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February 28, 2006: Music Analysis. Tomorrow Today, the science magazine on Deutsche Welle's DW-TV. "What makes a concert a concert? When do notes become music? And what distinguishes one interpretation of Mozart from another? That's what computer expert Gerhard Widmer decided to find out with the help of a Bösendorfer grand piano equipped with chips and measuring tools designed to record the volume and length of every chord via a laptop. The computer also isolated individual styles of playing, allowing scientists at the Vienna Institute for Artificial Intelligence to identify the stylistic trademarks of players such as Horowitz, Barenboim and Rubinstein." [Video available.] February 28, 2006: Contest seeks designs for virtual life. By Will Robinson. The Daily Beacon Online. "Symantec Corporation, the creators of Norton AntiVirus and other computer security tools, is sponsoring a contest that challenged students to design an efficient and survivable virtual creature. Student teams are eligible to win $10,000 for first place, $5,000 for second and $3,000 for third. ... Carey Nachenburg, a Symantec fellow and creator of the contest, said the idea is to get people interested in programming and computer engineering. Nachenburg is also a part-time computer science lecturer at UCLA and says he sees first-hand computer science enrollment dropping. 'The U.S. is not building up the next generation of programmers and engineers,' Nachenburg said. 'We’d like to see the numbers go up.' Tom Potok, a research scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory working in the artificial intelligence field, said there are lots of opportunities available. '[Oak Ridge Laboratory] has some internships, co-op programs, and I’ve had students work in my group,' Potok said. He said he is always looking for more scientists and that there is a need for computer science and computer engineering students. He said the field has a 'bright future.' ... The contestants download a small 1 MB program from http://www.symantec.com/specprog/university ...." February 28, 2006: BioBouncer Might Make Bars Safer. By Rachel Metz. Wired News. "A new security system for nightclubs uses facial recognition technology to identify troublemakers -- and share their faces with other clubs in a security network. ... BioBouncer is [Jeff Dussich's] solution. Its camera snaps customers entering clubs and bars, and facial recognition software compares them with stored images of previously identified troublemakers. The technology alerts club security to image matches, while innocent images are automatically flushed at the end of each night, Dussich said. Various clubs can share databases through a virtual private network, so belligerent drunks might find themselves unwelcome in all their neighborhood bars. ... Privacy watchdog groups, however, don't like the sound of it, and it's not clear club patrons will dig it, either." February 27, 2006: PalmPilot Creator Models Computer on Brain. Radio broadcast (available online) of NPR's Morning Edition, hosted by Renee Montagne and Steve Inskeep. "Jeff Hawkins created the PalmPilot and Treo smart phone. His new company, Numenta, is developing a type of computer memory system modeled after the human neocortex, what he calls the 'the big wrinkly thing' at the top of the brain. He's also the co-author of the book On Intelligence, which details his vision of how the brain processes information. ... (interview) Jeff Hawkins: 'A scientist I know has proposed that the grand challenge, the million-dollar prize ought to be a machine that can tell two objects apart visually; literally, cats from dogs. That’s how far we are from doing what humans can do today. So, we’re building a vision system that we believe will perform quite well, and it’ll be very much like a human vision system that you’d be able to show it pictures of things in any sort of form and variation, and it’ll say, and I know what it is. It’ll very instantly say, oh I know, that’s a cat, that’s a dog, that’s a car, that’s a refrigerator, or whatever.'" February 27, 2006: Pioneering artificial intelligence project outlined at British University in Dubai. Posted by Lara Lynn Golden, News Editor. AME Info. "A pioneering research project from within the Middle East, which aims to examine how an artificially-intelligent tutor can help teach English as a foreign language, is set to be discussed at the British University in Dubai (BUiD) in March. The experimental program - 'Intelligent Tutor' - is capable of systematically correcting errors for students studying English as a foreign language, and adapting to their preferred style of learning. Developed by Dr Marina Dodigovic, it could provide an important tool for students of the future looking to develop their language skills and has been hailed as one of the major 'technologies of the future' by experts in artificial intelligence. Dr. Marina Dodigovic, Assistant Professor of English and TESOL, the American University of Sharjah, will deliver the lecture, employing her wide knowledge of the field of Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL)." February 27, 2006: Municipal Mesh Network - Protocols developed at MIT are helping the city of Cambridge to go wireless. By Neil Savage. Technology Review. "The residents of Cambridge, MA, may soon be able to log onto the Internet from any bus stop or city park. The city is working with MIT to go wireless, with a special focus on giving low-income residents access to the Internet. The project is based on an experimental system called Roofnet, an unplanned, multiroute mesh network developed at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. A mesh network is a series of radio transmitters and receivers randomly dispersed over an area. To get data from one part of the mesh to another, the network must figure out the best route between them, which can change depending on network traffic, data rates, and even the weather." February 26, 2006: The Frankenstein Syndrome - When science goes awry. Book review by Kevin Nance of Daniel Dinello's Technophobia! Science Fiction Visions of Posthuman Technology (University of Texas Press). Chicago Sun-Times & suntimes.com. "Over time, [Daniel Dinello] became fascinated by science fiction not just as exciting yarns but as metaphors, cautionary tales and social criticism. As a filmmaker, critic and professor at Columbia College Chicago, he developed a particular interest in sci-fi novels and movies that critiqued corporate and military scientists whose utopian visions of an ideal world perfected by their own fantastic inventions have a nasty way of coming back to bite the seat of their lab coats. The result of these ruminations is Technophobia! Science Fiction Visions of Posthuman Technology (University of Texas Press, $24.95), in which Dinello explores the chasm between the rosy daydreams of scientists and the more jaundiced nightmares of sci-fi writers and filmmakers. From 'Frankenstein' to 'The Matrix,' robots, androids, cyborgs, artificial intelligence, cloning, the wilds of cyberspace, even cell phones and iPods -- which, come to think of it, do sound pretty sinister -- are all occasions for hair-raising speculation about how technological advances can go terribly wrong. ... Joe Steiff, his fellow filmmaker and Columbia College colleague, says Dinello has done a good job of capturing the way science fiction provides a forum for ethical debates about technology that may or may not be happening in real-life settings. ... 'There's plenty of anecdotal evidence that calls into question whether there are checks and balances within the research community, and science fiction writers are saying, "Wait a minute."' ... That's particularly true in the area of the blurring of human and machine, 'which 20 years ago would have been entirely in the realm of science fiction but increasingly is becoming foreseeably possible,' he says." February 25, 2006: Smart Cameras, Guards to Protect WTC Site. By Amy Westfeldt, with Tom Hays contributing. Associated Press / available from Forbes.com. "Visitors to the complex that eventually will fill the World Trade Center site might have to submit to iris scans or thumb print analysis to get into buildings, while smart cameras try to match their faces to a photo database of known terrorists. ... Some of the technology under discussion for the site is still emerging, [James] Kallstrom said, like the surveillance system that would try to match faces to a database of suspected criminals or dangerous weapons." February 25, 2006: Taking Spying to Higher Level, Agencies Look for More Ways to Mine Data. By John Markoff, with Scott Shane contributing. The New York Times & nytimes.com. "[B]y fundamentally changing the nature of surveillance, high-tech data mining raises privacy concerns that are only beginning to be debated widely. That is because to find illicit activities it is necessary to turn loose software sentinels to examine all digital behavior whether it is innocent or not. 'The theory is that the automated tool that is conducting the search is not violating the law,' said Mark D. Rasch, the former head of computer-crime investigations for the Justice Department and now the senior vice president of Solutionary, a computer security company. But 'anytime a tool or a human is looking at the content of your communication, it invades your privacy.' ... Data mining is already being used in a diverse array of commercial applications -- whether by credit card companies detecting and stopping fraud as it happens, or by insurance companies that predict health risks. As a result, millions of Americans have become enmeshed in a vast and growing data web that is constantly being examined by a legion of Internet-era software snoops. Technology industry executives and government officials said that the intelligence agency systems take such techniques further, applying software analysis tools now routinely used by law enforcement agencies to identify criminal activities and political terrorist organizations that would otherwise be missed by human eavesdroppers. ... [S]everal Silicon Valley executives say one side effect of the 2003 decision to cancel the Total Information Awareness project was that it killed funds for a research project at the Palo Alto Research Center, a subsidiary of Xerox, exploring technologies that could protect privacy while permitting data mining." February 25, 2006: I think, therefore I think. Book review by Mary Furness of Nicholas Fern's The Latest Answers to the Oldest Questions (Atlantic). The Weekend Australian & theaustralian.news.com.au. "Under the broad headings 'Who Am I?', 'What Do I Know?' and 'What Should I Do?', the individual chapters include discussions of free will and fate, minds and machines, bodies and souls, knowledge, meaning, understanding, postmodernism and pragmatism, and the latest ethical dilemmas. ... As questions surrounding artificial intelligence in the chapter on minds and machines threaten to become intractable, for instance, we come up against the 'dense, compact form' of 'philosophical bruiser' John Searle.... In the chapter on mind and body, Australian philosopher David Chalmers disagrees with philosophers who dismiss Descartes and his dualism as the Typhoid Mary of philosophy and has become the 'recognised leader of the new dualist school.'" February 25, 2006: Tuneful site taps into song rhythms. By Maurice Bridge. The Vancouver Sun & canada.com. "What does O Canada have in common with the William Tell Overture by Gioachino Rossini, Eight Days a Week by The Beatles, I Feel Good by James Brown and No Rain by Blind Melon? They're the answers you get when you tap out the first few bars of our national anthem on a website called The Song Tapper, which identifies tunes by the rhythm of their lyrics. It's a catchy little concept which has started to spread around the world, much to the surprise of its creators. The site (www.songtap per.com) is the brainchild of Simon Fraser University computing-science student Geoff Peters and two other students who developed it last year as a project for an artificial-intelligence course. ... The site has been up and running since September, but the Internet community really jumped on it it early this year. 'It really took off in the beginning of January,' Peters said. 'It learned songs by people teaching it, and it grew to 500 songs, and then a few thousand songs, and then it couldn't handle it, so we had to upgrade the server.' The site now knows about 14,000 songs, although it can only search about 3,500 at a time."
>>> Music, Information Retrieval, Education, Scientific Discovery, Applications February 24, 2006: The Searcher - Yahoo!'s head of research, Prabhakar Raghavan, helps find order in the chaos of the Internet. His task: discerning today what consumers want tomorrow. By David Shabelman. TheDeal.com. - Tech Confidential Magazine. [The interview is also available from CNET News.com: The driving force behind Yahoo Research / March 1, 2006] "'We have this huge mountain of data, and it raises fascinating questions about how we can use that to better the experience for our users,' [Prabhakar Raghavan] says. 'How do you create a sentient network of properties that seems to give the user exactly what they're looking for at every point, and not just with a search emphasis?' ... [Q:] Yahoo recently hired an expert in artificial intelligence to head up your New York research office. How do you expect to use AI in your search technologies? Raghavan: At some level, artificial intelligence is this broad umbrella, this catchall, for a bunch of techniques. When I talk about search and information, when I talk about machine learning, those are two disciplines that are classically branches of artificial intelligence. If you go to our Web site, you'll see things like the Tech Buzz Game, a prediction market for picking the technologies of the future. So the way you should think about it is--I'm almost shying away from the label of artificial intelligence because that's sort of a classical label--some of the newer sciences we are creating are really the confluence of multiples of these areas, whether it's machine learning or economics or so on. I expect that at least some of the lines of IT research will be redrawn over the next two years based on the new technological advances at companies like ours. [Q:] For most companies, of course, AI is just another acronym to ignore. Should the technology matter to them, and how could it change the nature of business? ... " February 24, 2006: A Quantum Swimmer Never Gets Tired. By Adrian Cho. ScienceNOW Daily News. "Theorists have pondered the idea of shape-changing robots squirming through a viscous fluid. Such studies provide insight into the finer points of fluid dynamics and might help to create real swimming robots. But taking a more whimsical tack, Joseph Avron and Boris Gutkin of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel, and a colleague decided to see what would happen if they shrank the imaginary machines to nanometer size and set them loose in a supercold fluid of particles called fermions. In that extreme scenario, the fermions, like particles of light, behave like waves." February 24, 2006: Curriculum - Fascinating, fun and, yes, that’s science. By Deedee Cuddihy. Teaching in Scotland, from TES, The Times Educational Supplement. "Forget about the facts; concentrate on asking questions. That’s the philosophy behind the new £1 million Connect science and technology gallery [www.nms.ac.uk/connect]. Opened just last week, with the help of National Museums of Scotland funds and a gaggle of sponsors, the gallery at the Royal Museum offers a wealth of interactive, visually-stunning and unique displays. ... The exhibition space has been divided into five main subject areas covering transport (Move It!), artificial intelligence (Robots), cloning (Me2), space travel (Blast Off!) and energy (Power Up). Each subject area is designed around a number of significant museum objects, complemented by a range of specially designed interactives." February 24, 2006: Animated Robot for Hospitalized Children. AATP Interactive (the weblog of the American Association for Technology in Psychiatry). "The Robotics & Multibody Research Group (Brussels University) is working on Anty, an intelligent soft robot that will entertain long-term hospitalized children. When developed the robot will walk, talk and show feelings. According to the creators, Anty will be able to develop different personalities, so kids won't get bored with him. Anty uses sensors for vision, audio and touch to interact with the children. By means of artificial intelligence, Anty is capable of understanding and expressing emotions." February 24, 2006: Robot capable of identifying objects by simple properties. By Harry Yeates. ElectronicsWeekly.com. "Researchers at the University of Birmingham have developed a robot that can identify objects by type. The system is still very primitive, but it is a step towards a cognitive machine with integrated language and vision processing. ... The aim of the four-year Cognitive Systems for Cognitive Assistants (CoSY) project is to combine natural language processing with vision, adding ‘attention’ to the robot’s behaviour. Combining language with vision requires a mediating layer of representation between the two. The attention behaviour allows the robot to find an object more quickly if it knows what it is looking for." February 24, 2006: Exhibit explores world of robots, A.I. By Bridget Brown. The Galveston County Daily News. "Space Center Houston will help us understand what makes robots tick when artificial intelligence invades the premises. The 5,000-square-foot 'Robots and Us' exhibit showcases the history and creation of robots, and answers the question of why humans often fear and, at the same time, are intrigued by them. 'At first, robots were seen as these evil things that would take over the earth,' said Roger Bornstein, director of marketing for Space Center Houston. 'It has progressed from people being afraid to them getting more comfortable. There is something almost heroic about (robots) now. We totally accept them.'" February 24, 2006: Supposing we did ourselves out of a job. Column by Charlie Brooker. The Guardian & Guardian Unlimited. "I was reading about the Singularity the other day, and apparently it's nigh. If you don't know what I'm talking about, it's a theoretical point in the evolution of technology: imagine we design an artificial intelligence smarter than ourselves, which in turn designs an intelligence smarter than itself, which in turn designs an even brainier entity, and so on and so on and so on until it's impossible for us to envisage anything smarter at all - at which point, TA-DA! Singularity! The point of no return. ... Anyway, it sounds great. It takes the pressure off us. ..." February 24, 2006: Profile - Larry Brilliant, Doctor looks to use technology to aid global health care. By Patrick Hoge. San Francisco Chronicle & SFGate.com. "[Dr. Larry] Brilliant's plan: to create a vastly expanded, nongovernmental version of a Canadian Internet program that scours the world for information to help fight disease, poverty and suffering after catastrophes. The system, searching Web sites in seven languages, identifies for public health officials worldwide the first hints of nearly 40 percent of the disease outbreaks subsequently verified by the World Health Organization. ... One former colleague, Dr. Alfred Sommer, former dean of the School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University, pointed Brilliant to Canada's Global Public Health Intelligence Network, a Web-crawling computer application that led to early identification of a SARS outbreak in China. ... 'SARS is the pandemic that did not occur,' Brilliant said. The key with diseases, he said, is 'you find them early and kill them before they spread.' Anderson took the idea to Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who subsequently chose Brilliant to lead Google.org, their new, $1 billion philanthropic arm. The serendipity of it all was fitting for a man whose life has been one long, strange trip."
>>> Public Health & Welfare, Web-Crawling Agents, Natural Language Processing, Applications February 23, 2006: Engineers take center stage at SUNY. By Kathryn Gill. Daily Freeman. "The new faces of engineering at SUNY New Paltz range from a 13-year-old middle school girl to a 44-year-old recent graduate who works as a fire marshal in New York City. Both were among those attending the college's Engineering Day on Wednesday, which showcased the innovations of high tech companies in the Hudson Valley and the work of students and professors at SUNY New Paltz. Students at middle schools throughout the region were invited to the event. Michael Cancel, who has worked for the New York City Fire Department for 20 years, said he pursued his engineering degree on a part-time basis over the past 6 years, taking about three classes a semester. ... Cancel plans to break into the engineering field with the goal of doing something to 'benefit mankind.' He said he is considering pursuing a career in artificial intelligence or nanotechnology. ... [E]ighth grader [Erin Rose] said the stereotype that boys are better at engineering than girls is 'not at all true.' She said she plans to take advanced placement math and science at Beacon High School next year. ... Robert Foster, a 22-year-old senior at the college who also works part time in the Metrology Department of IBM in East Fishkill, showed off the Evolutionary Music Composer, a computer that can compose original music. Foster said the computer produces music autonomously by taking a population of notes and picking out those it thinks sound good. ... 'Music is attractive to undergraduate students to get them involved in research,' Khalifa said. Many people equate creative thinking with intelligence, he said, making the computer program a good way to explore ways of developing artificial intelligence." February 23, 2006: Future is wild and wacky as ever. John Gleeson's column. The Winnipeg Sun & winnipegsun.com. "For those of us who were children in the 'fabulous '60s,' the future has given us quite a poor showing. ... The latest issue of The Futurist magazine ('dedicated to readers who take their own futures seriously') includes some mind-bending projections that suggest the future is still as wild and wacky as ever. Some (like the discovery of cures for major diseases) are wonderfully positive, while others are downright creepy. According to futurologists Ian Neild and Ian Pearson (A Timeline for Technology: To the Year 2030 and Beyond), in the next six years we can expect: ... By 2020: * Artificial Intelligence (AI) teachers get better results than most human teachers. * AI entity becomes Member of Parliament. * Electronic pets outnumber organic pets. * Robots are used as dance tutors; ... " February 23, 2006: Study Plays Down Export of Computer Jobs. By Steve Lohr. The New York Times & nytimes.com (registration req'd). "The movement of computing work abroad represents an economic and scientific challenge, but the fears of job migration far outweigh the reality so far, according to a new study by the Association for Computing Machinery. The lengthy report, to be released today, is the result of a yearlong project by the professional organization to assess the impact and implications of the outsourcing of software development and research. ... 'The global competition has gotten tougher and we have to run faster,' said Moshe Y. Vardi, co-chair of the study group and a computer scientist at Rice University. 'But the notion that information technology jobs are disappearing is just nonsense. The data don't bear that out.' Yet the view that job opportunities in computing are dwindling fast is both common and potentially damaging to America's competitive prowess, according to David A. Patterson, president of the Association for Computing Machinery. He pointed to the declining interest in computer science as a major among American college students, based on a survey last year of the intentions of students entering college."
>>> Computer Science, Careers in AI (@ Resources for Students), Industry Statistics February 22, 2006: Robot head lost in shuffle of travel. By Bret Weaver. The Daily Helmsman Online. "Phillip K. Dick’s head has vanished. Not Phillip K. Dick one of the great novelists of the 20th century, but Phillip K. Dick the android replication of the famous science fiction author. Developed collaboratively by David Hanson of the University of Texas at Arlington and Andrew Olney of The University of Memphis, the Phillip K. Dick android is one of the most advanced interactive robots in the existence today, according to the American Association for Artificial Intelligence. The plan was to take it to California for a showing at Google. 'David got on a plane from Dallas to San Jose with the head in a carry-on and somehow got separated from it,' Olney said. 'That’s the last we ever saw of it.' The mystery deepens when you consider the nature of the robot. 'The machine is a robotic portrait of Phillip K. Dick,' said Olney, a doctoral student in computer science who designed Phillip’s artificial intelligence core. ... Speculation on exactly what has happened to the head is rampant. 'I would like to think that in a Phillip K. Dick vein of ideology that the robot liberated itself, it found its freedom,' Olney said." February 22, 2006: Decentralised search finds results. IST Results. "A prototype search and categorisation engine that couples the power of powerful natural-language processing methods with Grid computing offers hope to those sifting through the mass of unstructured data distributed across a company’s networks. ... [Professor Jawed] Siddiqi stresses that the great innovation about GRACE was the way it used very strong natural-language processing methods to harvest textual content from documents. These natural-language processing methods supply the fundamental, unstructured content, which is then re-indexed into ‘knowledge domains’. These knowledge domains represent not only a complete virtualisation of multiple relevant content sources, but also incorporate the underlying semantics in related ontologies, the meanings and hierarchical relationships among terms and concepts in a domain." February 22, 2006: National Engineers Week to feature research. By Melea Burke. The Lariat Online. "If you've ever wondered about the inner workings of computers or gas turbine engines, you can attend an event sponsored by Baylor's chapter of the Society of Women Engineers at 5 p.m. today in 109 Rogers Engineering and Computer Science Building. The 'Evening of Fun and Research' will include presentations by Dr. Greg Hamerly, assistant professor of computer science, and Dr. Kenneth Van Treuren, associate professor of mechanical engineering. Hamerly will highlight his research in machine learning and Van Treuren will speak about his study of turbine blades. Society of Women Engineers is holding the event as a part of National Engineers Week, said Dr. Cindy Fry, adviser for the Society of Women Engineers and full-time lecturer in computer science. This week, co-chaired by Society of Women Engineers and the Northrop Grumman Corporation, is dedicated to raising awareness of engineers' positive contributions to the quality of life, according to the National Engineers Week Web site. ... Hamerly's concentration is on data clustering and machine learning, both in the artificial intelligence field. He focuses specifically on applying machine learning techniques to simulations for computer chips." February 22, 2006: Computer science class will delve into science-fiction - The new class will teach students fact from fiction in science-fiction novels. By Laura Simurda. Daily Trojan. "From Star Trek's Lt. Cmdr. Data to the Little Lost Robot from Isaac Asimov's stories, a computer science class arriving soon at USC [University of Southern California] will utilize science fiction to teach students about robotics and artificial intelligence. Course creators Milind Tambe, an associate professor of computer science, and Emma Bowring, a third-year Ph.D. candidate, are currently working to adapt what would usually be a graduate-level coursework to an undergraduate intensity by focusing on the fundamentals. 'In a sense there are sort of two big steps - one is teaching not a graduate level class, two is teaching via science fiction,' Tambe said. The class, Computer Science 499: Intelligent Agents and Science Fiction, will be offered next semester as an interactive and 'fun' introduction to robotics and artificial intelligence, Tambe, said." February 22, 2006: Smart cameras drive machine vision uptake. Manufacturingtalk News; based on a news release from Frost and Sullivan. "Once vision systems achieve greater versatility and upgradeability, the range of applications is likely to expand beyond industries and production processes. ... . SICK IVP, Sweden has introduced a first of its kind 3D vision smart camera that uses laser triangulation for high-performance capture of 3D images. Due to 3D inspection capabilities, the camera has versatile qualities that enable it to perform inspection, location, and measurements of objects to enhance production processes. This revolutionary 3D smart vision system, which also incorporates tools that can estimate height and volume is set to make a significant impact on robotic guidance applications such as bin picking, inspection of connector pins, and inspection of weld seams all of which require precise inspection of 3D images. Currently, researchers are also working toward the development of real-time autonomous robotic guidance using machine vision systems. The five year reverse engineering the vertebrate brain (REVERB) project jointly undertaken by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), BAE systems, and a group of universities in the United Kingdom aims at incorporating artificial intelligence in robotics." February 22, 2006: My AIBO Obit - Why did Sony put a good dog down, and what will robotics do next? Column by By Lance Ulanoff. PC Magazine & pcmag.com. "The AIBO had become a member of our family -- one that generated real feelings. So when I shared with my family the news that Sony had decided to discontinue its AIBO business, there was a collective gasp. 'No more AIBO?' my children asked. I'm sure the sentiment is the same among robot enthusiasts who grew to love the expensive, yet expressive, entertainment robot. The AIBO was especially popular with hobbyists, scientists, and grad students, who often modified the robot dogs and entered them in various collegiate robot soccer tournaments. ... Things were never really going well for Sony's robotics group, though, especially with the AIBO. Over seven years, Sony sold just 150,000 units. Compare that with the millions of iRobot Roombas and WowWee Robosapiens sold in just a few years. In the past year or so, I began to sense a lack of interest on Sony's part. The last big hardware update was a few years old, and Sony was rolling out yearly software enhancements with little enthusiasm or fanfare. ... I posed the following questions to a Sony rep ... Q: Where is the AI technology mostly likely to turn up next? A: 'Sony is not planning any new research and development specifically for AIBO or QRIO products, but R&D for the elemental technologies (visual recognition, sound recognition, etc.) will continue for research on Artificial Intelligence. The knowledge and technology Sony has gained in robotics may possibly be applied to future Sony products.' ... So while I mourn the loss of the AIBO, I throw out a challenge: Someone, anyone, create a sub-$500 robot with as much intelligence, flexibility, mobility, sensation, and lovability as the AIBO." February 21, 2006: Search & discover - Video search engines allow networks and studios to make the most of their assets, even as copyright concerns loom unresolved. By Debra Kaufman. HollywoodReporter.com. "A key to such developments is search -- the ability of the consumer to hook up with programming. The latest in video search engines actually latch onto imagery, as opposed to merely recognizing text, and the nascent tool appears likely to unearth a new realm of consumer applications. 'Video search engines are a great tool,' says Chris Cookson, president of Warner Bros. Technical Operations and chief technology officer at Warner Bros. Entertainment. 'If someone is looking for content that we can provide, then we're excited about making it easy to make that connection.' As the amount of content increases, the ability to search for what you're looking for 'is a make-or-break (proposition) for the viability of rich media on the Web,' says Allen Weiner, an analyst at research and consulting firm Gartner. 'In essence, finding what you're looking for is what it's all about.' ... Another technique is being perfected by IBM in concert with CNN, the BBC and other broadcasters. MARVEL -- short for Multimedia Analysis and Retrieval -- conducts image-based examination of video, audio and transcribed audio for search engines. 'It uses a machine learning technique that requires that statistical models are built ahead of time for the different content categories,' lead researcher John Smith says. (For example, if a user provides basketball clips, then the machine creates models for future basketball clips based on patterns, shapes and textural appearance.) 'The learning is automatic once some human identifies the examples to feed it.'" February 21, 2006: African-American achievers in modern science - Meet scientists who work with invisible lights, nanomachines, and robots that sing songs. By Keely Parrack. The Christian Science Monitor & csmonitor.com. "February is Black History Month. In celebration of the contributions that African-Americans have made to science, we talked to three black scientists who are making history today with their groundbreaking work. ... James McLurkin, computer scientist - Meet James McLurkin and his 112 robots. Right now they are running loose. 'They are running on my software [computer program],' Mr. McLurkin says, 'but there is no good way to see why that one springs around and that group's smashing its heads into the wall.' But he's going to figure it out. McLurkin and his team of undergraduates at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge are building a swarm viewer. ... His computer program allows the robots to work together and communicate with one another to solve problems. ... To kids interested in science, his advice is: 'Have fun; do the things you like. ...' ... Martin Culpepper, mechanical engineer - ... Now Dr. Culpepper is figuring out how to make machines that build tiny things made up of moving parts as small as atoms and molecules. He calls these 'super-precise machines,' as they need to be able to pick up something as small as a molecule and position it precisely into place. This is called 'nanotechnology,' the science of developing materials at the atomic and molecular level. Imagine a very powerful computer so tiny you can't see it without a microscope. ... Culpepper's main advice for potential young scientists: 'Know how to work with your hands; play around with stuff.' He also advises them to learn the language of mathematics, saying, 'It is the language of logical thought.'" February 21, 2006: Project Eagle. By Richard Susskind. Law News and Law Reports from The Times & Times Online. "The story of Project EAGLE is sad yet inspiring. It is about under-funded innovation in the public and voluntary sectors. From 2002 to 2005, the Legal Services Commission and two Citizens Advice Bureaux collaborated in developing a prototype, internet-based system that provides expert help on employment law for generalist advisers (www.projecteagle.org.uk). ... [G]overnment funding has now run out and the project has been brought unceremoniously to a close." February 21, 2006: Drive-Through Technology Made to Order - Fast-food stores compete to shave seconds off their service time and gain accuracy and simplicity in the ordering process. Associated Press / available from latimes.com. "Fast-food chains are trying new ways to stand out in an industry ultimately limited by how fast a person can hand food out the drive-through window. Companies are trimming bulky text from menus, using computer programs that guess upcoming orders and routing order-taking duties to call centers. ... To help cut the waste from leftovers, Pittsburgh-based HyperActive Technologies Inc. developed a computer system --- HyperActive Bob --- that tells cooks how much food they need by counting vehicles in the drive-through line and factoring in demand for current promotions and popular items. The system cuts preparation time and eliminates as much as 60% of waste, Chief Executive Joe Porfeli said. The technology is used at two major national chains, Porfeli said, declining to give their names." February 20, 2006: Gizmos Trump Gowns at Nerd Oscars. By Xeni Jardin. Wired News. "Attendees at the 2006 Scientific and Technical Academy Awards ceremonies in Beverly Hills saw more pocket protectors Saturday than Harry Winston diamonds. The annual film-industry tech honors recognize devices, formulas and discoveries that change the way movies are made. ... Some of the winners were honored for work developed decades ago. Demetri Terzopoulos and John Platt shared a 2006 Academy Award for pioneering computer-generated techniques to simulate cloth in motion pictures.... Terzopoulos says he and Platt have since shifted focus to an even more complex scientific challenge. 'We're working on modeling the human brain, so we can develop artificially intelligent virtual actors,' Terzopoulos told Wired News." February 19, 2006: Poem Cyborg. By Pier Giorgio Di Cicco [Toronto's Poet Laureate]. The Toronto Star (page D6) & TheStar.com (Sunday Ideas; subscription req'd). February 19, 2006: Second thoughts about the mission? By Leslie Brokaw. The Boston Globe & boston.com. "Artificial intelligence founding father, MIT professor emeritus, and voice-of-HAL-consultant Marvin Minsky will be taking questions tomorrow after the 7 p.m. screening of Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey' at the Coolidge Corner Theatre. Back when Kubrick was developing the movie, which was released in 1968, he turned to Minsky for advice on making the talking computer accurate." February 18, 2006: Beware the helpful robots in your home. By Paul Marks. New Scientist (Issue 2539; subscription req'd). "The growing breed of oh-so-cute robotic pets and small humanoids can make it easy to forget that robots are essentially fast-moving lumps of metal, and therefore potentially dangerous when something goes wrong. Industrial robots have been with us for decades, along with a steady trickle of robot-related accidents. The first death was in 1981, when an engineer at a Kawasaki plant in Japan was killed when a robotic arm pushed him into a grinder. ... [W]hen we do begin sharing our living and working space with mobile robots, many legal issues are likely to arise. What if, for instance, a robot were to get under someone's feet, tripping them down a set of stairs? Robot owners will have to be aware of their responsibilities to other people, says Joanne Barker, a solicitor with Which Legal Service in Hertford, UK. 'It would be like having a pet: it can do its own thing, but you are the one responsible for its actions.' ... But lawyer Stephen Sidkin, a spokesman on high-tech product liability issues for the Law Society of England and Wales, believes robots will have to be a lot smarter than that. 'Designers will have to ensure a robot's software is capable of learning how to avoid all problems like hot drink spills. The onus has to be on the manufacturer to get it right.' ... The Japanese government is concerned enough to have commissioned a long-term research programme designed to establish the safety standards for robots working in our homes and as nurses and porters in healthcare." February 17, 2006: Learn Arab Language, Culture. By Stefan Lovgren. National Geographic News. "Researchers have developed an interactive computer system that uses artificial intelligence and gaming techniques to teach Arabic to U.S. soldiers. Soldier-students equipped with microphones navigate through an Arabic-speaking environment on a computer screen. If they successfully phrase questions and understand the answers, they can move on to the next level of the game. ... The characters that users face in the game, meanwhile, are animated by artificial intelligence. ... 'Language without any context is hard to learn,' said [Högni] Vilhjálmsson, a research scientist with the Information Sciences Institute at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. 'But if you put it into the context of face-to-face communication, allowing for gestures and other non-verbal behavior, it becomes easier [to learn].' ... In each mission, students must complete an overall task focused on civil affairs and reconstruction efforts. In the Afghan version, the task is to rebuild a clinic in a remote village. ... A speech recognition system allows the speaker to communicate with characters on the screen. ... Users can gauge how well they are doing by the reactions of the other characters."
>>> Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Video Games, Military, Education, Speech, Applications February 16, 2006: Speed thrills with neural networks. By Christine Evans-Pughe. ElectronicsWeekly.com. "Conventional computing methods can solve most data processing and control tasks as long as you throw enough high-speed silicon at the problem. Our brains, though, can complete some remarkably complex tasks, faster than a room full of computers, and yet we achieve this with neurons that do not respond in much less than a millisecond. ... Anyone working in electronics a decade ago will remember the excitement, followed by disappointment, generated by fuzzy logic microcontrollers that used artificial neural network algorithms and machine-learning to 'revolutionise' embedded systems. There was no revolution. But the idea has not disappeared and today, driven by increasingly stringent emissions regulations, software and hardware-based neural network-based techniques are being successfully applied to engine control and diagnostics in automotive embedded systems. In the Aston Martin DB9, for example, Ford has used a software neural network running on the main ECU for detecting misfires in the car’s high revving V12 engine. ... Artificial neural networks work well where there is a causal relationship between one or more inputs and a physical quantity, but where there is no straightforward analytical relationship between the inputs and the output." February 16, 2006: USC Research Institute Sees Growth in Corporate Projects. By Michael Hiltzik. Los Angeles Times (registration req'd). "[Herb] Schorr, 70, ... became director of USC's Information Sciences Institute in 1988. Since then, it has grown into a nearly $70-million enterprise funded mostly by federal grants. But more growth opportunities in research and development are on the corporate side, where ISI hopes to fill the gap between the basic research customarily performed in academia and the product development usually handled by industry. By positioning ISI as a provider of private research in its core fields of computer science, artificial intelligence and information technology, Schorr aims to build corporate funding to as much as a third of ISI's revenue, up from less than 20% today. He believes that strategy will enable ISI to grow at a real rate of 4% a year. ... 'Industry research fits really well with academia,' says David Patterson, a UC Berkeley professor of computer science and president of the Assn. for Computing Machinery. 'But development causes problems with universities as it becomes more secret and proprietary. And there's more money for development than for research.' Schorr notes that ISI already works with some corporations under non-disclosure agreements, and argues that the institute has learned how to manage such relationships. Nikias is similarly sanguine. 'Most companies understand that there are limits when they have a relationship with a university,' he says." February 15, 2006: Tech executive to run MIT media lab - Moss aims to focus on work with broad impact on society. By Robert Weisman. The Boston Globe & boston.com. "MIT has tapped entrepreneur and technology executive Frank Moss as the new director of its fabled Media Laboratory at a time when the lab, which helped popularize the 1990s digital revolution, is seeking to broaden its base of corporate sponsors and refocus its high-tech research on fields like aging, healthcare, and education. ... 'In many ways, it's a business,' Moss said, suggesting the media lab may conduct more research into projects of interest to its corporate sponsors. 'You have to strike a balance between having academic freedom and doing different types of research, and having the work sponsored by companies that want to see research commercialized. At the media lab, we may have to go a step further than we've done in the past and build prototypes with sponsors.' ... As for the type of research on which he'd like to focus, Moss cited examples from the lab's biomechatronics program ... its hyperscore graphical composing application ... its open studio project ... and its sociable robotics research to build machines that can interact with people on human terms. Moss said he'd also like to initiate collaborations with the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, known as CSAIL, across the street from the media lab."
>>> Academic Departments (@ Resources for Students), Robots, Applications February 15, 2006: Slime mould used to create first robot run by living cells. By Alok Jha. The Guardian & Guardian Unlimited. "Ever worried that the terrifying cyborgs that fill sci-fi stories might one day become a reality? Perhaps the latest research by Klaus-Peter Zauner of Southampton University will cause a stir: the engineer has invented a robot that is controlled by living cells. The cells in question are a specially grown type of 'slime mould' that naturally shies away from light. ... The work came out of a collaboration with scientists at Kobe University in Japan, who had been studying ways of using biological cells in robots. Dr Zauner himself had been trying to use individual molecules - rather than instructions from computer programs - to control the functions and movements of robots. ... 'What is very attractive to us is the fact that cells can self-repair and self-restructure, all the things that you can't achieve with conventional technology,' he said. Using biological cells provides some autonomy to the robot's movements. 'In a conventional computer we specify a program and if the computer doesn't do exactly what we want ... there's an error.'"
>>> Robots, Systems February 14, 2006: If Robots Ever Get Too Smart, He'll Know How to Stop Them. By Cornelia Dean. The New York Times. "In Isaac Asimov's collection of stories, 'I, Robot,' robots rise up against humanity. In the classic sci-fi thriller 'Blade Runner,' a bounty hunter must exterminate intelligent androids that are both deadly and very unhappy with their creators. Even in 1920, when the playwright Karel Capek gave English speakers the Czech word 'robot' (laborer) in his play 'R.U.R.,' the androids at Rossum's Universal Robots were bent on wiping out the human race. 'If popular culture has taught us anything,' Daniel H. Wilson says, 'it is that someday mankind must face and destroy the growing robot menace.' Luckily, Dr. Wilson is just the guy to help us do it. In his new book, 'How to Survive a Robot Uprising,' Dr. Wilson offers detailed --- and hilariously deadpan --- advice on evading hostile swarms of robot insects (don't try to fight --- 'loss of an individual robot is inconsequential to the swarm').... [H]e earned his doctorate in robotics at Carnegie Mellon... And his thesis describes a version of the smart house, a dwelling so rich in sensors that it would monitor people's activities and raise an alarm if their movements changed or stopped. He said he was inspired to investigate the possibilities of such 'assisted intelligent environments' by his mother, a nurse who organizes care for elderly people who want to remain in their own homes --- or 'age in place,' as Dr. Wilson put it. ... '[T]he book turned out very nicely,' Dr. Atkeson said. People will pick it up because it is funny --- 'and then you have an opportunity to educate them. It's a robotics primer.'"
>>> Humor (@ AI Toons), Robots, Science Fiction, Smart Houses, Assisitive Technologies, Applications February 14, 2006: The Science of the Mind, and Its Baggage. Opinion by Beckett W. Sterner. The Tech (Volume 126, Number 3). "[H]ow we think about the research matters as much as its results. Not only do scientists’ beliefs shape their research agendas, but in a society where few people have technical knowledge, scientists are also the foremost interpreters of the meaning of new ideas and technology in our lives. ... ... Now that MIT has launched its expanded brain and cognitive sciences department, it’s time for us to face up to the consequences of what we may learn, but more importantly, what non-scientific baggage will come with it." February 14, 2006: Tech Check - Sales pick up for robotic cleaners. By Dave Toplikar. Lawrence Journal-World & LJWorld.com. "More than 1.5 million house-cleaning robots have been sold by iRobot, a company founded in 1990 by 'roboticists' from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. ... Besides the Roomba, I also found a number of other floor-cleaning robots. Most were pricier than the Roomba [basic model about $149]. They included Zucchetti Orazio floor cleaner ($1,299), the Karcher RC3000 Robocleaner ($1,495), the Electrolux EL520A Trilobite ($1,799), the Friendly RV400 Vacuum ($1,599) and the CleanMate 365 ($124). ... [Arvin Agah, a Kansas University associate professor] predicts it will be awhile before consumers have servant robots — ones that can do a multitude of household tasks, like clean dishes, make beds or take out trash. The difficulty is in creating an artificial intelligence that can recognize the various types of houses we live in. The robot must be able to travel on carpet, on hardwood and move up and down stairs. For that reason, some people are working on specialist robots that do one particular task. 'It’s easier to design and build them, versus a robot that just listens to you and does whatever you ask,' Agah said. ... Agah told me of a couple of robots he had heard of being developed. One would serve as a golf caddy. Another type is a robotic nurse that interacts with patients and delivers medicine in nursing homes" February 14, 2006: Get your geek on - They love sci-fi, anime, fantasy gaming, and all things Tolkien. And they're no longer relegated to pop culture's dungeon. By Ethan Gilsdorf. The Boston Globe & boston.com. "'Popular culture is a great way for getting people interested in science,' says Ed Rodley, a [Boston] Museum of Science curator. 'There's a whole generation of roboticists who saw "2001: A Space Odyssey" and wanted to do artificial intelligence. Ten years behind them are "Star Wars" fans.' Last year, the museum's 'Lord of the Rings' exhibit was a huge hit. The current show 'Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination' set a record, attracting 15,193 visitors in one day." February 13, 2006: Civil servant. The Engineer Online. "The Saab Civil Aircraft Missile Protection System (CAMPS) is designed to be fitted to civil aircraft to protect from man-portable surface-to-air missile launchers. The system boasts a number of innovations designed to make it more effective. ... The key to CAMPS’ effectiveness is that it will be an intelligent system that can learn what is and what is not a threat over time, making for extremely low false alarm rates, according to Karlstrom. The ‘neural net’ technology is to be calibrated this year when the sensors will be fitted to a Boeing 737 in the US and will travel to every airport in the country." February 13, 2006: Getting the picture. The Engineer Online. "A surveillance system based on artificial intelligence promises to give clear, unequivocal pictures of those caught on CCTV committing crimes. The system, developed at the University of Portsmouth, improves CCTV image quality by 'selectively' enhancing sequences of video footage. ... Lewis Hibell, a PhD student at the university, has devised a method of selective enhancement to reconstruct the original image. ... The artificial intelligence/machine-learning aspect of the research is the neural network being used. 'This is a new neural network I have created known as a Self-Delaying Dynamic Network (SDN). The use of a neural network means that we do not have to specify the way in which pixels or pieces of the image are combined or chosen,' said Hibell. He added: 'The network is shown examples of the problem and examples of answers to that problem. It then learns how to perform the processes required to produce the answer.'" February 13, 2006: A Pill, A Scalpel, A Database - Health care is embracing IT to analyze a glut of medical data, find new cures, and provide more-personalized treatment. By Marianne Kolbasuk McGee. InformationWeek. "A few generations ago, most good physicians knew pretty much all there was to know about medicine. Today, no doctor can keep up with the explosion of medical and health information. It's a problem with consequences for how we live and die. Yet, the solutions--while still out of reach--are taking shape as information technology transforms mass-market medicine into the equivalent of a hospital built for one. This isn't a story of miracle cures and happy endings. But we can paint a picture of three big areas in which health care is showing great promise and some progress in harnessing the spiraling volume of medical information in ways that improve care. The first area is filtering and then delivering information to the bedside, giving doctors data uniquely tailored to.... The second involves putting existing data into forms that make it more useful fuel for all these efforts. ... The third area is using analytics to mesh data that provide new insights.... Different doctors may use different phrases in written or dictated reports to describe the same thing, which can make it difficult to combine and correlate information in a standardized way. Artificial-intelligence software that includes 'intelligent language parsing' and 'natural language understanding' can translate doctors' reports into a format that can be queried and analyzed, says David Johnson, an IBM researcher involved in the Memorial Sloan-Kettering project." February 13, 2006: Big Brain Thinking - Stanford neuroscientist Bill Newsome wants to implant an electrode in his brain to better understand human consciousness. By Emily Singer. Technology Review. "Bill Newsome, a neuroscientist at Stanford University in Palo Alto, CA, has spent the last twenty years studying how neurons encode information and how they use it to make decisions about the world. In the 1990s, he and collaborators were able to change the way a monkey responded to its environment by sending electric jolts to certain parts of its brain. The findings gave neuroscientists enormous insight into the inner workings of the brain. But Newsome is obsessed with a lingering question: How does consciousness arise from brain function? He feels the best way to answer that question is by implanting an electrode into his own brain -- and seeing how the electric current changes his perception of the world. ... It's not certain that Newsome will get approval for such a radical undertaking. But, if he does, his experiment won't be in the interest of curing a disease or become a human machine. He's hoping to do something broader: understand consciousness. Technology Review: Why is understanding consciousness so important to you? Bill Newsome: I think that how consciousness arises out of brain function is one of the most fascinating and important questions in all of neurobiology. If we understand the system completely (from input to output) at a cellular level, but still do not know exactly what causes conscious mental phenomena, we will have failed. ..." February 13, 2006: An insight into Yanxi Liu’s Alzheimer’s disease research - Research Profiles: Robotics Institute part 2. By Saravana Sivasankaran. The Tartan Online (Volume 100, Issue 17). "The Medical Robotics Technology Center (MRTC) and the Vision & Autonomous Systems Center (VASC) at Carnegie Mellon have been collaborating on what promises to be an innovative solution to a widely demonstrated problem in aging people. Under the leadership of Associate Research Professor Yanxi Liu, a project titled 'Predicting Risk of Alzheimer’s Disease From Shape Features' is trying to use computer vision techniques to help early detection of Alzheimer’s disease." February 13, 2006: Robot goes missing. AFP / available from the Sydney Morning Herald. "Philip K Dick is missing. Not the American science fiction writer whose novels spawned hit films such as Blade Runner and Total Recall -- he died more than 20 years ago -- but a state-of-the-art robot named after the author. The quirky android, was lost in early January while en route to California by commercial airliner. 'We can't find Phil,' said Steve Prilliman of Dallas-based Hanson Robotics, which created the futuristic robot with the FedEx Institute of Technology at the University of Memphis, the Automation and Robotics Research Institute at the University of Texas at Arlington and Dick's friend Paul Williams. ... [T]he robot features award-winning artificial intelligence that mimics the writer's mannerisms and lifelike skin material to affect realistic expressions. Top-of-the-line voice software loaded with data from Dick's vast body of writing allows the robot to carry on natural-sounding conversations, although it does come off as a bit doddering at times. Biometric-identification software and advanced machine vision allows the robot to recognise people...." February 13, 2006: ENIAC - A computer is born. ENIAC -- monster and marvel -- debuted 60 years ago. By Michael Kanellos. CNET News.com. "In February 1946, J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly were about to unveil, for the first time, an electronic computer to the world. Their ENIAC, or Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, could churn 5,000 addition problems in one second, far faster than any device yet invented. The scientists knew that they had created something that would change history, but they weren't sure how to convey their breakthrough to the public. So they painted numbers on some light bulbs and screwed the resulting 'translucent spheres' into ENIAC's panels. Dynamic, flashy lights would thereafter be associated with the computer in the public mind. That touch of showmanship would later prove fitting for the importance of the ENIAC, which celebrates its 60th anniversary this week at the University of Pennsylvania’s Moore School of Electrical of Electrical Engineering. Many historians acknowledge that other computers came earlier -- the Z3 in Germany, England's Colossus, the Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC) at Iowa State. But ENIAC arguably accomplished something more important: It sparked the imagination of scientists and industrialists."
>>> History, Systems, Interviews February 12, 2006: I am the droid R2D-X ... take me to your leader. By Louis Whitehead. The Brookings Register Online. "Nine Hillcrest Elementary School students and one home-schooled student have learned that robots aren’t just the stuff of mass production and science fiction movies. How did they do that? Why, by taking part in an Ocean Odyssey, of course. No, they haven’t been using robots to hunt for sunken treasure in the South Pacific. But they did participate in the national FIRST (For Inspiriation and Recognition of Science and Technology) Lego League for the first time in the fall of 2005. The league’s 2005 theme, 'Ocean Odyssey,' pertained to finding ways to use robots to benefit and preserve the health of the world’s oceans. 'It’s a good program for kids ages 9-14 because it’s a relatively inexpensive way to expose kids to science and engineering, and they get to see what engineers and scientists do. You have to start kids at this age,' said Madeline Schaal, coach of the Hillcrest robotics team and coordinator of the school’s foreign language program. ... She also encourages other area elementary schools to get involved in robotics as well. 'It’s really simple to start. And if you want to coach, you don’t have to have a background in engineering,' she said, 'you just have to be willing to commit the time.'" February 12, 2006: New environmental intelligence demonstrators - Basque organizations present two environmental intelligence demonstrators in European project. Basque News and Information Channel eitb24. "Basque research centre Ikerlan-IK4 and white line domestic appliance manufacturer Fagor Electrodomésticos presented two environmental intelligence demonstrators at a recent event held in Holland, to publicize the first results of the AMEC European project which seeks to design products, services and contents to help in the home of the future. ... A management spokesman said AMEC was designed to 'promote artificial intelligence', in reference to all the technological systems with people-sensitive devices that react to them in any environment...." February 11, 2006: The human touch. By Simon Tsang. The Age & theage.com. "[Stephen] Keeney says the artificial intelligence capabilities [of ASIMO] include facial recognition and voice recognition: it can understand hand signals and voice commands. It has a global mapping system which involves using its head-mounted cameras to scan its environment and record stationary and moving objects as it moves. Other advances in robotics are being made in Sweden. A student at the Complex Adaptive Systems of Chalmers University of Technology in Goteborg, Almir Heralic, has developed a robot called HR-2. ... While its motion is less graceful than ASIMO, Heralic says its aim is to test 'to what extent different biologically inspired algorithms could be used to create complex robot brains for real robots'. In other words, it's a test bed for developing robots with more natural human traits that don't have high processing and power demands. However, it raises the question of whether robots need to look like humans. While ASIMO takes on human form with two arms, two legs and five fingers on each hand, there's no real face. HR-2 has a metal faceplate with cut-outs for the eyes, nose and mouth." February 10, 2006: The Future is a Matter of Choice. Michael Anthony Basil's letter to the editor. SciFi Weekly. "Artificial intelligence remains a top-notch plot device which continues to keep us cautious of the possibility of our co-existing with living machines one day. We may not be ready for that reality just yet. The point is that sci-fi indeed only helps to make the unreal real if we choose the unreal to become real first. Human beings have always had this choice within their power and always will. The fact that human creativity establishes these realities in science fiction to begin with is just the proof we need to know that we are not as ignorant and self-destructive as we are often portrayed in most sci-fi classics." February 9, 2006: Biology inspires perceptive machines. IST Results. "Teaching a machine to sense its environment is one of the most intractable problems of computer science, but one European project is looking to nature for help in cracking the conundrum. It combined streams of sensory data to produce an adaptive, composite impression of surroundings in near real-time. The team brought together electronic engineers, computer scientists, neuroscientists, physicists, and biologists. It looked at basic neural models for perception and then sought to replicate aspects of these in silicon. 'The objective was to study sensory fusion in biological systems and then translate that knowledge into the creation of intelligent computational machines,' says Martin McGinnity, Professor of Intelligent Systems Engineering and Director of the Intelligent Systems Engineering Laboratory (ISEL) at the University of Ulster's Magee Campus and coordinator of the Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) initiative-funded SENSEMAKER project of the IST programme. ... He says intelligent systems need to adapt to their environment without reprogramming; they need to be able to react autonomously in a manner that humans would describe as intelligent; for that they need a perception system that enables them to be aware of their surroundings. Two other projects will carry aspects of their work further. The FACETS project, also funded by FET will continue to explore machine perception, focusing on vision. Meanwhile ISEL at Magee Campus is actively engaged in a major proposal to create a Centre of Excellence in Intelligent Systems." February 9, 2006: Overwhelmed With Gadgets? Here's a Dinosaur. By Leslie Walker. The Washington Post & washingtonpost.com. "Pleo, a $200 robot introduced at the Demo technology conference here this week, looks like a baby dinosaur barely bigger than a squirrel. ... 'Pleo is the first technology that is aiming its focus on human emotional interactions and relationships,' [Caleb] Chung said in an interview Tuesday. As machines and man become closer, Chung thinks humans will be able relate better to inanimate partners if they develop personalities and other humanlike traits. That's why Ugobe spent five years developing the first in what is planned to be a series of robots programmed to display emotion and learn from their dealings with humans. ... [T]he conference that has produced such past hits as the Palm Pilot and TiVo did feature some promising items this year. ... Riya: This start-up is preparing to release a Web photo service that uses automation and face recognition to organize photo collections. Riya's software peers into the pixels of images to analyze their patterns, identify faces, read any text it finds and then index or 'tag' all the photos." February 9, 2009: It's man versus machine. "The scrabble guy" column. Naples Sun Times & zwire.com. "Once again we tackle the burning issue every Scrabble player faces: 'How do I get better'? ... What if I told you to play a machine? Meet MAVEN, the artificial intelligence engine that resides in the computer CD ROM version of Scrabble, distributed by Hasbro. The disc actually presents a very entertaining version of the game. There are several different editions, based upon the type and version of operating system your computer uses." February 9, 2006: US plans massive data sweep - Little-known data-collection system could troll news, blogs, even e-mails. Will it go too far? By Mark Clayton. The Christian Science Monitor. "The US government is developing a massive computer system that can collect huge amounts of data and, by linking far-flung information from blogs and e-mail to government records and intelligence reports, search for patterns of terrorist activity. The system - parts of which are operational, parts of which are still under development - is already credited with helping to foil some plots. It is the federal government's latest attempt to use broad data-collection and powerful analysis in the fight against terrorism. But by delving deeply into the digital minutiae of American life, the program is also raising concerns that the government is intruding too deeply into citizens' privacy. ... The core of this effort is a little-known system called Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight, and Semantic Enhancement (ADVISE). Only a few public documents mention it. ... A major part of ADVISE involves data-mining - or 'dataveillance,' as some call it. It means sifting through data to look for patterns. If a supermarket finds that customers who buy cider also tend to buy fresh-baked bread, it might group the two together. To prevent fraud, credit-card issuers use data-mining to look for patterns of suspicious activity. What sets ADVISE apart is its scope. It would collect a vast array of corporate and public online information - from financial records to CNN news stories - and cross-reference it against US intelligence and law-enforcement records. ... But ADVISE and related DHS [Department of Homeland Security] technologies aim to do much more, according to Joseph Kielman, manager of the TVTA portfolio. The key is not merely to identify terrorists, or sift for key words, but to identify critical patterns in data that illumine their motives and intentions, he wrote in a presentation at a November conference in Richland, Wash. ... Understanding the relationships among people, organizations, places, and things - using social-behavior analysis and other techniques - is essential to going beyond mere data-mining to comprehensive 'knowledge discovery in databases,' Dr. Kielman wrote in his November report. ... Some computer scientists support the concepts behind ADVISE. 'This sort of technology does protect against a real threat,' says Jeffrey Ullman, professor emeritus of computer science at Stanford University. 'If a computer suspects me of being a terrorist, but just says maybe an analyst should look at it ... well, that's no big deal. This is the type of thing we need to be willing to do, to give up a certain amount of privacy.' Others are less sure. 'It isn't a bad idea, but you have to do it in a way that demonstrates its utility - and with provable privacy protection,' says Latanya Sweeney, founder of the Data Privacy Laboratory at Carnegie Mellon University. But since speaking on privacy at the 2004 DHS workshop, she now doubts the department is building privacy into ADVISE. 'At this point, ADVISE has no funding for privacy technology.'" February 9, 2006: U.S. could fall behind in global ‘brain race.' Initiatives aim to boost science, math education. By Dan Vergano. USA Today (page 1D) & USAToday.com. "A chorus of scientists, politicians and business leaders has long sounded this lament: The USA is about to be deposed as the world's leader in science and technology. And last week President Bush joined the choir, calling in his State of the Union address for a $136 billion boost in science education and research over the next 10 years. ... Such concerns are driving the biggest push to improve U.S. science competitiveness since 1957, when the Soviet Union started the space race with the launch of a basketball-size satellite called Sputnik. While the 20th century had the arms race, the competition in this century will be a brains race, says science policy analyst Michael Lubell of the American Physical Society. ... Altogether, it adds up to disheartening prospects for the nation, says [Norman] Augustine. His panel [for the National Academy of Sciences report, 'Rising Above the Gathering Storm'] made 20 recommendations, including research funding increases, math and science education measures and tax-credit changes. But many involved say the biggest change needed is a cultural one, making science and technology attractive to today's students. 'Frankly, we've lost our focus,' [Jeff] Bingaman said at an interview last week with USA TODAY, which included Alexander and Sens. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., and Barbara Mikulski, D-Md. The four are key movers behind science-competitiveness legislation, the PACE Act, now garnering a great deal of support in the Senate. Backed by 60 senators one week after its unveiling, the act's three bills largely contain the NAS recommendations. 'My own view is that kids here, like kids everywhere, get excited by what they are exposed to,' Bingaman says. 'We have to expose them to exciting areas of math and science.' ... [A] Raytheon Corporation survey of 1,000 11-to-13-year-olds released last month found that 84% said they would 'rather clean their room, eat their vegetables, go to the dentist or take out the garbage than learn math or science.' ... Many kids are taught by teachers lacking a background in science or math, Augustine says. For example, among eighth-graders in a 1999 survey, 59% had math teachers who didn't specialize in the subject. The international average was 29%. Bush's 'American Competitiveness Initiative,' announced in his State of the Union speech, would train 70,000 high school teachers to lead advanced math and science courses. Another effort would encourage up to 30,000 math and science professionals to become high school teachers. Similar initiatives are proposed in the PACE Act.” February 8, 2006: Japanese robot enchants Brazilian school kids with samba and soccer. Kyodo News / available from Yahoo! Asia News. "QRIO, the product of cutting-edge artificial intelligence technology developed by Sony Corp., is touring Brazil under the sponsorship of the National Federation of UNESCO Associations in Japan. ... As part of its performance at Colegio Magno School the robot demonstrated dancing to different rhythms, stumbling and getting back up, reacting to sound stimulation and talking to local students in Portuguese. ... [Karen Pincelli Izzo, 11] could hardly control the excitement in her voice as she described the experience, adding that the encounter had inspired her classmates to pay more attention in science classes. 'The robot has shown us that this is the right track for motivating students towards technology,' the school's principal, Miriam Tricate, said, emphasizing that she was impressed by the students' interest in talking to the Sony technicians who attended the event. ... Sony developed the first prototype of the robot in 1997 and the current version can handle uneven surfaces and recognize people's faces and voices."
>>> Resources for Educators, Robots; also see this related article February 7, 2006: Grant gives students a taste of engineering. By Clair Maciel. Fort Bend Herald and Texas Coaster & herald-coaster.com. "Every Wednesday, for two hours after school, students at Deaf Smith Elementary are getting an early start on learning how to be an engineer. With a $3,000 grant underwritten by the Lamar Educational Awards Foundation this year, teachers are helping the children learn the basics of building a functional robot in a 6-week robotics academy program. [PHOTO: Fifth-graders Sandra Grimaldo, Nancy Grimaldo and Kaitlyn Kendziora build their own remote-controlled robot in the after-school robotics program at Deaf Smith Elementary School.] A total of 54 students in first through fifth grades participate in the after-school program, where they build robots, cars and cranes out of LEGOs and learn the practicalities and mechanics of constructing such devices." February 7, 2006: Furby creator launches dinosaur. By Chris Kirkham. Digit Live News. "Scheduled to appear Tuesday at the DEMO technology conference in Phoenix, Arizona, Pleo is a 'life form' made by Ugobe, a robotic technology group. [Caleb] Chung's latest project is designed to resemble a one-week-old, long-neck dinosaur -- a sauropod. Pleo walks, Pleo listens, and Pleo feels -- meaning Pleo has an advanced operating system that allows him to relate to humans through a wide range of emotions. ... 'Caleb Chung realized with the Furby that people are more fascinated with life than they were with features and functions,' says Ugobe CEO Bob Christopher. 'Life is a phenomenal thing to emulate.' Pleo runs on a sophisticated operating system termed 'LifeOS' by Christopher. Emotions are configured in an artificial intelligence engine using more than 50 algorithms to simulate hormones and sophisticated emotions. Christopher says Pleo has its own distinct personality -- not quite dinosaur, not quite human."
>>> Robotic Pets, Applications February 6, 2006: Uni military research. By Becky Conway. Student Newspaper [Edinburgh University]. "The Artificial Intelligence Applications Institute (AIAI), which forms part of the School of Informatics, has gained a number of contracts from the arms sector involving the development of planning systems employed by the military. ... The AIAI adapt technologies developed by the Artificial Intelligence (AI) department and the wider AI discipline, turning them into marketable systems used both in the defence industry and elsewhere. It is believed AIAI-developed technology may have been used to improve the military capabilities of armed forces when operating within a coalition, channelling AI technology to develop strategies for more efficient warfare. Currently, the government provides funding for research and development directly to arms companies. They can in turn invest in university research, which although providing investment in the institution, can also limit the applications of technology from departments. ... While ethical committees govern the work of both the Colleges of Humanities & Social Sciences, and Medicine & Veterinary Medicine, no such structure exists to oversee research and development carried out by the College of Science & Engineering. The Edinburgh University Students’ Association upcoming Annual General Meeting on 8 February will however see this issue raised. An 'Ethical Research' motion is to be proposed, asking EUSA to lobby the University to create a representative ethics committee for the College of Science & Engineering. It is hoped that a governing body can be established that 'strives for the maintenance of high ethical standards, both in research methodology, and the possible applications of research.'" February 6, 2006: Software That Learns by Doing. Machine-learning techniques have been used to create self-improving software for decades, but recent advances are bringing these tools into the mainstream. By Gary H. Anthes. Computerworld. "Attempts to create self-improving software date to the 1960s. But 'machine learning,' as it's often called, has remained mostly the province of academic researchers, with only a few niche applications in the commercial world, such as speech recognition and credit card fraud detection. Now, researchers say, better algorithms, more powerful computers and a few clever tricks will move it further into the mainstream. ... [Sebastian Thrun, director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory] used several new machine-learning techniques in software that literally drove an autonomous car 132 miles across the desert to win a $2 million prize.... Computer scientist Tom Mitchell, director of the Center for Automated Learning and Discovery at Carnegie Mellon University, says machine learning is useful for the kinds of tasks that humans do easily -- speech and image recognition, for example -- but that they have trouble explaining explicitly in software rules. In machine-learning applications, software is 'trained' on test cases devised and labeled by humans, scored so it knows what it got right and wrong, and then sent out to solve real-world cases. Mitchell is testing the concept of having two classes of learning algorithms in essence train each other.... Stuart Russell, a computer science professor at the University of California, Berkeley, is experimenting with languages in which programmers write code for the functions they understand well but leave gaps for murky areas. Into the gaps go machine-learning tools, such as artificial neural networks. Russell has implemented his 'partial programming' concepts in a language called Alisp, an extension of Lisp. ... Meanwhile, research is pushing forward in a branch of machine learning called genetic programming (GP), in which software evolves in a Darwinian fashion." February 6, 2006: Picking the job. By Nick Chordas. The Columbus Dispatch & Dispatch.com. "So you want to make video games? Get in line: The industry has become increasingly competitive. Fortunately, to give students a leg up after graduation, game-design programs in schools often focus on the five major positions. A primer: ... Programmer : The true techie writes the computer code, making use of physics and artificial intelligence. Thanks to the programmer, a car that hits a wall doesn’t pass through it unharmed. Average salary: $62,500; highest: $300,000."
>>> Careers in AI and AI Courses (@ Resources for Students), Video Games, Software Development, Industry Statistics February 6, 2006 : Code-Breaker - The life and death of Alan Turing. Jim Holt's review of David Leavitt’s, "The Man Who Knew Too Much: Alan Turing and the Invention of the Computer" (Norton/Atlas). The New Yorker. "With the backing of John Maynard Keynes, he was elected a Fellow of King’s College in 1935, at the age of twenty-two. ... That spring, attending lectures in the foundations of mathematics, he was introduced to a deep and unresolved matter known as the 'decision problem.' A few months later, during one of his habitual runs, he lay down in a meadow and conceived a sort of abstract machine that settled it in an unexpected way. The decision problem asks, in essence, whether reasoning can be reduced to computation. That was the dream of the seventeenth-century philosopher Gottfried von Leibniz, who imagined a calculus of reason that would permit disagreements to be resolved by taking pen in hand and saying, Calculemus --- 'Let us calculate.' Suppose, that is, you have a set of premises and a putative conclusion. Is there some automatic procedure for deciding whether the former entails the latter? ... By ruthlessly paring away inessential details, he arrived at an idealized machine that, he was convinced, captured the essence of the process. The machine was somewhat homely in conception: it consists of an unending tape divided into squares (rather like an infinite strip of toilet paper). Over this tape a little scanner travels back and forth, one square at a time, writing and erasing 0’s and 1’s. ... Turing was able to do some amazing things with his abstract devices, which soon became known as 'Turing machines.' ... The boldest idea to emerge from Turing’s analysis was that of a universal Turing machine: one that, when furnished with the number describing the mechanism of any particular Turing machine, would perfectly mimic its behavior. In effect, the 'hardware' of a special-purpose computer could be translated into 'software' and then entered like data into the universal machine, where it would be run as a program.... At Princeton, Turing took the first steps toward building a working model of his imaginary computer, pondering how to realize its logical design in a network of relay-operated switches; he even managed to get into a machine shop in the physics department and construct some of the relays himself. In addition to his studies with [Alonzo] Church, he also had dealings with the formidable John von Neumann, who would later be credited with innovations in computer architecture that Turing himself had pioneered. ... Back at Cambridge, he became a regular at Ludwig Wittgenstein’s seminar on the foundations of mathematics. ... When Turing arrived at Bletchley Park, no work was being done on the naval Enigma, which many considered to be unbreakable. Indeed, it has been said, there were only two people who thought the Enigma could be broken: Frank Birch, the head of Bletchley’s naval-intelligence division, because it had to be broken; and Alan Turing, because it was an interesting problem. ... By 1942, Turing had mastered most of the theoretical problems posed by the Enigma. Now that the United States was ready to throw its vast resources into the code-breaking effort, he was dispatched as a liaison to Washington, where he helped the Americans get their own Bombe-making and Enigma-monitoring under way. Then he headed to New York, where he was to work on another top-secret project, involving the encryption of speech, at Bell Laboratories, which were then situated near the piers in Greenwich Village. While at Bell Labs, he became engrossed with a question that came to occupy his postwar work: was it possible to build an artificial brain?" February 5, 2006: Princeton dean - Comp sci field needs women. By Clark Cohen. The Brown and White. "Women are often discouraged from the field of computer science because of negative stereotypes and myths associated with the industry, Maria Klawe, dean of engineering at Princeton University, said in a lecture last Wednesday. Klawe’s speech, 'Gender, Lies and Video Games: the Truth about Females and Computing,' was a part of the computer science and engineering distinguished seminar series. Klawe said she hopes to increase participation of women in engineering and computer science. ... Myths that stop females from entering the computer science field include ideas such as computers were made for men and women lack the inherent ability to understand computers. ... The reasons women are less interested in technology can be traced to adolescence, Klawe said. ... By increasing interest in computing, Klawe said, and gaining confidence and a sense of belonging in the field, women will be more likely to follow career paths in computer science. Changing the computer nerd image associated with computing through media, games, contests, outreach workshops and speakers, and integrating more computer programming in math curriculum will also open doors for females, Klawe said. Emphasizing computer applications rather than just programming will also attract more women, she said. As will exposing females to computers at an earlier age." February 5, 2006: Getting their 'bot in gear - Richardson Students building machine for contest. By Jeremy Roebuck. The Dallas Morning News & DallasNews.com. "Just three weeks into the new semester, the students in Max Morales' robotics class have designed and started construction on a robot that can collect rubber balls and shoot them, and aim itself with an independent targeting device. 'This is not quite your daddy's shop class,' said Mr. Morales, a Richardson High School teacher. 'Instead of building dustbins and birdhouses, we're building autonomous robots.' Next month, the students will take their completed robot to Houston for the FIRST Robotics Competition Lone Star Regional. The event is part of the world's largest robotics competition for high school students, conducted by an organization called For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology. More than 1,000 teams from countries across the globe compete. 'Programs like this are important if we want to attract more students to technology,' said Cristian Penciu, dean of electronics at DeVry University's Dallas campus." February 5, 2006: Surveillance Net Yields Few Suspects - NSA's Hunt for Terrorists Scrutinizes Thousands of Americans, but Most Are Later Cleared. By Barton Gellman, Dafna Linzer and Carol D. Leonnig. The Washington Post (page A01) & washingtonpost.com. "Surveillance takes place in several stages, officials said, the earliest by machine. Computer-controlled systems collect and sift basic information about hundreds of thousands of faxes, e-mails and telephone calls into and out of the United States before selecting the ones for scrutiny by human eyes and ears. Successive stages of filtering grow more intrusive as artificial intelligence systems rank voice and data traffic in order of likeliest interest to human analysts. ... Supporters speaking unofficially said the program is designed to warn of unexpected threats, and they argued that success cannot be measured by the number of suspects it confirms. ... Contributors to the technology said it is a triumph for artificial intelligence if a fraction of 1 percent of the computer-flagged conversations guide human analysts to meaningful leads. ... Even with 38,000 employees, the NSA is incapable of translating, transcribing and analyzing more than a fraction of the conversations it intercepts. For years, including in public testimony by Hayden, the agency has acknowledged use of automated equipment to analyze the contents and guide analysts to the most important ones. ... An alternative approach, in which a knowledgeable source said the NSA's work parallels academic and commercial counterparts, relies on 'decomposing an audio signal' to find qualities useful to pattern analysis. Among the fields involved are acoustic engineering, behavioral psychology and computational linguistics. A published report for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency said machines can easily determine the sex, approximate age and social class of a speaker. They are also learning to look for clues to deceptive intent in the words and 'paralinguistic' features of a conversation, such as pitch, tone, cadence and latency." February 4, 2006: Robot special - Almost human. New Scientist (Issue 2537; page 38) & NewScientist.com. "Robots are on the march. Already, 1.5 million Roomba vacuum-cleaning bots are crawling the globe, and autonomous planetary rovers are working overtime on Mars. But this is only the start of what engineers are hoping to achieve. The goal is to build robots that can be let loose in our world, where they will learn to interact with humans in a messy and unpredictable environment, not just in the lab. These robots need to be able to get around in the same places we do, manipulate objects in their surroundings and communicate with others around them. In short, they need to be more like us. ... New Scientist lifts the lid on the most stunning advances in humanoid bots. Researchers are poised to pull together developments in three key fields - walking, talking and manipulation - to produce a new generation of human-like machines. And when artificial intelligence catches up, they will not only be able to clean the house, do the dishes and take out the garbage, but also to play with children, help care for the elderly and even explore the farthest reaches of space and perform repairs or search-and-rescue missions in hazardous sites on Earth. ... The robot revolution, in three exclusive features: Now hear this ... Walk this way ... Get a grip ... Note: These articles require a Full Access subscription."
>>> Robots, Applications February 3, 2006: March of the Machines. By Duncan McLeod. Financial Mail. "Robotics is set to change the way people work, live and play in the next few decades. Robots will make many middle management and clerical jobs redundant and make people's lives easier by doing menial tasks. They will also become companions. This is the prediction of futurist David Smith, who heads the Unisys-sponsored Global Future Forum, a network of future-thinkers. Smith says rapid advances in technology will deliver a world of 'intelligent' robots far faster than is often suggested. ... Japan's ageing population - more than 40% of the society is expected to be 60 years or older by 2050 - will drive demand for robots, he says. The machines will take care of the frail and elderly. ... 'Children will buy robots to look after their parents,' Smith predicts. ... Artificial intelligence is already being built into some business software, though Smith says this is still 'crude' compared with what's coming. 'In some societies, a lot of jobs will disappear,' he says. It's not yet clear what the impact of this might be." February 3, 2006: The business of future gazing. Click, BBC TV's technology show, presented by Spencer Kelly. "It is the futurologist's job to map out a path for their employers, spotting business opportunities and risks, identifying social changes, and steering their company towards the best profits. Futurologist for BT, Ian Pearson says: 'I've got a lot of experience of working in different aspects of engineering, so I've got a good feel of how fast the different areas are going. So if I'm tracking what people are starting to do research and development on today, by going to conferences and reading technical magazines and stuff, I've got a fair idea of what's likely to be around, and I can guess fairly accurately how long it's going to take before it comes.' ... The latest technology timeline released by BT suggests hundreds of different inventions for the next few decades including: ... * 2017: first hotel in orbit * 2020: artificial intelligence elected to parliament * 2040: robots become mentally and physically superior to humans.... If ever there was a symbol of the third millennium, surely it is technology in human form." Use the sidebar link to watch the programme. February 2, 2006: PDP Planet.com - Computer History and Restoration Archive. Interview with Rich Alderson, the project's chief systems administrator. WebTalkGuys World Radio Show on Web Talk Radio, with hosts, Rob and Dana Greenlee. [Note: the broadcast can be accessed from several sources including this page at Yahoo! Podcasts.] "Rich Alderson: The kinds of programming that got done on systems like the DEC-10 and the DEC-20 were some of the biggest breakthroughs in areas like artificial intelligence and databases -- these things were invented on this kind of hardware and it was done in what was a very limited resource environment. Large disk drives were under 500 megabytes ... that's megabytes. ... We had to be smart about how we programmed. What Paul wanted to see was that the techniques that we learned under those conditions didn't get lost when it came time for people to have to do the same sort of thing on a 500-gigabyte disk and a CPU that ran literally one million times as fast as the ones we were using. ... Rob Greenlee: Talk about what you can do at the site itself. ... You give access to these older systems to help people learn ... " February 2, 2006: Hi-Tech initiative aims to curb spread of disease after disaster. By D. Neil McInnes. Scottish Enterprise. "Pioneering technology is being developed at the University of Edinburgh to help aid agencies respond more efficiently to outbreaks of disease including those that follow natural disasters like the Asian tsunami. Under the terms of a recently signed memorandum of understanding, the University’s School of Informatics will provide computer technology which will enable the World Health Organisation (WHO) track the spread of disease more effectively and then act to curb its impact. ... With its world-renowned expertise in artificial intelligence planning, the University will help agencies track the spread of infection in a methodical fashion, and respond to emergencies quickly and flexibly. Edinburgh researchers will provide WHO with a range of hi-tech support including initiatives for electronic record-keeping systems that help officials accurately monitor the spread of disease, and computer support that enables senior medical staff to make informed decisions at the scene of an outbreak. ... Richard Wheeler, Business Development Executive for the School of Informatics, said: ' ... This project is an exciting development because the University of Edinburgh has world-renowned expertise in medicine and informatics -- the agreement has the potential to develop into a much wider collaboration on e-health and disease surveillance and control which could have a major impact on world health.'" February 2, 2006: China develops underwater robot for nuclear reactors. Xinhua / available from People's Daily Online. "Chinese scientists have developed the country's first underwater robot which is used for working surrounding fuel rods inside nuclear reactors. ... Chinese automation experts said that this type of underwater robot has laid a solid foundation for further research and development in versatile artificial intelligence technologies." February 1, 2006: Data mining tells government and business a lot about you. By Robert S. Boyd. Knight Ridder Newspapers. "You may never have heard the term 'data mining,' but it's at the core of the argument that's raging over government eavesdropping on Americans. It's also how commercial companies learn about who you are, where you go, what you eat, what you like, what you buy. Data mining is the process of using computer technology to extract the knowledge that's buried in enormous volumes of undigested information. ... Once it's been collected, the data harvest is stored, organized, searched and analyzed by complex computer programs called algorithms. The programs scour the data for hidden patterns or relationships, such as a suspicious number of insurance claims by an individual or repeated phone calls between, for example, Afghanistan and Detroit. ... Data miners are like gold or diamond miners, who have to burrow through tons of useless material to get the nuggets they want. ... There's a 'greatly increased government hunger for private information of all sorts,' said Jonathan Zittrain, an expert on the social implications of the Internet at Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Mass. 'As such databases grow, the government essentially possesses its own stockpile of the nation's communications on which to perform searches.' ... Data-mining experts make a distinction between the appropriate use of the technology to detect terrorists or catch criminals and its possible misuse to invade privacy or inhibit free communication. 'The realization that every digital movement is recorded and monitored itself will chill private behavior,' Zittrain wrote in the Harvard Law Review. But Gregory Piatetsky, a Boston-based consultant to data-mining companies, defended the technology in an e-mail interview. 'I believe that data mining technology can be useful,' he said, noting its success in detecting credit card fraud and money laundering. In national security cases, he said, the government 'may have linked several e-mails from a bad guy to other guys that we know nothing about. Before you can determine whether that guy is good or bad, you first need to intercept' the e-mails. Some experts say it's all right to use data mining against terrorists, but not against domestic crooks. ..." February 1, 2006: EECS Revamps Course Structure. By Waseem S. Daher. The Tech (Volume 126, Number 65). "Will freshman scheming be the same if their schemes are more about robots and less about Scheme? This coming term marks the launch of C1, a new course designed to teach freshmen introductory electrical engineering and computer science in an integrated fashion using mobile robots as a case study. ... The new curriculum is designed with three goals in mind: greater flexibility in requirements, better integration of electrical engineering and computer science, and more depth to better prepare students for graduate school or real-world design challenges, [Professor Tomas Lozano-Perez] said. ... The proposal is currently being shown to the faculty, will then be opened up for student comment, and then must jump through all the hoops of various MIT committees to be approved, meaning the changes are still fairly tentative. ... The idea with these capstone classes is that students would be able to explore an individual subject area, so that they will be better prepared for graduate school or research, for example, Lozano-Perez said. Another advantage to this proposed reorganization is that students would have more flexibility in choosing subjects of interest. Students would pick two 'streams' through the various levels described above. The idea here is to 'break the stovepipes' that segregate EE and CS, and allow students to mix and match subjects more easily, [Eric L.] Grimson said." February 1, 2006: Tech trends for 2006 begin with Google. Ottawa Business Journal. "The expanding role of Internet search engines---call it 'Googlemania'---will be the top technology trend of 2006, according to Deloitte's annual survey of the technology, media and telecommunications industries. ... The company predicts the scope of search, while still based on text-based key words, will expand to include digital data held on devices such as PCs, mobile phones, digital cameras and personal video recorders. Deloitte also sees significant improvements in the linkage between humans and technology. Natural language speech recognition and voice synthesis will likely be combined with basic artificial intelligence offering a wide range of new services, the company says. Possible applications in the automotive industry include distance monitoring, collision avoidance and voice-controlled driver environment." February 1, 2006: Sony scraps four-legged robot pet Aibo. By Yuri Kageyama. The Associated Press / available from USAToday.com. "The world's first mass-marketed robot, Sony's Aibo, recognizes its owners' faces and is programmed for sympathy, like a canine companion. Its eyes light up in red to show anger, green to convey happiness. It even learns its own name. ... Like so many things Sony has made over the years, the Aibo is a niche product. And since Sony is pulling the plug on robot production as part of a major restructuring, so goes the Aibo. ... Owners have created fan clubs around the world, and some even dress up their canine robots like babies. Some hospitals used the Aibo --- which means 'pal' in Japanese and combines the first two letters of 'artificial intelligence' combined with 'bo' from robot --- in therapy. The robots' charm comes in part from how their behavior somewhat reflects how they've been treated by their masters. ... Takeshi Ohashi, a Kyushu Institute of Technology professor, considers Aibo a gem of technological finesse. He plans to appeal to Sony to bring the robots back. Ohashi has his motives. He is an organizer of RoboCup, an annual international competition in which teams use Aibos and other robots to play soccer."
>>> Robotic Pets, Robots, Assisitive Technologies, Competitions (@ Resources for Students), Applications February 2006: Celebrating Fifty Years of Computer Science. Carnegie Mellon Today (Vol. 3, No. 1). "In 1956 ... In Pittsburgh, in the basement of the then Graduate School of Industrial Administration building at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, associate dean Herbert Simon was orchestrating another type of revolution: the electronic revolution. With a unique interdisciplinary mix of psychology, economics, organizational behavior and a brand new IBM 650, Simon's Computation Center led Carnegie Tech into the forefront of computer science and artificial intelligence. ... The School of Computer Science will host a campus-wide celebration, April 19-22, to commemorate the past achievements and to celebrate future endeavors that will continue to revolutionize the world. Key events will include a semi-centennial symposium and a celebration of the newest building on campus, the Gates Center for Computer Science." February 2006: An Ibsen Classic, Now With Robots! By Mike Daisey. Wired (Issue 14.02). "[O]n February 8 in New York City, the underground theatrical superstars Les Freres Corbusier premiere the first production of Hedda Gabler in which half of the major roles are played by robots. Not humans in funny suits, but walking, talking machines performing live onstage. It's titled, naturally, Heddatron. ... It might be difficult for machine actors to convey the full dimensions of the human condition. But Elizabeth Meriwether's strange script cuts to the heart of Ibsen's story: A woman chained up in her own life struggles to break free of social programming. That struggle is mirrored by the robots, who attempt to escape their own programming and achieve true AI - self-awareness. Just as Hedda rails against a world that can't hear her, the robots represent potential that one day may be unleashed."
>>> Robots, Ethical & Social Implications, Philosophy February 2006: Hollywood Science Gone Bad. By David Kushner. IEEE Spectrum Online. "Anyone who chronicles technology for a general audience faces the same challenge --- how to make a story interesting and accessible, while getting the science right. ... While The Core and Armageddon, the 1998 Ben Affleck doomsday flick, rank among [Phil] Plait's worst ever, Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey, not surprisingly, tops the list. But the high ranking comes at a cost. '2001 is the most scientifically accurate movie ever made,' Plait says, 'but it's also really boring.'" February 2006: Sudoku Science - A popular puzzle helps researchers dig into deep math. By Lauren Aaronson. IEEE Spectrum Online. "Millions of people around the world are tackling one of the hardest problems in computer science --- without even knowing it. The logic game Sudoku is a miniature version of a longstanding mathematical challenge, and it entices both puzzlers, who see it as an enjoyable plaything, and researchers, who see it as a laboratory for algorithm design. ... As a member of the NP-complete subset, Sudoku is an ideal tool for investigating the whole class of NP problems: an efficient algorithm for any NP-complete problem --- the toughest of NP problems --- automatically provides an efficient algorithm for solving all. Although most experts believe that no such algorithm exists, they continually search for improved algorithms that provide shorter, if not the very shortest, paths to solutions. Sudoku has already led some researchers to concrete advances in algorithm design. At the Intelligent Information Systems Institute at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., director Carla Gomes experiments with Latin Squares, a version of Sudoku without subgrids. ... Sudoku follows in a long tradition of artificial intelligence research on games, most notably chess. But some of AI's most important advances stem from more modest games. The route-finding algorithm that powers car navigation systems, for instance, was first demonstrated on the Sliding Tile puzzle...." February 2006 : Geeks in Toyland - Lego built a global empire out of little plastic blocks, then conquered the wired world with a robot kit called Mindstorms. So when the time came for an upgrade, they turned to their obsessed fans - and rewrote the rules of the innovation game. By Brendan I. Koerner. Wired Magazine (Issue 14.02). "The kit, due in stores in August, looks nothing like 2.0 and isn't backward compatible. Users still program the bots from their PCs, but everything else about the experience has been changed. The centerpiece of a Mindstorms kit is the RCX brick, which acts as the robot's brain. It receives input from sensors and sends instructions to motors, breathing life into plastic-block creatures. The new brain has a 32-bit processor -- a huge upgrade over the old 8-bit processor -- allowing NXT bots to perform more-complex tasks than their predecessors, like ambling with a near-human gait or reacting to voice commands. ... The programming language has been revamped, as have the sensors, motors, and I/O ports. As a result, Mindstorms NXT robots look and act far more realistic than their predecessors. ... Instead of cobbling together a 3.0 version, Lund decided to make a clean break with the past. Mindstorms' main flaw, he believed, was its complexity; many kids lost interest before completing their first robot." February 2006: A Tour of Turing - The life and death of Alan Turing continue to offer up mysteries. Andrew Hodges' review of "The Man Who Knew Too Much: Alan Turing and the Invention of the Computer," by David Leavitt [The Great Discoveries Series. W. W. Norton, 2005]. Scientific American. "Twenty-five years ago the word 'Turing' tingled with mystery for the few who knew it. Readers of Douglas Hofstadter learned that Alan Turing belonged with Gödel in exploring minds and logic and knew also of 'the Turing test' for artificial intelligence. But others were aware of Turing as a British figure, a Cambridge mathematician, emerging in connection with the huge World War II operation to break the Enigma ciphers. His crucial importance in the battle of the Atlantic was still shrouded by state secrecy. In fact, it was only after this secrecy was lifted that he began to be acknowledged for another great contribution--his role in the origin of the computer." |
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