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June 30, 2006: BACS breathes perception into robots. ETH Zürich. "The ETH Zurich is coordinating the integrated research project BACS (Bayesian Approach to Cognitive Systems), which is being sponsored by the EU and will run until 2010. In this project, researchers are investigating the extent to which Bayes' theorem can be used in artificial systems capable of managing complex tasks in a real world environment. ... The basis of this research is Bayes' theorem. Thomas Bayes was an English mathematician and Presbyterian monk who lived in the 18th century. The theorem named after him describes alternatives for calculating the likelihood of events occurring using conditional probability. It is a model for rational judgment when only uncertain and incomplete information is available. ... The scientific work being carried out under BACS makes robots with new capabilities a real prospect: robots capable of handling incomplete information, analyzing their environment, acquiring context-specific knowledge, interpreting the data and, together with humans, taking decisions. Specific implementations with market potential are already planned." June 30, 2006: Official intelligence. By Craig Worrell. Galax Gazette. "Grayson County multi-sport athlete DeRon Brown has put up some pretty impressive numbers during his high school career. In fact, his statistics will stack up with those of any runningback or second baseman in the state. ... Though he may never have stirred up recruiting battles between coaches of the football and MACC teams while in high school, the academians will get their shot at Brown this fall when he enrolls at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. ... The summer program in Cambridge will help ease the transition from a small rural high school to the most selective university in the United States. ... While there's no question about the validity of Brown's intelligence, he plans to enter the field of another type of smarts. 'I want to go into artificial intelligence and robotics,' he said. 'Computer engineering. I've always wanted to make robots and see what they can do. It's one of the new technologies, and I think it's one of the greatest things there is.'" June 30, 2006: Search firm offers business focus - Accoona launches in Europe hoping to attract corporate users through its use of artificial intelligence technology. By Phil Muncaster. IT Week. "Web search engine Accoona launched in Europe last week hoping to attract corporate users by providing more accurate results through its artificial intelligence technology. ... Accoona’s artificial intelligence technology understands the meaning of user queries beyond a direct word match, and a SuperTarget feature enables users to refine these results as they wish, Kauder added." June 30, 2006: Allies on a growing viral battlefield. Fairfax Business Network, a sponsored supplement to The Sydney Morning Herald. "With a high proportion of Internet users now on broadband, security has emerged as an issue that the home or SOHO [small office, home office] user must address with some urgency. ... Microsoft's new OneCare suite is not yet available in this country. ... If you have a firewall that monitors outgoing traffic, it will ask for your approval whenever a new attempt is made to connect through to the Internet. If you are happy that this is legitimate, the firewall will remember and continue to let that program transmit, otherwise it is blocked. Over a period after you install it, as you use each of your programs that want to traverse the firewall, a set of rules will be built up to control what is or is not allowed to pass. You can go in at any time and modify or delete these rules if needed, but basically the firewall looks after itself, only alerting you when something new happens. This is a good example of artificial intelligence at work; a program that can learn as it goes, adapt to your requirements, and quietly patrol your border with the badlands." June 29, 2006: The Future Could be Female...‘Women’s Economy’ Erodes a (Necessary) End to Male Dominance. Online Recruitment. "According to Ian Pearson, Futurologist at BT Group Chief Technology Office (BTGTCO), the future could be female for many reasons: over the next 10-15 years Artificial Intelligence (AI) is likely to be incorporated in several products to make users’ lives easier, but also cause male-dominated industries requiring muscle power to disappear. However, it cannot be depended on to replace human intelligence and softer communication skills fully." June 29, 2006: Students win world cup in Germany - A team of girls has just returned to England from Germany with a world cup. BBC News. "The teenagers from Amberfield School, Nacton, Suffolk, won the final of the Robocup World Championships 2006, in Bremen Germany, earlier this week. ... The six girls, all aged 14, became the UK national champions in March.... They won first prize in the junior category for dancing robots and shared honours with teams from Germany and Canada who were also awarded first prizes." June 29, 2006: I Robot, your companion. IST Results. "Robotic technology is advancing apace and now a top team of European scientists and engineers hope to make the leap from single function ‘dumb’ machines to adaptive learning machines. The concept of a cognitive robotic companion inspires some of the best science fiction but one day may be science fact following the work of the four-year COGNIRON project funded since January 2004 by the IST’s Future and Emerging Technologies initiative. But what could a cognitive robot companion do? 'Well, that's a difficult question. The example that's often used is a robot that's able to fulfil your needs, like passing you a drink or helping in everyday tasks,' says Dr Raja Chatila, research director at the Systems Architecture and Analysis Laboratory of the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (LAAS-CNRS), and COGNIRON project coordinator. 'That might seem a bit trivial, but let me ask you a question: In the 1970s, what was the use of a personal computer?' he asks. ... Dr Chatila summarises the purpose of the seven themes. 'Research breaks down into four capacities required by a cognitive robot companion: perception and cognition of environment; learning by observation; decision making; communication and interaction with humans.'" June 28, 2006: Their robotics STEM from love of science. By Valeria M. Russ. Philadelphia Daily News & philly.com. "You can tell right away that Shavar Miles isn't big on talking. He speaks with a quiet, shy voice. But the 14-year-old student at Roberto Clemente Middle School let his expertise in robotics do the talking yesterday as he manned the controls of a Sea Perch underwater robot. ... The Clemente students' demonstration, and robotics demonstrated by students from Baldi Middle School and Overbrook High and Penn State and the University of Pennsylvania were part of the Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) Talent Development Forum at the hotel. The middle- and high-school students assembled robots from kits supplied by the Delaware Valley Industrial Resource Center (DVIRC), an economic development group that is focused on encouraging Philadelphia-area students to develop career interests in science and technology." June 28, 2006: Microsoft Bets on Robotics. Redmond wants to make it easier to program -- and make money from -- futuristic machines. By Alex Halperin. BusinessWeek Online. "On June 20, the company unveiled the Microsoft Robotics Studio, software that's designed to make it easier to program robots. Available in a beta testing phase as a free download, the platform lets programmers communicate with robots through Microsoft's Windows operating system and is meant to cut down on some of the more cumbersome aspects of robot design. ... [Tandy] Trower concedes the market is small and that the company's investment in robotics pales in comparison with what it devotes to core product areas. Still, he says Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates 'took a personal interest' in the project. ... Helen Greiner, chairman of iRobot says the Microsoft platform fills an 'educational niche.'" June 27, 2006: Robotics Camp Teaches Kids Critical Thinking. By Lindsay Wilcox. KLTV 7. "Can robots think? That's the question students are being asked this week at a robotics camp in Tyler. ... Camp organizers hope this event will peak some interest in Tyler middle schools, so they might participate in robotics competitions in the future." June 27, 2006: Seeing is believing -- device helps the blind read. The Associated Press / available from CNN.com. "The device, combining a personal digital assistant and a digital camera, was developed by inventor Ray Kurzweil and the membership organization of more than 50,000 blind people. It's been dubbed the Kurzweil-National Federation of the Blind Reader. 'This is really the hottest new technology to be developed for blind people in the last 30 years,' said [James] Gashel, who calls it 'the camera that talks.' About three decades ago, Kurzweil invented the first device that could convert text into audio. It was about the size of a washing machine. That gave way to software that could be used by a computer and scanner to perform the same function. The latest device, about the size of a paperback book, introduces portability. 'It's always been considered desirable to have a reading machine that a blind person could carry along with them,' Kurzweil said." June 27, 2006: Robocup 2006 - CMU robots are world soccer champs. By David Templeton. post-gazette.com. "Carnegie Mellon University won a soccer championship at the RoboCup 2006 World Championship early this month in Germany, and also spectators' hearts, with robots that provided color commentary during robotic soccer games. The success of Carnegie Mellon robots on the international stage has inspired university officials to push technology to the next step in robotic evolution. Those projects include robots that can attend meetings on behalf of humans, observe procedures, then instruct people how to do them, and watch over the elderly. 'One scenario is to send a robot to a meeting I cannot attend and tell me what's happening,' said Dr. Manuela Veloso, the Herbert Simon Professor of Computer Science and head of Carnegie Mellon's RoboCup teams. 'Another scenario is taking care of the elderly. There are many situations ... they can address.'" June 27, 2006: How Important Are Computers in Your Life? ABC News. "ABC News is currently producing a report looking at the increasing power and importance of technology in our lives and the future of artificial intelligence. We want to know how important you think technology is to our world." June 26, 2006: Not a bad piper … for a robot. By Iain Lundy. Scotsman.com. "It is enough to make traditional Scottish bagpipe aficionados choke on their chanters and mutter darkly that 'it could only happen in America'. When students of computer science graduated last year from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, they walked on stage to receive their degrees to the skirl of the pipes playing good old-fashioned Scottish tunes. But this was bagpipe music with a difference. ... [T]he university's Class of 2005 came face-to-face with the latest and slightly mind-boggling innovation in bagpipe technology -- a robot bagpiper programmed to produce, at the touch of a button, the same sound generated by hundreds of thousands of skilled pipers worldwide. McBlare, as it is fondly known, is the pride and joy of Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute." [An audio clip can be accessed via a link in the article.] June 26, 2006: The Thinkers - An engine that 'does search right.' By Mark Roth. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "Dr. [Raul] Valdes-Perez said clustering allows a computer user to go quickly to the Web pages that are most relevant, instead of having to rely on a search engine's software to put the pages he wants at the top of the heap. Google's overwhelmingly dominant search engine ranks a Web page based largely on how many other Web pages are linked to it, much as a scientist is sometimes ranked by how often his research is cited by other scientists. The philosophy behind that approach, Dr. Valdes-Perez said, is that 'if you have high-value information, it will work its way to the top.' But for any individual Web user, that may not be true, he said. ... As Vivisimo has evolved, it has named its clustering search engine Clusty.com, and has developed its own 'crawler' to go out and find Web pages before grouping them by theme. The clustering technology may even preserve one feature of the Web that is rapidly disappearing -- serendipity, or the chance you'll accidentally bump into a Web site you wouldn't have found otherwise." June 26, 2006: Smithsonian exhibit doggone fun. By Ron Chalmers. The Edmonton Journal. "Alberta at the Smithsonian will sparkle this week with singers, dancers, actors and artists -- and some surprising innovations. Dan Lizotte, a University of Alberta graduate student, will be in Washington, D.C., with a pack of robot dogs that help him study artificial intelligence and machine learning. ... It also will illustrate biting-edge computer science. As Lizotte's dog moves, it integrates computer vision, computer learning, and autonomous decision making -- all with potentially wide-ranging applications. 'It's good of the Smithsonian to showcase stuff that is not stereotypical Alberta, but is an important part of Alberta -- which is no slouch in research and technology,' Lizotte says."
>>> Robotic Pets, Autonomous Vehicles, Grand Challenges, Machine Learning, Vision, Academic Departments & Events (@ Resources for Students) June 26, 2006: Artificial Intelligence Turns 50 - Philosophy professor discusses how it started and where it's headed. By Susan Knapp. Vox of Dartmouth. "The field of AI has its roots at the 1956 Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence. In those early days, says [James] Moor, researchers wanted to make machines more cognizant and to lay out a framework to better understand human intelligence. Today, according to Moor, these remain goals for AI, but AI has become more focused on specific aspects of intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, vision, and action. Moor's expertise lies in the philosophy of computing, which explores such questions as, what kinds of minds can machines have, what does it mean to be creative or aware, and what kinds of decisions should machines make? These questions draw out interesting features of human nature, and highlight what it is that makes humans similar to and different from machines." June 25, 2006: From Astroboy to cuddly seals - Japan's love affair with robots goes way back -- and has a future, too By Rui Umezawa. Toronto Star & TheStar.com. "News stories of the latest humanoid robot in Japan have become as routine as photos of young starlets hawking the newest car or flat-screen television. ... The Robot Industry Policy Committee considers the development of such robots vital for Japan's future. Like other industrialized countries, Japan faces a shrinking and aging population, and robots may be one way of alleviating the inevitable labour shortage. While Canada turns to immigration to resolve similar issues, the Japanese seem just as comfortable working alongside artificial beings. Japan's rapid advancement in the field of robotics is the result of the convergence of various factors, ranging from the economic and industrial to the cultural. ... At the same time, the Japanese are culturally inclined to attach fondness to robots. ... [P]erhaps the greatest influence on Japanese robotics is literary. ... Accustomed to holding such a positive view of robots, the Japanese public is likely to continue supporting its government and businesses in further developing robotics, and Japan's rapid advancements in the field appears certain to continue." June 25, 2006: Coming soon - Mind-reading computers. Reuters / available from CNET News.com. "A raised eyebrow, quizzical look or a nod of the head are just a few of the facial expressions computers could soon be using to read people's minds. An 'emotionally aware' computer being developed by British and American scientists will be able to read an individual's thoughts by analyzing a combination of facial movements that represent underlying feelings." June 24, 2006: Robots are our friends. By Kathleen Richardson. New Scientist (Issue 2557; subscription req'd). "Robots as iconic images are associated with Star Wars and The Terminator, yet they have more to do with politics than with science fiction. The first robots were created in an age of rebellious political and social upheaval. Eighty-five years ago, the robot made its first appearance in the play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) written by Czechoslovakian playwright Karel Capek. In R.U.R., robots are mass-produced to work in place of people. The term is taken from the Slavic 'robota', which means forced labour." June 24, 2006: A Strange Loss of Face, More Than Embarrassing. By Sharon Waxman. The New York Times. "Philip K. Dick has gone missing, and now Hollywood finds itself an android short. An actual android. This famed science fiction writer, whose work was the source for many a Hollywood blockbuster, from 'Blade Runner' to 'Minority Report,' has been dead since 1982. Last year an admiring doctoral student and evident computer whiz, David Hanson, built a life-size facsimile of Mr. Dick, using the latest artificial intelligence technology, robotics and a skinlike substance he calls 'frubber.' The android, which looked just like the author and was able to conduct rudimentary conversations about Mr. Dick's work and ideas, was at the cutting edge of robotic technology, able to make eye contact and believable facial expressions. June 23, 2006: Out on a limb. By Stacey Higginbotham. The Deal.com (also available from CET News.com; July 8, 2006). "Advances such as telemedicine and the use of wireless devices in hospitals have become an accepted part of medical technology, but the notion of replacing limbs with computer-powered devices seems more like something out of 'RoboCop' or 'The $6 Million Man.' Since as far back as the Civil War, prosthetic limbs have consisted of unwieldy lumps of wood, plastic or metal. While some advances in materials have improved comfort for amputees, prosthetics still lack the responsiveness and feel of actual limbs. Icelandic prosthetic maker Össur hf. is trying to change that with its Rheo Knee. Billed as the first knee with artificial intelligence, it combines up to 15 sensors, a processor, software and a memory chip to analyze the motion of the prosthetic and learn how to move accordingly. ... Many experts in the bionics field view the next five years as a turning point for combining technology and biology. Hugh Herr, who directs the Biomechatronics group at MIT's media lab, cites two drivers of innovation in the area: availability of funding and progress in several different branches of science. Spending by the military and other groups continues to climb, while advances have been made in battery longevity, chip design, tissue regeneration and robotics, he says." June 23, 2006: Using Robots in Iraq to Make Missions Safer [radio broadcast - audio available.] NPR's Talk of the Nation, hosted by Ira Flatow. "The same company that makes the popular floor vacuum Roomba manufactures a military robot. Guests talk about robots deployed in the field, and what their use means for the future of warfare. Guest: Helen Greiner, chairman and co-Founder of the iRobot Company." June 23, 2006: Presidents selected for British Computer Society 50th anniversary year. PublicTechnology.net. "Nigel Shadbolt will take over as British Computer Society President from November 2006 with Rachel Burnett stepping in as Deputy President. They will both be in office when BCS celebrates its 50th birthday next year. Nigel, Professor of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the School of Electronics and Computer Science at Southampton University...." June 22, 2006: Technology camp introduces students to robotics. By Allison Koch. Sentinel News. "It's not quite what you would find in a sci-fi movie, but two-dozen Shelby County elementary school students learned in technology camp what makes Lego robots go."
>>> Summer Camps, Robots, Resources for Students June 22, 2006: Rise of the robots: Dreams becoming reality. By Hiroyuki Ueba. Daily Yomiuri Online. "This is the fourth installment of the weekly series 'Amazing Kansai!!,' introducing people who have made remarkable contributions in their fields, including religion, architecture, science, business and modern and traditional arts. ... State-of-the-art robot technologies have yet to reproduce the dazzling moves of top-notch soccer stars. In fact, their movements have yet to reach the level of toddlers. However, Prof. Minoru Asada at the Department of Adaptive Machine Systems at Osaka University's Graduate School of Engineering, a robotics expert, and other researchers who organized RoboCup, a worldwide soccer event for robots since 1993, have an ambitious target. 'By 2050, we hope to develop a team of fully autonomous humanoid robots that can beat the human world champions in soccer,' he said. ... When people think of robots, they generally imagine humanoids that appear in comics, science fiction novels and movies and anime. However, for robotics researchers, they are defined in broader terms. Asada said, 'Robots are artificial objects in symbiotic relationships with humans,' adding that home appliances could be considered robots in the broadest sense. However, this idea is a little too all-encompassing for his liking. Asada believes that the ability to communicate is the key element for a machine to qualify as a true robot. Although automobiles are not generally recognized as robots, the latest high-tech cars are a good example of robotics technologies being used in common machines. ... In September, he launched the five-year Synergetic Intelligence Project to study human learning processes and mechanisms and apply technical expertise from the research to robot design and development. ... The Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry estimates the market for next-generation daily-use robots will expand to 7.2 trillion yen in 2025." June 22, 2006: When robots learn social skills. IST Results. "Learning to communicate and adapting our behaviour to the information we receive has been fundamental to human evolution. If machines could do the same the intelligent talking robots of science fiction could become the stuff of science reality, as researchers aim to prove. Most research into the Artificial Intelligence (AI) that underpins any form of intelligent machine-machine or machine-human interaction has centred on programming the machine with a set of predefined rules. Researchers have, in effect, attempted to build robots or devices with the communication skills of a human adult. That is a shortcut that ignores the evolution of language and the skills gained from social interaction, thereby limiting the ability of AI devices to react to stimuli to within a fixed set of parameters. But a team of researchers led by the Institute of Cognitive Science and Technology in Italy are taking a new approach to the problem, developing technology to allow machines to evolve their own language from their experiences of interacting with their environment and cooperating with other devices. ... Another project partner, the Viktoria Institute in Sweden, has used Embodied and Communicating Agents to develop a system called Push!Music that provides a new and innovative way to share music files over portable devices. ... AI decides what tracks to exchange based on the user’s preferences and listening habits."
>>> Multi-Agent Systems, Machine Learning, Agents, Representation, Interfaces June 22, 2006: AI @ 50: Can It Be? Editor's Eye column by Jon Erickson. Doctor Dobb's Portal Blog. "Can it be? Is AI is really 50-years old? Well, almost. It will be exactly 50-years old at the end of August, but the festivities are underway sooner than that. ... To celebrate the occasion, Dartmouth will be throwing a party. Okay, a conference. Officially entitled 'Dartmouth Artificial Intelligence Conference: The Next Fifty Years,' the AI@50 conference will convene on the Dartmouth campus July 13-15 and include talks by McCarthy, Minsky, Rod Brooks, Stuart Russell, Nils Nilsson, and other luminaries in the field of AI. According to conference director James Moor, there will likely be considerable debate about the future direction that AI should take. He says that the plan for the conference is not only to honor the past and assess present accomplishments, but also to help seed ideas for future artificial intelligence research." June 22, 2006: Can you read - If so, you're human - probably. As computers get better at text tests, new Web site defenses are sought. By Crayton Harrison. The Dallas Morning News. "Computers are better than humans at a lot of complex calculations, but we still have them beat on some small problems. That's why a very simple test has protected some of the world's biggest Web sites for so long. ... But the defenses are finally crumbling. Computer scientists are working on replacements for the test, knowing that computers are learning to read even the messiest scribbles. ... Researchers aren't trying to beat the distorted-letter tests to ambush Web sites, of course. They're trying to make computers better at recognizing text. But if computer scientists can figure out how to beat the tests, hackers won't be far behind. The next wave of tests will have to present problems that computer researchers and cybercriminals have barely begun to tackle with artificial intelligence. Carnegie Mellon's research team trademarked a name for these computer-or-human tests: Captcha. It's an acronym that stands for 'Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.'" June 21, 2006: Robot scores. Comment by Andrew Lee, Editor. The Engineer Online. "RoboCup is intended to serve a serious purpose. Football embodies most of the key challenges facing the worlds of robotics and artificial intelligence. These include mobility, dexterity, connectivity and interaction with other robots, adapting to fast-changing situations and autonomous decision-making. Get these right in the context of football and their potential applications in other contexts are hugely significant. Added to this is the fact that RoboCup sounds like quite a lot of serious fun. In an age when engineering and technology has a tendency to either bore or scare people, its application to something as accessible as the beautiful game serves as a welcome educational tool." June 21, 2006: AI. By Alexander James Burke. globeandmail.com. "It's everywhere you look -- in our computers, our air conditioners, our fridges. It's the basis of an entire narrative genre -- sci-fi -- and it's been both unfathomably evil (Terminator; 2001: A Space Odyssey; System Shock 2) and tirelessly helpful (Terminator II; Robocop; Beneath A Steel Sky). There may be myriad ethical questions about the increasingly widespread use of Artificial Intelligence (AI), but one thing's for sure: Today's videogames don't really take full advantage of the advances in AI technology. ... [Peter] Molyneux's goals are more macrocosmic than [Ian] Davis' in their focus, but no more far-fetched. 'I am fascinated most with the concept of learning and with group minds, or the ability to simulate large scale systems and AI behavioural patterns. I want to see an AI system that fully adapts itself around a player and what that player wants.'" June 21, 2006: Scientists taking cues from nature. The Associated Press / available from BostonHerald.com. "It’s one of the greatest challenges for robotics engineers: Building a machine that actually walks like one of us. So far, most attempts have come off as, well, robotic. Scientists in the field of biologically inspired design are looking at nature to help solve such stumpers. They argue that engineers can learn much from the world’s most rigorous process: Evolution. 'If you think of organisms as products, all the bad ones have been recalled. Those that have survived evolved over millions of years,' said Marc Weissburg, a biology professor and co-director of Georgia Tech’s Center for Biologically Inspired Design. ... Two research centers opened up within the last year, one at Georgia Tech in Atlanta and another at the University of California, Berkeley." June 20, 2006: Johnson & Wales launches robotics degree program. Providence Business News. "Johnson & Wales University’s School of Technology will begin offering a new academic program in September, the university announced Tuesday. 'Robotic Engineering Technolog' is a two-year associate degree program that provides education in the area of robotics and automation. The program includes courses in math, science and engineering designed to provide a background in this growing technical field. Courses will cover material in mechatronics, computer vision, artificial intelligence and microprocessor-based robotic projects, including microprocessor interfacing for various sensors, speech synthesis, communication and real-time programming. As the United States recognizes its need to provide better education in math and science in order to catch up with global competition, robotics programs are developing around the country, from middle schools to universities." June 20, 2006: The ideas interview - Steve Quartz: John Sutherland meets a man who knows what you are thinking. The Guardian & EducationGuardian.co.uk. "Cognitive philosophy - 'brain science', as its practitioners call it - is a rarefied academic field. ... 'I think brain science is really beginning to explore the relationship between objective measures and subjective measures of things like taste and preferences," he replies. "When we make a decision there are, of course, conscious components in play. But it turns out that our brain is also tracking a lot of things that we may not be consciously aware of.'... Quartz's ideas cross traditional boundaries. He's both a philosopher and an experimental neurobiologist. And he's also creating a nexus (a very profitable one) between the university lab and the marketplace. Is he happy about that? 'I'm very drawn to that nexus. I think from the philosophical perspective it's a very interesting new development. We are now with brain science where we were 20 years ago with biotechnology - that point in time, for example, when genetics was about to have significant real-world applications. With brain imaging we're at the point where we can look scientifically at decision-making. And from there we too will move on to applications in the political realm, or the economic realm, or the legal realm.'" June 20, 2006: Neural networks invade hedge fund industry. By Pratima Desai. Reuters India. "Imagine a mathematical system that works like a human brain, can absorb thousands of bits of information in seconds, learn from its mistakes, adapt to new environments and help a manager allocate money to hedge funds. No, it's not Hal from the film 2001 Space Odessey or the Terminator, a robot played by Arnold Schwarzenegger -- both artificial intelligence tools that learned human behaviour. But it's something similar -- a neural network that is being developed by Germany's Commerzbank AG with academics at British universities to earn better risk-adjusted returns for hedge fund investors." June 20, 2006: Microsoft enters robotics race. By Stefanie Olsen. CNET News.com. "Imagine a world with Windows-powered robots that can perform house chores, schedule appointments or walk the dog. It may turn into a reality now that Microsoft has ventured into robotics, a field long relegated to science fiction, but which increasingly has come to life in recent years. Microsoft said Tuesday it launched a new research group and the company's first-ever robotics software, available for public preview via download. The technology, called Microsoft Robotics Studio, is a Windows-based toolkit designed so that commercial and individual developers can create intelligent applications for a range of products. ... With Microsoft's heft and money, the field of robotics will likely gain visibility, experts say."
>>> Robots (@ Software), Robots, Applications June 20, 2006: Robots Act as Soccer Commentators - At RoboCup 2006, Ami and Sango, a pair of biped robots specially programmed, call the game. By Susan Nasr. Technology Review. "As national soccer teams head into the second round of the World Cup this week in Germany, they're playing in the wake of RoboCup 2006, held last week in Bremen, Germany. Organized by the RoboCup Federation, these games, in which robots on wheels and legs compete in soccer 'matches,' are sponsored by a host of companies, including Microsoft. It might not get the fanfare of the World Cup, but this year RoboCup drew more than 400 teams from 36 countries. In 2006, though, a new twist was added to the event: robots not only played in the games, they also called the action. The two new announcers are biped robots made by Sony and programmed by a team of computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon University, led by professor Manuela Veloso. Standing around two-and-a-half feet tall, the robots were originally built to showcase Sony's robotic technology; they can perceive in three dimensions, recognize faces and colors, and talk in multiple languages." June 20, 2006: Author back to give keynote address at Robot Hall of Fame ceremony. By Timothy McNulty. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "With the robot world increasingly seeming like a mash-up of real-life science and goofy pop culture, it makes perfect sense for former Pittsburgher Daniel H. Wilson to be the keynote speaker at Carnegie Mellon's Robot Hall of Fame ceremony tomorrow. Wilson's humorous book, 'How to Survive a Robot Uprising,' partially based on research by fellow scientists at CMU's Robotics Institute (he got his doctorate there last year), is being made into a movie starring Mike Myers of 'Austin Powers' and 'Saturday Night Live' fame. And like Wilson's book, CMU's ceremony honors the real and unreal, from industrial robots to ones famous from movies. The lines between robotic fact and fiction have become so blurred lately that Wilson -- who used to worry his fellow scientists wouldn't realize he was joking about robot uprisings -- has become a voice of reason." June 19, 2006: Artificial Intelligence Turns 50 - Dartmouth philosophy professor discusses where it's been and where it's going. Dartmouth College press release. "The field of AI has its roots at the 1956 Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence. In those early days, says [James] Moor, researchers wanted to make machines more cognizant and to lay out a framework to better understand human intelligence. Today, according to Moor, these remain goals for AI, but AI has become more focused on specific aspects of intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, vision, and action. Moor's expertise lies in the philosophy of computing, which explores such questions as, what kinds of minds can machines have, what does it mean to be creative or aware, and what kinds of decisions should machines make? These questions draw out interesting features of human nature, and highlight what it is that makes humans similar to and different from machines." June 19, 2006: 'Heaven' - Will the future be better than we can imagine? [Part 1 of a 3 part series. The introductory article is here and Part 2 is here.] CNN.com. "Heaven or Hell? In the first of a three part series CNN hears how some scientists believe the future will be better than our wildest dreams. We are on the cusp of the next great evolutionary leap forward. Humanity is currently riding an upward curve of technological innovation --- across computers, nanotechnology, robotics, biotech and genetics. A curve rising according to its own principles with its own logical ascent that is becoming ever steeper and steeper as one advance brings ten or a hundred others closer to fruition, and they in turn facilitate more. Soon incredible things will become very everyday." June 19, 2006: Aussie robot dogs are world champs. By Louisa Hearn. The Sydney Morning Herald. "As one Australian football team was facing up to defeat in Germany overnight, another was celebrating after claiming a world championship. The University of Newcastle's NUBots beat off strong competition from around the world in Bremen, Germany to take out the grand final of The Four-Legged League in which 24 teams of robotic dogs compete in a World Cup style soccer play-off."
>>> Robots, Competitions (@ Resources for Students), Sports, Hazards & Disasters June 19, 2006: Diamonds in the data - Federal agencies increasingly use data mining to extract valuable info buried in large databases. By Aliya Sternstein. FCW.com. "At this moment, public health officials are poring over terabytes of health care data to detect the first signs of a possible pandemic flu outbreak, bioterrorism attack or other contagion. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began a biosurveillance program in 2003, but advances in information exchange standards and concerns about pandemic flu have accelerated its national implementation. The federal initiative, called BioSense, analyzes existing health care records, such as diagnoses, laboratory test results, physician visits and hospitalizations. The results help public health officials discover where an event is occurring and decide when to intervene with vaccines or quarantines. The CDC works with regional hospital systems to create secure connections between their health care databases and the federal database. The data does not contain patient names, medical numbers or personal identifiers, CDC officials said. Like the CDC, Medicaid agencies, NASA and many other government agencies have begun to employ software to look for meaningful patterns in large volumes of data. Their searches have various purposes, such as pinpointing criminal activity, improving customer service and detecting fraud, waste and abuse. Some call this activity data surveillance, others call it data mining, and still others prefer the term data analysis. Whatever such searches are called, they usually require federal agencies to strike a balance between observing behaviors and violating privacy. CDC officials say their project should not be labeled data mining. ..." June 19, 2006: A stethoscope without the ears. Duluth researchers refine computer technology for detecting heart murmurs and other problems. By Brandon Stahl. Duluth News Tribune. "For the past several months Glenn Nordehn, a doctor of osteopathic medicine and assistant professor at the University of Minnesota Medical School Duluth, has been recording patients' heart sounds as part of a research program to help doctors improve the use of one of their oldest and most recognizable tools: the stethoscope. ... 'The current method that physicians use to interpret is a subjective method,' Nordehn said. 'There's not an objective heart-sound analysis tool that's been validated.' Thanks to the work being done at the medical school and at UMD's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, there is nothing subjective about the way Nordehn's artificial intelligence computer programs interpret the heart sounds. When Nordehn records a heart sound, he hopes the software will be able to determine if a murmur -- an unusual, potentially abnormal heart sound in the heartbeat -- is nothing to worry about or is an indication of health problems." June 19, 2006: An intelligent valuation system. Basque Research. "Researchers at the Public University of Navarre are working on a computerised property valuation system which, by means of artificial intelligence techniques, tries to emulate the behaviour of a property valuer and thus offer the market price of a property in any city in the world, although the trials, for the moment, are being carried out in the housing market of Pamplona. The project, due to be finished for next December, is being undertaken with the collaboration of the Trabajos Catastrales company." June 19, 2006 @ 2PM: Artificial Intelligence - When Humans Transcend Biology - Web chat with Ray Kurzweil. The Washington Post. "Inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil will be online Monday, June 19 at 2 p.m. ET to answer your questions about Artificial Intelligence. ... Beyond the Future is a weeklong series of live Web chats with noted experts and Washington Post reporters examining the kinds of technological advancements the world could see in 20, 50 or even 100 years."
>>> Ethical & Social Implications, Robots, Systems, Applications, Science Fiction, The Future June 19, 2006: Into Egypt - A country invites the world, and its scrutiny. By Jay Nordlinger. National Review (pages 38 - 41; subscription req'd for online access). "[E]very spring, the WEF [World Economic Forum] comes to the Middle East, for a three-day conference focused exclusively on this crucial region. ... This burst of liberalization has been overseen by what the country's publicists call a 'dream team,' a 'handful of reformist ministers.' They are led by the prime minister himself, Ahmed Nazif. He is the face of what you might call the New Egypt.... Later, I interview Prime Minister Nazif one on one. He's an impressive-looking man, in his mid-50s, tall and solid, with a full head of gray-white hair. And he speaks like the intellectual he is. His Ph.D. is in computer engineering, from McGill, and his research was in computer vision. 'What's that?' I ask. 'In the simplest possible terms, it's making computers understand pictures, images.' And 'it is a beautiful science.' A mark of Nazif's interests and inclinations is his membership in the American Association for Artificial Intelligence."
>>> Vision, AAAI Membership, Associations (@ Resources for Students) June 18, 2006: Computers to mark papers in school trial. By Hannah Edwards. The Sydney Morning Herald. "Students at a Sydney high school are set to take part in a trial in which computers will mark their English assignments, examining grammar, punctuation, spelling and style. ... The program, titled Criterion, allows students to upload responses to essay questions that are then submitted to a computer server for checking. Mr [David] Hawkes said the program would relieve teachers from duties such as checking spelling, allowing them to concentrate on assessing areas such as content. 'Its chief advantage will be teachers being able to develop a closer relationship with the students,' Mr Hawkes said. 'Second, teachers will be able to concentrate on deeper aspects of essay writing such as context development and the structuring of the essay. "It's a really clever area of computer science. It's called natural language processing. The program's accuracy is now around 90 to 95 per cent of what a human marker would mark at.'" June 18, 2006: Encryption allows for security and privacy - Companies, agencies can see data but not identifying details. By Brian Bergstein. The Associated Press / available from MSNBC.com. "As new disclosures mount about government surveillance programs, computer science researchers hope to wade into the fray by enabling data mining that also protects individual privacy. Largely by employing the head-spinning principles of cryptography, the researchers say they can ensure that law enforcement, intelligence agencies and private companies can sift through huge databases without seeing names and identifying details in the records. ... The trick is to do more than simply strip names from records. Latanya Sweeney of Carnegie Mellon University -- a leading privacy technologist who once had a project funded under TIA -- has shown that 87 percent of Americans could be identified by records listing solely their birthdate, gender and ZIP code." June 18, 2006: No sex please, robot, just clean the floor. By Ed Habershon and Richard Woods. The Sunday Times (Britian). "The race is on to keep humans one step ahead of robots: an international team of scientists and academics is to publish a 'code of ethics' for machines as they become more and more sophisticated. ... 'There are two levels of priority,' said Gianmarco Verruggio, a roboticist at the Institute of Intelligent Systems for Automation in Genoa, northern Italy, and chief architect of the guide, to be published next month. 'We have to manage the ethics of the scientists making the robots and the artificial ethics inside the robots.' Verruggio and his colleagues have identified key areas that include: ensuring human control of robots; preventing illegal use; protecting data acquired by robots; and establishing clear identification and traceability of the machines. ... Present robots perform more mundane tasks: the most common consumer robots in Britain include self-guided vacuum cleaners such as the Scooba, lawnmowers such as the Robomow and children’s toys such as Robosapien. But far more sophisticated machines are being developed. ... To critics who scoff that intelligent robots are a long way off, the roboticists easily riposte that machines can already exert surprising influence over our lives -- think about the influence of the internet." June 18, 2006: Turing and the IT factor. Peter Conrad's review of The Man Who Knew Too Much: Alan Turing and the Invention of the Computer, by David Leavitt. Guardian Unlimited Books - Observer review. "Every time I open the electronic book in which I'm writing this review, I feel grateful to Alan Turing and also sorry for him. On the screen, an apple with a chunk bitten out of it glimmers into view: the logo proudly recalls Turing's achievement and miserably commemorates his end. Man, enticed by a woman, has always wanted to know too much, which is why Adam plucked the apple from the tree of knowledge. Turing's work on artificial intelligence, which enabled him to decrypt German military messages during the Second World War, then pressed him to design and help build a machine that could think for itself, advanced the intellectual rebellion that began in Eden." June 17, 2006: How much do we need to know? Interview with Bill Joy. By Gregory T. Huang. New Scientist (Issue 2556; subscription req'd). "Technology doesn't make everyone happy. Just ask computer scientist Bill Joy, who has pioneered everything from operating systems to networking software. These days the Silicon Valley guru is best known for preaching about the perils of technology with a gloom that belies his name. Joy's message is simple: limit access to information and technologies that could put unprecedented power into the hands of malign individuals (what is sometimes called asymmetric warfare). ... [Q:] Do you think your fears about technological abuse have been proven right since your Wired essay? ..." June 17, 2006: High-Tech Tools for the Cleaning Impaired. By Renée Peck. The Times-Picayune & nola.com. "'We all grew up watching 'The Jetsons' and we all thought we'd have Rosie (the robotic maid) to cook and clean for us,' said Nancy Dussault, director of global marketing for iRobot, the makers of Roomba, a robotic carpet cleaner, and Scooba, a robotic floorwasher. 'People are getting into the new robotics and incorporating them into their lifestyles.' ... What people (my age) want, she says, are electronics that don't need an Einstein to operate and that fit comfortably into the family dynamic. 'Over 80 percent of our Roombas are given names. You don't do that with your blender,' she pointed out. ... The iRobot Scooba hit stores this spring, so when the company asked if I'd like to test one, I considered it a duty to readers to find out what all the fuss is about. The $399 robot cleans hard floors, sort of like an electronic mop, without the mess. 'It's not a robotic paper towel, not a SpotBot,' company spokeswoman Nancy Dussault told me. 'This really uses an amazing amount of artificial intelligence to get around your floor.'" June 17, 2006: Gizmo column. New Scientist (Issue 2556: page 29). "Nuclear reactors might be built more efficiently by using supercomputers to artificially 'evolve' their design, engineers from the US Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee have found. Each design produced by the genetic algorithm...." June 16, 2006: Ga. Tech hires director for new robotics center. Atlanta Business Chronicle. "Georgia Tech is launching a robotics center on campus with hopes of creating a startup community of robot experts in Atlanta. The university has tapped Henrik Christensen, a robotics entrepreneur in Sweden and former professor at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, to head the center. His professorship will be paid by Detroit robot manufacturer KUKA Robotics Corp. The university is looking to aggressively enter the service robotics industry, which Christensen says is growing 400 percent a year. The center will focus on all aspects of service robotics, from researching ways to make intelligent vacuum cleaners and wheelchairs to robots that build cars and clean pools." June 16, 2006: Fast-food assistant 'Hyperactive Bob' example of robots' growing role. By Corilyn Shropshire. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "Kerien Fitzpatrick may be a die-hard roboticist, but he isn't too steeped in the technology to let a good business opportunity pass him by. The former Carnegie Mellon University researcher co-founded North Side-based HyperActive Technologies in 2001 to put the 'fast' back into fast food. 'HyperActive Bob' -- which looks more like a control center than a stereotypical robot -- is designed to help chains 'deliver food as fast as they want to,' said Mr. Fitzpatrick.... Using a small mounted camera on the restaurant's roof, 'Bob' spots vehicles entering the parking lot. It then considers how much food is already prepared and how many employees are needed before telling the kitchen when and what to throw on the grill or put in the fryer. 'Bob' also sizes up the vehicles -- a big SUV could mean more food to prepare, a run-of-the-mill sedan likely would mean less. ... What makes 'Bob' a robot is that it's smart enough to analyze its environment, make a decision and then act. ... Other Pittsburgh-based robotics companies pursuing the commercial market include RedZone Robotics, Automatika and Nomad Networks. RedZone has developed a robot that can clean and repair cities' water and sewage pipes, while Nomad Networks is fine-tuning a wireless security system that spots intruders."
>>> Robots, Vision, Business, Applications, Science Fiction June 16, 2006: New members to be inducted into Robot Hall of Fame. By Geoff Martin. canada.com. "The esteemed buckets of bolts already in the Robot Hall of Fame had better tidy up and make a little more room, because the Hall’s caretakers at Carnegie Mellon University have just inducted several new members. In a ceremony to be held on June 21 at Pittsburgh’s Sheraton Station Square, five new members will be inducted into the Robot Hall of Fame...." June 16, 2006: Tech Creates Self-Training Gene Prediction Program. News release from the Georgia Institute of Technology. "Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed the first ever computer program capable of training itself to predict genes in genomic DNA sequences of eukaryotic organisms, like animals, plants and fungi. The software program, GeneMark.hmm-ES may help researchers save a year or more off genome sequencing and interpretation projects." June 16, 2006: Program sparks interest in computer science with Legos. By Angie Zancanaro. The Exponent Online. "Beginning Sunday, the computer science department is putting on a camp for middle school students. The camp features two separate sessions; a beginners session which runs from Sunday to Wednesday and an advanced session which runs from Wednesday to Saturday. ... The main activity for the beginner camp is a Lego robotics program in which students build and program their own robots; the camp then holds a competition called the Lego Bowling Challenge, where teams attempt to knock down as many bowling pins as possible with their robots. ... The advanced camp focuses on a more detailed look at robotics in computer science. The campers do a robotics project similar to the Lego Bowling Challenge, but they also take a trip to Beckman Coulter, one of Purdue's partners in computer science. On the trip, campers learn about robotics with medical devices."
>>> Summer Camps, Robots, AI Courses (@ Resources for Students) June 16, 2006: Young designers predict the look and function of future cellphones. Cape Argus. "Mobile phone technology is advancing rapidly, but what can people expect to be using in 2015? What will their mobile be able to do and what will it look like? Nokia collaborated with Industrial Design students from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London to come up with ideas. ... Get your friend: Ik-Soo Shin - The aim was a user-friendly product that was like a friend. A new generation of cells with Artificial Intelligence will be able to express a user's feelings, such as anger. The phone will also recognise the voice of the user...." June 16, 2006: Seek new options and survive. By Clive Cookson. Financial Times & FT.com. "In an uncertain world, we are often pulled between sticking with what we know will reap rewards and exploring new options. Now neuroscientists have discovered which parts of the brain are involved in exploration and which in exploiting the familiar. ... To find out whether the subjects were using exploitative or exploratory gambling strategies, the scientists compared their human behaviour with the decisions made by intelligent robots; functional magnetic resonance imaging showed which brain areas were activated when exploring or exploiting. The research is published in Nature."
>>> Cognitive Science, Reinforcement Learning June 15, 2006: Government Increasingly Turning to Data Mining - Peek Into Private Lives May Help in Hunt for Terrorists. By Arshad Mohammed and Sara Kehaulani Goo. The Washington Post (Page D03). "At the federal level, 52 government agencies had launched, or planned to begin, at least 199 data-mining projects as far back as 2004, according to a Government Accountability Office study. Most of the programs are used to improve services, such as detecting Medicare fraud and improving customer relations. But a growing number of agencies are exploring the technology to analyze intelligence and assist in the hunt for terrorists. Another GAO report released in April found that of $30 million spent by four government agencies last year on services from data-crunching companies, 91 percent was for law enforcement or counterterrorism. The hope is that the technology can help to discern and thwart threats just as businesses have used it for years to predict consumer behavior on buying cosmetics or repaying mortgages, for example. Companies keep an increasing amount of data about everyone -- tracking their buying, travel, bank transactions and bill-paying habits. Data mining uses mathematical formulas to look for patterns in those behaviors. The results could enable the grocery store to send out targeted coupons, or, in theory, help the government decide how likely it may be that someone is linked to terrorist groups." June 15, 2006: Taking The Next Logical Step. By Patrick Seitz. Investor's Business Daily. "On Oct. 8, 2005, Stanford's robotic vehicle, a Volkswagen Touareg nicknamed Stanley, won the 132-mile race through the Mojave Desert near the outskirts of Las Vegas. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency -- the U.S. military group sponsoring the event -- awarded [Sebastian] Thrun's team the $2 million prize. ... Thrun, 39, is a booster for the robotics industry. He calls all four vehicles that completed the race within the 10-hour time limit winners. To persuade others to embrace robotics, he paints the industry as 'the next logical step in the Industrial Revolution.' ... Thrun rejects critics and doubters. 'There are always people who doubt the dreams, who have no imagination,' he said in an interview with Nova, the science TV series. 'I'm sure that the entire Industrial Revolution was a dream to people 500 years ago. Two hundred years ago, nobody would think that we'd plaster our country with pavement and filling stations to support a new infrastructure (for today's vehicles). I prefer to spend my time with people who dream.' After high school, Thrun became intrigued by the way people think. Many scientific disciplines touch on part of the mystery, including philosophy, psychology and biology. But Thrun was drawn to robotics because he could build machines that emulate intelligence. Best known in scientific circles for his work in probabilistic robotics, Thrun says he's been influenced by research in neural networks and statistics. June 15, 2006: ISM’s Predictive Pro predicts potential code weaknesses - Code analysis tool identifies bug hot spots to focus QA efforts. By Rick Grehan. InfoWorld. "Most QA tools manage project and bug tracking. They largely manipulate and organize information gathered in the past, and in so doing, tell you where you are on a project. If they step into the future, they only do so to assist in constructing timetables of proposed activities such as task planning. Now comes a tool that processes data harvested from the past to inform the future: ISM (Integrated Software Metrics) Predictive Suite -- QA tools that act as 'AI bug prophets.' Predictive’s crystal ball is a combination code-metrics engine and artificial-intelligence system." June 15, 2006: Robot World Cup kicks off. By Matt Chapman. vnunet.com. "So far in the competition, TeamOsaka beat NimbRo TeenSize in the Humanoid TeenSize category by four goals to one, while in the first round of the 3D simulation competition the biggest win was by SEU which put nine goals past OPU Hana 3D."
>>> Robots, Competitions (@ Resources for Students), Sports June 14, 2006: Teachers, Students At Robot Camp. By Donna Lowry. 11Alive.com (Atlanta). "Today's tech-savvy kids can sometimes be intimidating to their teachers who aren't as proficient in technology. It’s a dual purpose camp for both students and teachers. ... The idea is the brainchild of East Cobb Middle School science teacher Fred Stillwell. 'They’re learning to use the robotics for expanding and enriching kids. It will also allow them to take these robots back to the schools and create robotics programs in their elementary schools,' said Stillwell." June 14, 2006: Android research helps explain human behavior - Of device and men: because the Repliee Q1Expo android looks like a human being, we can expect it to elicit humanlike responses from those who come into contact with it. News release from Indiana University School of Informatics edited by Laboratorytalk. "Karl MacDorman is on a journey to better understand what makes human beings tick. And the companion who helps him has been known to make ticking sounds. MacDorman is among a handful of experts in the emerging field of android science, a cross-disciplinary approach to test and, if possible, verify hypotheses about human behavior. He now lends that expertise to the School of Informatics at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, where he continues his research and also teaches graduate courses in the psychology of human-computer interaction. 'It is not possible - nor is it ethical - to conduct many kinds of experiments on humans,' said MacDorman, associate professor in the school's human-computer interaction design programme. 'Very humanlike robots provide an experimental apparatus and test bed that has great potential to help neuroscientists, psychiatrists, social and cognitive scientists and others understand how and why we act the way we do.'" June 14, 2006: Software tracks proteins inside living cells. By Tom Simonite. New Scientist Tech News. "A computer system that automatically tracks the movements of proteins within a living cell has been developed by a team of biologists and computer vision experts. It could save researchers the hours often spent analysing microscope images by hand, to determine the way a cell works. The system, called CellTracker, automatically analyses a series of still digital images captured through a microscope. Doug Kell at Manchester University in UK, the lead biologist involved with the project, believes the system could dramatically speed up studies of cells' function. ... The system uses image recognition algorithms to identify the membrane marking the edge of a cell as well as the one enclosing the nucleus, which contains the cell's DNA. ... The software has been publicly released for other researchers to use." June 14, 2006: The End Is Near, But First, This Commercial - On the Hill Sci Fi Channel Promotes 'Doomsday' Scenario. By Libby Copeland. The Washington Post (page C01). "The Sci Fi Channel sponsored a discussion on Capitol Hill yesterday speculating on 10 exceedingly lousy ways our species might meet its end. It was part of an elaborate promotion for a television special called 'Countdown to Doomsday,' which airs tonight at 9. ... The segment on robots taking over the Earth shows a montage of real robots, such as Honda's Asimo, a small humanoid figure that can walk. 'Don't let these cute and innocent-looking machines fool you,' [Matt] Lauer says in the show. 'Many believe they're the first soldiers on the front lines of a robot revolution that's taking over the planet.' ... 'You wanna watch the robots,' [Linda] Douglass said. 'Seriously.'" June 14, 2006: Robot soccer World Cup kicks off. BBC News. "A football tournament played by teams of robots has kicked off in Germany. The 10th annual RoboCup, being held in Bremen, will see more than 400 teams of robots dribbling, tackling and shooting in an effort to become world champions. ... Researchers from 36 countries come to test their sensors, artificial intelligence software and body shapes on the pitch. 'After 50 years within artificial intelligence, it has been determined that these things can be better researched using soccer than the game of chess,' said Hans-Dieter Burkhard, the Vice President of the Robocup Federation." June 13, 2006: Independent robots team up for search task. By Tom Simonite. New Scientist Tech News. "A team of autonomous flying and ground-based robots have successfully cooperated to search for and locate targets in the streets of an urban warfare training ground in the US. The system could help in search and rescue efforts and military operations -- and even has the potential to include humans in the team. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, US, tested their system of team-working bots at a realistic urban warfare training ground at the US Army's Fort Benning base. ... The researchers hope this distributed model will scale up easily, so that large networks of many different robots, sensors and even humans could be patched into a team. 'A key advantage of this approach is the way the information available to the robots is anonymised,' says [Ben] Grocholsky. There is no need for complicated coordination of the different elements of the team -- each just uses any information it gets to help with its own goals." [Video available via link in article.] June 13, 2006: Computers being taught 3D vision. United Press International. "U.S. researchers say new machine learning techniques are allowing them to teach computers to perceive three dimensions in 2-D images. The Carnegie Mellon University scientists say it is now possible for computers to learn how to discern the geometric context of natural scenes, which, previously, has been a major roadblock for computer vision. ... The discovery may ultimately find application in vision systems used to guide robotic vehicles, monitor security cameras and archive photos."
>>> Vision, Machine Learning, Applications June 13, 2006: Silicon Players of the Beautiful Game. By Philip Bethge. Spiegel Online. Never mind chess -- the cool game for smart machines now is soccer. Humanoid robots stumble around the field but learn quickly. They're playing their own World Cup this week in Germany, and scientists hope machines will beat human champions in less than 50 years. ... [University of] Freiburg's robots are looking for revenge on Wednesday. The annual RoboCup 2006 takes place in Bremen this year, in parallel with the human World Cup. The organizers expect around 400 teams from 36 countries to take part. They'll flank, dribble and score in five separate leagues. ... 'Robot soccer has replaced chess as the main problem of artificial intelligence,' says [Sven] Behnke. In 1997 programmers were celebrating the triumph of IBM's 'Deep Blue' computer over chess champion Gary Kasparov; since then technology has moved on to the secrets of the give-and-go pass and the backheel. ... The rules of everyday life are far more difficult to express in bytes than chess matches or planetary orbits. A brilliant checkmate is child's play compared to the art of a free kick. 'Intelligence needs a body,' says [Oskar von] Stryk, meaning that interaction with the real world is a prerequisite for intelligent behavior. Nothing's harder to program into a robotic athlete than ball control. Never mind team play."
>>> Robots, Competitions (@ Resources for Students), Sports, Chess, Multi-Agent Systems, AI Overview June 12, 2006: Naturally Inspired - Interview with Alex Ellery. Astrobiology Magazine. "Biomimetic devices look to nature for inspiration, mimicking the way insects, plants and animals cope with difficulties. From the way plants furl their leaves to how wasps bore holes into trees, evolution has developed clever and varied ways to solve engineering problems. Alex Ellery is the head of the Robotics Research group at the Surrey Space Centre in the United Kingdom. In this interview with Astrobiology Magazine, he explains how robotics can borrow from the strategies used by life, and discusses how these techniques may be used in future European space exploration missions. Astrobiology Magazine (AM): Let’s talk about designing with biomimetics, and how you’re applying such designs to the upcoming ExoMars mission. Alex Ellery (AE): I prefer the term bio-inspiration rather than biomimetics, because we’re trying to get ideas from nature rather than just copying it. The primary rational is that biological organisms are faced with the same set of challenges and problems that engineers are. For rovers and robots, we’re trying to design autonomous intelligent agents that can survive in hostile environments. So we look at how nature has coped with that problem through evolution by natural selection, and then we can reverse engineer the natural solutions and incorporate them in our machines. ... My main interest is in robotic devices, specifically robot rovers with autonomous navigation. By studying how animals navigate, we can try to apply their methods to a planetary rover. ..." June 12, 2006: Report: High Schools Fail To Meet Needs Of Tech-Driven World. By K.C. Jones. TechWeb News. "Only 26 percent of U.S. schools require students to take computer science courses, according to a report released last week. Most cite lack of time in students' schedules, according to the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA). Though computer use pervades almost every aspect of life, the misperception that computers are for video games and surfing the Internet also prevents greater class enrollment, according to the report released last week. 'We all need to go beyond thinking this is just about the computer as a tool to help us learn other subjects -- it's really about programming, hardware design, networks, graphics, and a myriad number of other elements,' Anita Verno, professor at Bergen Community College and curriculum chair of CSTA, said in a prepared statement. ... 'The United States cannot ignore the fact that there will be a shortage of qualified candidates for the 1.5 million computer and information technology jobs by 2012,' co-author of the report and CSTA President Chris Stephenson said in a prepared statement." June 12, 2006: Heaven or hell? How will technology shape our future? CNN.com. "Humanity is the verge of an incredible future. Technologies that seem like science fiction are already becoming science fact as researchers develop innovations that will transform the very essence of what it is to be human. ... [Ray] Kurzveil argues that the growth of computing power, miniaturization and increased technical prowess will turn the world into an incredible place -- free from the conflicts over resources and wealth that have plagued it and in the last century and almost led to our obliteration in the fires of global thermonuclear war. ... In a 24-page article published in Wired magazine in March 2000, Bill Joy, the co-founder of Sun Microsystems, laid out his grave fears for the future of humanity. ... 'Enhancement and transhumanism opens up a real debate,' says Baroness Greenfield, Professor of Pharmacology at Lincoln College, Oxford University. 'Biotech, nanotech and cognitive enhancement will lead to a blurring of the boundaries of what it is to be human and a collapse of the traditional boundaries that define us. ... Increasingly science is nudging into the realm of ethics,' says Greenfield. 'Soon we will see the rise of bio-ethics as a serious discipline. But it should be given the status of politics.'" June 12, 2006: Talking PCs? Talk to the hand. By Nick Hampshire. ZDNet UK. "Voice recognition and speech synthesis technologies may not have developed to the degree some science fiction writers hoped, but have nevertheless seen some startling successes. ... Voice synthesis has been around for a long time. Bell Labs demonstrated a computer-based speech synthesis system running on an IBM704 in 1961, a demonstration seen by the author Arthur C. Clarke, giving him the inspiration for the talking computer HAL9000 in his book and film '2001: A Space Odyssey'. Forty-five years later, voice synthesis technology can be found in products as diverse as talking dolls, car information systems and various text-to-speech conversion services such as the one recently launched by BT. Many of these modern systems can convert text into a computer synthesised voice of quite respectable quality. ... Voice recognition has turned out to be a much harder task than researchers realised when work began on the problem over forty years ago. However, limited voice recognition applications are starting to creep into everyday use, voice input telephone menu systems are now commonplace, speech-to-text dictaphones are increasingly used for note-taking by doctors and lawyers, and voice input has started to appear in computer games systems. The success of some of these limited-application voice recognition systems has recently prompted the big software heavyweights, Microsoft and IBM, to make further investments. ... However, there are still a lot of technological hurdles to overcome; to understand what these are, we need to delve further into the technology. ... Speech recognition - Speech recognition, on the other hand, is a much harder task, and commercial off-the-shelf systems have only been available since the 1990s. Because every person's voice is different, and words can be spoken in a range of different nuances, tones and emotions, the computational task of successfully recognising spoken words is considerable, and has been the subject of many years of continuing research work around the world. A variety of different approaches are used, dynamic algorithms, neural networks, and knowledge bases, with the most widely used underlying technology being the Hidden Markov Model. These techniques all attempt to search for the most likely word sequence given the fact that the acoustic signal will also contain a lot of background noise." June 12, 2006: Europe's new Mars probe to banish ghost of Beagle 2. By Hazel Muir. New Scientist Space News. "Europe is gearing up to send another probe to the surface of Mars. At a press conference in London, UK, on Monday, scientists outlined their ambitions for the ExoMars mission, which will look for chemical signs of life, past or present, on the Martian surface. The UK will be a major contributor to ExoMars, due for launch in 2011. ... The European Space Agency mission will send a spacecraft to the Martian surface with a rover folded inside. After a two-year journey, the spacecraft will use parachutes, retrorockets and airbags to land softly on the Red Planet. Then it will set the rover free. The ExoMars rover will be more autonomous than NASA’s robots, Spirit and Opportunity. Stereoscopic cameras and software will allow it to identify intriguing rocks and navigate routes to them. That means it will not always have to wait for commands from Earth, which lies up to 22 light minutes away from Mars."
>>> Space Exploration, Autonomous Vehicles, Robots, Applications June 12, 2006: The technology behind backgammon - The die is cast as artificial intelligence takes online backgammon to a new level. By Paul Wardley. Personal Computer World. "Backgammon is the oldest known board game, with a history spanning thousands of years. ... Much of the renewed interest in the game stems from its connection with computing technology: not only because backgammon is being packaged as a hot new form of online gaming or because a PC is a tireless and always-available opponent, but because backgammon has become one of the success stories of research into artificial intelligence (AI). Self-taught backgammon-playing computer programs are so good that they have overturned many of the assumptions previously held about how the game should be played and which are the best moves, especially in the opening phases of the game. ... Backgammon-playing programs are entirely self taught using the technique of reinforcement learning, which is one of the most promising avenues of research into artificial intelligence. ... The mode of reinforcement learning that has been so successful in teaching computers to play backgammon is called temporal difference (TD) learning, which is based on the differences between temporally successive predictions. ... Gerald Tesauro, an IBM researcher, is responsible for pioneering TD techniques with backgammon. His program, TD-Gammon, was developed after abandoning experiments with a supervised learning program called Neurogammon, in which the good and bad moves were hard-coded." June 12, 2006: Japanese store hires robot staff - Unlike some shop assistants 'Enon' can speak and respond to spoken commands. By Simon Burns. vnunet.com. "A robot sales assistant started work for the first time at a Japanese department store on Saturday morning. The 130cm high machine is able to guide customers around the store's supermarket section and carry shopping, according to its manufacturer, Fujitsu." June 12, 2006: Are virtual worlds the future of the classroom? By Stefanie Olsen. CNET News.com. "In educational circles, Whyville's private universe is known as a multiuser virtual environment, or MUVE, a genre of software games created to inspire children to learn about math and science, among other subjects. Unlike most game software and social networks, which elicit negative associations for some parents and teachers, MUVEs are structured environments with rules for behavior, yet no pat formula for action. Designed to provide problems to solve that don't involve slaying monsters, MUVEs compel kids to figure out the issues to succeed in the environments or have time to socialize. Learning-based virtual worlds are growing more popular in schools and among children, thanks to ongoing efforts by universities and private companies. ... Wider adoption of MUVEs raises the question: Are virtual worlds the future of learning for the wired generation? ... Whyville citizenship isn't easy to come by, creating a challenge for predators. ... Artificial-intelligence technology also filters out bad words or suggestive words, like 'pants,' and asks chatters to rephrase their sentence. If the person persists, he or she can lose chat privileges." June 12, 2006: He can build them better, faster, sexier. By Andrew Rimas. The Boston Globe & boston.com. "[P]rofessor Hugh Herr, director of the Biomechatronics Group at MIT's Media Lab, has made a career of taking the fiction out of the science. His team has developed, among other marvels, a prosthetic 'Rheo Knee' that uses artificial intelligence to replicate the workings of a biological human joint. ... His Biomechatronics Group works closely with the Veterans Administration Center for Restorative and Regenerative Medicine. 'If you look at innovation in prosthetics, there's a major spike after every war,' says Herr. But public funding isn't the only factor pushing his research. Herr believes that we live in a time where three key disciplines -- tissue engineering, machine-learning, and robotics -- have advanced to the point where biomechatronics is poised for a huge leap forward. Herr thinks that, within his lifetime, amputees will run faster than people with biological legs."
>>> Assistive Technologies, Robots, Machine Learning, Applications; also see this related article June 12, 2006: SpelBots Ready for RoboCup 2006 in Bremen, Germany. Newswise / source: Spelman College News & Events. "The Spelman College robotics team, SpelBots, has qualified for a second year in a row to compete in the international RoboCup. This year’s competition will be held in Bremen, Germany, June 14-20. The SpelBots look forward to continuing to break new ground as the first all-female, all-black and undergraduate team to compete in both the United States and international RoboCups.... The SpelBots are the first to use Tekkotsu for their robot programming design. Tekkotsu is an open-source framework under development at Carnegie Mellon University under the direction of Professor David Touretzky. 'What we're doing here, although it looks fun and cute, is actually serious research. Students are learning complex science in a visual way,' said Dr. [Andrew] Williams. 'This is more than a robotics team. We want to help African American students to see what they can do. Robots have helped us make advances in the area of medicine, search and rescue and assisting the elderly.' ... Competing in the US Robocup and International Robocup is not enough for the team and its adviser. That’s why Williams decided to use the Spelman model to jump-start robotics education in the African-American community. This summer, the College launches a C.A.R.E. Camp for middle-school students. Dr. Charles Hardnett, assistant professor of computer science, will provide leadership for two consecutive sessions to middle-school students. The camp’s goal is to expose middle school students to the opportunities in computer science and robotics. In a pilot project conducted earlier this academic year, the results were very encouraging. In addition to the day camps, student will participate in Saturday activities where they will learn robot and computer-game programming in the context of technical leadership. ... Building on the positive energy of the SpelBots, the C.A.R.E. program expects to help African-Americans blaze new trails in the area of robotics education. Dr. Williams says, 'We want students to dream about technology and how they can help improve the community through it.'" June 12, 2006: A World Cup for Gearheads. By John Borland. Wired News. "Thor is a FU Fighter, part of the Free University of Berlin team competing in this year's Robot World Cup, or RoboCup, a decade-old event drawing 440 teams from 40 countries to Bremen, Germany. With soccer fans in Brazil yellow and Italian blue now flocking to Germany for the human World Cup, excitement over the robotic version kicking off June 14 is also running high. ... The event has its roots in the early 1990s, when Japanese robotics researcher Hiroaki Kitano and colleagues around the world were looking for a common platform in which to test and share their work. ... In 1997, the first RoboCup was held. Interest has climbed substantially since, peaking at last year's Osaka games, which attracted more than 180,000 spectators. The event has helped boost a strain of basic robotics and artificial intelligence research very different than that aimed at factory floors or other controlled environments. The soccer matches force robots into a fast-changing, unpredictable environment, where they have to react quickly and work as a team. ... Some of this work has already paid off in the real world. Robots created by a Florida team were used in the aftermath of the World Trade Center attacks in New York to help find victims, for example. ... [T]he Cup is divided into five separate 'leagues,' featuring different kinds of robots that allow researchers to focus on different issues. Competitions are also held for search-and-rescue operations that take place off the soccer field." June 11, 2006: Peeking at what's around the corner - Robotics as part of everyday life is fast approaching, forecaster says. By Michelle Quinn. The Mercury News. "For more than 20 years, Paul Saffo has been Silicon Valley's resident prophet, a tarot card reader of sorts who makes forecasts about technology and business. ... Q: What else do you think is around the corner? A: Every decade is shaped by a cheap enabling technology. The 1980s were shaped by cheap microprocessors and the poster child was the personal computer. The '90s were shaped by cheap lasers and the poster child was the World Wide Web. This decade is being shaped by cheap sensors, eyes, ears and sensory organs for our machines. The next big consumer phenomenon -- the big revolution that will surprise everyone -- robots. The geek on the cover of Business Week and Time is going to be someone making robots." June 11, 2006: Scientists Grasp for Sense of the Human Touch. All Things Considered story by Nell Boyce. NPR. [Audio available.] "Bruce Springsteen used to sing about wanting just 'a little of that human touch.' It turns out that researchers who build robots feel the same way. That's because, of all the five senses, touch is the most difficult to replicate in mechanical form. Just think about it: Your fingertips are constantly registering everything from temperature to vibrations to texture. Now, scientists are getting closer to matching the power of the fingertip with a new kind of sensor for pressure. Ravi Saraf, at the University of Nebraska, says a very sensitive pressure sensor could help a robot learn a lot about texture. ... RoboCup Soccer:Germany is hosting a major soccer competition in June. No, not just the World Cup. RoboCup.... Meet the New Robot Hall of Famers:Five robots will join robots such as the Mars Pathfinder Sojourner Rover and C-3PO in Carnegie Mellon University’s Robot Hall of Fame this year." June 11, 2006: CRV offers robotics classes. Clinton County News / available from the Lansing State Journal. "For the past three summers, Community Resource Volunteers (CRV) has been building Lego Mindstorms robots in the activity center at 304 N. Brush St., St. Johns. The activity has also been available in some area schools during the school year. ... Students learn how to build a variety of robots and then they learn how to use a computer to tell the robot what to do. ... The robot activity is aimed at fifth through eighth-grade students, but CRV is well aware there are some younger robot 'wizards' who can be included too." June 11, 2006: Becoming bionic - For the first time, I can appear to be a person without a disability. I am struggling to make that idea my own. By Sarah Garrecht Gassen. Arizona Daily Star. "I've learned to walk a million times. I use a prosthetic leg because my own left leg was amputated at the age of 3, the result of a rare congenital condition. ... Technology has progressed over the 31 years I've used a prosthesis. My legs have evolved from hard, shiny wood and plastic limbs that had to withstand little- kid roughhousing to more advanced knees and feet covered with sculpted foam and heavy nylons trying to create the illusion of a 'real' leg. ... Each new leg was a step forward. But now, I'm taking the biggest step. I'm learning how to be bionic. Becoming bionic isn't like it is on television -- I haven't been implanted with computer chips and wires. I still put my prosthesis on over what's left of my organic leg. But my new bionic knee, called the Rheo knee, now has a mind of its own. It reads how I walk and adjusts to the terrain.... My prosthetist, Eddie Escobar at Hanger Prosthetics, thought I would be a prime candidate for the newest in prosthetic technology, the Rheo leg, which uses artificial intelligence to mimic the movement of a real knee. ... Using a bionic leg has given me abilities that I'm sure few others recognize as monumental." June 10, 2006: Nuts-and-Bolts Ballplayer for a Space-Age Infield. By Lee Jenkins. The New York Times. "The player is best described as a machine -- cameras for eyes, tires for legs, a motor for a heartbeat and a computer for a brain. This is the type of quicksilver infielder who can calculate the speed of a line drive and run it down almost every time. But before the budding shortstop is ranked by Baseball America, developmental experts agree on one issue that needs to be addressed. 'He's going to need a name,' said Thomas G. Sugar, a robotics engineer at Arizona State University. 'He has to be robo-something.' ... Sugar and [Michael K.] McBeath received a grant for this project from the National Science Foundation, not because baseball needs more robotic players, but because Sugar and McBeath are trying to create machines to perform simple human tasks. If a robot is able to field a ground ball, it might be able to help a stroke victim fetch a glass of water. 'It's an interesting problem for people in robotics,' McBeath said. 'It's an interesting problem for people in robotics,' McBeath said. 'The fact that it applies to sports just makes it more interesting.'" June 10, 2006: Howard, Dandy Don and Giff they're not - Robots get jobs as announcers. By David Templeton. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "They are little Sony robots known as QRIOs, but one could swear they're little people wearing gray plastic armor. ... Ami and Sango, programmed with software developed at Carnegie Mellon University, will provide color commentary for spectators during the RoboCup 2006 World Championship that begins Wednesday in Bremen, Germany. The competition in four robot categories will involve 350 teams from 40 countries. But Ami and Sango will provide commentary only for games played by four-legged Sony robots known as AIBOs. RoboCup is an international project to promote artificial intelligence, robotics and related fields through robot soccer competitions. ... RoboCup coincides with the World Cup soccer competition that began yesterday throughout Germany, with its finals scheduled for July 9. CMU software provides the robots with the ability to track the orange soccer ball as competing AIBOs chase, catch, pass and shoot the ball toward respective goals. ... The upstart commentators explain rules, identify which team controls the ball, provide some interesting asides, and comment on fouls and goals, all with synthesized voices that lack human emotion but do reveal personality."
>>> Robots, Competitions (@ Resources for Students), Sports June 9, 2006: Budgeting for Terror. By Lawrence Henry. the American Spectator. "Among last week's news stories, the budget for the Department of Homeland Security has received continuing attention. ... So who should get more DOH money? Washington, D.C. or Walla-Walla? The Empire State Building or Old Faithful? ... The potentially random nature of effective terror also very strongly suggests the most effective programs will be the big ones: the massive data collection operations, the artificial intelligence analysis of action and communications and movement, and the rapid deployment of special assets when the dots cluster in a certain way." June 9, 2006: Espion carving niches in e-mail security. By Ted griggs. The Advocate & WBRZ News 2. "Espion International, a local e-mail security firm, hopes to make its reputation by providing the health-care industry with something the federal government now demands: privacy and protection for patient information. ... Espion International’s artificial intelligence algorithm, which performs many of the functions that normally require a person, monitors incoming and outgoing e-mail. The program detects anything considered personal information, from Social Security numbers to insurance policy numbers, then checks to see if those messages also contain medical information. ... Companies and consumers will spend close to $4 billion this year on anti-spam, anti-virus and e-mail security, and the amount is growing by around 25 percent per year, according to the Ferris Group, a San Francisco-based market and technology research firm." June 9, 2006: Group Seeks to Make Computer Science More Attractive. By Dan Carnevale. The Chronicle of Higher Education [subscription req'd]. "Computer science, long portrayed as a club for boys with few social skills, is about to get a makeover. A new organization seeks to attract women and underrepresented minorities to the field by promoting computer-science courses as more welcoming and more sociable than they are reputed to be. 'IT and computing have the image of not being a very people-friendly field,' says Teresa A. Dahlberg, an associate professor of computer science at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She is the director of the Stars Alliance, a 10-institution consortium that wants to open the doors of technology courses to underrepresented groups." June 8, 2006: Unpacking pecking orders to get the gist of web gab. By Eric Mankin. innovations report / source: EurekAlert!. "A USC Information Sciences Institute system pulls answers from online conversations by identifying the alpha chatterers. The system, to be presented at a conference on human language technology on June 6, was developed to analyze technical conversations in which an objectively correct answer exists. But the method for statistically characterizing response by the group to individuals is generalizable. Online communities are now firmly established in domains ranging from high school gossip to professional open-source software design discussions, generating huge repositories of records of human knowledge processing, pre-converted to digital form. 'For study of online natural language interaction, it’s the mother lode,' says Eduard Hovy of the University of Southern California Information Sciences Institute. ... This research is one of the first quantitative studies in the field of natural language processing that takes account of the fact that chat conversations are structured interactions among a large number of people. In the long term, research in this area will lead to the development of systems that can automatically produce reports and summaries of meetings, researchers hope." June 8, 2006: Brainpower under the bonnet. The Economist Technology Quarterly (subscription req'd). "The V12 engine found in the Aston Martin DB9 is notable not just for its brawn -- it produces 450 horsepower -- but also for its brain. It detects cylinder misfires using an artificial neural network, a system modelled on the interconnected neurons of a simple brain. ... Neural networks, like brains, are particularly good at analysing data and recognising patterns that are difficult to define precisely. They are trained using thousands of examples, and a 'learning' algorithm that alters the strength of the connections in the network so that it gives the appropriate output value (whether or not a misfire has occurred) depending on the input values (engine speed, acceleration, cylinder position, and so forth)." June 8, 2006: When looks are no longer enough. The Economist Technology Quarterly (subscription req'd). "Looks, the video-games industry is discovering, will get you only so far. The graphics on a modern game may far outstrip the pixellated blobs of the 1980s, but there is more to a good game than eye candy. Photo-realistic graphics make the lack of authenticity of other aspects of gameplay more apparent. It is not enough for game characters to look better -- their behaviour must also be more sophisticated, say researchers working at the interface between gaming and artificial intelligence (AI). ... AI, [Michael Mateas] suggests, offers an 'untapped frontier' of new possibilities. ... Representatives from industry and academia will converge in Marina del Rey, California, later this month for the second annual Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment (AIIDE) conference." June 8, 2006: New Sensor Feels Fine. By Adrian Cho. ScienceNOW Daily News. "Rivaling the human fingertip's sensitivity to texture, the new sensor could give robots a finer sense of the objects they manipulate and help surgeons feel as well as see their way around the insides of the body. Engineers can give robots eyes and ears by equipping them with video cameras and microphones. But enduing robots with a sense of touch is far more difficult. Simple sensors can tell a machine whether it is in contact with something, but detectors that also sense texture tend either to be too complicated and delicate for commercial use or lack the spatial resolution needed to detect details dozens of micrometers across. Now, chemical engineers Vivek Maheshwari and Ravi Saraf of the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, have developed a relatively simple and sturdy sensor that can sense texture about as well as a human fingertip can."
>>> Systems, Robots, Medicine June 8, 2006: Trust me, I'm a robot - Robot safety: As robots move into homes and offices, ensuring that they do not injure people will be vital. But how? The Economist Technology Quarterly. "Last year there were 77 robot-related accidents in Britain alone, according to the Health and Safety Executive. With robots now poised to emerge from their industrial cages and to move into homes and workplaces, roboticists are concerned about the safety implications beyond the factory floor. To address these concerns, leading robot experts have come together to try to find ways to prevent robots from harming people. Inspired by the Pugwash Conferences -- an international group of scientists, academics and activists founded in 1957 to campaign for the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons -- the new group of robo-ethicists met earlier this year in Genoa, Italy, and announced their initial findings in March at the European Robotics Symposium in Palermo, Sicily. ... According to the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe's World Robotics Survey, in 2002 the number of domestic and service robots more than tripled, nearly outstripping their industrial counterparts. ... So what exactly is being done to protect us from these mechanical menaces? 'Not enough,' says Blay Whitby, an artificial-intelligence expert at the University of Sussex in England. ... Robot safety is likely to surface in the civil courts as a matter of product liability. 'When the first robot carpet-sweeper sucks up a baby, who will be to blame?' asks John Hallam, a professor at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense. If a robot is autonomous and capable of learning, can its designer be held responsible for all its actions? Today the answer to these questions is generally 'yes'. But as robots grow in complexity it will become a lot less clear cut, he says."
>>> Ethical & Social Implications, Robots, Applications, Industry Statistics, Science Fiction June 8, 2006: Computer 'Beings' Evolve as Society. By Tracy Staedter. Discovery Channel News. "Millions of computer-generated entities that live and die by natural selection could reveal how our own culture and language evolve. The software agents are part of a project called NEW TIES (New and Emergent World Models Through Individual, Evolutionary, and Social Learning), which draws on the expertise of five European research institutions to push computer simulation of artificial worlds further than ever before. The joint computer project not only reproduces individual and evolutionary learning, but also social learning. ... Understanding gleaned from such a project could advance machine learning for a range of applications. The learning software could guide exploratory or search and rescue robots that must cooperate to accomplish tasks in unknown environments." June 8, 2006: High-tech and looking forward. Editorial opinion. Ocala Star-Banner. "By typical economic development measures, the news on Wednesday that the Florida Institute for Human & Machine Congnition is setting up shop in Ocala wouldn't be much of a big deal. ... But IHMC isn't your typical new business. Not by a long shot. The Pensacola-based lab is one of Florida's, maybe the nation's, most respected private high-tech research outfits. ... The areas of technology it is delving into include robotics, human-machine interaction, machine learning and artificial intelligence. ... What makes IHMC, which did $22 million in grant research last year, an economic development coup for Ocala is not just what it does or its affiliation with four Florida universities - the University of West Florida, the University of Central Florida, Florida Institute of Technology and Florida Atlantic university - but who will be doing it. [IHMC founder and Director Ken] Ford, for starters, is a bona fide star in research circles. .. And he's not the only star on the IHMC team. Florida is home to five fellows of the prestigious American Association of Artificial intelligence, among only some 200 worldwide. All five work for IHMC." June 8, 2006: Arts and Crafts for the Digital Age. By Michel Marriott. The New York Times. "At first blush, the PicoCricket Kit resembles a plastic box of arts and crafts supplies, crammed with colored felt, pipe cleaners, cotton and Styrofoam balls. ... Mr. [Mitchel] Resnick, whose work with children and learning at the Media Lab helped the Lego Group create its highly successful Mindstorms robotic construction kits in 1998, said he wanted to produce something in which the emphasis was not on the building of mechanical objects. Instead, he said he was more interested in encouraging the creation of something artistic, and delivering a technology and programming language that would let young people take more control of how their creations would behave. ... Other developers, too, are producing more open-ended building kits aimed at letting young people create and program their own computerized designs. ... Vex robot kits include instructions, but they encourage young people -- generally high school age and older -- to tackle problems. ... Homemade robots have become such a hot topic lately that Mark Frauenfelder, editor in chief of Make magazine, said much of the magazine's latest issue was devoted to guiding readers in building their own." June 8, 2006: Robo pups vie to be top dog. By Louisa Hearn. The Sydney Morning Herald. "Move over Socceroos, Australia's other footballing heroes are heading over to Germany this week to compete for the international RoboCup title. The RoboCup features the famous Four-Legged League in which 24 teams of robotic dogs play football against one another completely independent of any human control. ... Teams from UNSW, University of Newcastle and Griffith University will each take part in the Four-Legged League this year with the first match kicking off on June 14. ... Professor Vladimir Estivate-Castro who manages Griffith's Four-Legged League team, MiPal, said his team spends most of the year developing and advancing the software . 'It is far more complex in programming terms than something like chess because it's a very dynamic environment. In soccer you may try to hit a ball but it may have a spin which means you cannot predict outcomes. The robot has to carry a camera, and recognise the ball, goals, and its opponents'." A related video is available.] June 8, 2006: This Day in History. Computer History Museum. "June 8, 1954: Computer Pioneer Alan Turing Found Dead. 'Computer pioneer Alan Turing is found dead at age 42, of an apparent suicide. ...'" June 7, 2006: Flesh and Machines - MIT robotic scientist Rodney Brooks foresees a future mercifully free of robot-inflicted terror. By M. Arner. WeeklyDig (Issue 8.24). "Last week, the Coolidge screened one of the Cold War era’s best paranoiac, proto-Star Trek-ian homages to The Tempest: Disney’s 1956 Forbidden Planet, in which advanced technology joins forces with the darker parts of the human psyche to unleash whole reservoirs of animated whoop-ass on unsuspecting styrofoam sets. The Coolidge prefaced the film with an introduction by Rodney Brooks, director of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence (AI) Laboratory, the co-founder and CTO of iRobot Corporation (where you got your little Roomba), and the midwife for dozens of synthetic creatures. The pairing was nice, in that Brooks’s vision of future human-machine relations involves a lot less carnage than the one seen in the film. ... Brooks was able to thrive during this pre-‘90s lean period, and he did it by revolutionizing the discipline, effectively removing the 'intelligence' from it. ... Turns out, this 'just reacting' can facilitate some very sophisticated, lifelike behavior. And indeed, a philosophical argument can be made that this is how we work, to that even what we believe to be our 'conscious intentions' are just the sum of many, many small, dumb local reflexes working together." June 7, 2006: Our geeks beat most of world's geeks in competition. By Jake Vest. Orlando Sentinel. "'Geek Responsibly.' That's the unofficial motto of Team 1902 -- Exploding Bacon, also sometimes known as Winter Park Robotics Inc., easily identified by its team emblem, a pig on a rocket. ... In six intensive weeks early this year, 16 intense students working in a borrowed garage in a modest neighborhood put together a machine that can think. ... This is a group of students from Winter Park High, University High, Lake Highland Prep and Glenridge Middle School, assisted by a few University of Central Florida mentors and a couple of engineers. They designed and built a programmable entity that can do assigned tasks, that can react to electronically transmitted commands and that has rudimentary judgment skills. ... Not only did they manage to build a robot, but they also built one that managed to kick a little national and international butt, bringing home the bacon for Team 1902 from FIRST Robotics Competition events. ... Why don't we all know more about these kids than we know about Michelle Wie, Dwight Howard and Britney Spears?" June 7, 2006: Summer camps for children. NRVToday.com. "Here are a few excellent camp opportunities for your children this summer. ... LEGO/ROBOTIC CAMP Tired of chores?! Using Lego Mindstorms Robotic Invention System you might actually invent a machine to pick up trash or even write your name on your homework! This 5 day camp will give children entering the 4th through 6th grades an opportunity to build and program small Lego robots." June 7, 2006: Artificial intelligence says Brazil will beat Italy for their sixth Cup. By Sarah Tregoning. Gulf News. "The World Cup may whip football fans into a frenzy of passion, but two students [at American University in Sharjah] have applied cold science to predict the tournament's outcome. Imran Fanaswala and Yashar Fasihnia, both 22, say they know exactly who is going to win the World Cup, thanks to their artificial intelligence World Cup predictor FIFI. FIFI, which stands for Fifa Intelligence, has predicted the winners of each game from the group stages to the final."
>>> Machine Learning, Sports June 7, 2006: Unmanned Vehicle Deployed by 2012. By Jung Sung-ki. The Korea Times. "A high-tech unmanned surveillance vehicle will be deployed by the military by 2012, a state-run defense institute said Wednesday. ... The vehicle will be directed by a remote control system or move autonomously via its own artificial intelligence system, Choi [Chang-gon] said, adding the system would be able to identify and avoid objects during operations. ... Under the military reform plan to build a more advanced and scientific armed forces, the government has redoubled efforts to develop up-to-date military systems suitable for future warfare." June 7, 2006: Translator lets computers "understand" experiments. By Tom Simonite. New Scientist Tech News. "A framework for translating the write-ups of experiments into a format that can be processed by computers has been developed by academics. The new tool could revolutionise the way scientific papers are written and help scientists make creative leaps, researchers say. ... 'Computers are not very good with natural language, they need to have things as formalised as possible,' says Ross King, a researcher at Aberystwyth University in Wales, who developed the framework with colleague Larisa Soldatova. Called EXPO, it can be used to translate scientific experiments into a format that can be interpreted by a computer. The researchers have published the software code online so that anyone can use and modify it. ... EXPO provides a descriptive framework, or ontology, to represent different stages of an experiment and the relationships between these stages. It also includes ways to define the hypothesis tested, the way results are analysed, and the conclusion drawn." June 7, 2006: Were Greeks 1,400 years ahead of their time? Scotsman.com News. "For decades, researchers have been baffled by the intricate bronze mechanism of wheels and dials created 80 years before the birth of Christ. The 'Antikythera Mechanism' was discovered damaged and fragmented on the wreck of a cargo ship off the tiny Greek island of Antikythera in 1900. Now, a joint British-Greek research team has found a hidden ancient Greek inscription on the device, which it thinks could unlock the mystery. The team believes the Antikythera Mechanism may be the world's oldest computer, used by the Greeks to predict the motion of the planets. ... The mechanism contains over 30 bronze wheels and dials and was probably operated by hand, Mr [Mike] Edmunds said." June 7, 2006: 'Robots Save Japan' and put Fukuoka at industry's center. The Asahi Shimbun & asahi.com. "'Robotto ga Nihon wo Sukuu' (Robots Save Japan) is Yaskawa Electric Corp. Chairman Shin Nakayama's pet phrase and the title of his book dealing with the robot industry and its outlook. It was published in February. How does Nakayama, 66, view the robot industry in Fukuoka Prefecture and elsewhere in Japan? ... Q: What is needed in Fukuoka Prefecture and Kyushu to win international competition? A: The next-generation robot needs advanced artificial intelligence to distinguish objects, talk and do other things. ... Q: The U.S. robot industry is supported by military demand and has abundant funds for development. What about Japan? A: In a way, I envy the U.S. research and development environment supported by military demand, but it would not be acceptable in Japan. Japan has an accumulation of technology in industrial robots, and I think we can display leadership accordingly. Japan, the United States and Europe excel in different areas. ... Q: In manufacturing sites, some workers voice concern that their jobs may be taken over by robots. How do you see the situation? ... "
>>> Robots, Applications, Ethical & Social Implications, Interviews, Industry Statistics June 6, 2006: Worm-inspired robot crawls through intestines. By Tom Simonite. New Scientist Tech News. "A robot designed to crawl through the human gut by mimicking the wriggling motion of an undersea worm has been developed by European scientists. It could one day help doctors diagnose disease by carrying tiny cameras through patients' bodies. The team behind the robot includes scientists from Italy, Germany, Greece and the UK. They modelled it on polychaetes, or 'paddle worms', which use tiny paddles on their body segments to push through sand, mud or water." June 6, 2006: Chatting With Your Search Engine. "Cell phone users and instant messaging addicts can now search the web using IM chat software rather than a web browser. Kozoru, a Kansas-based startup, on Monday launched Byoms, a new search engine that queries the web with instant messages. ... 'It’s a very conversational environment,' said [Justin] Gardner. 'We don’t think in keywords. We wanted to give people the option to use sentences.'" June 6, 2006: Alan Kotok; he tred vanguard of computers with brilliance, wit. By Bryan Marquard. The Boston Globe & boston.com. "For someone who devised a computer chess program as an MIT undergraduate in the late 1950s, helped create the world's first video game, and held a leadership role with the World Wide Web Consortium, Alan Kotok got his start in an inauspicious fashion -- or so he was told. 'There's a family legend, which I don't personally recall,' he said in a 2004 oral history, 'that my engineering career began at a tender age when I stuck a screwdriver into an electric outlet.... Arriving at MIT in 1958, Mr. Kotok joined the Tech Model Railroad Club, where he met like-minded students interested in computers. In the spring, artificial intelligence pioneer John McCarthy , then a professor at MIT, taught a computer programming class for freshman. McCarthy told four students that he had been working on a computer chess program, Mr. Kotok recalled, and asked whether they would take over. Mr. Kotok ended up writing a thesis for his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering on the program. ... As an undergraduate, Mr. Kotok began working with several students who collectively developed Spacewar, the first video game, and the first joystick. After graduating, Mr. Kotok went to work for Digital."
>>> History, Tributes, Chess, Video Games June 5, 2006: HCMC University robot wins national championship. By To Tam; translated by Minh Phat. Thanh Nien Daily. "The Ho Chi Minh City Polytechnic University won the national robot-making contest Sunday for the second time in three years. ... The team’s robot has also won a spot in the Asia-Pacific Robocon 2006 to be held in Malaysia in September." June 5, 2006: Surveillance system scrambles people's faces. By Lakshmi Sandhana. New Scientist Tech News. "An intelligent video surveillance system that automatically scrambles people's faces to protect them from unwarranted monitoring has been developed by a Swiss company. Developed by EMITALL Surveillance, based in Montreux, Switzerland, the technology singles out any people in a video feed, on the basis of their movement, and disguises them digitally while leaving the rest of the scene intact. ... Its developers say the system could let law enforcers use closed circuit television (CCTV) cameras without invading the privacy of those being watched. For example, a video stream could remain anonymous until its operators realise that a crime has been committed. The video could then be unscrambled by authorities with the necessary encryption key." June 5, 2006: New software 'teaches' computers how to identify beauty. Penn State Live. "Beauty is no longer just in the eye of the beholder-computers 'taught' to evaluate photographs can match people's aesthetic judgments of 'beautiful' or 'pretty' more than 70 percent of the time, according to Penn State researchers. The researchers have developed a computational-aesthetics software that enables computers to single out aesthetically pleasing photographs based on more than a dozen visual features. ... For their project, the researchers selected images which had been ranked by at least two members and which had aesthetics scores greater than 5.8 or less than 4.2. Using those images and rankings, the researchers 'trained' the computer to identify 15 features most often correlated to high aesthetic scores. 'These image-annotation techniques that we are developing have potential for additional uses for judging photographs but also for other applications such as biomedical image databases,' [James] Wang said. 'Computers, for instance, could be trained to classify pathologies.'" June 5, 2006: Game Design Camp. Events Calendar from GrandForksHerald.com. "The University of Minnesota-Crookston is hosting a Game Design Camp from June 18-22, for ages 16 to 22. This camp will focus on simulating physics, modeling and artificial intelligence, working on commercial level editors and exploring design issues." June 5, 2006: Nothing artificial about UQ student’s intelligent study aids. UQ News Online. "Forget X-men robots with super-human powers, PhD student Michael Milford is proving that Homo sapiens can do anything they put their mind to. The 24-year-old University of Queensland robotics and artificial intelligence student is taking inspiration from his super-human subject matter, finding time not only to study for his PhD, but also to publish educational textbooks for school children and complete the odd marathon in his spare time. ... Mr Milford expects to complete his PhD in July. His research is looking at how rats function in their environment and applying this to robotics with the aim of creating a robot that can move around its environment intelligently." June 5, 2006: Robo-student answers roll call - Hospitalized kids keep up on studies with help of robots. By Jim Fitzgerald. The Associated Press / available from the Daily Herald. "Lying in his hospital room, on a mattress designed to protect his fragile skin, 13-year-old Achim Nurse poked his bandaged fingers at an orange button on what looked like a souped-up video game console. Half a second later, in a social studies class discussing the Erie Canal, a 5-foot-tall steel-blue robot raised its hand. 'You have a question, Achim?' said the teacher. Achim is using a pair of robots -- one, called Mr. Spike, at his bedside, and its mate, Mrs. Candy, in the classroom -- to keep up with his schoolwork and his friends for the months he will be bedridden at Blythedale Children's Hospital in Valhalla, just north of New York City. The robot in the classroom, which displays a live picture of Achim, provides what its inventors call 'telepresence': It gives the boy an actual presence in the classroom, recognized by teachers and classmates. It can move from class to class on its four-wheel base and even stop at the lockers for a between-periods chat. ... The robot system was developed in Toronto by Telbotics with Ryerson University and the University of Toronto. It is managed in the United States by The Learning Collaborative, under a federal grant. ... [Andrew] Summa said one student used a robot so fully that it joined the boy's classmates to sing a song at a school show. He said a child in the audience asked, 'What's that thing up on stage?' to which a friend of the student replied, 'That's no thing. That's Jimmy.'" June 4, 2006: What the boss is reading - Ken Ford is one smart guy. By Carlton Proctor. PensacolaNewsJournal.com. "A renowned research scientist and author of hundreds of scientific papers and five books, Ford is founder and director of the Pensacola-based Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition. ... Asked what book has influenced his illustrious career the most, Ford said it was difficult to choose one. 'But in terms of career motivation, nearly 30 years ago, I read Douglas Hofstadter's "Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid,' he said. ... Ford, whose own broad interests include artificial intelligence, cognitive science, human-centered computing, and entrepreneurship in government and academia, said the book has inspired a generation of fledgling computer scientists." June 3, 2006: BYU project: Y-Clops the robot is a fast learner. The student-built device will compete next week in international trials. By Todd Hollingshead. The Salt Lake Tribune. "Built by a team of 12 electrical- and computer-engineering students from BYU [Brigham Young University], the mobile robot makes decisions with its own brain, a custom-built circuit board that runs artificial intelligence algorithms. The camera detects colors it is programmed to avoid, such as the orange of the barrels and the white path marks, then the computer decides the machine's path. ... Y-Clops will eye down its robotic rivals June 10-12 in Michigan at the 14th Annual Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition, sponsored by the Defense Department." June 2, 2006: Technology innovators told to think big, develop must-have products. By Dirk Meissner. Canadian Press & canada.com. "Technology innovators seeking success in the business world must think big and possess a killer instinct that includes the ability to fire their best friend or even themselves, a group of inventors was told Friday. ... 'The most important thing is to think big,' said Morten Irgens, president and chief technology officer of the Vancouver-based company Actenum Corp. that designs scheduling software for industry. ... Actenum, using artificial intelligence and operations research, develops computer software that allows companies in the oil, gas and mining industries to stick closely to their maximum production schedules despite facing constant unplanned events that could disrupt operations. Actenum has also used its technology to participate in national security research projects that include enhancing coastal surveillance and guarding against natural disasters. ... The business advice for innovators was part of a three-day Intelligent Systems conference that concluded Friday. ... It was sponsored by Precarn Incorporated, an independent, non-profit company that helps Canadian companies market their new ideas. A technology showcase at the conference included an intelligent water monitor that detects contaminants in drinking water and a robot that can swim, making it capable of helping divers." June 2, 2006: Exhibit uses movie relics to turn fantasy into reality. By Betsa Marsh. The Enquirer & Cincinnati.com. "For nearly 30 years, since we first discovered what it was to jump into hyperspace and enter 'a galaxy far, far away,' some of us have had dozens of unanswered 'Star Wars' questions. ... Some answers are lost forever in film mythology, but some will be revealed - and more questions posed - in the new Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination exhibit opening Saturday at COSI Columbus. It is the first stop in a seven-city tour for the exhibit. The exhibit reflects a five-year collaboration between the Museum of Science in Boston with writer-director George Lucas' Lucasfilm Ltd. It poses two immense questions for the future: How will we get around in the post-automobile age? And how will robots become our close friends and helpers? Acknowledging that most American students and adults are less than tech-literate.... In 'Robots and People,' C-3PO and R2-D2 introduce their real-world cousins emerging from labs today. To catch the latest on robotics, let's pop inside an old rusted interior of a Jawa Sandcrawler to meet C-3PO in the 'flesh' and Cynthis Breazeal on video. Dr. Breazeal, director of the Robotic Life Group, MIT Media Lab, is working to create socially intelligent machines who will eventually work collaboratively with humans, as useful as seeing-eye dogs." June 2, 2006: Baby Talk and Monkey Talk. By Victor D. Chase. ScienceCareers.org. "How does an infant learn language? Once the basics of a language are learned, there are rules that someone familiar with language instinctively applies, but a baby coming to language with no previous knowledge cannot apply such rules. So how does it learn? 'It’s a big question,' says Jessica Maye, an assistant professor of linguistics at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, 'because it takes money to make money. If you know something about language, you can use that to learn something else about language, but how do you learn the very first thing?'... Early in her graduate school career at the University of Arizona, Tucson, Maye decided she wanted to focus on psycholinguistics, a relatively new branch of linguistics that draws on cognitive sciences, including psychology, computer science, artificial intelligence, speech and hearing, and neural imaging to explain how humans learn language. After receiving her Ph.D. in 2000, Maye spent 3 years as a postdoctoral fellow in brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester in New York, where she began conducting experiments on how babies learn. ... The goal of the NSF-funded project is to determine why infants are so much more proficient than adults and monkeys. 'If we know more about how infants use the statistical information they have access to, we can incorporate that information into machine processing of language to better enable speech recognition to correctly process language as humans do,' says Matt Goldrick, an assistant professor in Northwestern’s Linguistics Department (which is separate from the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders where Maye works). ... Apart from the implications about language therapy, there's another practical side to Maye's research. Computer scientists aiming to improve computer speech recognition need to enhance the ability of machines to achieve 'source separation,' the ability to distinguish and make sense of several voices talking at the same time even in the presence of background noise (although a phenomenon Maye has not researched herself). ... Another thing humans can do very well but machines cannot is find the edges of words." June 1, 2006: Taking Soldiers Out Of Harm's Way - Research On Unmanned Ground Vehicles Could Make Surveillance Safer. ScienceDaily / source: Florida State University. "Over the past three years, thousands of American soldiers in Iraq have been horribly injured or killed by improvised explosive devices (IEDs). The explosives, placed near or buried under roadways and often detonated by remote control, frequently target U.S. military vehicles and convoys -- often with deadly success. At Florida State University, one researcher is working on new technologies that could reduce the carnage. Emmanuel G. Collins, the John H. Seely Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the Florida A&M University-FSU College of Engineering, envisions the creation of an unmanned ground vehicle that could patrol large areas without putting U.S. soldiers in harm's way. ... Collins serves as director of the Center for Intelligent Systems, Control, and Robotics (CISCOR), a multidisciplinary research center in the College of Engineering that uses state-of-the-art technology to develop solutions for industry and government. In addition to the unmanned ground vehicle, other automated systems being developed at CISCOR include one that will enable wheelchairs to traverse uneven terrain more effectively, and another that will assist automobile drivers in the always-tricky task of parallel-parking." June 1, 2006: Robot shows children how to move - The latest in robotic technology could help thousands of children with movement disorders.By Gill Higgins. BBC News. "A team of scientists in Aberdeen is putting a robotic arm to the test in the hope of giving children more control and better co-ordination. ... The latest improvements have been harnessed in a device that can act as a guiding hand to children with movement disorders, like dyspraxia. ... Lead researcher Dr Mark Mon-Williams said: 'We know practise helps improve skills. For some reason some children don't learn the basic control skills so we've got to start them practising good movement. Therapists don't have the time to do this. The robotic arm can help children practice these specific skills. There is a need for another way of helping children with movement problems.'... One in 20 children has some kind of movement disorder, but there are too few occupational therapists to help." June 1, 2006: Take a moment and a raise a glass to the wonderful, underappreciated AI. Andrew Kantor's CyberSpeak column. USAToday.com. "AI does more than make better games ... What Far Cry illustrates is how far artificial intelligence has come. It's so sophisticated that we almost dismiss it. In a way, that's a sign of their quality. Invisible tech is often the best tech. ... Because Google doesn't talk like HAL 9000, we don't think of it as AI. Working with its own algorithm and the data input by millions of users every time they search, Google is able to help you find information on the billions of pages of the Web in a matter of seconds. Or less. ... Another example: When I check my e-mail, Thunderbird deletes almost all of the incoming spam. It does this not by looking for obvious spam words, but by using artificial intelligence - in this case Bayesian filtering to create a detailed profile of each message. Based on what it's learned - yes, learned - about the mail I receive, it can tell it how likely any given message is legit. If you drive a modern car, your vehicle's artificial intelligence is doing a lot for you - quietly and behind the scenes, of course. ... So while we're waiting for our computers to have meaningful conversations with us, take a moment to appreciate the underappreciated AI - and be glad its not trying to kill us - much." June 1, 2006: Nowell SpyForce-AI. By Frank J. Ohlhorst. CMPnetAsia. "Securing your borders is the first step in preventing outsider attacks, but in many cases, security professionals are so focused on that task that an even bigger threat goes unaddressed: the insider threat. Insider threats are perpetuated by once-trusted individuals belonging to the enterprise network, so naturally, the larger the enterprise, the larger the threat. Austin, Texas-based Nowell has rolled out SpyForce-AI ... which is geared toward containing and preventing the ever-growing insider threat. SpyForce-AI’s security utilities focus on anomalous user behavior to identify when things look like they might be going awry. The product’s claim to fame comes from the inclusion of an Artificial Intelligence (AI) engine that adapts to user behavior and learns the acceptable process for a user’s interaction with corporate information. Over time, the AI engine builds a better understanding of data flow and becomes even more accurate at identifying anomalies." June 1, 2006: Microsoft in India - A top executive at Microsoft Research's newest lab, in Bangalore, India, outlines its evolving R&D strategy. By Wade Roush. Technology Review. "Last week, MSR India's assistant managing director, Kentaro Toyama, was in Berkeley, CA, coordinating an international conference on information and communications technology for developing economies. Technology Review Senior Editor Wade Roush caught up with him there. ... TR: What kinds of research are you starting with? KT: The six research areas we're currently focusing on are photography; digital geographies, which includes any kind of digital map or location-based services and software; multilingual systems, including speech recognition, natural language processing, and building systems that interact across different languages; hardware for communications, including distributed sensor networks; software engineering, which looks at creating tools that make software development easier; and emerging markets, or how computing will impact social and economic development." June 1, 2006: Concordia offers glimpse of cutting-edge art - Artists explore digital technologies. By Alana Coates. The Gazette & canada.com. "Robots that react to the movements of their viewers. Clothing that lights up when touched. Giant cubes that fly through the air without any strings attached. This is the art of the future, and Montreal is at the cutting edge. Some of the projects created at the Hexagram Institute for Research in Media Arts and Technologies were on display at Concordia University yesterday, giving viewers a taste of what's possible when art and technology are brought together." June 1, 2006: Experts to discuss future of robotics. By Matt Cunningham. Indiana Daily Student. "IU psychology Chairwoman Linda Smith kicked off the International Conference on Development and Learning [ICDL] Wednesday morning by welcoming participants -- including representatives from the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the MIT Media Lab and Microsoft Research -- to Woodburn Hall. The conference is devoted to asking question in hopes of fostering advanced forms of artificial intelligence. Smith said the conference offers a unique opportunity for researchers to immerse themselves in the work of a field that relies upon many different disciplines -- including robotics, neuroscience, computer science and engineering. She added she sees this conference as an opportunity for researchers to realize that different research traditions are growing into one united entity." June 2006: No slowdowns for automated rope inspector. By Norm Tollinsky. Northern Ontario Business. "After decades of relying on the human eye to spot defects in hoist ropes, the mining industry is about to transition to an automated, computer-based vision system. ... 'The computer vision system does what the human eye does, but it does it a whole lot better,' said Andrew Young, who managed the Automation Visual Rope Inspection project. ... There are three components to the system: a Rope Monitoring System with three high-speed cameras, a Rope Analysis System that uses software to detect anomalies and a Rope Reporting System that provides the inspector with a list of potential defects. ... Automating hoist rope inspection will result in an extra 30 to 35 minutes a day for hoisting ore and that, said [Chris] Deschesnes, 'translates into big dollars.' ... The software distinguishes between grease blobs and structural defects by keeping track of anomalies and the precise location at which they are detected. If an anomaly is detected on only one of a series of runs, it’s probably a grease blob. If it keeps reappearing in the same location, the software flags it for review by the inspector. ... The automated visual hoist rope inspection system was developed by C-CORE, a non-profit research and development company in St. John’s, Newfoundland...." June 2006: Undercover Bedbugs? The latest in soldiery: a menagerie of robo-animals. By Lucas Conley. Fast Company (Issue 106: page 36). "'Biological systems have had eons to evolve particular traits,' says DARPA spokeswoman Jan Walker. 'We're interested in discovering how these traits are engineered and how we can adapt that engineering in new ways.' This is, in fact, only the latest foray into animal-inspired robotics. Other DARPA-funded research has included the Robolobster, capable of maneuvering through shallow, turbulent tidal zones (one possible use: locating and detonating coastal mines). Federal funding has also spurred research into bees, cockroaches, and dolphins." June 2006: The Soul of The Machine - Can a random collection of data be conscious? Jaron's World by Jaron Lanier. Discover (Volume 27, Number 6; registration req'd). "There's been a resurgence of discomfort with science, bubbling up from both conservative religious quarters and New Age movements. From the times of Galileo through the 1960s or so, the philosophical debate mostly involved God. Something has changed. We've entered a more selfish era, and with it has come a new challenge. The concern with God has been joined by anxiety over the nature of personhood. In the mid-20th century, scientists like John von Neumann and Alan Turing presented the world with a new framework for explanation. Suddenly, the mind could be interpreted with a technological metaphor: the computer. ... One hears a bit of goading in the way some scientists and technologists, including Steven Pinker, Ray Kurzweil, Marvin Minsky, and others, have tried to challenge the notion that individuals are too special to be understood like any other phenomena." June 2006: Gone Swimmin' - An amphibious robot explores aquatic environments and could help save coral reefs, too. By Michelle Théberge and Gregory Dudek. IEEE Spectrum Online. "The mechanical hexapod, called Aqua, is the latest in a series of seagoing robots our research group at McGill University, in Montreal, has been developing in collaboration with teams led by Michael Jenkin at York University, in Toronto, and Evangelos Milios at Dalhousie University, in Halifax, N.S., Canada. Our goal is to develop an underwater vehicle that can autonomously explore and collect data in aquatic environments while surviving the harsh saltwater conditions and often turbulent waters of the open sea. In building Aqua, we are tackling one of the most challenging topics in robotics: integrating vision and locomotion into an amphibious machine that can determine what it is 'seeing,' where it is, and where it is going. But more than just providing an interesting engineering exercise, Aqua, we hope, will someday play an important role in protecting coral reefs. ... We hope that Aqua and its progeny will soon be able to help in these conservation efforts. Perhaps swarms of these robots will one day carry out data collection on marine ecosystems, both autonomously and in tandem with biologists. ... Although the warm Barbados waters provide a perfect outdoor laboratory, this year's sea trials showed that taking research out of the controlled environment of the lab has its risks and challenges. Nevertheless, all the results -- the successes as well as the failures -- helped to advance our research. The difficult part now will be waiting until the next time to test our ideas again in the warm Caribbean." June 2006: Man vs. Machine - 2006 Rave Awards - Books: Daniel Wilson's How to Survive a Robot Uprising. By Robert Capps. Wired (Issue 14.06). "'The purpose of this book,' Daniel Wilson writes in the introduction, 'is to prepare you for the future robot uprising.' And he’s only half joking." June 2006: Dependable Software by Design - Computers fly our airliners and run most of the world's banking, communications, retail and manufacturing systems. Now powerful analysis tools will at last help software engineers ensure the reliability of their designs. By Daniel Jackson. Scientific American. "Now a new generation of software design tools is emerging. Their analysis engines are similar in principle to tools that engineers increasingly use to check computer hardware designs. A developer models a software design using a high-level (summary) coding notation and then applies a tool that explores billions of possible executions of the system, looking for unusual conditions that would cause it to behave in an unexpected way. This process catches subtle flaws in the design before it is even coded, but more important, it results in a design that is precise, robust and thoroughly exercised. One example of such a tool is Alloy, which my research group and I constructed. Alloy (which is freely available on the Web) has proved useful in applications as varied as avionics software, telephony, cryptographic systems and the design of machines used in cancer therapy. Alloy and related design-checking tools build on a quarter of a century of existing research into ways to prove mathematically whether programs are correct. But rather than requiring proofs to be done by hand, they employ automated reasoning techniques that treat a software design problem as a giant puzzle to be solved. These analyzers operate on designs, not program code, so they cannot guarantee that a program will not crash. But they potentially offer software engineers the first practical tools to ensure that designs are robust and free from conceptual flaws and thus provide a firm foundation on which to build reliable software systems." June 2006: Bend It Like Nimbro - Soccer-playing humanoids kick off one of the biggest robotics competitions of the year. By Patrick Di Justo. Popular Science. "As World Cup soccer rages in Germany this month, 350 teams from around the world will convene in the city of Bremen to compete in the robotic equivalent, the 10th annual RoboCup World Championship. The goal, so to speak, of this event is highly ambitious: to create android athletes that could whip the human world-champion soccer team by the year 2050 -- and, along the way, advance the field of artificial intelligence. ... Here, our favorite players. ..." [Video available.] |
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