back then. ... Robots too are a reality, although far from commonplace. They make our cars, sweep our minefields, repair our space stations, although housework is still proving something of a blind spot." December 7, 2006: Munich International Airport deploys GeoVision License Plate Recognition Systems. Security Park. "The Munich Airport car parks are secured with GeoVision License Plate Recognition (GV-LPR) systems. ... The GV-LPR system can capture and recognize number plates from entrance and exit. The captured plate numbers will be processed and checked against the Comfort Parking site database. The whole process will take only a few seconds. If the numbers match the database, the fence will lift open to allow passage. ... GeoVision's GV-LPR system is a digital license plate recognition system that utilizes Neural Network Technology of artificial intelligence." December 7, 2006: MIT figure struck, injured in Hanoi. The Boston Globe. "Seymour Papert, a professor emeritus at MIT who is one of the pioneers of artificial intelligence and an authority on how computers can help children learn, was seriously injured after being struck by a motorbike in Hanoi, where he was attending a conference. ... Papert ... helped develop the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with Marvin Minsky. Their book, 'Perceptrons,' is considered one of the seminal works on the topic. Papert also helped create Logo, a programming language used to teach computer science."
December 6, 2006 [issue date]: Review of Biomedical Informatics: Computer Applications in Health Care and Biomedicine, edited by Edward H. Shortliffe and James J. Cimino, 3rd ed (Health Informatics Series), 1037 pp, New York, NY, Springer, 2006. Reviewed by Daniel Masys, MD. JAMA (2006;296:2624-2625; subscription req'd). "In the pages of this journal in 1990,[1(p1115)] Robert Greenes from Harvard and Edward Shortliffe from Stanford defined medical informatics as 'the field that concerns itself with the cognitive, information processing, and communication tasks of medical practice, education, and research, including the information science and the technology to support these tasks.' In that same year the first edition of the textbook Medical Informatics was published, edited by Shortliffe and assembled from chapters submitted by pioneers in the field. ... In addition to its primary audience of students who aspire to careers with the word 'informatics' in the job title, the text's accumulated wisdom and lessons learned can help educate any health professionals responsible for selecting information systems to be acquired and used in office and institutional settings." December 6, 2006: Chess Machine Defeats Man - Deep Fritz, a chess-playing computer, beats chess champion Vladimir Kramnik after upgrade. By Cassimir Medford. Red Herring. "The best human chess player in the world, Vladimir Kramnik, on Wednesday lost to Deep Fritz, a multiprocessor computer that plays and teaches chess. Deep Fritz won the six-game tournament by four points to two after winning the last game in Bonn, Germany. ... The Man vs. Machine chess battles have spurred the parallel development of new and improved hardware and software for decades. The Machine in the form of Deep Blue, IBM’s massively parallel AS 400, won its first victory in 1997 when it defeated Mr. Kasparov." December 6, 2006: Software sniffs out crime. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Business Brief. "A group of Carnegie Mellon University researchers has developed software for exposing online auction thieves who use Web sites such as eBay to steal money from consumers."
>>> E-Commerce, Fraud Detection & Prevention, Data Mining, Machine Learning, Applications; also see this related article December 6, 2006: Robots shoot, SIUE scores. By Georgina Gustin. St. Louis Post-Dispatch [STLtoday.com]. "A nerve-jangling, gut-wrenching morning of robotic competition ended Tuesday when Southern Illinois University Edwardsville's Team 17 ran up against Team 7's defensive ploy called 'The Wall.' And, as the winners basked in their glory, the crestfallen losers dismantled their "bots" and went home. The SIUE School of Engineering's Robot Soccer Shoot-Out was history. ... Earlier in the school year, the School of Engineering gave robot kits to 31 area high schools and invited them to build robots to compete against each other in a 'soccer' tournament in early November. The top 10 finishers from that competition advanced to Tuesday's event to play against teams of SIUE freshmen. The idea, school officials said, is to stimulate area high school students to pursue engineering careers -- which, they hope, will begin at SIUE -- while helping the freshmen decide which engineering specialty to choose. ... SIUE's outreach efforts appear to be working. During the past dozen years, enrollment has grown from 699 to about 1,200 students, many of whom come from area schools, and some of whom were inspired by competitions like this one." December 5, 2006: Bush's privacy watchdogs make public debut. By Anne Broache. CNET News.com. "At its first open meeting since it was conceived two years ago, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board heard more than three hours of tips for future action--and not all of it gentle--from advocacy groups, think tanks and academics of various political stripes. Of the 10 such representatives who spoke on panels at the meeting, many urged the group to probe more deeply into the constitutional issues surrounding electronic surveillance, data mining and swapping, and terrorist watch list programs conducted by the government." December 5, 2006: World chess champion loses to computer. The Associated Press / available from The Mercury News. "World chess champion Vladimir Kramnik lost his final game in a match against computer program Deep Fritz on Tuesday, ceding a hard-fought Man vs. Machine series 4-2." December 5, 2006: Computer-challenged elves need not apply. Perspective by Richard Schmalensee. CNET News.com. "The software in these toys is the real revolution. Their intelligence comes from a software platform that humans write in geeky languages like C++ or Java. String enough statements like 'IF i < n THEN' together cleverly and Elmo will go nuts. ... Software platforms will lie at the center of tomorrow's innovation." December 5, 2006: Parallel parking a pain? Your car can do it for you as auto-park systems arrive. By James R. Healey. USAToday.com. "David Cole, head of the not-for-profit Center for Automotive Research ... foresees more automatic functions as interest grows in automatic transportation, in which cars electronically communicate with roads and other cars to steer, hold steady speeds, avoid wrecks, make the correct turns and park themselves at their destinations. 'The intelligent highway system kind of vegetated along for a while, and now it's caught on again because the technology is here,' Cole says." December 5, 2006: Obituary - Jack Williamson, Last of the pulp SF novelists, he overcame chronic writer's block. By Christopher Priest. The Guardian. "With the death of Jack Williamson, at the age of 98, the last contact with the era of the American science fiction 'pulp' magazines has been broken. ... At the age of 18 he discovered the 'scientifiction' magazine Amazing Stories, then in its first year of publication. ... Within two years he had sold his first story, The Metal Man, to Amazing, and soon became a regular contributor to this and other titles which were springing up in the lively new market. ... [H]is novel The Humanoids was an early exploration of what is now known as artificial intelligence." December 5, 2006: Nuance enhances mobile speech recognition. By Liz Tay. PC World. "To enable 'natural language processing', Nuance's speech recognition technology analyses a collection of utterances from local call centre data in Australia, the US, and the UK. Using statistical and semantic language modeling, the system compares the data against what is said, to decide on the most probable function the user is trying to perform. 'It's semi-artificial intelligence,' Chidiac said. 'You can say exactly what you want, and the system will route you to the right area, or the right person and so on. You don't have to go through the various prompts.'" December 5, 2006 [issue date]: IT organisations gear up for milestone year in 2007. ComputerWeekly.com. "This year Computer Weekly and the National Computing Centre celebrated their 40th anniversaries, and the Parliamentary IT Committee marked its 25th year. Next year another batch of IT organisations celebrate similar milestones, including the British Computer Society (50 years), the Real Time Club (40 years), the BCS Elite group (25 years ), the Information Technologists Company (15 years) and IT4Communities (five years). The British Computer Society has planned a series of events and activities for its golden anniversary, ranging from a grand anniversary dinner in May to a children's code breaking competition." December 3, 2006: Ecommerce Sites Go Personal - Like.com., MyShape.com Use Technology To Help Shoppers Find What They're Looking For. By Larry Magid. CBS News. "Both Like.com and myShape.com are at the cusp of a new development which some people are calling 'web 3.0' -- a web of sites that can act of personal advisors using artificial intelligence to anticipate what people need or want based databases that truly understand the user. These sites may be primitive compared to what some people imagine, but they do offer us a glimpse of a future where each of us will have intelligent agents doing our bidding. In the meantime, I’ll be happy if I can just find the tools I need to get through my holiday shopping." December 3, 2006: Kramnik vs Deep Fritz: Game five ends in a fighting draw. ChessBase.com. "World champion Vladimir Kramnik had the white pieces for the last time in this match, and needed a win in order to have chances for an overall victory."
>>> Chess, Games & Puzzles, Competitions (@ Resources for Students); also see this related NewsToon December 3, 2006: If Andrew Ng could just get his robot to assemble an Ikea bookshelf, we'd all buy one. By Katherine Seligman. San Francisco Chronicle. "Most of us only dream about a robot that will pick up pizza boxes and assemble furniture, but Andrew Ng, an assistant computer science professor at Stanford, is building one. Leader of the STair -- or Stanford Artificial Intelligence Robot -- project, Ng, 30, believes every home eventually will have one. ... On the coming robot revolution- If you look in your house, many of us have robots -- the dishwasher, the dryer. I think the revolution in robotics will come when we can teach a robot to carry out a variety of tasks instead of specialized robots for specialized applications. On a key motivation of the project - To try to reintegrate all of the areas of artificial intelligence. Today there are groups that work on computer vision, object recognition, machine learning." December 2, 2006 [issue date]: Uncrewed aerial vehicles: no pilot, no problem? By Paul Marks. New Scientist (Issue 2580: pages 26-27). "The promise is fantastic: new generations of remote-controlled aircraft could soon be flying in civilian airspace, performing all sorts of useful tasks. They could monitor flood defences, keep criminal suspects under surveillance, give firefighters a bird's-eye view of blazes, search for people lost at sea, or provide wireless networks from on high. The reality is that a lack of radio frequencies to control the planes and serious concerns over their safety are going to keep them grounded for years to come. ... For autonomous aircraft to be used at higher altitudes, and for surveillance and inspection tasks, they will need their own range of frequencies that do not interfere with cellphone networks, TVs, Wi-Fi and air-traffic control. ... Even if the industry gets its act together in time for the 2011 conference, competition for the desired frequencies - probably between 3 and 10 gigahertz - will be fierce.... Similarly, a UAV on a collision course with another aircraft must behave as if it had a pilot on board. In such situations, conventional pilots obey an evasive-action order from an onboard 'traffic collision alerting system' (TCAS). Ultimately UAVs will probably respond automatically to these orders. The problem for now is that aviation regulators have yet to define precisely what they mean by 'equivalent', so UAV makers are not yet willing to commit themselves to developing collision-avoidance technology. ... [L]ast week the UN's International Civil Aviation Organization, based in Montreal, Canada, said its navigation experts would meet in early 2007 to consider regulations for UAVs in civil airspace." December 1, 2006: Samsung's gun-toting robot. CNET News.com photo essay. "Would someone please tell the folks at Samsung about Isaac Asimov's three laws of robotics? Specifically, the very first one, which says in its entirety: 'A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.' That's not at all the spirit of this machine-gun-toting robotic sentry that Samsung is working on. ... The robot uses pattern-recognition technology to sort out fleshy targets from nonhuman objects." December 1, 2006: 'Deis sophomore to release book in Jan. By Dina Fine Maron. The Hoot (Brandeis University's Community Newspaper). "What is human consciousness? If humans are just a collection of biological machinery, then what makes us distinctive and where does free will factor into this? These complex questions and more were addressed by Brandeis sophomore Eliezer 'Elie' Sternberg, whose book, Are You a Machine?: The Brain, the Mind, And What It Means to Be Human, is being released in early January. After reading an article by philosopher John Searle on the possibility of building conscious machines in his junior year of high school, Sternberg was inspired to write a paper for his junior English class, which he then submitted to Prometheus publishing between his junior and senior years of high school. Prometheus expressed interest in his 20-page paper, but told him to expand on it. ... Teuber summarized the draft, stating that 'the various chapters address a number of topics in cognitive science, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, and philosophy of mind and range from "What is consciousness?" to discussions of John Searle's "Chinese Room Experiment," as well as the theories of Dan Dennett, David Chalmers, Bert Dreyfus, Paul Churchland, and others.'" December 1, 2006: World chess champion Vladimir Kramnik defends tenaciously to draw computer Deep Fritz. The Associated Press / available from The International Herald Tribune. "World chess champion Vladimir Kramnik defended tenaciously and held computer program Deep Fritz to a draw Friday in the fourth game of the Man vs. Machine match." December 1, 2006: The Seoul of a New Machine. By Quinn Norton. Wired News. "'Someone said that men make robots because they can't have babies,' says Naveen Kuppuswamy, gesturing across his cluttered lab to where an 20-inch high mechanical biped stands inert on a center table. 'That's our baby.' ... KAIST's Robot Intelligence Technology, or RIT, lab is most famous as the home of the Federation of International Robot-soccer Association, FIRA, the robotic soccer league. But beyond the easy crowd appeal of robotic sport, the researchers here are far more enthusiastic about a different creation -- one that lives in the wires and silicon woven throughout the walls of this building: a 'software robot' they call Rity. Rity is the ghost in the machine: an autonomous agent that can transfer itself into desktop computers, PDAs, servers and robotic avatars, and adapt and evolve like a genetic organism." December 1, 2006: What Comes After Web 2.0? - Today's primitive prototypes show that a more intelligent Internet is still a long way off. By Wade Roush. Technology Review. "To see how these ideas may evolve, and what may emerge after Web 2.0, one need only look to groups such as MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, the World Wide Web Consortium, Amazon.com, and Google. All of these organizations are working for a smarter Web, and some of their prototype implementations are available on the Web for anyone to try. ... But none are ready for prime time. The first category of projects is related to the Semantic Web.... A second category of post-Web 2.0 projects focuses not on helping machines understand the meaning and the uses of existing Web content, but on recruiting real people to add their intelligence to information before it's used. The best known example is Amazon Mechanical Turk...." December 2006 [issue date]: MoMA Roboto. By Brian Ashcraft. Wired (Issue 14.12). "Robothink, Japan's first bot museum, opened its doors this fall. The 28,000-square-foot facility is housed in a former used-car dealership in Nagoya. From Robby to Aibo, the droid depository features dozens of actual automatons, plus replicas of real and fictional bots." December 2006 [issue date]: Profile - Physics Meets the Brain - How Terry Sejnowski went from a grad student in theoretical physics to computational neuroscience's White Knight. By Karen Hopkin. The Scientist. "Although his eye was on the brain, in the early part of his career Sejnowski focused more on machine learning and artificial neural networks. While a junior faculty member in the department of biophysics at Johns Hopkins University in the mid-1980s, Sejnowski and Geoff Hinton invented the Boltzmann machine, a logical network that can train itself to solve problems. In some ways the network works like the brain, handling data by tweaking the strength of the connections among its many nodes. ... Sejnowski's most striking work on learning algorithms, however, made its debut at a workshop on computational neuroscience held in Woods Hole in 1984. There, Sejnowski unveiled NetTalk, an algorithm that allowed a computer to teach itself to translate written text into speech. ... By weaving together theory and experimentation, Sejnowski effectively launched the field of computational neuroscience." December 2006 [issue date]: Just Charge it. IEEE Spectrum. "At Robot Kitchen, in Hong Kong, robots greet, seat, and feed patrons. Robot No. 1, which bears more than a passing resemblance to Rosie the robot maid from 'The Jetsons,' has a touch-screen interface to take customers’ orders. Robot No. 2 uses its built-in tray to deliver orders." December 2006 [issue date]: Is Your Car Smarter Than You Are?- The computing power of the family car has grown exponentially. The question is: Do we like it? By Ben Stewart. Popular Mechanics. "[O]ver the past several years and without most of us noticing, that control has been migrating from the driver to the driven. Antilock brake systems (ABS), which were introduced in 1978 and became widespread in the '80s, marked the first of the car-overrides-driver technologies. ... There is little question that the rise of computerized controls has made cars safer. ... As technology continues to develop, the next logical step is to design a vehicle that decides if an accident is imminent and automatically takes drastic action to prevent it. ... Lexus will debut an intelligent cruise-control system in the spring of 2007 that uses two forward-facing cameras along with millimeter-wave radar to detect not only large metallic objects in the road (like cars), but also smaller, fleshy ones-like humans. A third camera observes the driver's face; if the camera sees the operator is not looking ahead at danger, the system sounds an alert." December 2006 [issue date]: Me Translate Pretty One Day - Spanish to English? French to Russian? Computers haven't been up to the task. But a New York firm with an ingenious algorithm and a really big dictionary is finally cracking the code. By Evan Ratliff. Wired (Issue 14.12). "Jaime Carbonell, chief science officer of Meaningful Machines, hunches over his laptop in the company's midtown Manhattan offices, waiting for it to decode a message from the perpetrators of a grisly terrorist attack. Running software that took four years and millions of dollars to develop, Carbonell's machine -- or rather, the server farm it's connected to a few miles away -- is attempting a task that has bedeviled computer scientists for half a century. The message isn't encrypted or scrambled or hidden among thousands of documents. It's simply written in Spanish:.... Language translation is a tricky problem, not only for a piece of software but also for the human mind. ... From its genesis at the post-World War II dawn of computing -- when ambitious researchers believed it would take only a few years to crack the language problem -- until the late 1980s, machine translation, or MT, consisted almost entirely of what are known as rule-based systems. ... Over the past decade, however, machine translation has improved dramatically, propelled by the relentless march of Moore's law, a spike in federal funding in the wake of 9/11, and, most important, a new idea. The idea dates from the late 1980s and early 1990s, when researchers at IBM stopped relying on grammar rules and began experimenting with sets of already-translated work known as parallel text. In the most promising method to emerge from the work, called statistical-based MT, algorithms analyze large collections of previous translations, or what are technically called parallel corpora ... to divine the statistical probabilities of words and phrases in one language ending up as particular words or phrases in another. ... Instead, the Meaningful Machines system uses a large collection of text in the target language (in the initial case it's 150 Gbytes of English text derived from the Web), a small amount of text in the source language, and a massive bilingual dictionary. ... Born in Uruguay, Jaime Carbonell moved to Boston with his family when he was nine. He later enrolled at MIT, where he found part-time work translating Digital Equipment Corporation computer manuals into Spanish to help pay tuition. In an attempt to speed up the translation process, he built a small MT engine...." December 2006 [issue date]: Scientific American 50. By The Editors. Scientific American. Be sure to see: "Robots on the move - Improved mathematical models and sensors endow robots with enhanced mobility. By Brie Finegold.
>>> Robots, Neural Networks, Neuroscience, Systems, Cognitive Science, Machine Learning |
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