Year 2007 Archive of AI in the news articles
 -- November --
(a subtopic of AI in the news)


 AI Topics Home  
 

<< HEADLINES are generally listed in order of date posted here <-> ARTICLES are organized by date published or issue date >>

VIDEO NEWS REPORTS, DEMOS, VODCASTS & MORE

video camera and microphone

AUDIO NEWS REPORTS, INTERVIEWS, PODCASTS & MORE

ARTICLES

November 30, 2007: Window of robotic opportunity - Japanese-made device operates on new software developed by Microsoft. By Yuri Kageyama. The Associated Press / available from South Florida Sun-Sentinel.com. "ZMP of Japan began selling a two-legged walking robot Thursday that runs on Microsoft's new robotics software -- a product the companies said will make it easier to transfer technology from one robot to another. ... Microsoft founder Bill Gates has said robotics is the next hot field in technology. And Tandy Trower, who oversees robotics at Microsoft, foresees a day when robots will operate in every home, much as Gates in the 1970s envisioned a PC proving valuable in every home. 'This really isn't about Microsoft trying to create any kind of an exclusive solution,' Trower said in an interview. 'We think that this is the natural evolution of the PC technology, that PCs will start to get up from our desk and move around and interact with us in a richer way.'"
>>> Robots, Robots (@ Software & Hardware), Applications
-> back to headlines

November 30, 2007: Grade-school kids build, program Lego robots. By Jennifer Nitson. Corvalis Gazette-Times. "'I’ve worked on a program three times and I never got it to go the right way,' said 9-year-old Jordan Koetje, a Garfield Elementary fourth-grader taking part in the school’s FIRST Lego robotics program. Jordan and 18 other Garfield fourth- and fifth-graders have been working on robots for weeks in preparation for the regional Lego Robotics tournament at Linus Pauling Middle School on Dec. 15. Using computers, the students must program their robots to perform various tasks. They also must research and present a paper on the tournament theme: energy choices, their impact and consequences."
>>> Robots, Competitions (@ Resources for Students), Resources for Educators
-> back to headlines

November 30, 2007: Scientists map imprinted genes in human genome. PhysOrg.com (source: Duke University Medical Center). "Scientists at Duke University have created the first map of imprinted genes throughout the human genome, and they say a modern-day Rosetta stone – a form of artificial intelligence called machine learning – was the key to their success. The study revealed four times as many imprinted genes as had been previously identified and is featured on the cover of the December 3 issue of Genome Research. ... The technical wizardry needed to find the genes fell to Dr. Alexander Hartemink, the other senior author of the study and an assistant professor in Duke’s department of computer science, and Philippe Luedi, the first author of the study. They fed sequence data from two types of genes -- ones known to be imprinted and ones believed not to be imprinted -- into a computer and asked it to discover the differences. This machine learning approach led to an algorithm, which was able -- like the original Rosetta stone -- to decode seemingly impenetrable data, in this case, specific DNA sequences that pointed to the presence of imprinted genes."
>>> Machine Learning, Bioinformatics, Scientific Discovery, Applications
-> back to headlines

November 30, 2007: Software That Learns from Users - A massive AI project called CALO could revolutionize machine learning. By Erica Naone. Technology Review. "The thing that makes computers a huge pain for everybody, says Pedro Domingos, an associate professor of computer science at the University of Washington, is that you have to explain to them every little detail of what they need to do. 'It's really annoying,' Domingos jokes. 'They're stupid.' That's why Domingos is taking part in CALO, a massive, four-year-old artificial-intelligence project to help computers understand the intentions of their human users. Funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and coordinated by SRI International, based in Menlo Park, CA, the project brings together researchers from 25 universities and corporations, in many areas of artificial intelligence, including machine learning, natural-language processing, and Semantic Web technologies. Each group works on pieces of CALO, which stands for 'cognitive assistant that learns and organizes.' ... The goal is to build an artificial intelligence that can serve as a personal assistant for someone.... The research has already produced a few products...."
>>> Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Agents, Interfaces, Speech, Representation, Applications
-> back to headlines

November 30, 2007 [issue date]: 'Professors of the Year' Bring Technical Disciplines Down to Earth. By Paula Wasley. The Chronicle of Higher Education (Volume 54, Issue 14, Page A8). "In his eight years at Smith [College], Mr. [Glenn] Ellis has helped develop the first engineering curriculum designed specifically for women, one that has been widely recognized as a model for improving engineering education. His classes have focused on integrating engineering into the traditional liberal-arts curriculum, which he hopes will encourage students to make connections between their subjects. So a class on artificial intelligence may also become a lesson on philosophy and the nature of language. By using ambiguous sentences to try to determine if an unknown instant-message respondent was human, Mr. Ellis's students learn about syntax and semantics, and about the limits of machine intelligence."
>>> Resources for Educators
-> back to headlines

November 29, 2007: Shooting for the Academic Stars - By picking top students and feeding their passions, a Virginia school lands on top. By Lucia Graves. U.S. News & World Report. "Well, high-powered peers are one asset. 'They feed off each other and create a kind of synergy for thinking,' says [Principal Evan] Glazer. Beyond that are specialized course offerings such as Artificial Intelligence, DNA Science II, and Advanced Optics with Research Applications."
>>> Resources for Educators
-> back to headlines

November 29, 2007: The tech they promised... and what we got. By Peter Judge. ZDNet.co.uk. "From movies to manifestos, few greatly hyped things ever live up to the promises made about them. The film of the book is always the film of the back-jacket blurb, and so on. And, let's be honest, technology lets us down more than most things. ... As the winter casts a chill on our souls, here's a run-down of the greatest disappointments we've had with technology. 1. Artificial Intelligence ... Now, pretty intelligent systems work on datamining, speech recognition and other applications. And, sometime in the future, we may indeed have to deal with really intelligent machines. Meanwhile, since HAL, we've had a ton of AI in fiction...."
>>> History, The AI Effect, Applications, Science Fiction
-> back to headlines

November 29, 2007 [issue date]: Is artificial life moving any closer? Greg Bear reviews "Genesis Redux" (edited by Jessica Riskin, University of Chicago Press) and "Beyond Human" (by Gregory Benford & Elisabeth Malartre, Tor/Forge). Nature (Volume 450, Number 7170; subscription req'd). "Three vinyl toys stand on my office bookshelf: the Golem, Frankenstein's monster and the Terminator -- a reminder that automatons of the imagination have been with us for a long time. The synthesis of life in both the past and future is discussed in two new books that open a window on to artificial life, enhanced life and robots. Genesis Redux gathers together papers from a rousing academic conference held in Stanford in 2003, and Beyond Human offers a critical but enthusiastic view from a physics and biological perspective."
>>> Robots, History, Philosophy, Ethical & Social Implications
-> back to headlines

November 29, 2007: Robot teddy to help sick children. BBC News. "A robot teddy that can interact with its owner and could alert medical staff to changes in a sick child's condition will be tested in the Highlands. Huggable, which is fitted with sensors, is being developed by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US."
>>> Robots, Assisitive Technologies, Applications
-> back to headlines

November 29, 2007: An open approach to smarter homes. ICT Results. "Homes today are filled with increasing numbers of high-tech gadgets, from smart phones and PCs to state-of-the-art TV and audio systems, many of them with built-in networking capabilities. Combined, these devices could form the building blocks of the smart homes of the future, but only if they can be made to work together intelligently. European researchers are addressing the challenge. ... There are two fundamental obstacles to realising the vision of the intelligent networked home: lack of interoperability between individual devices and the need for context-aware artificial intelligence to manage them. And, to make smart homes a reality, the two issues must be addressed together. The EU-funded Amigo project, coordinated by [Maddy Janse, a researcher for Dutch consumer electronics group Philips], is doing just that, creating a middleware software platform that will get all networkable devices in the home talking to each other and providing an artificial intelligence layer to control them. “With the Amigo system, you can take any networkable device, create a software wrapper for it and dynamically integrate it into the networked home environment,” Janse explains. The project, which involves several big industrial and research partners, is unique in that it is addressing the issues of interoperability and intelligence together and, most significantly, its software is modular and open source. ... A video [embedded in article & available via link below] created by the project partners underscores their vision for the future in which homes adapt to the behaviour of occupants, automatically setting ambient lighting for watching a movie, locking the doors when someone leaves or contacting relatives or emergency services if someone is ill or has an accident. ... In October, it launched the Amigo Challenge, a competition in which third-party programmers have been invited to come up with new applications using the Amigo software."

  • Video: A vision of the future (via YouTube) [9:45]. "This is a video from the EU-IST funded Amigo project. The Amigo project develops an open service oriented middleware architecture for context-aware networked home environments. This video envisions a day in the life of a family living in such an intelligent home environment."

>>> Smart Houses, Assisitive Technologies, Applications, Competitions (@ Resources for Students)
-> back to headlines

November 28, 2007: Top 10 - This week [sidebar]: Artificial intelligence researcher David Levy has predicted that humans will marry robots within 50 years. Here are the 10 best things about being married to a robot. By Kerrie Murphy and several contributors. Australian IT. "10. The housework will get done while you are asleep so you always wake up to a clean house. ... Next week: In the interest of balance, send us the 10 worst things about being married to a robot. Answers by Thursday, please."
>>> Robots
-> back to headlines

November 28, 2007: Million Book Project exceeds goal by 500,000 and counting. By Allison M. Heinrichs. Pittsburgh Tribune-Review (pittsburghlive.com). "On Tuesday, Carnegie Mellon University officials announced their international venture to digitize 1 million books has exceeded its goal by 500,000 works of literature, with 7,000 more added daily. ... Carnegie Mellon professors estimate 1 percent of published books have been scanned for the Universal Digital Library, which can be accessed at www.ulib.org. ... The project begun in 2002 is the brainchild of Raj Reddy, professor of computer science and robotics. His idea was to preserve all published works and make them freely available to anyone with access to the Internet by scanning each page of every book in libraries worldwide. ... 'We're not doing this for now, but for 100, 200, 1,000 years from now,' Reddy said. 'So if, all of a sudden, the book no longer exists in print, we won't have lost it forever.'"

  • Also see: Online library offers 1.5 million works and counting - The Universal Digital Library, backed by several major libraries around the globe, is more about preservation and less about getting clicks. By Candace Lombardi.CNET News.com (November 27, 2007). "'Remember when the Taliban took over in Afghanistan and they dynamited statues they thought were heretical? We'll never have them again. But once books are digitized and stored on servers around the world, it becomes impossible for any one government to destroy all the copies of a book. Once it's there it remains immortal,' [Michael Shamos, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University and director of intellectual property for the Universal Digital Library (UDL)] said. The project, which has been ongoing for the last five years, was founded and is still directed by Raj Reddy, a Carnegie Mellon computer science and robotics professor who has been awarded everything from the ACM Turing Award to the French Legion of Honor. The project is funded partially by the National Science Foundation and, in addition to Carnegie Mellon and Bibliotheca Alexandrina, is led by Zhejiang University in China and the Indian Institute of Science in India. Seven other Chinese universities and eight other Indian universities are also partners. "

>>> Professor Reddy is an AAAI Fellow and an AAAI Past-President. Also see the AAAI Video Library project.
-> back to headlines

November 28, 2007: Humanoid could teach Japanese dentists to feel people's pain. AFP / available from ABC News. "A group of robot and computer-makers presented the high-tech dental patient in Tokyo at the 2007 International Robot Exhibition, a four-day technology showcase that opened Wednesday. The medical simulation robot, named Simroid [see video below], is designed to be used for clinical training at dental schools, said Tatsuo Matsuzaki, an official at robot maker Kokoro Company Ltd, which developed the body and control system. ... 'Because it's so real, dental trainees can see patients' feelings and will be able to develop good skills as they treat it, not as an object, but as a human being,' Mr Matsuzaki said."

  • Video:  Simroid (via YouTube). "Simroid is a dental patient robot developed as a training tool for aspiring dentists. She can follow spoken instructions, closely monitor a dentist's performance during mock treatments, and react in a human-like way to pain. She was built by Kokoro Company Ltd."
  • Also see:
    • Robots dazzle at Japanese exhibit. By Hiroko Tabuchi. Associated Press / available from USAToday.com (November 28, 2007). "A robot math whiz breezes through a Rubik's Cube, using metal hands to twist and turn the colorful toy. A panda robot uses sensors to detect when people are laughing, and joins in. A dentistry student peers into the mouth of a new patient -- a humanoid practice robot with a complete set of pearly white teeth. Japan showed off its cutting-edge robots Wednesday at the country's largest robotics convention, a dazzling display of the technologies that make it a world leader in both service and industrial robotics."
    • Androids in pain and breast-feeding baby bots. By New Scientist staff and Reuters. NewScientist.com news (November 29, 2007). "Japan's premier robot event offers visitors the chance to find a high-tech ping-pong opponent, see an android dental patient twitch in pain, and to nurse baby robots in the same afternoon. Showcasing around 1000 industrial and service robots, the International Robot Exhibition in Tokyo confirmed Japan's enthusiasm for robots, many of which manufacturers hope to adapt to the needs of an ageing population."
    • Photos: Robots at play and work. CNET News.com (November 30, 2007).

>>> Interfaces, Robots, Medicine, Assisitive Technologies, Applications, Events (@ Resources for Students)
-> back to headlines

November 28, 2007: Sci-fi play probes alien intelligence. By Dean Lisk. The Daily News (hfxnews.com). "The world of science fiction - artificial intelligence, time theories and maybe even extra-terrestrials - is getting the centre-stage treatment. 'I scratched my brain, and I can't remember the last time someone did an original sci-fi play in Halifax,' Paul Kimball said. The local filmmaker is directing Doing Time, an original production that will be performed at the Wired Monk in Halifax beginning tonight. ... The story also deals with ideas about time and the differences between human intelligence and artificial intelligence. 'Mac looks, in his writing, at how close are we, as human beings, coming to being artificial-life forms? How close is artificial intelligence to becoming self-aware - sort of the Terminator thing,' Kimball said."
>>> Science Fiction
-> back to headlines

November 28, 2007: Your Robotic Personal Assistant - New software lets robots pick up objects they have never seen before--an important step toward creating multifunctional domestic helpers. By Kate Greene. Technology Review. "Aside from the Roomba, robots haven't made much progress infiltrating American homes. But researchers at Stanford University have developed software that overcomes one of the biggest challenges: teaching a robot how to pick up an object it has never encountered before. The robot's software suggests that the best way to pick up something new is by determining the most grabable part of the object--the stem of a wineglass, the handle of a mug, or the edge of a book, for instance. ... Instead of using predetermined models of objects, some roboticists, including [Aaron Edsinger, founder of Meka Robotics] and [Andrew Ng, professor of computer science at Stanford], are building perception systems for robots that look for certain features on objects that are good for grasping.
>>> Vision, Machine Learning, Robots, Applications
-> back to headlines

November 27, 2007: The autonomous warbird - A Navy jet under development would fly bombing missions from aircraft carriers with no pilot aboard. By Peter Pae. Los Angeles Times. "Now, behind a barb-wired fence and double security doors in Palmdale, Northrop Grumman Corp. engineers are building what could become the ultimate flying robot: a jet fighter controlled by a computer. It would take off from an aircraft carrier, drop a bomb on an enemy target and then land back on the carrier, all autonomously. The first carrier test flight of the X-47B -- including a shipboard take-off and landing -- is slated for late 2011. If successful, the flight could redefine naval aviation, analysts said. ... Unlike drones that are controlled remotely by humans, Northrop aircraft such as the Global Hawk fly under the control of an onboard computer. The plane's mission is preprogrammed into the computer so it takes off, completes its flight and then lands, all autonomously. Humans still monitor the mission and have the ability to alter the craft's flight path or destroy it if it goes off course. Still, the plane is likely to raise several thorny legal questions as it nears the possibility of carrying out combat missions later next decade, including the liability of killing noncombatants because of a programming error or a computer glitch."
>>> Autonomous Vehicles, Military, Applications, Ethical & Social Implications
-> back to headlines

November 27, 2007: $1 million grant brings artificial intelligence to Capo Unified - The South County district is the only one in O.C. to receive the award. By Scott Martindale. The Orange County Register. "Imagine a writing teacher being able to assign 24 essays a year to each student in her class – and not having to worry about grading a single one. That's the promise of a new computer-based writing program that will be rolled out at six elementary schools and three middle schools in the Capistrano Unified School District early next year.... 'Students will create and submit a piece of writing to an artificial intelligence software program, and immediately the system sends back a score and suggestions for improvement,' said Susan Holliday, educational technology director for Capistrano Unified. 'We're really focusing on students learning and not just on the technology.' ... The writing program, called Write Away, is intended to complement and enhance regular classroom instruction, not replace it, Holliday said."
>>> Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Education, Applications
-> back to headlines

November 27, 2007: Champaign native's Cornell team finishes race. By Don Dodson. The News-Gazette.com. "Noah Zych got a tough assignment: Build a vehicle that can navigate through cities on its own. The vehicle had to stop at stop signs, maneuver around other cars, merge into moving traffic. ... The assignment was part of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Urban Challenge, which pits university and corporate teams against one another. Zych, from Champaign, was part of an 11-person team from Cornell University that spent months preparing for the competition, held Nov. 3 on a former Air Force base in Victorville, Calif."
>>> >>> Grand Challenges, Robots, Autonomous Vehicles, Military, Transportation, Applications; and see the many related articles posted during October & November
-> back to headlines

November 27, 2007: The transistor at 60. The Sydney Morning Herald. "In December 1947, Bells Labs scientists John Bardeen and Walter Brattain first revealed what would come to be known as the transistor. ... It is extraordinary to reflect on how far the silicon revolution has come in such a short time. Soon after Bardeen and Brattain made their breakthrough, William Shockley, also at Bell Labs, invented the first semiconductor transistor. All three were awarded the 1956 Nobel prize for their efforts. Justin Rattner, chief technology officer of Intel, calls the transistor 'the fundamental building block of the information age.' ... Innovations that give us more processing power will spawn many other innovations, Mr Rattner says. Google 'took a very powerful piece of software and ran trillions of bytes of examples of English and Arabic and trained it to recognise language statistically. It knew nothing about Arabic or English, though. We have spent decades on artificial intelligence thinking we could do everything with rules. The new thinking is statistical - which is how the brain works - and making use of access to a massive amount of training information from the internet. This move to machine learning is going to open up a broad class of applications such as machine translation and continuous speech recognition. That technology will move very quickly and then you begin to combine that with robotic technology and you move into the age of personal robots.'"
>>> Machine Learning, Applications, History
-> back to headlines

November 26, 2007: Imagining a bionic future - Research has yielded thought-controlled arms and hands that grasp. By Rebecca Ruiz. msnbc.com. "When Paul Selmer lost his right leg below the knee in a hunting accident, a doctor fitted him with a standard prosthesis that required a waist belt to swing the wooden foot with each step. Selmer remembers it feeling like a 'sandbag.' That was 28 years ago. The gallery owner and small-aircraft pilot is now a devotee of a high-tech device called a PROPRIO foot, which utilizes sensors, artificial intelligence and microprocessors. ... According to the Amputee Coalition of America, Selmer is one of 1.9 million people living with limb loss in the country, many of whom have benefited from breakthrough technological advancements in the past few years. ... The American Orthotic & Prosthetic Association estimates that businesses provide $3.5 billion worth of services to orthotic and prosthetic patients annually. Increased government spending and research, triggered by the number of amputee soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, has played a significant role in helping to allocate resources for bold new projects."

  • Also see the related slide show: Advancements in prosthetics - Research has yielded innovations such as thought-controlled arms and hands that grasp.

>>> Assisitive Technologies, Robots, Applications, Industry Statistics
-> back to headlines

November 26, 2007: Newsmaker Interview with Don Norman - Tech design with thought. By Candace Lombardi. CNET News.com. "If anyone knows a thing or two about designing for human-computer interaction, it's Don Norman, professor at Northwestern University, author of The Design of Future Things, and co-founder of the Nielsen Norman Group. In addition to his current consulting work for leading tech companies and car manufacturers, Norman was vice president of the Advanced Technology Group at Apple, a company known for its ability to design well for the masses. ... [Q:] Name some changes you expect to see in humans as a result of our increased involvement with computers, electronics, and robots. [Norman:] For years I used to say, 'We shouldn't have to adapt to technology, it should adapt to us.' I now believe that's wrong. We shouldn't have to adapt to arbitrary technology. On the other hand, so much of our modern life has been a major adaptation to the technology surrounding us, whether it's heating systems, lights, telephone, or television. ... [Q:] What's the biggest challenge automakers face as they look to implement more computer control devices into cars? ... [Q:] Paint for me what a high-tech house will look like in 2020. ..."

  • Also see: Technology becoming humanlike. By Ann Geracimos. The Washington Times (December 6, 2007). "Are so-called smart cars becoming too smart for their owners' well-being? Is our society so enamored of technology that the technology ends up doing us more harm than good? These are the kinds of questions posed by Don Norman, author of several influential books on industrial design whose life mission is to alert people to the problems inherent in some of modern society's fabled inventions and the impact they have on our lives. 'In the past, machines were tools. Even the computer and modern audio TV set were tools. We are reaching an era where the technology has intelligence that makes its own decisions, and suddenly we are tools for the machines,' Mr. Norman says in an interview, using the example of the automobile that can drive itself and the dangers of driver complacency that can follow. ... 'As we move toward the design of intelligent machines, rigor is absolutely essential. It can't be the cold, objective rigor of the engineer, for this focuses only on what can be measured as opposed to what is important,' he writes in his latest work, 'The Design of Future Things.' 'We need a new approach, one that combines the precision and rigor of business and engineering, the understanding of social interactions, and the aesthetics of the arts.'"

>>> Ethical & Social Implications, Interfaces, Transportation, Smart Houses, Applications, Interviews
-> back to headlines

November 26, 2007: Proving Turing's simple computer. By Ben Crighton, host of BBC Radio 4's More Or Less programme. "A 20-year-old Birmingham University student has won a $25,000 (£12,500) maths prize for proving that a certain type of very simple computer, given enough time and memory, could solve any problem that a supercomputer could solve. Alex Smith, an electrical and computer engineering undergraduate, first heard about the prize in an internet chatroom earlier this year. ... The idea of a simple computer that could solve any problem came from the brilliant British mathematician Alan Turing in the 1930s. ... Instead of having a different machine for each task, you could have just one piece of hardware and simply change the software. Turing machines are not real computers, but hypothetical ones, arranged by 'state' and 'colour'. Ever since Turing first proposed the idea of a universal machine, mathematicians have been competing to find the simplest one. ... So has Stephen Wolfram's quest for the simplest universal Turing machine been a purely academic exercise? ..."
>>> Turing (@ Namesakes)
-> back to headlines

November 26, 2007: Searching Video Lectures - A tool from MIT finds keywords so that students can efficiently review lectures. By Kate Greene. Technology Review. "Researchers at MIT have released a video and audio search tool that solves one of the most challenging problems in the field: how to break up a lengthy academic lecture into manageable chunks, pinpoint the location of keywords, and direct the user to them. Announced last month, the MIT Lecture Browser website gives the general public detailed access to more than 200 lectures publicly available though the university's OpenCourseWare initiative. The search engine leverages decades' worth of speech-recognition research at MIT and other institutions to convert audio into text and make it searchable. ... The fundamental elements of the Lecture Browser have been kicking around research labs at MIT and places such as BBN Technologies in Boston, Carnegie Mellon, SRI International in Palo Alto, CA, and the University of Southern California for more than 30 years. Their efforts have produced software that's finally good enough to find its way to the average person, says Premkumar Natarajan, scientist at BBN. 'There's about three decades of work where many fundamental problems were addressed,' he says. 'The technology is mature enough now that there's a growing sense in the community that it's time [to test applications in the real world]. We've done all we can in the lab.'"
>>> Speech, Natural Language Processing, Information Retrieval, Applications, AI Courses (@ Resources for Students); also see this related article
-> back to headlines

November 25, 2007: Korean gov't helping robots transition from starring roles to common appliances. By Yoon Sojung. Korea.net. "When UK filmmaker Stanley Kubrick presented '2001 Space Odyssey' in 1968, viewers of all ages were mesmerized by the mystery of the universe Arthur C. Clark, the author of the original story, portrayed and Hal, the robot. Since then, robots have been shown as super heroes, helpers or sometimes enemies in many science fiction movies and animations. homes and offices. They help and amuse by cleaning the floor, singing and even performing sophisticated medical operations. Robots can make decisions and operate for themselves by analyzing the environment with their artificial intelligence and sensors that function as human senses. ... Though Korea entered the robotics field as a latecomer, the country’s robotics industry now ranks sixth in the world in terms of competitiveness and technology, according to Korea’s Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy. The Korean government considers robotics, especially 'service robots' that can clean homes and provide entertainment, a key growth industry and has been providing considerable support."
>>> Robots, Applications
-> back to headlines

November 25, 2007: In 250 years, Pittsburgh has reinvented itself many times. By Craig Smith. Pittsburgh Tribune-Review (pittsburghlive.com). "As Western Pennsylvania prepares to mark the 250th anniversary of the naming of Pittsburgh by Gen. John Forbes in 1758, historians said Pittsburgh is a continuing story of renewal. ... The next renaissance is being built on language technology, artificial intelligence and robotics, said John Matsumura, associate director for research at Rand Corp.'s Pittsburgh office. ... More than 7,000 technology firms in the region employ more than 207,000 people and account for 17.5 percent of the area's overall workforce, according to the Pittsburgh Technology Council. Their annual payroll is $10.8 billion. ... 'We have the technical lead. It's ours to lose to be a leader in the field of robotics,' said Steve DiAntonio, director of strategic business development at the National Robotics Engineering Center, which develops leading edge automation technology for government and businesses."
>>> Careers in AI (@ Resources for Students), Applications, Industry Statistics
-> back to headlines

November 25, 2007: "Love and Sex With Robots." Seth Lloyd reviews "Love and Sex With Robots - The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships," by David Levy. Los Angeles Times. "The title says it all: By 2050, David Levy predicts, ordinary people will routinely fall in love with robots and have sex with them. ... Given the intrinsic difficulty of programming computers and computerized robots to perform even humble tasks, I suspect that Levy's forecast of a summer of robotic love in 2050 is premature. Predicting distant technological advances is a mug's game. Let's leave such extrapolation to science fiction writers, who are pretty good at it. One of the gaping lacunae in 'Love and Sex With Robots' is the scarcity of reference to the rich and varied science fiction literature on the same topic. Movies like 'Blade Runner' (based on Philip K. Dick's 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?'), and many other films, books and manga, explore human-robot relationships with greater subtlety and insight than is found in Levy's book. One of its predictions, however, is spot on. The latter half of the book leaves love behind and looks exclusively at the prospect of humans having sex with robots."
>>> Ethical & Social Implications, Robots, Science Fiction
-> back to headlines

November 24, 2007 [issue date]: View from the top - Peter Norvig, Google's director of research. By Jim Giles. New Scientist (Issue 2631: pages 62-63). "[A]ccording to current and former employees, Google manages something remarkable when it comes to workplace culture. The firm that famously grew from a garage operation to multinational business has, in the process, managed to hold on to the creative spirit that imbued its early days. In that sense, the Googleplex bubble never did burst. Peter Norvig, Google's director of research, is proof of that. Google poached him from a plum academic position - division chief at NASA's nearby Ames Research Center - back in 2001. Prior employers included Sun Microsystems, before which he earned a PhD at the University of California, Berkeley. His online CV makes it clear that he has not regretted the move away from academia. A note to recruiters reads: 'Please don't offer me a job. I already have the best job in the world at the best company in the world.' ... The firm's willingness to pursue new ideas also means that many staff are working on original projects rather than fixing bugs in old ones. The astronomy project is just one of many: Google also launched a new facial-recognition system this summer, and recently purchased the Finnish firm Jaiku, which specialises in social networking for mobile phones - a sort of Facebook for cellphones. Longer-term, says Norvig, his staff are thinking about language translation software as a step towards making every website accessible to all, irrespective of your native tongue."
>>> Careers in AI (@ Resources for Students), Machine Translation, Astronomy, Information Retrieval, Applications, Ethical & Social Implications
-> back to headlines

November 24, 2007 [issue date]: Evolution of humour could make computers laugh. By Mark Buchanan. New Scientist (Issue 2631: pages 6-7; subscription req'd). "Did you hear the one about the computer with a sense of humour? Didn't think so. Computers can do many things, but stand-up comedy is not one of them. Yet the idea that computers can be witty might not be all that far-fetched. Perhaps machines need not be conscious to understand humour, and even to invent and tell jokes. Physicist Igor Suslov of the Kapitza Institute for Physical Problems in Moscow, Russia, has designed a computer model which he says explains the evolution of humour. Our ability to experience humour, he suggests, ultimately depends on quirks in how the brain handles information. ... He argues that humour is the brain's way of dealing with such errors: a rapid emotional response makes us aware of a mistake, and brings new information into consciousness especially swiftly. ... Suslov hasn't yet made a computer that laughs, but he has proposed a specific computational model, based on a neural network, that would mimic the information processing he describes, and necessarily be prone to the same recognition errors...."

  • Also see: Robocomedian, the comic computer. By Roger Highfield. Telegraph. "A mathematical model to reveal the science of laughter has been devised that not only explains where jokes came from in the first place but suggests that humour is inevitable because it is a kind of error detection mechanism to keep the most complex known machine - the human brain - working efficiently. In short, we laugh at our mistakes to improve performance. For developers of artificial intelligence, a joke telling machine remains far-fetched and was thought to remain that way until we could understand and even simulate consciousness in a machine. But now physicist Igor Suslov...."

>>> Humor, Neural Networks, Reasoning
-> back to headlines

November 23, 2007: BU to offer game engineering certificate. Boston Business Journal. "Boston University's Metropolitan College said this week it has added a new graduate certificate program in interactive multimedia and game engineering. The program will be offered for the first time during the spring 2008 semester and will introduce students to computer graphics and simulation. The program will feature courses in animation, advanced graphics, real-time simulation techniques, and artificial intelligence, according to a statement from BU officials. ... 'Multimedia computing applications have grown enormously during the past decade,' said Lou Chitkushev, chairman of MET's computer science department."
>>> AI Courses (@ Resources for Students)
-> back to headlines

November 23, 2007: VW wins L.A. Auto Show design contest - Firm crafts a two- wheeled pod for the commute in 2057. By Mark Glover. The Sacramento Bee. "Volkswagen's Slipstream design, a two-wheeled, teardrop-shaped travel pod, won the 2007 Los Angeles Auto Show's Design Challenge, which asked eight California-based auto-design studios to come up with the ideal commuter vehicle for the distant future.. Called RoboCar 2057, the fourth annual challenge sought designs incorporating artificial intelligence, robotics and positive environmental impacts."
>>> Robots, Transportation, The Future, Applications; also see these related articles
-> back to headlines

November 21, 2007: New Hitachi Robot Rolls Around, Crashes. By Yuri Kageyama. The Associated Press / available from washingtonpost.com. "Hitachi's new toddler-like robot rolled around and waved for reporters Wednesday, only to crash into a desk and demonstrate the challenge of turning automatons into everyday helpers. The red and white robot, designed to run errands in offices, wasn't prepared for the jam of lunch-break wireless network traffic at the company's research center. Unable to communicate with its handler's laptop, it smashed into the office furniture as reporters gasped. ... Reporters had to wait for an hour until after the lunch break to watch the robot repeat the demonstration -- this time smoothly making its way between the desks. ... Robots are now mostly used as industrial machinery and toys. Hitachi Ltd.'s robot is the latest attempt by Japanese companies to develop one that can be an assistant in daily life. In 2005, Hitachi showed the robot's 51-inch-tall predecessor, the EMIEW (for 'excellent mobility and interactive existence as workmate'). The improved EMIEW 2 demonstrated Wednesday has shed some pounds to be safer around people and easier to carry around. ... Honda Motor Co. and Toyota Motor Corp. have also developed human-like robots that reporters have seen working as guides at the Japanese automakers' facilities."
>>> Robots, Assisitive Technologies, Applications
-> back to headlines

November 21, 2007: Roboethics something we'll have to ponder. By Ed Willett. The Leader-Post. "A couple of weeks ago I wrote about research aimed at making robot-human interactions more comfortable for humans. [See Somewhere, George Jetson is smiling] With more and more robots finding more and more uses in society, that kind of research is important. But there's something else we're going to have to consider as robots become ubiquitous: ethics. How do we insure that robots don't pose a threat to the much frailer humans they interact with (especially with robot caregivers being developed for use in places like Japan, where the elderly already make up 20 per cent of the population and are swelling in number)? ... But it's not just how robots will treat us that we need to consider. We also need to consider how we will treat robots, if and when artificial intelligence advances to the point that they become independently thinking and functioning beings. Robert J. Sawyer is probably Canada's best-known science fiction writer. Much of his science fiction focuses on the possible effects on near-future society of current technological trends. In an editorial in the Nov. 16 issue of Science Magazine [Robot Ethics], he wrote about the growing interest in roboethics. ... We haven't seen much concern with roboethics in North America yet, but, as Sawyer points out, it's likely that some of the most interesting debates over the issue will eventually surface in the United States legal system."
>>> Ethical & Social Implications, Robots, Assisitive Technologies, Science Fiction, Applications
-> back to headlines

November 19, 2007: Virtual Eve: first in human computer interaction. Massey University Electronic Newsletter (Issue 18). "Eve is what is known in the information sciences as an intelligent or affective tutoring system that can adapt its response to the emotional state of people by interaction through a computer system. The system 'Easy with Eve' is thought to be the first of its type. The ability of virtual Eve to alter her presentation according to the reaction of the child facing her at the keyboard has been hailed as an exciting development in the $25 billion e-learning market. The Massey scientists, led by Dr Hossein Sarrafzadeh at the Auckland-based Institute of Information and Mathematical Sciences, tell the story of creating Eve and the teaching system in the latest issue of the leading international journal on information sciences, Elsevier. ... Linked to a child via computer, the animated character or virtual tutor can tell if the child is frustrated, angry or confused by the on-screen teaching session and can adapt the tutoring session appropriately."

  • Watch this introductory video of virtual Eve.

>>> Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Interfaces, Emotion, Image Understanding, Education, Applications
-> back to headlines

November 19, 2007: I, Robot, Run. Associated Press video / available from RedOrbit Video News. "Honda may have made Isaac Asimov's dream come true. The world's most advanced humanoid robot can now run. Watch him in action."
>>> Robots
-> back to headlines

November 19, 2007: Mark Harding - 'We are as advanced as most corporates.' Barclays' general counsel has embraced technology but says lawyers are in no danger of losing their jobs to machines. By Michael Herman. Times Online [part of The End of Lawyers?: Other Views (below)]. "Harding, who joined Barclays as group general counsel four-and-a-half years ago from Clifford Chance -- he had done a previous stint in-house at UBS -- has responsibilities that cover Barclays' retail, commercial and investment banks, overseeing 750 lawyers. Already, he says, those lawyers are using smart IT systems to increase their efficiency. One example is a 'virtual data room', which has transferred hundreds of boxes worth of information that was previously only available on paper in one fixed location on to a web-based system ready to be accessed and searched from wherever his lawyers happen to be. ... But if a computer can produce a credit agreement -- a legal document -- for a customer to borrow £100 with no lawyers in sight, why can’t a much more sophisticated computer produce a credit agreement for a private equity firm to borrow £100 billion? Harding concedes it could 'in principle', but 'we would need seriously advanced artificial intelligence to be able to cope with all the variables'. ... While technology may not have replaced Harding’s lawyers, it has freed them up to get more closely involved in the business."

  • Also see: The End of Lawyers? Will lawyers exist in 100 years? Times Online.
    • The Susskind Extracts. "Technology and standardisation will make lawyers less important, Richard Susskind argues in his forthcoming book, The End of Lawyers? Over the next six weeks, in six exclusive draft extracts, he examines the radical changes ahead for legal service." (October 19, 2007).
      • "'No-one has a vision for the next generation of lawyers' - In part five of The End of Lawyers?, Richard Susskind asks why the profession is reluctant to look beyond the next five years."
      • "Outside investors will demand a very different type of law firm - In part four of The End of Lawyers?, Richard Susskind says that new investors will not be wedded to business practices of the past ."
      • "How the traditional role of lawyers will change - n part three of The End of Lawyers?, Richard Susskind argues that 'black letter' lawyers will give way to multi-disciplinary, 'hybrid' advisers."
      • "A decade on: much changed, much still to unfold - In part two, Richard Susskind revisits some of the radical predictions he made about legal services 10 years ago."
        • "I believe now, and I believed then, that we are in a transitional phase between the print-based industrial society and the IT-based information society. Only when knowledge-based technologies allow us to manage more effectively these mountains of data we have created, will we be fully in the information society."
      • "Legal profession is on the brink of fundamental change - In the first of a six-part series on the future of legal services, Richard Susskind lays down a challenge to all lawyers."
    • Other Views, including:
      • Mark Wyatt: "'In the late 90s, the dust was blown off the law'  - The founder of Legal Week explains how his new venture is using technology to introduce greater transparency to legal services."
      • Mark Chandler: "'I don't know a big company that isn't doing something' - Cisco Systems' general counsel has set out to revolutionise his legal department through technology."

>>> Law, Knowledge Management, Applications
-> back to headlines

November 19, 2007: A Wiring Diagram of the Brain - The emerging field of connectomics could help researchers decode the brain's approach to information processing. By Emily Singer. Technology Review. "New technologies that allow scientists to trace the fine wiring of the brain more accurately than ever before could soon generate a complete wiring diagram--including every tiny fiber and miniscule connection--of a piece of brain. Dubbed connectomics, these maps could uncover how neural networks perform their precise functions in the brain, and they could shed light on disorders thought to originate from faulty wiring, such as autism and schizophrenia. 'The brain is essentially a computer that wires itself up during development and can rewire itself,' says Sebastian Seung, a computational neuroscientist at MIT. ... With an estimated 100 billion neurons and 100 trillion synapses in the human brain, creating an all-encompassing map of even a small chunk is a daunting task. ... [Winfried] Denk, Seung, and their collaborators are now developing sensitive new imaging techniques and machine-learning algorithms to automate the construction process. ... The researchers use data from a manually generated wiring diagram to train an artificial neural network to emulate the human tracing process. They can then use the resulting algorithm to analyze new chunks of brain tissue. To date, they've been able to speed the process about one hundred- to one thousand-fold."
>>> Neuroscience, Neural Networks, Machine Learning, Applications
-> back to headlines

November 18, 2007: Looking for Mr. Roboto - In future, the love of your life could be an automaton. Chicago Sun-Times. "SWF seeks SRM, tall, dark and handsome.... In case you're wondering, an SRM is a 'single robotic male,' or 'malebot.' Malebots and their female counterparts -- fembots -- will be commonplace companions by mid-century, asserts David Levy in his new book, Love + Sex With Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships (Harper, 310 pages, $24.95). Scientific advances in artificial intelligence will be so great, he contends, that humans will interact with, have sex with, fall in love with and even choose to marry -- robots."
>>> Ethical & Social Implications, Robots
-> back to headlines

November 17, 2007 [issue date]: Road-bots prepare to take the wheel. By Michael Reilly. New Scientist (Issue 2630: 28-30; subscription req'd). "We're at the starting line of this year's DARPA Urban Challenge (UC), a 6-hour, 100-kilometre race along the roads of a simulated city organised by the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Alice's laser eye swings cautiously around. A robot can't be nervous, but its human creators, a team of researchers from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, certainly are. They hope to prove that cars like Alice are a glimpse of the future. ... The US government hopes to turn the winners into military supply vehicles for war zones, while some companies hope to make robotic cars a feature of our cities, and maybe reduce road deaths into the bargain. ... That robots would make better drivers is something some roboticists clearly believe. Distracted by chatting, using cellphones or eating, human drivers are erratic, whereas a robot's attention never wavers from the wheel. 'Boss has been a better driver than me for a while,' says [William 'Red'] Whittaker, beaming like a proud father. Would he trust it to drive him on the highway? 'Sure. Absolutely.'"

  • Also see the editorial from the November 17th issue of New Scientist: Time to let robots into the driving seat? (Issue 2630: 5). "It seems unthinkable: roads filled with driverless cars. But in terms of technology at least it may not be far off. The top three robot finishers at the Urban Challenge, run last month in a simulated suburb outside Los Angeles, displayed an uncanny ability to replicate human driving behaviour - good behaviour, that is. ... The main roadblock [to a world where cars drive themselves] is human acceptance. How would you feel if a giant truck pulled up next to you with no one at the wheel?"

>>> Robots, Grand Challenges, Autonomous Vehicles, Transportation, Military, Applications, Ethical & Social Implications; also see related articles on our October & November pages such as these.
-> back to headlines

November 16, 2007: Mars rover crippled and blinded as instruments fail. By David Shiga. NewScientist.com news. "NASA's Opportunity rover has been crippled and blinded by problems with two of its most important instruments. The agency has suspended work involving the rover's rock grinding tool and its infrared spectrometer while engineers try to work out a fix. The problems are the latest in a long line of failures that have begun to plague both rovers as they age. Opportunity and its twin, Spirit, were designed to last just 90 days. But they have been driving around the Red Planet for nearly 4 years, having landed in January 2004. ... Despite the various age-related problems, [John] Callas is optimistic about the future of the rovers. 'I'm planning to keep these rovers going for years more,' he says. 'They're still very effective robotic geologists.'"
>>> Robots, Autonomous Vehicles, Space Exploration, Applications
-> back to headlines

November 16, 2007: Human Intelligence Imitates Artificial [podcast]. NPR's Morning Edition. "As a rule, artificial intelligence imitates the brain. But here's one case where human intelligence imitates the artificial kind: setting a world record for number crunching. Alexis Lemaire set a new record for calculating the 13th root of a 200-digit number. This artificial intelligence researcher says he made his mind work like a computer."

  • Also see this Agençe France-Presse report, available from COSMOS: Is the answer 2,397,207,667,966,701? (November 16, 2007). "French 'mathlete' Alexis Lemaire showed off his rare mental agility Thursday, claiming a new world record after working out in his head the 13th root of a random 200-digit number in just 72.4 seconds. Lemaire, a 27-year-old doctoral student in artificial intelligence from Reims, near Paris, sat at a laptop computer that randomly selected the figure and displayed it on the screen. The number was so long it ran over 17 lines."

>>> Cognitive Science
-> back to headlines

November 16, 2007: Driverless cars on city streets. By Spencer Kelly. Click, the BBC News programme. "'The big difference between the Desert Grand Challenge and the Urban Grand Challenge is that now you have to worry about the movement of other vehicles,' said Michael Montemerlo of Team Stanford. ... 'I think there are differences between how a car and a human will drive,' said Sebastian Thrun of Team Stanford. 'Humans are much smarter at grasping situations very quickly, for example a rolling ball that a child might follow. A robot is much better at precision measurements. It can measure the exact distance to the ball and how fast it rolls much faster than a human could ever do. So when it comes to swerving around the child it will be much more precise than a human can be.' Mr Thrun points out that most accidents and road deaths are caused by human error, so it is important not to pretend that 'being human' is something computers need to live up to."

>>> Robots, Grand Challenges, Autonomous Vehicles, Transportation, Applications; also see related articles on our October & November pages such as these.
-> back to headlines

November 16, 2007: Led by Robots, Roaches Abandon Instincts. By Kenneth Chang and John Schwartz. The New York Times. "This experiment in bug peer pressure combined entomology, robotics and the study of ways that complex and even intelligent patterns can arise from simple behavior. Animal behavior research shows that swarms working together can prosper where individuals might fail, and robotics researchers have been experimenting with simple robots that, together, act a little like a swarm. 'We decided to join the two approaches,' said José Halloy, a biology researcher at the Free University of Brussels and lead author of a paper describing the research in today’s issue of the journal Science. ... 'It’s a cascade of imitation, so a small effect can become quite large,' said Stephen Pratt, a professor of life sciences at Arizona State University. 'This one is a real step forward. They’ve developed these theories about what kinds of individual behavior rules would have to follow to generate a collective intelligence. I thought it was very gratifying they could get the roaches to do what they normally would not do.' The scientists plan to extend their research to higher animals. The next creation: a robotic chicken...."
>>> >>> see these related articles: 1 & 2 & 3
-> back to headlines

November 16, 2007: With robotic bugs, larger ethical questions - Advances affect ties of human, machine. By Colin Nickerson. The Boston Globe (boston.com). "Research reported yesterday in the journal Science described how a team of European scientists placed tiny robots in a colony of laboratory cockroaches. Using behavioral modification methods, the whirring, partly-disguised faux insects were able to induce the real creepy-crawlies to follow their lead in seeking shelter in bright spaces. Bent behavior, indeed, for critters famous for lurking in dark, moist cracks. No one cares too much if cockroaches can be hoodwinked into acting against their own interests. Still, it's surprising that robots can insinuate themselves into colonies of living things, however wee-witted, and more or less take charge. Although not designed to address major philosophical issues, the research nonetheless points to how robot science appears headed in weird and unpredictable directions. Some scientists say it is inevitable that advances will ultimately affect the fundamental relationship between humanity and its machines. And many analysts say it is high time that societies start seriously considering the ethical dimensions of the technological advances, although others contend the dangers are exaggerated. ... 'What's weird is how biological entities change their behavior when in the company of robots,' said Sawyer. 'When robots start interacting with us, we'll probably show as much resistance to their influence as we have to iPods, cellphones, and TV.'"
>>>Robots, Ethical & Social Implications, Applications; also see the journal with the referenced articles and this video report
-> back to headlines

November 16, 2007: Robotics Special Issue. Science (Volume 318, Issue 5853):

  • Introduction to the Special Section: A Robotic Future. By Marc S. Lavine, David Voss, and Robert Coontz. "This special section looks at robots and robotics from a wide range of perspectives. Bellingham and Rajan (p. 1098) tell how robots with an increasing sense of autonomy are being used to explore the hostile environments under the oceans and in outer space. Pfeifer, Lungarella, and Iida (p. 1088) examine recent efforts to design robots based on lessons learned from biological organisms. They show that robots can improve their performance by borrowing living body plans and substructures. Madden (p. 1094) reviews the progress that has been made in developing artificial muscles that can compete with the properties of human muscle and may one day enable untethered robots to run, leap, jump, or climb. But even as robots become more lifelike, the biological function of self-replication still eludes them, as Cho (p. 1084) reports. The last two pieces take us from body to brain. In a story by Lester (p. 1086), we find that robots are increasingly used in secondary schools and undergraduate programs as tools to interest students in engineering and computer science. From a different direction, a Perspective from Edelman (p. 1103) describes a research program in which robots equipped with brainlike devices learn to carry out tasks in the presence of visual cues and other sensory feedback.
  • Podcast: Focus on Robotics: "A companion podcast to our Robotics special issue: Robots on the sea floor and traveling through the solar system; an editorial on robot ethics; the DARPA robot challenge; making a robot behave like a cockroach; and more."
  • Other articles in this special issue include:

>>> Robots, Ethical & Social Implications, Grand Challenges, Autonomous Vehicles, Space Exploration, Cognitive Science, Applications, Resources for Educators
-> back to headlines

November 16, 2007: Human-like Robot. Raw video from the Associated Press / available from RedOrbit.com. "Check out a robot that can kick a soccer ball, dance and even walk down stairs. The world's most advanced humanoid robot demonstrate its skills at the Honda Initiation Grant Technical Horizon Symposium in California (Nov. 15)."
>>> Robots
-> back to headlines

November 15, 2007: Robot 'pied piper' leads roaches. BBC News. "A robotic cockroach can act as a 'pied piper' to its flesh-and-blood counterparts, persuading the real insects to hide in unusual places. European scientists introduced tiny autonomous robots into an 'arena' where cockroaches were allowed to run free. They wanted to see whether the robots would be accepted by the insects and whether they could influence their collective decision-making process. The results were reported in the academic journal Science. ... 'On one hand we are very interested in understanding the sociability of animals. On another hand, engineers are very interested in building autonomous systems,' said Jose Halloy, of the reasons behind the research."

>>> Multi-Agent Systems, Artificial Life, Robots; and see these related articles: 1 & 2 & 3
-> back to headlines

November 15, 2007: Wheel Genius. By Lev Grossman. TIME. "On a recent Saturday afternoon, on a desert road outside Los Angeles, a Land Rover ran into a Chevy Tahoe. Happily, nobody was hurt. That's because no one was in either car. ... DARPA's first driverless rally, in 2004, was an off-road race. This year the agency focused on urban features. The 60-mile (100 km) course included intersections and buildings, and contestants had to park and merge with traffic. ... A lot of new technology was on display in Victorville, but the DARPA challenge also demonstrated a new way of developing technology. You could call it the open-sourcing of R&D, or maybe the American Idol-izing of it. Amateurs are free to mix it up with big corporations and research universities."

>>> Robots, Grand Challenges, Autonomous Vehicles, Transportation, Military, Applications ; also see related articles on our October & November pages such as these.
-> back to headlines

November 15, 2007: Banned User Abused Factiva - Business school blocks user who downloaded 5 million articles from web service. By Jeremy S. Singer-Vine. The Harvard Crimson. "Since July, a data-hungry user has downloaded from Factiva over 5 million articles, an amount so excessive that it jeopardized the University’s contract with the popular online research service. ... [Lydia] Petersen said that the user might have been downloading articles for 'text-mining,' a research method that uses complex natural language processing to extract information from, and identify patterns in, large aggregations of text. 'Text-mining is increasingly becoming an legitimate research method,' Petersen said. 'Vendors and academicians are going to have to come to some understanding about this use. Academicians need these texts to do this kind of research, but at the same time vendors need to protect their intellectual property.'"
>>> Natural Language Processing; also see this related item
-> back to headlines

November 15, 2007: Colossus cracks codes once more. By Mark Ward. BBC News. "For the first time in more than 60 years a Colossus computer will be cracking codes at Bletchley Park. The machine is being put through its paces to mark the end of a project to rebuild the pioneering computer. ... Colossus is widely recognised as being one of the first recognisably modern digital computers and was developed to read messages sent by the German commanders during the closing years of WWII. It was one of the first ever programmable computers and featured more than 2,000 valves and was the size of a small lorry. ... The Colossus machine will be pitted against modern computer technology that will also be used to decipher and read the transmitted messages. ... The Cipher Challenge is also being used to mark the start of a major fund-raising drive for the fledgling National Museum of Computing."

  • Also see:
  • UPDATE:
    • Colossus loses code-cracking race. By Mark Ward. BBC News (November 16, 2007). "An amateur cryptographer has beaten Colossus in a code-cracking challenge set up to mark the end of a project to rebuild the pioneering computer."
    • German man beats WWII Colossus code cracker - Rebuilt British cipher-breaking machine used in World War II is beaten in code-breaking challenge by German man who wrote his own software. By Tom Espiner. CNET News.com (November 16, 2007). "

>>> History
-> back to headlines

November 15, 2007: Accountancy Age Awards 2007 - Best Use of Internet: Business. Accountancy Age. "The equivalent of an electronic auditor, Validis, the winner of the Best use of Internet in Business Award, is a revolutionary new software package that uses artificial intelligence technology to pull out discrepancies and errors in small business accountants. ... 'This technology could change the way businesses operate. The use of the internet to deliver the product and the flexible approach is very inventive,' the judges said."
>>> Business, Induction, Applications
-> back to headlines

November 14, 2007: Robotic aids for the disabled and elderly - Pitt, CMU researchers are seeking innovative ways to help people remain independent. By Gary Rotstein. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "The universities received a $15 million, five-year grant from the National Science Foundation a year ago to develop their new Quality of Life Technology Center, with similar funding expected to follow for another five years. The idea is that after a decade, different teams of robotic scientists, mechanical engineers, clinicians and others will have performed 'transformative' research. ... Some type of artificial assistance, be it a science fiction-style personal robot or far more subtle sensors, could physically help them dress, dine and drive or at least coach them in such tasks. ... Jim Osborn, executive director of the Quality of Life Technology Center, recently told a gathering of long-term care providers that if such advances could delay all nursing home admissions by a month, societal savings could be $1 billion monthly. Artificial assistance is necessary because a shortage of both paid personal attendants and available family caregivers is anticipated as the elderly population doubles over the next 30 years. ... The robotic wheelchair work of a team headed by Rory Cooper, chairman of Pitt's School of Rehabilitation Sciences and Technology, is among the easiest of the center's 22 funded projects to visualize now, but the overall scope is far broader. ... If the project works as envisioned, the center's achievements will include 'virtual coach' technology, in which a person with fading mental skills could wear a watch or carry a cell phone that registers all kinds of information. This mobile assistant might advise that person to take medications, watch a favorite TV show or shift in the wheelchair to avoid pressure sores. The toughest part, researchers agree, is designing a robot to put its 'hands' on humans, helping brush their hair or teeth, button their clothes, lift them from bed or make other advances envisioned to help the most disabled people."
>>> Assisitive Technologies, Smart Rooms, Vision, Robots, Applications, Industry Statistics, Ethical & Social Implications
-> back to headlines

November 14, 2007: University College Cork scoops awards for research. By Marie Boran. SiliconRepublic.com. "[The Cork Constraint Computation Centre] 4C, together with Irish software company TreeMetrics, won an award for its research and development project from the it@cork Leaders Award for its work on the use of artificial intelligence and optimisation technology in forestry. With two areas of expertise combined from both 4C and Treemetrics, a forest is scanned to predict the number, shape and density of trees and how this will affect the outcome of logs as well as what time of year is optimal for cutting."
>>> Natural Resource Management, Applications
-> back to headlines

November 14, 2007: Netflix offers $1M coding prize. Associated Press / available from CNN.com. "Netflix's system for recommending movies to its subscribers is proving tough to beat, as thousands of engineers and statisticians have discovered after long hours of research. Hoping to widen its lead in the online DVD rental market, Netflix last year dangled a $1 million reward to anyone who could improve upon the Los Gatos-based company's current movie-recommendation software by at least 10 percent. The prize remains on the table, Netflix said Tuesday, for the more than 27,000 contestants from more than 160 countries who have entered the quirky coding contest so far. To keep the programmers motivated, Netflix is handing out at least $50,000 annually to whoever has come closest to the 10 percent improvement."

  • Also see: Netflix Prize - Close, But No $1 Million Cigar. Katie Hafner's post to Bits, the New York Times technology Blog (November 13, 2007). "Today the company, based in Los Gatos, Calif., announced that it is awarding an annual progress prize of $50,000 to a group of researchers at AT&T Labs, who improved the current recommendation system by 8.43 percent. ... The race has remained close, with no consistent front-runner. The AT&T Labs team was often neck and neck with teams from the University of Toronto, Princeton University, and the Budapest University of Technology and Economics."

>>> Data Mining, Neural Networks, Collaborative Filtering (@ Filtering), Machine Learning, Customer Service, Applications, Competitions (@ Resources for Students); also see these related articles: 1 & 2
-> back to headlines

November 13, 2007: From Ants to People, an Instinct to Swarm. By Carl Zimmer. The New York Times. "Americans spend a 3.7 billion hours a year in congested traffic. But you will never see ants stuck in gridlock. ... The reason may be that the ants have had a lot more time to adapt to living in big groups. “We haven’t evolved in the societies we currently live in,” Dr. Couzin said. By studying army ants -- as well as birds, fish, locusts and other swarming animals -- Dr. [Iain] Couzin and his colleagues are starting to discover simple rules that allow swarms to work so well. Those rules allow thousands of relatively simple animals to form a collective brain able to make decisions and move like a single organism. ... To get a sense of swarms, Dr. Couzin builds computer models of virtual swarms. Each model contains thousands of individual agents, which he can program to follow a few simple rules. To decide what those rules ought to be, he and his colleagues head out to jungles, deserts or oceans to observe animals in action. ... Dr. Couzin is carrying the lessons he has learned from animals to other kinds of swarms. He is helping Dr. Naomi Leonard, a Princeton engineer, to program swarming into robots. 'These things are beginning to move around and interact in ways we see in nature,' he said. Ultimately, flocks of robots might do a better job of collecting information in dangerous places. 'If you knock out some individual, the algorithm still works. The group still moves normally.'"
>>> Multi-Agent Systems, Artificial Life, Nature of Intelligence, Robots, Cognitive Science, Agents
-> back to headlines

November 13, 2007: Know the face. The Engineer Online. "Big Brother may be watching you but it doesn't mean he recognises you, which is why researchers at University College London (UCL) are developing new automated facial recognition software. It will be able to identity faces regardless of variation in position, pose, expression, and illumination. ... The new system will use a Bayesian probability model to allow the recognition of images taken in such conditions. ... The research is supported by the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA), the Home Office scientific development branch, the MoD systems analysis-system design department and Canada's York University. 'The area of automated face recognition is one that has the potential to bring great benefits to the police service,' said Geoff Whitaker, head of biometrics at the NPIA. 'But there are still a number of significant challenges to overcome before these can be fully realised, especially with respect to its use with "uncontrolled" and low-quality facial images such as those typically obtained from CCTV. ... [Simon] Prince believes the technology has more applications than simply security and could affect every aspect of life. 'In robotics there is a need to recognise humans and it could be useful in almost any device,' he said. 'Even your shower could use it to know what temperature you like. It has ubiquitous uses."

  • Also see: One-track mind. The Engineer Online (November 13, 2007). "BAE Systems has developed a CCTV camera system that it claims can autonomously track individuals even if they change their appearance or try to hide in a crowd. ... Another feature of the software is its ability to detect suspicious behaviour."

>>> Law Enforcement, Biometrics (@ Image Understanding), Vision, Machine Learning, Applications
-> back to headlines

November 13, 2007: Fruit packer. The Engineer Online. "Working with kiwifruit marketing organisation Zespri, a researcher at New Zealand's Massey University has developed an automated kiwifruit packing system. Dr Rory Flemmer of the University's School of Engineering and Technology, said that his new machine can not only grade kiwifruit to within 0.1 gram, it can also spot blemishing and soft spots thanks to the use of a built in vision system. 'The robot will not only reduce packing costs but will inspect and pack more consistently,' he said.'... The next step for Dr Flemmer is to develop an automated robot which will be able to pick the kiwifruit from an orchard."

  • Watch this video report from One News (tvnz.co.nz): Kiwifruit industry turns to robo-packer - "The Kiwifruit industry is going to start using robotic machines to pack and grade the fruit due to constant labour shortages in the industry."

>>> Vision, Agriculture, Robots, Applications, Ethical & Social Implications
-> back to headlines

November 13, 2007: Forget Disneyland, South Korea plans to build robot theme parks to promote the industry. Associated Press / available from theage.com.au. "The [proposed] parks -- which will combine culture and entertainment with robot technology -- are to be built in Incheon, just west of Seoul.... South Korea regards the robot industry as a key area for economic development. It has grown about 40 percent a year since 2003, according to the ministry."
>>> Robots, Applications, Industry Statistics
-> back to headlines

November 13, 2007: Chemical computing - Silicon electronics has been the staple of the computing industry for more than half a century, but increasingly researchers are looking at other methods of computing to deliver increased computational power or allow specialist applications. BBC News. "Chemical computing is an unconventional approach to computation that uses a 'soup' where data is represented by different concentrations of chemicals. Chemical computers can exploit several different kinds of reaction to carry out the computation. ... Dr Andrew Adamatzky of the University of West England works on another type. 'I am dealing only with reaction-diffusion computing,' he explains. This type of computation exploits waves travelling through a beaker of chemicals to carry out useful calculations. ... Although slower than silicon, its key advantage is that it is cheap to produce and incredibly robust. Working with chemist Ben De Lacy Costello, Dr Adamatzky has already produced logic gates using the technique that can be used to make chemical 'circuitry'. 'Ultimately, we will produce a general purpose chemical chip,' he said. The chip would be capable of mathematical operations such as adding and multiplying numbers, he said. However, he believes he can take the research even further to create intelligent, amorphous robots."
>>> Robots, Hardware
-> back to headlines

November 13, 2007: Smart Phone Suggests Things to Do - New software uses artificial intelligence to infer your behavior and serve up appropriate lists of restaurants, stores, and events. By Kate Greene. Technology Review. "[R]esearchers at Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) want to push the phone farther. They have developed software that turns a phone into a thoughtful personal assistant, one that helps people find fun things to do. The software, called Magitti, uses a combination of cues--including the time of day, a person's location, her past behaviors, and even her text messages--to infer her interests. It then shows a helpful list of suggestions, including concerts, movies, bookstores, and restaurants. ... The software employs artificial-intelligence algorithms that have traditionally been used in research to make tailored recommendations. If, for instance, a person prefers to eat inexpensive lunches and more-expensive dinners, Magitti will pick up on this (by comparing the GPS location of the restaurant with a database of establishments) and offer up corresponding recommendations. ... 'What's unique is that we've tried to build awareness of different kinds of activities,' says Victoria Bellotti, senior researcher at PARC. ... The idea of storing personal information as specific as location raises privacy concerns. But Bellotti says that this is something PARC considered when developing its system. "
>>> Interfaces, Telecommunications, Applications, Ethical & Social Implications
-> back to headlines

November 13, 2007: TalkBack - Students sound off on artificial intelligence. By Addison Herron-Wheeler, a senior at James Monroe High School. The Free Lance-Star (Fredericksburg.com). "'I would probably have a robot that would do everything for me, like do my laundry and clean my room.' -- Emily Olivares, senior, James Monroe High School ... 'I would not make a super-powered robot because I think they're creepy. I would not want one.' -- Laura Lash, senior, James Monroe."
>>> Robots, Applications
-> back to headlines

November 12, 2007: Brain2Robot - A robot arm controlled by the user’s thoughts could one day make life easier for people with paralysis. PhysOrg.com. "In the Brain2Robot project, an international team of researchers has developed a robot control system that works on the basis of electroencephalograph (EEG) signals. This new idea could enable patients with severe motor disabilities to regain some of their lost autonomy. ... Electrodes attached to the patient’s scalp measure the brain’s electrical signals, which are amplified and transmitted to a computer. Highly efficient algorithms analyze these signals using a self-learning technique. The software is capable of detecting changes in brain activity that take place even before a movement is carried out. It can recognize and distinguish between the patterns of signals that correspond to an intention to raise the left or right hand, and extract them from the pulses being fired by millions of other neurons in the brain. These neural signal patterns are then converted into control instructions for the computer."
>>> Assisitive Technologies, Neuroscience, Machine Learning, Applications
-> back to headlines

November 12, 2007: 'Robo' Seeks Leeks. By Chuck Bennett. New York Post. "The 60-year-old aqueduct that supplies the city with more than half of its water has sprung leaks somewhere along its 85-mile route - and it will be up to a robotic submarine to find them. ... [E]ngineers fear turning off the flow for a visual inspection because the water pressure may be the only thing holding the tunnel up. ... The first step will be launching a $3.5 million 'autonomous underwater vehicle' - an 81/2-foot-long torpedo-shaped robot that can self-navigate through the tunnel while taking snapshots of the walls. In 2003, the robot navigated through the 131/2-foot-wide tunnel - which supplies 55 percent of the city's water - but a navigation error caused it to smack into a wall during a sharp turn, causing slight damage.... This time around, the enhanced robot will have better artificial-intelligence navigation software and better cameras to completely map the tunnel, said the machine's creator, Ben Allen, of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution."
>>> Autonomous Vehicles, Robots, Applications
-> back to headlines

November 12, 2007: Champagne? Security? The robots deliver - But at $31,000-plus, the help's not cheap. By Hiawatha Bray. The Boston Globe (boston.com). "Jeeves is one of three new machines just launched by MobileRobots, a 12-year-old maker of delivery and surveillance robots that's moving into the consumer market. Jeeves' $32,000 colleague, BrewskiBot, carries a miniature refrigerator capable of storing two six-packs of beer. Then there's Agent 007, a $35,000 machine with a video camera and microphone that's capable of patrolling your home and alerting you to intruders."
>>> Robots, Household Appliances, Applications
-> back to headlines

November 11, 2007: The Grill - Ray Kurzweil talks about 'augmented reality' and The Singularity - The futurist and inventor talks about pervasive computing, augmented reality, and storage as a philosophical issue. By Ian Lamont. Computerworld. "[Q] How will hardware technologies evolve over the next 10 years? [A] If you go out 10 years, computers are not going to be these rectangular objects we carry around. They’re going to be extremely tiny. They’re going to be everywhere. There’s going to be pervasive computing. It’s going to be embedded in the environment, in our clothing. It’s going to be self-organizing. ... [Q] What’s your definition of artificial intelligence? [A] Artificial intelligence is the ability to perform a task that is normally performed by natural intelligence, particularly human natural intelligence. We have in fact artificial intelligence that can perform many tasks that used to require -- and could only be done by -- human intelligence. There are hundreds of examples today, and they are deeply embedded in our economic infrastructure. All communication is governed by intelligent algorithms that route and connect the information. Programs are embedded into computer-assisted design systems. AI flies and lands airplanes, guides intelligent weapons systems, places billions of dollars of financial transactions each day. These examples are narrow AI, in that they are performing specific tasks, very often sophisticated tasks that required human experts to perform. [Q] What could slow down the arrival of strong AI, or of the 'smarter than human' technologies you call the Singularity? [A] There are really two areas to think about. One is hardware and one is software. There’s a strong consensus that the hardware will be available. So, the key issue is how long it will take to get the software and science. I make the case that a 20-year horizon is a conservative estimate, based on the exponential progress we’re making in reverse-engineering the human brain. ..."

  • Also see: Coming Soon to a Theater Near You: The Singularity. By Eliza Strickland. Wired News (November 13, 2007). "Ray Kurzweil has plenty of titles already: inventor, author, futurist, techno-optimist, artificial intelligence expert. Now he's adding a Hollywood gloss to that list by writing, directing, producing and acting in his first feature film. He's adapting his latest book to make a movie titled The Singularity Is Near: A True Story About The Future. ... Wired News talked to Kurzweil about the movie that he hopes will give us a glimpse into that world."

>>> AI Overview, Applications, Speech, Natural Language Processing, Systems, The Future, Interviews
-> back to headlines

November 11, 2007: Far Out - Studios Imagine Smart Cars for a World Transformed by Robots. By Phil Patton. The New York Times. "'Robocar 2057' is the theme of the fourth edition of an event created by Chuck Pelly, the noted designer and teacher, who said the theme was inspired by the recent film 'Transformers.' So this year, automotive design studios in the Los Angeles area competed to produce designs showing how artificial intelligence might improve the automobile and integrate it more closely with human lives. ... These cars exist only on paper and in digital form. The robots in the eight concepts are closer to Transformers than to traditional humanoid bots like Robbie the Robot of the 1950s or Honda’s more recent robot called Asimo, for Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility. ... Nissan’s OneOne is a pet robot able to take the children to school and play with them as well. G.M.’s offering is the OnStar Ant, a kind of minitable that comes in bunches and arranges itself in useful ways thanks to flocking and herding software. Its theme is ubiquitous mobility, a take on ubiquitous computing, a Silicon Valley buzzword."

  • Don't miss the related slide show: Robocar 2057
  • Also see: The future of the auto industry is out there. By Mark Glover. Sacromento Bee (November 14, 2007). "Drivers? Who needs drivers? In the fourth annual Los Angeles Auto Show's Design Challenge, eight automotive design studios in and around Los Angeles envision a world where vehicles can haul people and cargo without someone sitting behind a steering wheel. ... Motor vehicles on the market today have components with artificial intelligence that enable hands-free parking, 'intelligent' gearboxes that adapt to an individual motorist's driving style and electronic stability control that senses and adjusts for on-road trouble faster than a human's reflexes."

>>> Robots, Transportation, The Future, Applications
-> back to headlines

November 11, 2007: Project Seeks to Track Terror Web Posts. By Arthur H. Rotstein. Associated Press / available from chicagotribune.com. "The project in the [University of Arizona's] Artificial Intelligence Lab will not identify people outside cyberspace 'because that involves civil liberties,' [Hsinchun] Chen said, preferring to let law enforcement and intelligence analysts take over from there. Instead, it will help identify messages with the same author and reveal links that aren't obvious. 'Our tool will help them ID the high-risk, radical opinion leaders in cyberspace,' Chen said. ... Dark Web's software, which Chen calls Writeprint, samples 480 different factors to identify whether the same people are posting to multiple radical forums. It can analyze everything from a fragment of an e-mail to videos depicting American soldiers blown up in Humvees and fuel tankers. ... Dark Web compares writings it finds to others in its logs of about 500 million pages of jihadist-produced documents, videos, images, e-mails and other postings, Chen said.
>>> Law Enforcement, Web-Searching Agents, Natural Language Processing, Data Mining, Machine Learning, Agents, Applications
-> back to headlines

November 11, 2007: Safety in numbers  - Alexis Lemaire can calculate the 13th root of a 200-digit number in just over a minute. By Viv Groskop. The Observer. "Lemaire, 27, is a 'human calculator', one of two dozen in the world and the only one of his kind in his native France. He can perform amazing mathematical feats just by concentrating. ... We meet on a warm but misty winter day at the station cafe at Reims, an hour east of Paris, where Lemaire is writing a PhD thesis on artificial intelligence. ... As well as his research and teaching commitments, Lemaire also works for Talner, a Paris-based internet company developing language recognition systems. But as with other 'mathletes' - maths prodigies - he spends up to four hours a day on his hobby - or what he simply calls his 'calculations'."
>>> Careers in AI (@ Resources for Students)
-> back to headlines

November 11, 2007: No Drivers, but a Lot of Drive. By John Markoff. The New York Times. "Not surprisingly, perhaps, robot personality quirks can mirror the individual styles of their human designers. And in this third annual race, sponsored by the Pentagon and now called the Darpa Urban Challenge, the leading machines also reflected a very human rivalry between two leading computer science and engineering schools. ... Both sides played down the competitive nature of the contest, but contrasting styles were clearly visible both in their machines and in their reactions to the results of the race. 'Boss was more jerky,' said Gary Bradski, a machine vision expert who has worked with the Stanford team. 'It accelerated fast and it turned fast.' By contrast, he contended, 'Junior was more Zen; it took the minimal actions needed to achieve its goals.'... This style of machine personality reflects a rapid step forward to a new age of intelligent machines. Increasingly, researchers are working on products that aid human decision-making. In addition to robotic vehicles, we might see a smart G.P.S. 'companion' that offers travel advice, or an expert system for consumers that helps with financial planning. Perhaps we will even see social networking machines that offer advice to Web surfers on how to navigate the Internet. In the short term, the researchers said that work done in preparation for the Darpa races would lead to new safety systems to help cars avoid collisions."

>>> Robots, Interfaces, Grand Challenges, Autonomous Vehicles, Transportation, Military, Emotion, Applications
-> back to headlines

November 10, 2007: Automatic for the people - Robots may soon be transforming our working lives in the same way that computers once did. But will progress come at a human cost? By Michael Fitzpatrick. The Guardian. "Fulfilling the dreams of bosses everywhere, Wakamaru San is never late, doesn't gossip or throw sickies, and somewhat unnervingly never stops smirking. That's because one-metre tall Wakamaru is an android, whose idea of a tea break is to find the nearest power socket and recharge itself when its battery runs low. This Mitsubishi-made winsome bot is part of the vanguard of so-called 'second generation' robots, autonomous machines designed to help around the home and workplace - permanently. In the first serious attempt to commercialise a robot that can work in the office, 10 little Wakamarus touting 'strong receptionist skills' were recently taken on by an employment agency in Japan, where they are now for hire for £12,000 a year. ... So where does that leave us less-than-dedicated, sickly humans? Will the coming revolution make work optional, giving us rich lives filled with leisure, even 'creating Athens without the slaves', as the former Conservative cabinet minister Peter Walker put it back in 1983? Or are we headed for at least 50% unemployment and massive social unrest?"

  • Be sure to see the sidebar: Are friends electric? Fact and fiction.

>>> Robots, Hazards & Disasters, Applications, The Future
-> back to headlines

November 10, 2007: Kindergarten and robots - Nyack has matched the two with good results. By Randi Weiner. The Journal News. "Nyack schools introduced robotics to middle-school students last year as an after-school class, then moved it into the classroom this year as a special component of the technology course. The program was so successful that its coordinator, Art Browne, wanted it available to all students. So this year, robotics was introduced into kindergarten, with plans to eventually make it a component from kindergarten through 12th grade. 'It's an integral part of math and science, with more hands-on and they get to do some competitions with it. It involves a whole new level of excitement,' Browne said. 'We get a lot of great feedback from the parents. We're having a great time.'"
>>> Resources for Educators, Robots
-> back to headlines

November 10, 2007: What is artificial intelligence? By Manal Ismail and Reema Saffarini. Gulfnews.com. "Entering the field of artificial intelligence, however, cannot be done at the undergraduate level. Those interested in the field will need to get a bachelor's degree in computer science or computer engineering to gain the necessary technical background before pursuing a postgraduate study in AI. 'Those who are interested in the field can go into research,' said [Abdullah Al Zarouni, professor of engineering at the UAE University]. 'However 10 per cent of AI projects have been implemented while the rest are still on paper. Computer software and hardware are not advanced enough.' Al Zarouni added that this field still needs further development in the Middle East. ... However, to enter this field a student must have exceptional math, logic, software design and writing skills. If it is hardware that you are more interested in, then a background in electrical or electronics engineering is essential. If you prefer software, then a background in computer science and programme development is needed."

  • Sidebar: What students think of Artificial Intelligence... Compiled by Manal Ismail. "... 'I love video games and AI has definitely helped enhance the gaming industry and develop its future generation.' -- Sumid Arora, marketing, UOWD  ... 'It would be very useful if it was used worldwide with responsibility and to make life easier.' -- Hashim Bakir, business, EHSAL."

>>> AI Overview, Expert Systems, Fuzzy Logic, Ethical & Social Implications, Emotion, Applications, AI Courses (@ Resources for Students)
-> back to headlines

November 9, 2007: Babies driving robots at University of Delaware. By Neil Thomas. UDaily. "Babies driving robots. It sounds like the theme of a cartoon series but it is actually the focus of important and innovative research being conducted at the University of Delaware that could have significant repercussions for the cognitive development of infants with special needs. ... 'If these infants were adults, therapists would have options of assistive technology such as power wheelchairs,' [James C. (Cole)] Galloway said. 'Currently, children with significant mobility impairments are not offered power mobility until they are 5-6 years of age, or older. This delay in mobility is particularly disturbing when you consider the rapid brain development during infancy. Their actions, feelings and thinking all shape their own brain's development. Babies literally build their own brains through their exploration and learning in the complex world.' ... The tiny robot is ringed with sensors that can determine the obstacle-free roaming space, and will either allow infants to bump obstacles or will take control from the infant and drive around the obstacle itself."
>>> Assisitive Technologies, Robots, Applications
-> back to headlines

November 9, 2007: 'Semantic' website promises to organise your e-life. By Will Knight. NewScientist.com news. "Making sense of an ever-increasing number of emails, web pages, feeds, and social networking contacts is a tough job for even the most organised person. But now a new website can organise your e-life like a personal assistant, say its developers. ... [Radar Networks'] website called Twine, which is currently in beta testing, harnesses the philosophy at the core of a discipline called the 'semantic web'. ... Twine annotates information semantically, highlighting the names of people or companies mentioned in an email, for example, and grouping these names into two categories at one side. This allows a user to explore connections between different documents, and to see their information organised in a more insightful fashion, [Nova] Spivack says. ... Twine has to perform this annotation itself. It does this by using a combination of natural language processing and machine learning techniques. That is, it takes techniques from linguistics, such as understanding meaning through words, sentence structure, or grammar. ... Experts believe Twine and other semantic web technologies have great potential, but many are also keen to test them before making a judgement. 'I think it's a good application that can exploit the current semantic web technology', says Tim Finin, a web researcher at the University of Maryland in Baltimore, US. '[But] I'm hesitant to describe it as "the next big thing"'."

  • Sidebar video: "An internet start-up aims to untangle the web for you by launching a site which aims to analyse and organise all your digital data (Courtesy of Radar Networks)."

>>> Interfaces, Representation, Web-Searching Agents, Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Applications; also see these related articles
-> back to headlines

November 9, 2007: DIUS Minister speaks out on UK science policy. PublicTechnology.net / also available from the Department for Innovation, Universities & Skills (DIUS) . "Ian Pearson, the Department for Innovation, Universities & Skills Minister of State for Science and Innovation gave the first Sir Gareth Roberts Science Policy Lecture at The Science Council on 6 November 2007. This is what he said: 'It is an honour to be asked to give this, the First Annual Roberts Lecture on science policy. ... In this lecture I propose to develop three themes: the need to drive up the supply of highly trained scientists and engineers, if the UK is to remain competitive in this century; the central importance of the science and society agenda; and how the scientific and research community can best help us to respond to the major challenges we face over the next decade and beyond. I will argue that despite a great deal of excellent work to date, more needs to be done on STEM [science, technology, engineering and mathematical] skills and to underpin that vital work we need to refresh our science and society vision for the new environment we find ourselves in. I want to launch today a debate about what that new vision should be and how collectively we can up our game when it comes to communicating the value of science and education. I will further argue that cross-disciplinary research must become an increasing priority in the inter-connected world of the future. Lastly, I will raise the question of the implications that this cross-disciplinary approach and the blurring of traditional scientific boundaries has for the STEM agenda going forward. ... Developments in computing with artificial intelligence will also bring the potential for major ethical dilemmas - we have all seen the Terminator films - reinforcing the need for open public dialogue. Scientists may have discovered it but they cannot operate in a vacuum. They are part of the society in which they and the outcomes of their research operate. We will need to engage at an early stage with our publics and we need to recognise that there will be valid concerns and genuine ethical dilemmas in certain areas of research.'"
>>> Ethical & Social Implications, The Future
-> back to headlines

November 9, 2007: Mapping News - YourStreet connects news stories to places, creating a different kind of social network. By Erica Naone. Technology Review. "A new startup called YourStreet is bringing hyper-local information to its users by collecting news stories and placing them on its map-based interface, down to the nearest street corner. ... The site's main technological advance lies in its ability to mine geographical information from news stories. Using natural-language-processing algorithms developed in-house, as well as supplementary algorithms provided by the company MetaCarta, the site searches the text of regular news stories for clues about associated locations. The system searches particularly for entities within cities such as hospitals, schools, and sports stadiums, Nicholson says, relying on databases of entities created by the U.S. Geological Survey. YourStreet is currently working on some improvements to the system's ability to recognize nicknames; for example, it should be able to interpret 'GG Bridge,' as many bloggers refer to it, as the Golden Gate Bridge. Other companies have designed similar but contrasting services."
>>> Natural Language Processing, Interfaces, Customer Service, Applications
-> back to headlines

November 9, 2007: Is There Progress on Talking Sensibly to Machines? A "Perspectives: Computer Science" article by Yorick Wilks. Science 318(5852): 927 - 928 (subscription req'd). "Since the earliest days of computing, people have sought ways to communicate with computers in 'natural' language, rather than program them in symbolic languages like FORTRAN and C. In the 1960s, MIT researcher Joseph Weizenbaum's ELIZA program was an entertaining simulation of a Rogerian therapist [fn]. ... In the PARRY/ELIZA years, artificial intelligence research typically took logic to be the core of machine intelligence, and linguistics was still strongly influenced by Noam Chomsky at MIT; both AI and linguistics assumed that small sets of axioms or grammar rules explained large sets of data, i.e., proved theorems or sentences. ... All this changed in 1990, with the astonishing success of Frederick Jelinek's team at IBM [fn]. ... The method was a statistical one that learned from the parallel text data what translation was but without creating any rules at all. This was the first important work in applying machine learning to language processing. ... The field has now settled into two main traditions of research on how to produce machine conversationalists. ... One, represented by researchers like Steve Young at Cambridge University, assumes that machine learning methods from speech processing can be trained to manage dialogs directly, without intermediate quasi-linguistic structures [fn]. The second follows the route Jelinek later took and tries to recapitulate those linguistic structures but empirically, using machine learning, rather than making up rules, as linguists traditionally did [fn]. ... [R]esearch systems are already much better than [recreational chatbots] and the range of projects expected to deliver usable prototypes has expanded in recent years. These efforts range from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Cognitive Assistant that Learns and Organizes project [fn] to the European Commission's new Companions project [fn] to create a long-term conversational partner [photo]."
>>> Natural Language Processing, Machine Learning, Chatbots (@ Natural Language Processing), Interfaces, Customer Service, Applications
-> back to headlines

November 8, 2007: Robots Rule! A collection of articles, photos & video edited by Elizabeth Corcoran. Forbes.com. "Ever since the term 'robot' came into vogue in the 1920s, we've fantasized about machines that could do our bidding. Reality, in the past, fell far short. But these days, advances in microprocessors, materials science and especially software--call it artificial intelligence or just plain old programming smarts--are bringing those dreams of robotics closer to reality."

  • Articles & Photo Galleries:
    • Robots Meet Reality - Robots may not be ready to drive all by themselves. But by working with people, robotic car technology could save lives. By Andy Greenberg (November 8, 2007). "What DARPA's race really demonstrated, they argue, is that robotic driving technology is ready to work together with human drivers--not to replace them. 'This was a fun event, but it clearly shows that the world is not ready for autonomous driving,' says Sebastian Thrun, the head of the Stanford team whose robotic Passat, 'Junior,' took the competition's second-place prize. In the near term, Thrun says, these autonomous driving technologies should be put to work in warning systems and automatic stopping controls, devices that he says could reduce the 95% of vehicular deaths that are caused by human error. Thrun points out that more than 42,000 automobile casualties occur in the United States every year. 'It's a number that keeps me up at night,' Thrun says. 'If we could cut that in half, it would be an incredible achievement.' The key to applying imperfect robotic technology to present problems, says autonomous-driving researcher Jay Gowdy, is to combine humans' ability to understand their surroundings with a robot's ability to measure and react consistently."
    • Viva La Robotic Revolution! - In DARPA's first urban road race, robotic cars hit the streets--and, for the most part, not each other. By Andy Greenberg (November 4, 2007).
    • Dude, Where's My Driver? - Robot cars racing this weekend in DARPA's epic race take on a truly, insanely hard challenge: avoiding each other. By Andy Greenberg (November 1, 2007).
    • Robot Chic - One day, machines could take our place at the top of the evolutionary heap. It's not as crazy as it sounds. By Brian Caulfield (September 10, 2007).
    • Domo Arigato, Receptionist Roboto - A Japanese temp agency is renting out robots to greet and guide visitors to offices and hospitals. By Vivian Wai-yin Kwok (July 16, 2007).
    • The Robots Are Coming! - Our dreams for robots used to outpace reality. No more. By Elizabeth Corcoran (August 18, 2006).
  • Video:
    • Stanford Robot Challenge - Stanford's robot Junior takes 2nd Place and $1 million in the DARPA Challenge. (November 5, 2007)
    • Robots On The Road - What does it mean when there's no one at the wheel for you and for the Department of Defense? Andy Greenberg fills us in on the DARPA Urban Challenge where robotic vehicles were put to the test (November 5, 2007).

>>> Robots, Grand Challenges, Autonomous Vehicles, Transportation, Military, History, Ethical & Social Implications, The Future, Science Fiction, Applications
-> back to headlines

November 8, 2007: Prof discusses future of artificial intelligence. By Colin Kavanaugh. The Daily Pennsylvanian. "Ever wonder what Rosie the Robot might have thought about the Jetsons? Or how the Roomba vacuum cleaner avoids sweeping away the house cat? Manuel DeLanda, a professor of architecture at Columbia University, spoke on the history of artificial intelligence and the place it holds in modern society at a lecture last night at the University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology's Rainey Auditorium at Penn Museum. ... DeLanda was introduced as a 'neo-disciplinary' thinker whose research in an array of fields like science, philosophy and economics is 'changing the foundational approach' of those schools of thought. DeLanda spoke on the differences between the two types of learning that researchers have tried on machines: symbolic versus connectionist."
>>> Machine Learning, Reasoning, Events (@ Resources for Students)
-> back to headlines

November 8, 2007: A Better Recommendation Engine - Cleverset's approach to e-commerce exposes consumers to the long tail. By Kate Greene. Technology Review. "[A] Seattle-based startup called Cleverset thinks it has the secret to the next-generation recommendation system: a type of computer modeling found mainly in artificial-intelligence research labs. Cleverset's system weighs the importance of the relationship among individual shoppers, their behavior on the site, the behavior of similar shoppers, and external factors such as seasons, holidays, and events like the Super Bowl. Using these ever-changing relationships, Cleverset's system serves up products that are statistically likely to match what the customer will find interesting. ... Recommendation systems have been around for nearly as long as online retail sites have existed, and each varies slightly in its approach. ... Cleverset uses an approach called statistical relational modeling, developed in the past decade, in which each piece of information in a data set is linked together based on its relationship to every other piece of information. ... It's been used to develop technologies such as natural-language processing (to extract relationships from text), bioinformatics (to find relationships between genes and proteins), and computer vision (to help robots see scenes as collections of related items). Daphne Koller, a professor of computer science at Stanford University, says that statistical relational modeling is good in these instances because there is a lot of uncertainly within the data sets. Relationships can be established, she says, and then statistics must be used to determine the likelihood and importance of each relationship."
>>> E-Commerce, Machine Learning, Applications
-> back to headlines

November 8, 2007: Random Access Warehouses - A company called Kiva Systems is speeding up Internet orders with robotic systems that are modeled on random access computer memory. By Kevin Bullis. Technology Review. "Squat orange robots and a set of adaptive algorithms are making it possible to deliver online orders faster. The system, so far installed in two giant Staples warehouses, allows workers to fill two to three times as many orders as they could with conventional methods. The startup that developed the robots and software, Kiva Systems, based in Woburn, MA, announced yesterday that it is rolling out a third system, for the pharmacy giant Walgreens. ... Rodney Brooks, professor of robotics at MIT, says that the Kiva system is a 'very interesting' application of robotics. 'It is increasing the productivity of people by having robots do the easy tasks and letting people do the hard tasks,' he says. 'At the moment, it is incredibly hard for robots to manipulate varying objects. So Kiva leaves that to people and lets the robots do the relatively easy task of moving something from one place to another.' Eventually, Brooks says, robots may be able to handle all the tasks involved: 'Don't expect the current hard tasks for robots to stay hard forever.'"

  • Watch thew related video: "A video of a Staples warehouse showing robots delivering shelves to workers, who scan and pack items. Robots also deliver empty shelves to other workers for restocking. In a newer version of the system, robots pick up packed boxes and deliver them to trucks." (December 2006)

>>> Robots, Applications
-> back to headlines

November 7, 2007: Professor of Philosophy and Computer Science Henry E. Kyburg Dies. University of Rochester press release. "Henry E. Kyburg Jr., a renowned and respected professor of philosophy and computer science at the University of Rochester, died of acute pancreatitis Oct. 30 at the age of 79 at Strong Memorial Hospital. He was well-known for his cutting-edge studies of uncertain inference, which is the human process of reaching conclusions, and data mining, the process by which computers search for information in data or draw conclusions from it."
>>> Tributes, AAAI Fellows
-> back to headlines

November 7, 2007: Robot Consumers, Grow Up! - Why can't American consumers handle the future that robotics is willing to offer? Lance Ulanoff's column. PC Magazine. "Our robotics expectations buckle under the massive burden of fantasy robotics. Our conception of consumer robotics is steered, almost entirely, by science fiction. We confer personalities and cognitive thought on robots before we even see them. We assume that they'll have human emotions and foibles. ... Part of the problem is the Western world's relatively short history with robots. Most people point to Karel Capek's R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), a science-fiction play that premiered in 1921, as the first use of the term and America's introduction to robots. We should take a cue from the Japanese. ... Both Japan and America face similar 21st-century challenges, the biggest of which is probably the care of our rapidly aging populations. Japan, Korea, and other Asian nations are working double-time to try to develop home-care robots that can, for example, retrieve medicine and even carry the infirm from bed to bathroom and back. Americans, on the other hand, are less interested in robots that can work hand-in-hand with us than those that can work under our hands. ... In the end, Americans will never overcome their cultural aversion to humanoid robots, and they won't have to. Robotics technology will embed itself inside every aspect of our daily lives without our even realizing it."
>>> Robots, Robotic Pets & Toys, Assisitive Technologies, Applications
-> back to headlines

November 7, 2007: MIT develops lecture search engine to aid students. By Anne Trafton. MIT Tech Talk (page 4). "Imagine you are taking an introductory biology course. You're studying for an exam and realize it would be helpful to revisit the professor's explanation of RNA interference. Fortunately for you, a digital recording of the lecture is online, but the 10-minute explanation you want is buried in a 90-minute lecture you don't have time to watch. A new lecture search engine developed at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) could help with this dilemma. Created by a team of researchers and students led by MIT associate professor Regina Barzilay and principal research scientist James Glass, the web-based technology allows users to search hundreds of MIT lectures for key topics. 'Our goal is to develop a speech and language technology that will help educators provide structure to these video recordings, so it's easier for students to access the material,' said Glass, who is head of CSAIL's Spoken Language Systems Group."
>>> Speech, Natural Language Processing, Information Retrieval, Applications, AI Courses (@ Resources for Students)
-> back to headlines

November 7, 2007: Somewhere, George Jetson is smiling. By Ed Willett. The Leader-Post. "[C]urrent humanoid robots either freak us out or, after a while, simply bore us. Which is why researchers are hard at work trying to improve robot-human interaction. Maybe if they danced? ... Or maybe what robots really need is a sense of humour. ... Of course, people in the future may get along better with robots simply because they're going to grow up with them. Robots could find more use in classrooms, for example, thanks to work like that just carried out by Javier Movellan at the University of California San Diego."
>>> Robots, Applications
-> back to headlines

November 7, 2007: 'Robo-moth' melds insect, machine. By Denise Gellene. Los Angeles Times. "Harnessing the electrical impulses of sight, scientists have built a robot guided by the brain and eyes of a moth. ... The research, presented at the Society for Neuroscience's annual meeting in San Diego this week, marked the latest advance by scientists who are trying to perfect the link between brain and machine. The technology might one day help people who are paralyzed or have lost their limbs regain the ability to move. Scientists have developed experimental devices that allow those patients to move cursors on a screen or crude robotic hands using only their thoughts. The technology might also lead to development of machines that can see and smell the world just as living things do, although scientists cautioned such an advance is a long way off. ... [Charles M. Higgins of the University of Arizona] and other robotic researchers also have been working to exploit the eyesight of ordinary house flies and dragonflies."
>>> Neuroscience, Robots, Vision, Applications
-> back to headlines

November 7, 2007: Google taps UNSW doc for programming. By Sanna Trad. The Australian. "One of Australia's leading researchers in artificial intelligence, who developed a computer system that can read sign language, is set to join internet giant Google in the US. ... Dr [Mohammed Waleed] Kadous's research areas include artificial intelligence, machine learning, robotics and human-robot interfaces. In 2002, when he was a PhD student at UNSW, Dr Kadous developed a computer that could read sign language with 98 per cent accuracy. 'My work has always focused on using computers to make it easier for people to communicate,' he said."
>>> Assisitive Technologies, Machine Translation, Careers in AI (@ Resources for Students)
-> back to headlines

November 6, 2007:  Why Toddlers Love Robots - Responsiveness and unpredictability are the keys to keeping children's attention. By Morgen E. Peck. IEEE Spectrum Online. "Entertainment robots have become sophisticated enough that they can charm toddlers for weeks, or even months, and could soon be useful to teachers as permanent educational assistants, according to research reported this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Qrio, the dancing, bouncing, giggling robot spawn of Sony Corp., tried out its social skills on a group of children between 10 months and 24 months old at the Early Childhood Education Center at the University of California, San Diego, as part of a study on how children socialize with robots. The researchers found that the key to Qrio's popularity was its ability to move and respond to the children in a way that was closely timed to the activity around it. ... The research was done as part of the University of California, San Diego's RUBI project, which has the goal of developing a robotic teacher's assistant."
>>> Education, Robots, Applications
-> back to headlines

November 6, 2007: Vintage Computer Festival [video] - The rare, historic, and bizarre. Reported by Kara Tsuboi. CNET News.com. "Blow off the dust and get ready to dig through boxes. News.com’s Kara Tsuboi takes a tour of the biggest garage sale for antique computers, vintage video games, and discarded gadgets--the Vintage Computer Festival at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif. And for the first time in decades, the 45-year-old LINC personal computer lights up."
>>> Hardware, History, Exhibits (@ Resources for Students)
-> back to headlines

November 5, 2007: Giggling robot becomes one of the kids. By Mason Inman. NewScientist.com news. "Computers might not be clever enough to trick adults into thinking they are intelligent yet, but a new study shows that a giggling robot is sophisticated enough to get toddlers to treat it as a peer. An experiment led by Javier Movellan at the University of California San Diego, US, is the first long-term study of interaction between toddlers and robots. ... Movellan says that a robot like this might eventually be useful as a classroom assistant. 'You can think of it as an appliance,' he says. 'We need to find the things that the robots are better at, and leave to humans the things humans are better at,' Movellan says." [Be sure to see the video in the sidebar.]
>>> Robots, Applications
-> back to headlines

November 5, 2007: DARPA's Urban Challenge:

  • Champion Robot Car Declared - Carnegie Mellon's computer-laden Chevy Tahoe wins the Urban Challenge and takes home the $2 million prize. By Kate Greene. Technology Review. "In the 1880s, the carriage lost its horse. Now, thanks to a car named Boss, the automobile could be about to lose its driver. This weekend, Boss, a Chevrolet Tahoe fitted with sensors and computers by a team of engineers from Carnegie Mellon University, won the most famous of robotic races: the Urban Challenge. With no human assistance, the vehicles competing in the race had to safely and quickly navigate city streets while staying in their lanes and avoiding other moving and parked cars. ... The Urban Challenge is the third in a series of autonomous-vehicle competitions, designed to spur robotics innovation and inspire the next generation of engineers."
  • CMU robot drives itself to $2 million prize. By Nate Guidry, with contribution from the Associated Press. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "'It's a significant day for robotics,' said William 'Red' Whittaker, Carnegie Mellon robotics professor and team leader of Tartan Racing. 'The world got to see great driving by robots. This is a phenomenal thing for robotics.' Dr. Whittaker said the California driving code was in effect and the robots had to follow the speed limit as they reached their destinations. 'A day like Saturday demonstrates to the world what robots can do,' continued Dr. Whittaker. 'In the beginning of any technology, no one really believes. That was true of the first computers, rocket ships and the first robots.' ... The Tartan Racing team includes Carnegie Mellon faculty, staff and students from the School of Computer Science's Robotics Institute and the College of Engineering. It received major support from General Motors, Caterpillar and Continental AG, with engineers from those companies and Intel embedded with the team in Pittsburgh."
  • 'Aggressive but safe' SUV wins robotic street race. New Scientist staff & Reuters. NewScientist news.com. "Each robot vehicle appeared to have its own personality. The Carnegie Mellon/General Motors SUV rushed out of the starting gate, while Stanford's Volkswagen, named Junior, was more conservative. ... The Toyota Prius from the University of Pennsylvania and Lehigh University took corners slowly and then accelerated. Each vehicle hit a top speed of about 30 mph (48 km/h)."
  • Crashes and Traffic Jams in Military Test of Robotic Vehicles. By John Markoff. The New York Times. "The contest, called the Grand Challenge and sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa, featured both robot collisions and robot traffic jams. Yet the event also demonstrated that the state of the art in robotics has reached the point where the most sophisticated autonomous vehicles can now drive comfortably and safely on a city course while surrounded by traffic and other obstacles. 'It was a good day in robotland,' said William L. Whittaker, a Carnegie Mellon University professor who pioneered the idea of contests to help advance robot technology during the 1980s. ... In addition to the prize money, the event, which has been held every 18 months, cost $20.5 million to produce this year. However, the organizers described it as an economical way to bring about rapid technological progress in a field that is a military priority. Mr. Whitaker also said that the program was having a Sputnik-like impact in the engineering and computer science departments of many universities, where enrollments have jumped in response."
  • Rivalry pushes robotics forward - DARPA's Urban Challenge's competitive drama seeds the idea in people's minds that self-driving cars are possible. By Stefanie Olsen. CNET News.com. "Carnegie Mellon University and its robotics guru Red Whittaker have been vindicated. ... Apart from a little competitive drama and at least one robot wreck, the DARPA Urban Challenge produced a more important win for robotics this year, one that everyone from Whitaker to Stanford's team leader Sebastian Thrun pointed out at the race Saturday. That was simply that the competition seeded the idea in people's minds that self-driving cars are possible. Moreover, proponents say the underlying technology will pave the way for a new generation of cars that will help save lives, either through assisted-driving applications for civilian cars or fully autonomous vehicles for the military."
  • Robot cars race around California. By Jon Stewart. BBC News. "The car industry is watching developments closely. Larry Burns, GM's vice-president for research and development and strategic planning, said developing cars that drive themselves is a key objective. 'Imagine being able to talk on the phone, eat your breakfast, handle your emails, and leave the driving to the vehicle,' he added. 'That would be pretty phenomenal. It's going to a big breakthrough. It's technology that's on the way to "having cars that don't crash".' He believes cars with that level of intelligence could be on the road by 2015."
    • Also see these BBC News sidebar videos:
      • Waiting for traffic at junction
      • Circumnavigating obstacles
      • Going for a spin in public
  • Robot cars rise to the Challenge. By Peter Henderson. Reuters / available from New Zealand Herald. "Hundreds of spectators turned out for the event, including 10-year-old Vernon Bussler, who compared the results to a robot arm and scorpion he had made out of Lego play bricks. 'It's just different from the Lego - just way more things on it,' he said. Encouraging future scientists is part of the goal of the robot car race, the latest U.S. Defense Department challenge to universities, companies and inventors who last turned out in 2005 to send self-controlled vehicles more than 100 miles (160 km) through the desert between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. The cars run completely by computer, without human intervention, using sensors to plot and pick their way. ... 'It's getting a little monotonous to see everybody do so well,' joked Gerry Mayer, director of Lockheed Martin's Artificial Intelligence Laboratories, which worked with the University of Pennsylvania and Lehigh."
  • Scientific American chronicles DARPA's quest to find the perfect robot driver. Posted by Larry Greenemeier to SCIAM Observations (opinions, arguments and analyses from the editors of Scientific American). "It's not always a bad thing when a machine takes your job, especially if that job is driving across a battlefield to deliver supplies, collect intelligence or perform rescue operations. The Defense Department moved a step closer to that goal last Saturday with it crowned a winner for its DARPA Urban Challenge."
  • Robocar race winner: aging baby boomers may get self-guided wheels in the future. By Sharon Gaudin. Computerworld. "In the not-too-distant future, aging baby boomers may have self-guided vehicles to drive them around when they get too old to get behind the wheel themselves, according to one of the leaders of the team that won DARPA's Urban Challenge race over the weekend. Chris Urmson, director of technology for Carnegie Mellon University's Tartan Racing team, said he wouldn't let the team's so-called autonomous vehicle drive his wife and children around city streets just yet. But he added that he thinks we're only 10 to 20 years away from having driverless cars motoring around the roadways. And that could be perfect timing for all of the baby boomers who may be losing their ability to drive safely around that time. ... 'To have 11 self-driving cars out on the road was just amazing,' Urmson said. 'I, obviously, wanted our team to win. But at one point, I stood near the course, and I saw six robots driving around and interacting, and it was magical.' ... [S]ome of the most interesting technologies developed for the race were the tools that enabled the self-guided cars to make those kinds of 'smart' decisions, said Urmson, whose team worked on the Urban Challenge for the past 18 months."
  • DARPA's Urban Grand Challenge homepage has links to media coverage.

>>> Grand Challenges, Robots, Autonomous Vehicles, Military, Transportation, Applications, The AI Effect; and see the many related articles posted during October & November
-> back to headlines

November 4, 2007: Urban Challenge Event winners announced! DARPA.

  • 1st Place - Tartan Racing, Pittsburgh, PA
  • 2nd Place - Stanford Racing Team, Stanford, CA
  • 3rd Place - Victor Tango, Blacksburg, VA

-> back to headlines

November 4, 2007: Hal's odyssey - Human-like chatterbot wins Erie resident prize. By Jim Martin. GoErie.com. "Hal, as many science fiction fans will remember, was the name of the artificial intelligence computer in Arthur C. Clarke's '2001: A Space Odyssey.' That's where Robert Medeksza, of Erie, looked for inspiration and a namesake back in 1995 when he created Ultra Hal, an artificial intelligence software program. ... Medeksza's Ultra Hal software recently won the 'most human' computer of the year in the 17th annual Loebner Prize Competition for Artificial Intelligence. ... Medeksza said he has a goal that goes beyond building a successful company. He wants to dispel misconceptions about artificial intelligence and ease the fears of those who equate artificial intelligence with scary notions of killer robots. He said, 'My goal is to make artificial intelligence a commonplace word, to make an AI revolution and to make sure AI is part of everyday technology.'"
>>> Turing Test, Chatbots (@ Natural Language Processing), Applications, Science Fiction
-> back to headlines

November 3, 2007: Perspectives - Are we becoming gods? Opinion by Michio Kaku. New Scientist (Issue 2628: 58-59; subscription req'd). "Science is undergoing a profound transformation: we are making the transition from an age of discovery to an age of mastery. ... In a BBC4 documentary, Visions of the Future, we decided to examine three key areas where this is manifesting itself: intelligence, life and matter - the three pillars of science. ... With the computer revolution and the proliferation of electronics we are beginning to manipulate artificial forms of intelligence; with the unravelling of DNA and the Human Genome Project we are no longer simply cataloguing genes but manipulating them; and with the discovery of the quantum theory we are beginning to manipulate the behaviour of individual atoms. Let's start with the intelligence revolution. ... Like electricity, the computer will 'disappear' and intelligence will be everywhere and nowhere, hidden in the walls and the fabric of our lives, silently carrying out our wishes. The word 'computer' may even disappear from the language. ... All this raises profound social questions. How far do we want to push this technology? Will the machines take over and replace us? Perhaps. But the researchers we talk to also outlined alternative scenarios: for example, where we enhance our own intelligence, or restrict the intelligence of our machines, or even end up merging with our creations. ... We may be poised on the brink of the greatest explosion of science in human history, but are we ready for it? Soon we will have the power of Greek gods, able to animate the inanimate and create life in our image, but will we also have the wisdom of Solomon to go with it? I believe that wisdom comes from a vigorous, democratic debate over these profoundly important technologies. This debate can only happen with an educated, informed public. The purpose of the series is to begin this debate."
>>> The Future, Ethical & Social Implications, Applications; also see this related article
-> back to headlines

November 3, 2007: Full Coverage of the Urban Challenge Robot Car Race. Michael Belfiore's posts to Wired's Danger Room Blog.

    • 5:04PM update: "Three autonomous vehicles crossed the finish line within the 6-hour time limit here at the DARPA Urban Challenge in Victorville, CA. ... The bots started the race several minutes apart, and they had to complete different missions taking varying times, so it's not clear who will take home the $2 million first prize, the $1 million second-place prize, or the $500,000 third-place prize. Judges will compare notes and score sheets, which note any traffic infractions and other demerits, and Tether will announce the winners tomorrow morning."
  • Also see:

>>> Robots, Autonomous Vehicles, Military, Transportation, Grand Challenges, Applications
-> back to headlines

November 2, 2007: Austin company aims to feed content to its users - Some might say Thoof can read minds. By Omar L. Gallaga. The Austin American-Statesman. "Thoof.com, which launched in June, takes things a step further: It aims to feed content to its users in such a personalized way that some might swear the site can read their minds. It's a lofty goal, but the technology guru behind it is founder Ian Clarke, a technologist who has studied artificial intelligence and the way complex patterns emerge from the behavior of groups. Every time you visit a Web site, your browser transmits information about you -- what operating system you're using, which Web browser you're visiting with, even your geographic location. Thoof uses that information to determine what stories you'll see. If you're on a Windows PC, it may show you stories other Windows users liked."
>>> Machine Learning, Marketing, Collaborative Filtering (@ Filtering), Applications
-> back to headlines

November 2, 2007: Can Facebook feed its ad brains? - Social-networking site expected to tap artificial intelligence to deliver ads to its 49 million members. By Stefanie Olsen. CNET News.com. "The predominant question on everyone's mind is: Can Facebook build an ad system clever enough to keep pace with the passing fancies of its social-networking members? Facebook will have to get really good at processing all of the data it has collected on its reported 49 million members--demographics, personal preferences, and social histories--to predict what advertisements they might actually like and respond in their 'news feed' or next to their 'wall,' according to industry executives. ... One tech executive characterized the challenge like this: 'The company that can process the most data will win.' ... There's no question Facebook is sitting on a data goldmine, with an exhaustive amount of information on people's preferences, backgrounds, and social histories--all given voluntarily by members. ... But with that data comes some interesting machine learning problems, experts say. Machine learning is a broad term in the field of artificial intelligence. It refers to developing algorithms that can discover patterns in data and learn from them. Google, for example, has used probabilistic Bayesian models to serve results to data searches based on keywords. With advertising, it's all about matching the right person to the right ad. And on an individual level, that's a tall order. ... [N]o one obvious technique is the silver bullet for social networks--no one has solved the problem of serving ads in that setting before. ... One of the techniques in this field is known as collaborative filtering, which Amazon used when creating its product recommendation system."
>>> Machine Learning, Marketing, Bayes (@ Namesakes), Collaborative Filtering (@ Filtering), Applications
-> back to headlines

November 2, 2007: Prelude to a Robot Race - On Saturday, 11 autonomous vehicles designed by the best roboticists in the world will compete for a $2 million prize in the Urban Challenge. By Kate Greene. Technology Review. "This week, robotic cars overran the desert town of Victorville, CA. Thirty-five autonomous vehicles, capable of piloting themselves without any human aid, came to compete in the Urban Challenge, a robot race sponsored by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The robots' goal is to autonomously--and safely--navigate city streets, avoid obstacles in the roads, merge with traffic, park in a crowded lot, and perform other tasks on the roads of the former George Air Force Base. The robotic car that completes the course with the most points for speed, accuracy, and style will win a $2 million prize. Two runners-up will receive $1 million and $500,000. ... Yesterday, DARPA announced that only 11 vehicles were safe enough to qualify for the final event on Saturday. (See a slide show and video of six of the finalists.)

>>> Robots, Autonomous Vehicles, Military, Transportation, Grand Challenges, Applications
-> back to headlines

November 1, 2007: The Robot in the Newsroom. By Saul Hansell. Bits, The New York Times Technology Blog. "The biggest change is the feature in the middle column of the technology page titled 'Technology Headlines From Around the Web.' It presents a constantly updated list of hot technology stories. Notice what we are not worried about. We link off directly to other sites that we have no relationship with. We link equally to mainstream media and small blogs. Our job is to help people find the good stuff fast, both what we write and from others. Even more interesting to me is how this list gets generated. It is mainly created by an automated algorithm developed by Philippe Lourier, the developer of Blogrunner, a Web site The New York Times Co. bought last year. ... On Blogrunner, editors and computerized Web crawlers work together to find the best stuff."
>>> Web-Searching Agents, Applications
-> back to headlines

November 1, 2007: Rise of the machines. The Economist. "[T]his weekend the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency is holding a contest for robot vehicles capable of operating on their own in busy cities (see article). What is intriguing about this competition is the sort of teams taking part. ... A similar sort of thing can be seen in the development of UAVs for civilian use. Indeed, so cheap and so easily available has the technology become that even hobbyists are making UAVs (see article). ... With luck there will be many more robotic devices to do not just dirty and dangerous jobs, but also tiresome but necessary ones, such as fetching and carrying for bedridden people. Robots can do some of these jobs better and more cheaply than humans can. But the technology's spread also brings worries. ..."

  • A challenge, eh?  - The competition to make a working robot vehicle has moved from the desert to the mean city streets. The Economist (November 1, 2007). "Three years ago the world's most advanced robotic cars struggled to make their way around even basic obstacles such as large rocks and potholes in the road. ... Now, however, they can squeeze into parking places, flip on their indicators before making turns and even display the flair of a London taxi driver when merging into traffic. This improvement in 'autonomous vehicle technology', as the jargon has it, is partly a result of prodding by America's defence department, which hopes a third of its ground vehicles will be robotic by 2015. To that end its research arm, the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), has scaled back the traditional process of handing out large research grants and getting nothing useful in return. Instead, it has been running a series of grand prix for such vehicles. ... The established mixture of competitiveness and amateur fair play will surely continue (teams routinely patch up each other's wrecks after a crash). And that seems to produce for DARPA what many millions spent on more run-of-the-mill research projects has failed to generate."
  • The fly's a spy - A new type of flying machine is watching you. The Economist (November 1, 2007). "As it flits from room to room its video-camera 'eye' transmits pictures to a screen on a remote-control unit strapped to the wrist of its clandestine operator. This is not a scene from a James Bond film, in which 007 tests a new device from 'Q', but an animated video produced by Onera, France's national aerospace centre, to explain REMANTA, a project to develop the technologies needed for miniature robotic aircraft. More bug-like flying devices are being developed in other research laboratories around the world. ... Having evolved from military use, drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), are taking to the air in increasing numbers for public-service and civilian roles. ... However, the growing use of UAVs is causing a number of concerns. The first is safety. Last month America's National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) completed its first-ever investigation into an unmanned-aircraft accident. ... The second concern is privacy. ..."

>>> Robots, Autonomous Vehicles, Military, Law Enforcement, Ethical & Social Implications, Transportation, Grand Challenges, Applications, Industry Statistics
-> back to headlines

November 1, 2007: AI modelling gives Australia’s water security a boost. By Lilia Guan. iTnews Australia. "A South Australian entrepreneur has redeployed technology designed for defending Australia to the challenging task of managing the nation’s water security more efficiently. ... Through his start-up company Intelligent Software Development, [Don] Perugini designed and deployed the defence software to improve the speed and reduce the risk associated with planning major water infrastructure projects. 'We have developed a simulation architecture based on artificial intelligence and intelligent agents which is aimed at addressing complex problems such as the water management problem. We were easily able to adapt our simulation to this problem domain, to create Simulait Water,' Perugini said."
>>> Agents, Applications
-> back to headlines

November 1, 2007: Greek scientists blaze way in solving Internet questions - Experts at i-sieve are developing content-filtering technology. By Lina Giannarou. Kathimerini | eathimerini.com. "The firm, i-sieve technologies, is a Democritos spin-off company whose researchers have developed content-filtering technology to tune into the opinions of millions of people from all corners of the earth who use the Internet for everything from products and services to candidates for the leadership of the PASOK party. The job assigned to i-sieve is to use artificial intelligence to analyze the content of websites. These online media analysis methods are based on an innovative system of thematically organizing Internet content developed at the Software and Knowledge Engineering Laboratory at Democritos. 'In effect, this is an algorithm which we train to search the Web for what interests us and to classify it,' explained Costas Handrinos, the director of i-sieve."
>>> Natural Language Processing, Web-Searching Agents, Marketing, Applications
-> back to headlines

November - December 2007: Top 10 Forecasts for 2008 and Beyond. The Futurist (Volume 41, Number 6). Each year since 1985, the editors of The Futurist have selected the most thought-provoking ideas and forecasts appearing in the magazine to go into our annual Outlook report. Over the years, Outlook has spotlighted the emergence of such epochal developments as the Internet, virtual reality, and the end of the Cold War. Here are the editors' top 10 forecasts from Outlook 2008: ... 10. More decisions will be made by nonhuman entities. ..."
>>> The Future, Robots, Applications
-> back to headlines

November 2007: Automated Killers and the Computing Profession. By Noel Sharkey. Computer Magazine. "When will we realize that our artificial-intelligence and autonomous-robotics research projects have been harnessed to manufacture killing machines? This is not terminator-style science fiction but grim reality: South Korea and Israel have both deployed armed robot border guards, while other nations -- including China, India, Russia, Singapore, and the UK -- increasingly use military robots. Currently, the biggest player, the US, has robots playing an integral part in its Future Combat Systems project, with spending estimated to exceed $230 billion. The US military has massive and realistic plans to develop unmanned vehicles that can strike from the air, under the sea, and on land. The US Congress set a goal in 2001 for one-third of US operational ground combat vehicles to be unmanned by 2015. More than 4,000 robots presently serve in Iraq, with others deployed in Afghanistan. The US military will spend $1.7 billion on more ground-based robots over the next five years, several of which will be armed and dangerous. These developments pose a moral and ethical minefield for engineers and computer scientists. These groups have their own national or political interests, but they also have a duty to help protect innocents from the harm their devices might cause. ... Equipping the robotic soldier with an artificial conscience offers one approach to resolving the ethical dilemma of using autonomous weapons. Georgia Institute of Technology's Ron Arkin has funding from the US Army to design an ethical autonomous robot, which he refers to as a humane-oid. ... Computing professionals and engineers have a duty to ensure that the funding bodies, policy makers, and -- if possible -- end users know the current limitations of AI technology, including potential mishaps in the complexity of unpredictable real-world events."
>>> Ethical & Social Implications, Robots, Autonomous Vehicles, Military, Applications, Industry Statistics
-> back to headlines

November/December 2007: Prediction is difficult, especially about the future - Michael Gough assesses the future of the IT industry and highlights some of the likely key developments. ITadviser (Issue 52). "At the 2007 conference for the Council of Professors and Heads of Computer Science (CPHC) there was recognition that computing had to be 'embedded' in all disciplines. This is not the end of computer science, simply the recognition that science, engineering and technology, commerce, media and communications, health etc. all require its capabilities directly applied to advancing their agenda, knowledge and capabilities. For me computer science was always an applied discipline and this realisation simply means an opportunity to regroup and refocus its attentions on computing architecture, programming languages, the human-computer interface, parallel computing, and artificial intelligence. ... The next generation of electronic devices will extend the ubiquity of computing significantly. In 1964 IBM released the 360 mainframe. At that time experts confidently stated that only a few of these machines would be needed to do all the tasks that could be conceived! Essentially, one computer serving millions of people. The ubiquitous computing revolution is characterised by everyone having not one but dozens of computers doing many utility and specialised tasks; i.e. many computers for everyone. The Virtual Retinal Display typifies this scenario. The user is wirelessly connected to the internet. A camera mounted on the frame offers real time image (people, places, etc.) recognition. Intelligent agents running in the embedded computer display information on the inside of the lens of the glasses. Voice recognition and synthesis provide the human interface. Essentially, you are a node on the internet!"
>>> The Future, Computer Science, Systems, Smart Houses, Applications
-> back to headlines

November - December 2007 [issue date]: Top Ten Forecasts for 2008 and Beyond. Futurist Magazine. "Each year since 1985, the editors of THE FUTURIST have selected the most thought-provoking ideas and forecasts appearing in the magazine. Over the years, Outlook has spotlighted the emergence of such epochal developments as the Internet, virtual reality, and the end of the Cold War. Here are the editors' top 10 forecasts from Outlook 2008: ... 10. More decisions will be made by nonhuman entities. Electronically enabled teams in networks, robots with artificial intelligence, and other noncarbon life-forms will make financial, health, educational, and even political decisions for us. Reason: Technologies are increasing the complexity of our lives ...."
>>> The Future, Applications
-> back to headlines