AI in the news

Archive: February 2008

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AUDIO NEWS REPORTS, INTERVIEWS, PODCASTS & MORE

ARTICLES

February 29, 2008: Interview with Helen Greiner, Co-founder and Chairman of the Board, iRobot Corp. (audio | 15:30 | download option). Women in Technology audio interview series from The National Center for Women in Technology (NCWIT). "Helen Greiner is co-founder and Chairman of the Board of iRobot Corp., maker of the Roomba® Vacuuming Robot (over 2M units sold) and the iRobot PackBot® Tactical Mobile Robot, which deactivates mines in Iraq and Afghanistan."
>>> Robots, Science Fiction, Careers in AI (@ Resources for Students), Applications; also see this recent press release
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February 29, 2008: Warning! Kids building robots - Regional competition is today and includes Oregon City's first entry. By Wendy Owen. The Oregonian. "It's the day before the FIRST regional competition -- For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology -- and 55 teams from as far away as Michigan and Hawaii have gathered to compete.  ... The challenge changes every year, requiring returning teams to build and program their robots to perform different tasks. This year, the robots must race around a track. As they pass under a 6-foot-high rack, the robots can gain additional points by knocking a 40-inch fabric-covered ball off the rack, herding it around the track, hurdling it over the rack on the next pass and, finally, placing it back on the rack.

>>> Robots, Competitions (@ Resources for Students)
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February 29, 2008: PC World looks for director of robotics - Must like transistors By Guy Dixon. vnunet.com. "The UK's largest chain of computing superstores is on the hunt for a director of robotics, who will be responsible for sourcing and expanding the range of robots on PC World shelves. 'We are at a tipping point in the history of robotics,' said Paul Mitford, director of HR at PC World. 'Sales figures for robotic devices at PC World at Christmas exceeded our expectations and we are keen to expand the range that we sell."

  • Also see: The 3-minute interview: Gail Drake. By Dan Genz. Examiner. com (February 29, 2008). "Gail Drake left a profitable information technology career to teach her field to students at Battlefield High School in fast-growing western Prince William County. Teaming with fellow teacher Michael Piccione, she spearheaded the county’s recent dive into underwater robotics, in which students won a national competition in 2006. The program is now spreading to nine county high schools."

>>> Robots, Applications, Careers in AI (@ Resources for Students)
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February 29, 2008: The certainty epidemic - We all seem convinced we're right about politics, religion or science these days. What makes us so sure of ourselves? By Robert Burton. Salon.com [From "On Being Certain" by Robert A. Burton, M.D. © 2008 by the author and reprinted by permission of St. Martin's Press.]. "Certainty is everywhere. ... But why? Is this simply a matter of stubbornness, arrogance or misguided thinking, or is the problem more deeply rooted in brain biology? Since my early days in neurology training, I have been puzzled by this most basic of cognitive problems.... Determining how this involuntary feeling of knowing happens takes us into the enormously complicated details of neurobiology. To simplify them for this discussion, let me borrow a term, 'hidden layer,' from the artificial intelligence community. By mimicking the way the brain processes information, A.I. scientists have been able to build artificial neural networks (ANNs) that can play chess and poker, read faces, recognize speech and recommend books at Amazon.com. While standard computer programs work line by line, yes or no, all eventualities programmed in advance, the ANN takes an entirely different approach. The ANN is based upon mathematical programs that are initially devoid of any specific values. The programmers only provide the equations; incoming information determines how connections are formed and how strong each connection will be in relationship to all other connections. There is no predictable solution to a problem -- rather, as one connection changes, so do all the others. These shifting interrelationships are the basis for 'learning.' ... The hidden layer thus offers a powerful metaphor for the way the brain processes information."
>>> Cognitive Science, Neural Networks, Machine Learning
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February 29, 2008: Humans Are Just Machines for Propagating Memes. By Kim Zette. Wired. "In the 1970s, Richard Dawkins coined the term 'meme' in his book The Selfish Gene to refer to aspects of human culture and how they evolve in a way that's analogous to how genes evolve. Since then, the study of memes has become an evolving meme itself. A meme is an idea or thing that is passed from person to person and is either adopted for its usefulness or other purpose -- in some cases becoming a wildly popular idea that can't be stopped -- or abandoned to die a quick and ignoble death. A meme can be a song or snippet of a song, a dance, an urban legend, an expression or behavior, a product brand or even a religion. British scholar Susan Blackmore, who delivered a presentation on memes at the TED [Technology, Entertainment, Design] conferenceThursday morning, says that human beings are being overrun by memes that want to use us for their own advancement. Wired.com spoke with her at TED. ... Blackmore: ... Up until very recently in the world of memes, humans did all the varying and selecting. We had machines that copied -- photocopiers, printing presses -- but only very recently do we have artificial machines that also produce the variations, for example (software that) mixes up ideas and produces an essay or neural networks that produce new music and do the selecting. There are machines that will choose which music you listen to. It's all shifting that way because evolution by natural selection is inevitable. There's a shift to the machines doing all of that. We're not there yet. But once we're there, there's going to be evolution of memes out there that is totally out of our control. Wired: What will that look like? Blackmore: Well, it will look like humans are just a minor thing on this planet with masses (of) silicon-based machinery using us to drag stuff out of the ground to build more machines. ..."
>>> The Future, Ethical & Social Implications, Interviews; also see 37 DOWN in AI Crossword Puzzle #1
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February 29, 2008: Japan experiments with robots as part of daily life. AP Digital via The Sydney Morning Herald. "At a university lab in a Tokyo suburb, engineering students are wiring a rubbery robot face to simulate six basic expressions: anger, fear, sadness, happiness, surprise and disgust. Hooked up to a database of words clustered by association, the robot -- dubbed Kansei, or 'sensibility' -- responds to the word 'war' by quivering in what looks like disgust and fear. It hears 'love,' and its pink lips smile. 'To live among people, robots need to handle complex social tasks,' said project leader Junichi Takeno of Meiji University. "Robots will need to work with emotions, to understand and eventually feel them. While robots are a long way from matching human emotional complexity, the country is perhaps the closest to a future -- once the stuff of science fiction -- where humans and intelligent robots routinely live side by side and interact socially. ... In the past several years, the government has funded a plethora of robotics-related efforts, including some 4.6 billion yen (US$42.7 million;euro28.7 million) for the first phase of a humanoid robotics project, and 1.1 billion yen (US$10.2 million;euro6.8 million) a year between 2006 and 2010 to develop key robot technologies. The government estimates the industry could surge from about 558 billion yen (US$5.2 billion;euro3.5 billion) in 2006 to 3 trillion yen (US$26 billion;euro17.5 billion) in 2010 and nearly 7.5 trillion yen (US$70 billion;euro47 billion) by 2025. Besides financial and technological power, the robot wave is favored by the Japanese mind-set as well."
>>> Robots, Applications, Industry Statistics
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February 28, 2008: Japanese cellphones to turn into 'robot' buddies. Agence France-Presse (AFP) via Google. "Softbank Mobile Corp.'s new mobile line looks like a small humanoid with attachable arms and legs, with the screen showing various faces. ... The telephone comes with enough artificial intelligence to learn the user's habits. If the user calls a particular person many times, a text phrase such as 'You're calling her often these days, aren't you?' might appear coming out of the face's mouth, according to Softbank Mobile spokesman Katsuhide Furuya. The user could carry on conversations with the phone by responding 'yes' or 'no' or with other simple replies."
>>> Telecommunications, Interfaces, Applications
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February 28, 2008: Plan to teach baby robot to talk. BBC News. "Staff at the University of Plymouth will work with a 1m-high (3ft) humanoid baby robot called iCub. Over the next four years robotics experts will work with language development specialists who research how parents teach children to speak. Their findings could lead to the development of humanoid robots which learn, think and talk. ... A consortium led by the University of Plymouth, a world leader in cognitive robotics research, beat competition from 31 others to win a £4.7m grant for the Italk - Integration and Transfer of Action and Language Knowledge in Robots - project."

  • Visit the RobotCub website - home of the iCub: "This is an open project in many different ways: it will distribute its platform openly, it will develop software open-source, and we are open to including new partners and form collaboration worldwide."

>>> Cognitive Science, Robots
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February 28, 2008: Computers Learn to Smell, May Join Dogs in Sniffing Out Bombs. By Ian King. Bloomberg.com. "A Silicon Valley startup is betting a computer can have a better sense of smell than a dog. Paul Rhodes, the founder of Evolved Machines Inc. in Palo Alto, California, is using graphics chips from Nvidia Corp. to create a machine that mimics the way human and animal brains learn to tell one odor from another. The goal is to create a device that helps firefighters recognize hazardous chemicals or monitors shipping containers for drugs and bombs. ... The challenge for the device is to identify odors while filtering out wind and other smells. To do this, his software is designed to mimic the way the human brain learns through experience. 'The process of synthesizing these systems, of running them over and over again, of training them, requires a tremendous amount of computation,' Rhodes said. Rhodes said the program can learn in 16 hours what a baby picks up in three months."
>>> Artificial Noses, Law Enforcement, Hazards & Disasters, Military, Applications
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February 27, 2008: Anita Borg Institute Announces 2008 Women of Vision Award Winners. Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology press release via Business Wire. "The Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology (ABI) announced today the winners of this year’s Women of Vision Awards. Three leaders in technology -- Justine Cassell, Northwestern University; Helen Greiner, iRobot; and Susan Landau, Sun Microsystems Inc. -- will be honored for their accomplishments and contributions as women in technology at ABI’s third annual Women of Vision Awards reception and dinner at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose on May 8th, 2008."

>>> Equality & Diversity (@ Resources for Students)
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February 27, 2008: The Online Hunt for Terrorists - Researchers are using Web spiders to track down terrorists online. By Isabelle Groc. PC Magazine. "Intelligence agencies are having trouble keeping up with the volume. That's why researchers from the Artificial Intelligence Lab at the University of Arizona have developed a set of automated tools to collect and analyze terrorist content on the Internet in a systematic way. The project, named the Dark Web, uses Web-spidering to find and catalog millions of Web pages, postings to terrorist forums, videos, and other multimedia content. ... Another independent group participating in the monitoring is the Virginia-based Terrorism Research Center. Its deputy director, Ned Moran, says that tools such as the Dark Web help intelligence analysts do the first pass. 'They take this massive entity of the Internet and scale it down into something more manageable.'"
>>> Web-Searching Agents, Agents, Law Enforcement, Applications
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February 27, 2008: Translation camera phone - Nokia's Karri Pulli shows Darren Waters a mobile that reads Chinese and translates it into English. Filmed on a mobile phone as part of the BBC News Future Mobile project. BBC News.
>>> Machine Translation, Image Understanding, Vision, Telecommunications, Natural Language Processing, Applications
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February 27, 2008: 'Scolding' software to speed planet hunt. By Zeeya Merali. New Scientist (Issue 2644: page 26; subscription req'd). "Last week, astronomers reported spotting the first multiplanet system orbiting another star, thanks to a network of robotic telescopes dotted around the world (see 'One-hit-wonder planet-spotting technique adds a new feather to its cap'). Each telescope runs software that allows it to alert the entire network as soon as it spots something interesting. The telescopes then bid for the chance to carry out follow-up observations, citing their assessment of their equipment, position and availability. ... [Alasdair] Allan and his colleagues have built a software control system (www.arxiv.org/abs/0802.0431) that ranks telescopes on the data they return. If a telescope fails to keep its promises, the system scolds it, instructing it to work out why it failed and to be more modest."
>>> Astronomy, Networks, Applications
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February 27, 2008: Robot as good as real dog at easing lonely hours. By Julie Steenhuysen. Reuters / also available from msnbc.com (Even a faux Fido can comfort lonely people). "A friendly dog can make older people feel less isolated -- and it appears to make little difference if that wagging tail belongs to a robot doggie or the real thing. Researchers at Saint Louis University in Missouri compared a 35-pound (16 kg), floppy-eared mutt named Sparky with AIBO, a far-from-lifelike robot dog, to see how residents of three U.S. nursing homes would respond. ... While AIBO has been discontinued, [Dr. William] Banks thinks similar robots could offer companionship for older people and might even be programmed to keep tabs on their owners, alerting emergency workers of a sudden fall."
>>> Robotic Pets, Assisitive Technologies, Robots, Ethical & Social Implications, Applications
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February 27, 2008: Automated killer robots 'threat to humanity': expert. By Marlowe Hood. Agence France-Presse (AFP) via Yahoo! News. "Increasingly autonomous, gun-totting robots developed for warfare could easily fall into the hands of terrorists and may one day unleash a robot arms race, a top expert on artificial intelligence told AFP. 'They pose a threat to humanity,' said University of Sheffield professor Noel Sharkey ahead of a keynote address Wednesday before Britain's Royal United Services Institute. ... Several countries, led by the United States, have already invested heavily in robot warriors developed for use on the battlefield. South Korea and Israel both deploy armed robot border guards, while China, India, Russia and Britain have all increased the use of military robots. Washington plans to spend four billion dollars by 2010 on unmanned technology systems, with total spending expected rise to 24 billion, according to the Department of Defense's Unmanned Systems Roadmap 2007-2032, released in December. ... But even more worrisome, he continued, is the subtle progression from the semi-autonomous military robots deployed today to fully independent killing machines. 'I have worked in artificial intelligence for decades, and the idea of a robot making decisions about human termination terrifies me,' Sharkey said. Ronald Arkin of Georgia Institute of Technology, who has worked closely with the US military on robotics, agrees that the shift towards autonomy will be gradual. But he is not convinced that robots don't have a place on the front line."

  • Also see:
    • Robotics Prof Sees Threat in Military Robots - But are the dangers as overplayed as the Pentagon's dreams of robot battalions? By JR Minkel. Scientific American News (February 28, 2008). " Congress in 2001 mandated that one third of military ground vehicles must be unmanned by 2015. According to the DoD report, 'Unmanned Systems Roadmap 2007-2032,' the Pentagon plans to spend $4 billion by 2010 on unmanned systems technology, with an eye toward increasing autonomy to free up troops that would otherwise have to monitor the robots closely. An autonomous Chevy Tahoe successfully navigated a 60-mile (96-kilometer) urban setting this past November in four hours to win the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's 2007 Urban Challenge. 'It is quite realistic,' [Professor Noel] Sharkey says, 'to have autonomous vehicles that are not monitored -- to take supplies and navigate from place to place.' Giving them license to kill would be another matter. Despite decades of research in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), computers remain unable to make simple visual discriminations such as picking a cow out of a barnyard scene. Robotic systems would be hard-pressed to tell friend from foe even in ideal conditions, let alone amid the smoke and confusion of battle, Sharkey says. Mindful of these limitations, Sharkey, who moonlights as a judge in televised robot contests such as BBC Two's Robot Wars series, proposes a global ban on autonomous weapons until they can comply with international rules of war prohibiting the use of force against noncombatants."
    • Experts warn of robotic terrorism. The Associated Press via CTV.ca (February 28, 2008). "Military experts have warned that terrorists could use unmanned drones in aerial attacks, saying robotics offered a frighteningly easy way to evade security. The know-how and materials for manufacturing lethal, improvised robots are easily available, according to experts at a conference Wednesday on robotics at the Royal United Services Institute, a 177-year-old forum on military affairs. 'Sooner or later we're going to see a Cessna programmed to fly into a building,' said Rear Adm. Chris Parry, who formed the Ministry of Defense's Development, Concepts and Doctrine Center in 2005. ... Unmanned vehicles, from hunter-killer planes like the U.S. Predator to explosives-disposal buggies, are also playing an increasingly important role in the U.S. war effort in Iraq and elsewhere."
    • 'Robot arms race' underway, expert warns. By Tom Simonite. NewScientist.com news (February 27, 2008). "Governments around the world are rushing to develop military robots capable of killing autonomously without considering the legal and moral implications, warns a leading roboticist. But another robotics expert argues that robotic soldiers could perhaps be made more ethical than human ones. Noel Sharkey of Sheffield University, UK, says he became 'really scared' after researching plans outlined by the US and other nations to roboticise their military forces. He will outline his concerns to at a one day conference held in London, UK, on Wednesday. ... As governments seem determined to invest in robotic weapons, [Ronald] Arkin suggests trying to design ethical control systems that make military robots respect the Geneva Convention and other rules of engagement on the battlefield. 'I have a moral responsibility to make sure that these weapons are introduced responsibly and ethically, and reduce risks to non-combatants,' he says."

>>> Military, Robots, Autonomous Vehicles, Ethical & Social Implications, Grand Challenges, Applications
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February 26, 2008: Vietnamese Canadian creates feminine android - The world’s most unusual feminine android, "Aiko," a robot created by a Vietnamese Canadian, can mimic, learn and avoid pain. By Nhu Lich. Thanh Nien Daily. "Making her debut at the Toronto International Center Exhibition in early November 2007, “Aiko” is modeled on a young Japanese woman. ... Via the B.R.A.I.N.S software (Biometric Robot Artificial Intelligence Neural System) designed by [Le] Trung, Aiko can learn simple new information from her surroundings. ... Born in Ho Chi Minh City in 1975, Trung and his family moved to Japan when he was two years old. Five years later, they left for Canada. ... Trung started inventing robots at 10."
>>> Robots
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February 25, 2008: Gates to students - Consider IT careers. eSchool News. "A widespread shortage of information technology (IT) graduates across North America is forcing Microsoft Corp. and other software companies to look to developing countries such as China to meet their needs, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates says.... But Gates also told the students that IT jobs are in high demand. 'It’s partly that the enrolment in the field is going down,' he said afterwards. ... He also fielded questions from students and recalled when he went to college in 'the Dark Ages' and learned about computers on his own time. “Fortunately for all of you, you’re in a generation where all of these courses are going to be online and basically free. I’m taking solid state physics from MIT, though MIT doesn’t know it,” he said, alluding to MIT’s pioneering OpenCourseWare project, which makes courseware available online free of charge. 'You are far more empowered in terms of your ongoing education than any other generation has ever been.' ... At Carnegie Mellon, Gates predicted people will increasingly interact with computers through such means as speech and touch screens rather than by using a keyboard. In five years, Microsoft expects more internet searches to be done through speech than by typing on a keyboard, ... Gates said software is proliferating into various branches of science, including biology and astronomy. Researchers are 'dealing with so much information that ... the need for machine learning to figure out what’s going on with that data is absolutely essential,' he said."
>>> Applications, Speech, Machine Learning, Careers in AI -and- AI Courses (@ Resources for Students)
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February 25, 2008: STOP terrorism software - UM scientists create technology for analysis and forecasting of terroriy. University of Maryland press release via EurekAlert. "Researchers at the University of Maryland’s Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS) have developed the SOMA Terror Organization Portal (STOP) allowing analysts to query automatically learned rules on terrorist organization behavior, forecast potential behavior based on these rules, and, most importantly, to network with other analysts examining the same subjects. SOMA (Stochastic Opponent Modeling Agents) is a formal, logical-statistical reasoning framework that uses data about past behavior of terror groups in order to learn rules about the probability of an organization, community, or person taking certain actions in different situations."
>>> Law Enforcement, Machine Learning, Expert Systems, Applications
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February 25, 2008: Going Gunning With My Imaginary Friends. Commentary by Clive Thompson. Wired. "Can a machine think? That's the question that mathematician Alan Turing posed in 1950, when he posited his famous Turing Test. He argued that artificial intelligence could be thought of as intelligent if it passes a social test -- if it can fool a human into believing it's real. Alas, critics agree that no machine has passed the Turing Test. We're never fooled by chatbots for very long, as the annual Loebner Prize contest proves. The thing is, we humans are awfully good at decoding social cues and detecting humanness; we can instantly tell when a preprogrammed 'conversation tree' is repeating itself. That's why many philosophers say machines will never pass the Turing Test. Except, of course, for videogames. They're filled with AI characters -- enemies we confront, and teammates we play alongside. And the truth is, we often develop complex emotional and social relationships with AI characters inside games. ... And here's the weird thing: In games, we know they're machines. We know our companions aren't human. But we don't care -- we still wind up treating them in oddly human ways. Videogames, in effect, are beyond Turing. As Simon Bart, a sociologist who studies videogames at Concordia University in Montreal, put it in a recent paper: 'The solo game is posthumanistically social.' It's about the pleasures of hanging out with machines even when you're aware they're merely machines."
>>> Video Games, Turing Test, Applications
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February 25, 2008: When robots do a better job than we do. By Mark Baard. The Boston Globe via Boston.com. "The Museum of Science this week is rolling out a 6-foot digital robot guide, Tinker, which uses a biometric identification system (a hand reader) and AI to recognize you and your conversations. Tinker, created by Northeastern University computer science professor Timothy Bickmore, cannot follow you into the museum's space exhibits, however. ... While Tinker is a meet-and-greet stationary projection, other robots with similar smarts are providing some college walking tours, and escorting nursing home patients to their doctors' appointments."
>>> Robots, Applications, Ethical & Social Implications
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February 25, 2008: Robots set to overhaul service industry, jobs - In the next decade, robots will increasingly take over low-level jobs, experts say, displacing human employees. By Tom A. Peter. The Christian Science Monitor. "As a growing number of robots become capable of working alongside humans, the service industry may face a pattern all too familiar in the manufacturing sector: robots replacing humans in jobs. ... But robots have already started their march into the service industry. Though they might not look like robots, automated checkout lines at grocery stores or touch-screen check-in kiosks at airports are the tip of the service industry's robotic revolution. Autonomous mobile robots are starting to appear, as well. In more than 100 hospitals across the US, nurses receive help from robotic 'tugs' that tow carts that deliver everything from meals to linens. ... In many ways, introducing robots in the service industry might be comparable to the time when personal computers entered the office space, eliminating many basic bookkeeping and accounting jobs, says John Wen, a director of the Center for Automation Technologies and Systems at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y. 'A lot of people that we needed 20 years ago are no longer needed,' says Dr. Wen. 'However, [the personal computer] has spawned another huge industry -- and I see robots doing exactly the same thing.'"
>>> Robots, Applications, Ethical & Social Implications
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February 25, 2008: Six sense. The Engineer Online. "Swarms of beetle-like robots using advanced sensory motor control technology could one day be used to crawl over the rubble of disaster areas in search of survivors. The rescue robots are just one of the possible outcomes of a three-year research project at Edinburgh University, where a team of engineers is attempting to create a six-legged robot that can adapt its gait to complex terrain. ... 'There are many other research groups building insect-like robots, but the robots tend to be ones that do only reflex behaviours,' said [roject leader Barbara Webb from the university's Insect Robotics Group]. 'There is not much research on building insect-like robots that continually learn what to do.' ... [Alan Murray of the university's Neural Networks Group], who is an electrical engineer, has spent years researching ways to build computer chips that work like the brain. 'In the brain neurons send messages to one another in a sort of neural Morse code,' he said. 'They don't send digital bits like computers, and they don't send analogue data like we find in audio systems. They communicate via little blips of signal -- voltage spikes.' Murray will find out how a robot can use these spikes in voltage to detect edges and the movement of edges in an image in order to work out how far it is from something."
>>> Hazards & Disasters, Neural Networks, Machine Learning, Neuroscience, Robots, Applications
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February 25, 2008: The age of robots dawns at Stanford - New center to focus on cars. By Kristina Peterson. Bay Area News Group via San Jose Mercury News / also available from Palo Alto Daily News (Robots head to highways and beyond). "Modern driving is inefficient and dangerous, 'a waste of life, time and energy,' [Sebastian Thrun, director of Stanford University's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory] said. In the future, autonomous cars powered by robotics could eliminate the United States' 40,000 annual deaths from car accidents and allow people to work or sleep in their cars, all the while reducing energy consumption, he predicted. ... Speaking with his frequent rival in robotics competitions, Carnegie Mellon robotics Professor Red Whittaker, Thrun capped the first public meeting of the Menlo Park-based Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence on Thursday by listing his goals for the new Stanford center opening next fall. It will be named the Volkswagen Automotive Innovation Lab, or more simply, CarLab. ... The center, financed with a $5.75 million donation from Volkswagen, is scheduled to open in September. Whittaker said robots can also save lives in dangerous industries like mining. Robotics can also make agriculture more productive, he said."
>>> Transportation, Hazards & Disasters, Agriculture, Robots, Grand Challenges, Autonomous Vehicles, Applications, Academic Departments (@ Resources for Students); also see these related articles
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February 25, 2008: Experts test Mars vehicle model. BBC News. "Road tests of a vehicle with a difference are taking place at Aberystwyth University. Scientists working on a new attempt to search for life on Mars are testing equipment on a scale model of a rover vehicle, which could roam the planet. ... A robotic arm for collecting samples and a panoramic camera built by the scientists are being tested.... Under the Beagle 2 system, all commands for moving the arm had to be sent directly from Earth. But it is hoped the arm will work with on-board cameras and acquire rock samples autonomously."

  • Also see: Mars rover team take tips from Beagle. By Abbie Wightwick. Western Mail via icWales (February 25, 2008). "A robotic arm built by Welsh scientists will play a key role in the next European mission to search for life on Mars. Specialists at Aberystwyth University are programming a robotic arm which will be sent to Mars to take and analyse samples for signs of life. A scale model is being tested in a special laboratory on the campus, designed to replicate the conditions on the red planet. Aberystwyth University computer scientist Dr David Barnes, who is making the arm 'smart enough' to be directed on location on Mars as well as from Earth, believes there is a strong chance that extraterrestrial life exists."

>>> Space Exploration, Autonomous Vehicles, Robots, Applications
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February 25, 2008: Artificial or not, AI enhances human life. By Kathy Ceceri. The Times Union. "Self-steering vacuum cleaners. Self-parking cars. Dolls responding to voice commands. We may not be living in the world of 'The Jetsons,' but robots are definitely becoming a part of ordinary life. ... In fact, the line between appliance and artificial intelligence is getting blurrier every day. According to roboticist Daniel H. Wilson, author of 'How to Build a Robot Army: Tips on Defending Planet Earth Against Alien Invaders, Ninjas, and Zombies' ... , to be classified as a robot, a machine only has have the ability to sense the environment, 'think' about what to do and act in the physical world. Doing it for you That sense-think-act closed-loop process 'is a pretty broad definition,' Wilson admitted in a recent phone interview. 'But we are surrounded by all these machines that are making decisions without human intervention. Robots don't have to move to be robots. Instead of moving themselves, they can send commands to the real world.'"

  • Also see: Book Review - How to Build a Robot Army. Posted to Wired.com's Geekdad blog by Kathy Ceceri (February 25, 2008). "How to Build a Robot Army is written by Daniel H. Wilson, who has a degree in robotics and has written two books before this one. (How to Survive a Robot Uprising and Where’s my Jetpack?) In this book, he tells you how to build a make-shift army using Roombas, Furbys and other household robots."

>>> Robots, Toys, Household Appliances, Transportation, Applications
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February 24, 2008: Comic books help students understand robotics theory - Prof creates materials using newer software. By Cindy Kranz. The Enquirer via Cincinnati.com. "University of Cincinnati professor Ernie Hall has discovered the joys of using comic books in the classroom -- for learning -- although the professor of robotics and computer science isn't opposed to having fun either. Using a new software, Comic Book Creator, Hall has created comic books, finding them helpful in explaining technical points for college students in his robot control class. ... Hall started using Comic Book Creator when he entered Microsoft's Made in Express contest in 2006. The 12 finalists in that contest, including Hall, each had to do a computer blog. 'I was just trying to think, "How can I make it interesting?"' Apparently, it helped. Hall won the contest and a $10,000 award, which he gave to UC to support the robotics program. Students on the UC Robot Team also will use the software to create a design report and presentation accompanying the team's International Ground Vehicle Competition on June 8 in Michigan. It will be Hall's 16th year at the competition. ... Team members also think the comic books will help young students connect with robotics. ... Hall, who has taught 25 years at UC, said he is constantly looking for new technology. 'It really is a way to communicate to the younger generation,' he said of the comic books. 'Since I'm getting older, it's something I need to work at all of the time. My students really understand video games. If I could capture the magic of video games and put that into education, gosh, I could beat MIT. Comic books are just a little step along that way.'"
>>> Resources for Educators, Competitions (@ Resources for Students), Robots
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February 24, 2008: Carrying the load - In an industry motivated mostly by gee-whiz factor, Bay State firms take the lead in creating robots with real-world uses. By Scott Kirsner. The Boston Globe via Boston.com. "Don't call them robots. I made the mistake five minutes into a conversation with Kiva Systems Inc. chief executive Mick Mountz, who paused for a second, smiled, and explained: 'We're not about the robot. This company was founded to solve a business problem, and a lot of robotics companies are about a cool technology that is looking for an application.' ... Kiva is part of a growing cluster of Massachusetts companies that are developing a new generation of robots that can do surprising things: clean out rain gutters, swim underwater to inspect the hulls of Navy vessels, and manage warehouses. The state has more than 150 companies and research labs working on robots, according to the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council, which says the figure is conservative. Bringing in the bots entails a psychological rethink of how warehouse work gets done, and some prospective customers may worry about reliability and maintenance costs (though Staples says those haven't been an issue). Which is why everyone involved with Kiva would rather de-emphasize the word robot."
>>> Robots, Applications, Ethical & Social Implications
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February 24, 2008: 'World Wide Computer' is on horizon. Russ Juskalian's review of The Big Switch by Nicholas Carr. USAToday.com. "A quiet revolution in computing is taking place as you read this. It'll change the way we work, socialize, and function as people, communities and nations. It will have an impact on how we make war and peace. Some say it's the biggest thing since electricity became a utility -- yet most of us won't see it coming. According to Nicholas Carr, author of The Big Switch and former executive editor of the Harvard Business Review, the revolution that's coming is based on the idea that the Internet, a network of computers, is becoming a gigantic computer itself. Not only will users be able to write programs to run on this 'World Wide Computer,' as Carr calls it, but sooner or later, this system will gain a level of artificial intelligence."
>>> AI Overview, Ethical & Social Implications
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February 24, 2008: Exhibit proposes new amenities for downtown life. By Kurt Shaw. Tribune-Review. "Wood Street Galleries curator Murray Horne has set up 'Urban Living,' an exhibition of innovative artworks that address, in their own way, the prospect of Downtown living. In a way, urban living is what motivated Sony Corp. to invent Aibo, a robotic dog the company first introduced in Japan in 1999. Aibo means 'companion' in Japanese. But, in the case of this robotic dog, the name is also an acronym for Artificial Intelligence 'bot,' or robot. So it is only fitting that seven of the dogs are in this exhibition, even though Sony discontinued the dogs two years ago. ... But, look a little closer, and a visitor will find that these cute little robotic pets aren't all they are cracked up to be. No, these particular seven have been re-engineered by French artist and robotics teacher France Cadet into, of all things, a dog that is half dog and half cat, a flesh-colored dog that has the characteristics of a pig.... Through such alteration,s Cadet's work raises questions about various aspects in contemporary science debates: danger of possible accidents, observation of animal and human behavior, artificial life, side effects of cloning and experimentation with animal eugenics. But, it also brings up the idea that, through science and technology, we can create whatever kind of pet we want."
>>> Robotic Pets, Ethical & Social Implications
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February 22, 2008: Spanish researchers develop facial expression recognition software. By Eduardo Martínez. innovations-report. "Researchers at the Department of Artificial Intelligence (DIA) of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid’s School of Computing (FIUPM) have, in conjunction with Madrid’s Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, developed an algorithm that is capable of processing 30 images per second to recognize a person’s facial expressions in real time and categorize them as one of six prototype expressions: anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness and surprise. ... This software has a range of applications: advanced human-computer interfaces, improved relations with the e-commerce consumers, and metaverse avatars with an unprecedented capability to relate to the person they represent."

>>> Image Understanding, Vision, Applications
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February 22, 2008: A Google Competition, With a Robotic Moon Landing as a Goal. By Brad Stone. The New York Times. "The return to the moon is part of the Google Lunar X Prize, a competition sponsored by Google with $30 million in prizes for the first two teams to land a robotic rover on the moon and send images and other data back home. At Google’s headquarters here on Thursday, 10 teams from five countries announced their intention to participate in the competition. They include a team led by William L. Whitaker, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University and renowned roboticist; an affiliation of four universities and two major aerospace companies in Italy; and one group that is a loose association of engineers coordinating their efforts online. ... Google will pay $20 million to the first team that lands on the moon, sends a package of data back to Earth, then travels at least 500 meters and sends another data package. The second team to accomplish the goals will win $5 million."
>>> Space Exploration, Autonomous Vehicles, Grand Challenges, Applications
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February 22, 2008: The Soul in the New Machines. By Nicolai Ouroussoff. The New York Times. "Bioengineered crossbreeds. Temperamental robots. Spermatozoa imprinted with secret texts. Although the fascination with organic form has been around since the Renaissance, we have now entered an age in which designers and architects are drawing their inspiration from hidden patterns in nature rather than from pretty leaves or snowflakes. The results can be scary, but they may also hold the key to paradise. 'Design and the Elastic Mind,' an exhilarating new show opening on Sunday at the Museum of Modern Art, makes the case that through the mechanism of design, scientific advances of the last decade have at least opened the way to unexpected visual pleasures. ... Organized by Paola Antonelli, the show opens with an act of high-tech graffiti. ... It is a nice, mischievous touch. And the precision of the script, in contrast to the paint’s fuzzy edges or the occasional drip, reinforces the show’s point that the old Manichaean duality between the artist and artificial intelligence, nature and machine, no longer holds."
>>> See this related article & links
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February 21, 2008: No Directions Required--Software Smartens Mobile Robots. DARPA initiative to develop self-navigating robots introduces a world of potential for the development of autonomous vehicles, but will the government take advantage of its research or let it wither on the vine? By Peter Sergo. Scientific American. "Computer experts recently gathered in San Antonio, Tex., to test one last time how well their software programs enabled a mobile robot vehicle to think for -- and steer -- itself. The event wrapped up the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) three-year Learning Applied to Ground Robots (LAGR) initiative, which awarded each of eight teams of scientists $2 million to $3 million to develop software that would give unmanned vehicles the ability to autonomously learn and navigate irregular off-road terrain. ... Until LAGR, most self-navigating mobile robots could only scan their immediate surroundings and plot a course over short distances. This made it difficult for robots to figure out an optimum route to any place farther than their own shortsighted universe of about 25 feet (7.6 meters), limiting them to a feel-as-you-go approach that often resulted in time-wasting, circuitous paths to a destination. ... The LAGR competition is different from the sportier and better-publicized DARPA Urban Challenge, which features a course that resembles city streets, or the agency's Grand Challenge in which autonomous vehicles race through the desert. Both competitions allow vehicles to use cameras, sensors, GPS, radar and lasers, whereas LAGR vehicles essentially use stereo cameras, GPS and onboard computers."
>>> Grand Challenges, Autonomous Vehicles, Transportation, Applications
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February 21, 2008: Autonomous Robots Coming of Age - Directions and Futures. SFGate.com. "Robotocists Sebastian Thrun and Red Whittaker present their visions on the future of autonomous robots. 7-9 p.m. Thurs. $12. Westin/Sheraton Palo Alto, 625 El Camino Real, Palo Alto. (650) 328-3123."

  • AAAI Member Event with Sebastian Thrun and Red Whittaker, hosted by Eric Horvitz, AAAI President. "Sebastian Thrun (Stanford) and Red Whittaker (CMU) will present their visions on the future of autonomous robots. Thrun and Whittaker and their respective teams faced off with one another on the DARPA Grand Challenge and the DARPA Urban Challenge, with Thrun's Stanford Racing Team winning the Grand Challenge and Whittaker's Tartan Racing Team, winning the Urban Challenge. Following short talks by Sebastian Thrun and Red Whittaker, Eric Horvitz, will moderate a discussion and field questions."
  • Is Silicon Valley the new Detroit for electric cars? Posted by Stefanie Olsen's post to CNET News.com's Green Tech Blog (February 22, 2008). "Volkswagen, for example, recently funded Stanford University in order to develop a new car lab whose mission is to study 'cutting-edge research in safety, comfort, and fun for the consumer driving the car,' said Sebastian Thrun, while speaking at an artificial intelligence conference Thursday night. The lab, which will open later this year, will focus on new technologies such as computer-assisted driving--for instance, a car that could park itself. Eventually, self-driving or smart cars could help make driving more efficient and safe, Thrun said."

>>> Grand Challenges, Autonomous Vehicles, Vision, Applications
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February 20, 2008: Digital animals rule toy fair. Reuters via Scientific American Video News. “A life-like golden retriever that responds to touch and your command was one of the highlights at this year's American International Toy Fair.”
>>> Robotic Pets & Toys, Robots, Applications
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February 20, 2008: Newsmaker - Gates explains why Microsoft needs Yahoo. By Ina Fried. CNET News.com. " ... [Q] What are some of the big technical challenges to getting to the type of technology that you talk about? When you think of the top two or three technical hurdles that we're working against today, what are some of the things that jump to mind? Gates: Obviously, natural user interface requires software. I was just reviewing the next version of Windows and the great advance they make in that. Will that be enough that everybody will obviously want to use it? Well, it didn't happen last time except in modest numbers, a few million, but that's still not mainstream. We've got vision software in the Surface, and we're trying to get that not just into retail stores but into homes and offices. You've got touch, which is going to come in, and that's fairly inexpensive. We worked with some partners to do some really great things on the touch technology. So, I think that can move mainstream fairly quickly. (In) speech recognition, it's many decades of work and building up the databases and just learning where the mistakes happen to get made. That was part of the great thing TellMe had. They had been doing directory assistance for a lot of the big phone companies, so their database of information of how people utter things was quite broad. And applying machine learning to improve the quality of that was a great synergistic opportunity. So, there are huge software improvements, and, of course, we need our chip guys to give us the memory and speed to be able to execute these natural interface things. ... [Q] Will the next version of Windows move natural language interface beyond the niche thing, or do you think it will still be a niche thing when we're talking about whatever comes after Vista? Gates: The version after Vista is a big step forward in terms of speech. ..."

  • Also see: Gates sees diminished role for keyboards. Associated Press / available from Boston.com (February 22, 2008). "People will increasingly interact with computers using speech or touch screens rather than keyboards, Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates said. more stories like this 'It's one of the big bets we're making,' he said during the final stop of a farewell tour before he withdraws from the company's daily operations in July. In five years, Microsoft expects more Internet searches to be done through speech than through typing on a keyboard, Gates told about 1,200 students and faculty members Thursday at Carnegie Mellon University."

>>> Interfaces, Speech, Natural Language Processing, Machine Learning, Vision, Applications, Interviews
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February 20, 2008: Wizkid robot unveiled at MoMA. ZDNet.com Emerging Technology Trends by Roland Piquepaille. "On February 24, 2008, a new exhibit will open at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA), Design and the Elastic Mind. And until May 12, 2008, you’ll be able to interact with Wizkid, which looks like a computer, but is really a robot. As said the European researchers behind this project, 'with its social skills and physical presence, Wizkid introduces the simplicity of everyday interactions in the world of computers.' You will not need to learn any language or type anything on a keyboard, Wizkid will understand you. Wizkid 'introduces the simplicity of everyday interactions in the world of computers.' But read more…"

>>> Robots, Art, Exhibits (@ Resources for Students); also see this related article
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February 20, 2008: Visionary Research - Teaching Computers to See Like a Human. M.I.T. researchers are harnessing computer models of human vision to improve image recognition software. By Larry Greenemeier. Scientific American News. "Seeking the way forward, Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers are looking to advances in neuroscience for ways to improve artificial intelligence, and vice versa. The school's leading minds in both neural and computer sciences are pooling their research, mixing complex computational models of the brain with their work on image processing. This cross-disciplinary approach began to yield fruit a year ago, when a group of researchers led by Tomaso Poggio, a professor in M.I.T.'s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and an investigator at the school's McGovern Institute for Brain Research, used a brain-inspired computer model to interpret a series of photographs. ... Poggio says that understanding how it works could be a significant step toward knowing how the whole brain operates. 'Vision is just a proxy for intelligence,' he says. The human brain is much more aware of how it solves complex problems such as playing chess or solving algebra equations, which is why computer programmers have had so much success building machines that emulate this type of activity."

  • Also see: Learning about brains from computers, and vice versa. By David Chandler. MIT News Office (February 16, 2008). "For many years, Tomaso Poggio's lab at MIT ran two parallel lines of research. Some projects were aimed at understanding how the brain works, using complex computational models. Others were aimed at improving the abilities of computers to perform tasks that our brains do with ease, such as making sense of complex visual images. But recently Poggio [the Eugene McDermott Professor in MIT's Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory] has found that the work has progressed so far, and the two tasks have begun to overlap to such a degree, that it's now time to combine the two lines of research. ... 'Computational models are beginning to provide powerful new insights into the key problem of how the brain works,' says Poggio, who is also co-director of the Center for Biological and Computational Learning and an investigator at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT. ... [T]he new work shows that it may be time for researchers in artificial intelligence to start paying close attention to the latest developments in neuroscience, he says."

>>> Neuroscience, Vision, Cognitive Science, Applications
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February 20, 2008: Italy unveils coffee- making robot - 'Justine' first product of Italian- led EU project. ANSA.it. "Italy on Wednesday unveiled a coffee-making robot it built with European Union partners. The robot, named Justine, is the first result of an EU project called DEXMART, led by Naples University Professor Bruno Siciliano. Putting Justine through her paces at a robotics conference here, Siciliano said: 'She's flexible and precise enough to make a cup of coffee - although she only stretches to the instant variety at the moment. However, she can also pick things up off the floor'. Over the next four years the DEXMART team will try to make Justine's hands and movements more and more like human ones. ... The project faces two key challenges: making robots that can use two hands together, like humans do, and making them 'aware' enough to stop what they're doing if a human being gets in the way. ... At present robots can use a single arm with reasonable accuracy and flexibility. But until now they have fallen short of the technological complexity and artificial intelligence needed for a two-handed approach. This is the key to making robots that can function usefully not only in factories, as they do already, but also in everyday human environments, where things are unpredictable."

  • According to the project homepage: "'DEXMART' is an acronym and stands for 'DEXterous and autonomous dual-arm/hand robotic manipulation with sMART sensory-motor skills: A bridge from natural to artificial cognition'".
  • A Radiotelevisione Italiana video news report (February 12, 2008) about the DEXMART Project, and featuring Professor Bruno Siciliano, can be downloaded from their download page.
  • And listen to this NPR Morning Edition radio report (February 22, 2008): Scientists Create Coffee-Making Robot - Scientists in Italy this week unveiled a robot barista named Justine. She's part of a European project to develop robots that can use two arms together.

>>> Robots, Applications
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February 20, 2008: Microsoft invites Nigerian students to Imagine Cup 2008 challenge. The Guardian (Nigeria). "Microsoft has called for entries from Nigeria students to compete in Imagine Cup 2008. This is another step in the global software giant's continued efforts to encourage Nigerian students to achieve excellence in technology and software development. Announcing the kick-off of the 2008 local challenge with the theme 'Imagine a world where technology enables a sustainable environment,' Mr. Attilla Szenvedi, Developer and Platform manager for Microsoft Nigeria said that Imagine Cup which was in its sixth year had become a truly global competition dedicated to finding solutions for real world issues. ... He explained that the competition was grouped into nine exciting categories ranging from software design and video game development to challenges involving algorithms and programming. ... The Imagine Cup Nigeria 2007 finalists were EasyLaw Academy, Remote Lecturing System (RLS), Smart Allocator, IntelligiAC and ThinkGP. EasyLaw Academy presented a web based e-learning application for law students while Smart Allocator developed a solution to simplify bed allocation in hostels. IntelligiAC created an artificial intelligence system to help student affairs departments in universities calculate students' grade point aggregates more efficiently."
>>> Competitions (@ Resources for Students), Applications
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February 20, 2008: Man-made madness. By Karen Brooks. The Courier-Mail. "For those unfamiliar with the Terminator story, it's based on a well-known formula that appears in varying guises across many futuristic-based narratives. Humans create machines and, at some point, the machines develop artificial intelligence -- artificial only in the sense that it's technologically determined, not organic. Eventually, these pieces of wondrous technology turn upon their creators. But some robots (and we are yet to learn why), refuse to destroy those who made and exploit them. On the contrary, they want to help them demolish their mechanistic peers and restore order: that is, place those composed of flesh and water at the top of the pecking order. Movies such as Forbidden Planet, Blade Runner, I, Robot, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Lost in Space etc, all deal with similar themes. Ever since Mary Shelley's Dr Victor Frankenstein brought his creation to life, fiction has continued to explore the ambivalence we feel about technology. ... For all that these stories are fiction, much of their appeal lies in the fact that they reflect very real contemporary concerns that erupt around the problematic relationship humans have with technology...."
>>> Science Fiction, Robots, Ethical & Social Implications
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February 19, 2008: Humans Marrying Robots? A Q&A with David Levy Is love and marriage with robots an institute you can disparage? Not to computer pioneer David Levy. Continuing advances in computers and robotics, he thinks, will make legal marriages between Homo and Robo feasible by mid-century. By Charles Q. Choi. A Scientific American Web Feature. "[Q] How did you first become interested in artificial intelligence (AI)? ... [Q] If people fall in love with robots, aren't they just falling in love with an algorithm? [A] If people fall in love with robots, aren't they just falling in love with an algorithm? It's not that people will fall in love with an algorithm, but that people will fall in love with a convincing simulation of a human being, and convincing simulations can have a remarkable effect on people.... [Q] How might human–robot relationships alter human society? ... [Q] What directions will you pursue now? [A] I'm writing an academic paper on the ethical treatment of robots. Not just the ethics of designing robots to do certain things -- people write about whether we should design robots to go into combat and kill people, for instance -- but should we be treating robots in an ethical way. ..."
>>> Robots, Ethical & Social Implications,The Future, Interviews; also see the related article from the March 2008 issue of Scientific American: Not Tonight, Dear, I Have to Reboot
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February 18, 2008: Virtual evolution breeds answers - Computer-simulated evolution can lead to unexpected solutions. By Ashton Anderson. The McGill Daily (Volume 97, Number 37). "Evolution is no longer confined to the physical world. For billions of years, vastly different life forms have been cooperating and competing, conquering and struggling, and living and dying, all in relentless pursuit of increasing the survival of their species. Now, computer scientists are developing solutions to their hardest problems by recreating the process of evolution in computers using genetic algorithms (GAs).Researchers have used the principles of evolution to design everything from airplane wings, boat hulls, and satellite antennae to efficient bus routes, robot vision, and electronic circuits. ... Genetic algorithms have opened researchers’ minds to nature’s techniques of solving problems, and today, some of the best problem solving strategies are inspired by biology."
>>> Genetic Algorithms, Machine Learning, Artificial Life, Applications
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February 18, 2008: Fast-learning computer translates from four languages. ICT Results. "Efforts to use computers to translate languages, known as machine translation, date from the 1950s, yet computers still cannot compete with human translators for the quality of the results. Machine translation works best for formal texts in specialised areas where vocabulary is unambiguous and sentence patterns are limited. Aircraft manufacturers, for example, have devised their own systems for quickly translating technical manuals into many languages. The EU has been active in promoting research in this field since the large Eurotra project of the 1980s. In common with other projects of the time, Eurotra used a 'rules-based' approach where the computer is taught the rules of syntax and applies them to translate a text from one language to another. This is also the basis of most commercial translation software. But since the early 1990s the new concept of 'statistical' translation has gained ground in the machine translation community, arising out of research into speech recognition. This dispenses with rules in favour of using statistical methods based on a text ‘corpus’. A corpus is a large body of written material, amounting to tens of millions of words, intended to be representative of a language. Parallel corpora contain the same material in two or more languages and the computer compares the corpora to learn how words and expressions in one language correspond to those in another."

>>> Machine Translation, Natural Language Processing, Applications
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February 18, 2008: A Start-Up Says It Can Predict Others’ Fate. By Matt Richtel. The New York Times. "Is your start-up worthy of investment? Ask the venture investor in a box. Two former Oxford University students are getting attention (and seed money) in Silicon Valley for developing new technology that automates aspects of the venture capital decision-making process. Kirill Makharinsky, 21, and Bob Goodson, 27, call their software a “start-up predictor,” and they say their company, YouNoodle.com, might give an edge to venture capitalists and other investors trying to decide whether to sink money into an early-stage company. 'We don’t want to replace investors,' Mr. Goodson said. 'We simply believe that industries of comparable size have utilized artificial intelligence to inform decision-making.'"
>>> Expert Systems, Applications
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February 18, 2008: Future of video game industry taking shape at GDC. CNET News.com Geek Gestalt blog by Daniel Terdiman. "[S]ome of the most impressive innovations on display during this year's GDC are likely to be aimed at the hard-core gamer market. The one I think I'm most excited to see is LucasArts' forthcoming Star Wars: Force Unleashed, which is said to feature several ground-breaking technological advances that herald a future in which video games are more realistic than ever. Among them are technologies that make physics more life-like, as well as artificial intelligence that makes game play different every time."

  • Also see:
    • Do video games have a motion picture-like future? By Mike Snider, USA Today (February 18, 2008). "Today's cutting-edge video games have the look and sound of movies; some even have blockbuster budgets. But even game developers concede that their creations usually lack the emotional impact of a great film or book. Bridging that gap will be a key topic at the Game Developers Conference this week in San Francisco, a five-day gathering that attracts the industry's talent pool. ... 'I think the dog alone is the most incredible piece of artificial intelligence I have seen in a game. He really feels alive,' ['God-game' legend Peter] Molyneux says. The player gets his companion early on. 'It's a fantastic moment when the dog turns around to you and looks up at you and wags its tail. You can't help but feel good.' Molyneux expects that having a canine companion along the lines of Old Yeller or Lassie will help create an emotional pull. Up to this point, most video-game companions -- almost exclusively human -- have simply followed the main character. 'Whenever you shoot, they shoot. It has been a very mechanical thing. You might as well have a floating gun,' says Jamil Moledina, executive director of the Game Developers Conference. 'The dog in Fable 2 is something that learns and behaves like a real dog. It comes to you when you least expect it. What Peter is doing is adapting the natural, real world we live in into the game environment.'"
    • Game creators look to the future. By Darren Waters. BBC News (February 18, 2008). "The event will also feature talk about the future of the human computer interface. 'Game worlds are a fairly complex universe, however the controllers we have are often a bit intimidating,' said [Jamil Moledina, director of the Game Developers' Conference]."

>>> Video Games, Applications
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February 18, 2008: A Chip Off The Old Genome. Business Wire via Investor's Business Daily. "Until now, most physicians have made their medical decisions based solely upon generic professional knowledge and treatment experience, with little or no insight into the molecular nature of a patient's disease. Ever since the monumental achievement of sequencing the human genome, however, it has become apparent that there is a need for a more robust patient gene classification system, as well as more effective predictive and prognostic tools to assist in medical treatment decisions. ... Iris is focused on developing and commercializing the Nano-Biochip(TM) to identify the gene expression patterns in patient samples and analyze them with an artificial intelligence software program. The Nano-Biochip and analytical software, in conjunction with an extensive personal patient survey, constitutes BioWindows(TM), a complete diagnostic and prognostic system that offers physicians an accurate look at the genomic aspect of a disease."
>>> Medicine, Bioinformatics, Expert Systems, Applications
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February 17, 2008: Aye, Robots. By John Schwartz. The New York Times. "Seeing Robby the Robot at the entrance to the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Conn., is like running into an old friend. That is, if you’re a fan of 'Forbidden Planet,' the 1956 science fiction classic loosely based on Shakespeare’s 'The Tempest.' Even if you haven’t seen the movie, the life-sized replica of the film robot is a breathtaking sight. The eight-foot-tall Robby, with his Michelin Man legs and glassy dome of a head, is one of the most famous mechanical men the movies have ever given us -- and he’s a fitting greeter for the new show 'Robotics' at the Bruce Museum until April 20. ... Off to the side, a small theater showed clips of robots from films and television shows old and new. Flickering scenes of the haunting Maria from 'Metropolis' and the menacing sentinel Gort from 'The Day the Earth Stood Still' are followed by more child-friendly scenes of R2-D2 from 'Star Wars' and the drunken lout Bender from 'Futurama.' But the Robotics exhibition is not all fun and games. Alongside the robots of popular culture it shows the less glamorous reality of today’s industrial automatons, including hands-on displays that could appeal to tech-minded teenagers. ... In all of the eye-popping busyness of the show, there was one display that got little attention from visitors. It was an actual, working robot, autonomous and remarkably intelligent. This robot does not walk or talk. It vacuums."
>>> Science Fiction, Robots, Applications, Exhibits (@ Resources for Students)
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February 17, 2008: Whom Do You Believe, G.P.S. or Your Own Eyes? By Joseph Berger. The New York Times. "The phenomenon of G.P.S. devices misleading drivers they were meant to help is not new. These satellite-guided efficiency gizmos were introduced in the late 1990s and ever since, the Westchester County police -- and no doubt the police elsewhere -- have been coping with the unintended consequences. ... But savvy drivers have realized that obeying artificial intelligence to the letter can get you into big trouble. ... The basic rule, [Eric J. Sinrod] and others and even the device manufacturers say, is to remember not to surrender your brain to a machine. Such advice is a digital-age version of that old war chestnut: Put your trust in the Lord, but keep your powder dry."
>>> Applications
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February 17, 2008: Elmo Live rocks. Video via Artificial Intelligence and Robotics blog. "Whether it is a robot or not is not a difficult question to answer. Being an intelligent agent and having a physical body qualifies it as a robot."
>>> Toys, Applications
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February 16, 2008 [issue date]: Robotic fish to spy beneath the waves. New Scientist (Issue 2643). "The US Office of Naval Research (ONR) in Alexandria, Virginia, plans to fund the development of 'highly manoeuvrable artificial fish for stealthy surveillance', according to a recent request for research proposals."
>>> Autonomous Vehicles, Robots, Rovers, Explorers & more, Military, Applications
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February 15, 2008: Program advances 3-D images. By Nikhil Kamat. The Stanford Daily Online. "Photographers may now be able to do more than print their work: they can instantly turn it into navigable virtual 3-D worlds. Stanford computer scientists have come a step closer to realizing this goal through the development of an algorithm that can render accurate three-dimensional models from ordinary photographs. The Make3d algorithm [check it out at http://make3d.stanford.edu/] , developed by Computer Science Prof. Andrew Ng and postdoctoral student Ashutosh Saxena, uses data from a large set of carefully analyzed images taken from all across campus to relate the relative depth of objects in various circumstances to properties of the two-dimensional image. This depth data is then used to extrapolate the relative positions and shapes of objects in new photographs introduced to the algorithm. 'If you look at a single image you will notice that some parts of the image relate to the depth -- for example, the sky is usually far away,' Saxena said. 'The machine learning algorithm, which is a branch of artificial intelligence, learns the relations, so it learns the relation between the image and the depth or the 3-D structure.'"

  • Also see: Stanford camera chip can see in 3D. Posted by Stephen Shankland's Underexposed Blog at CNET News.com (February 21, 2008). "Most folks think of a photo as a two-dimensional representation of a scene. Stanford University researchers, however, have created an image sensor that also can judge the distance of subjects within a snapshot."

>>> Image Understanding, Machine Learning, Vision, Applications
-> back to headlines

February 15, 2008: Artificial Playmates for Autistic Children. By Elsa Youngsteadt. ScienceNOW Daily News. "Children with autism spectrum disorder are unable to sustain play, make-believe games, and fluid social interaction--at least with real people. But psychologist and linguist Justine Cassell of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, says that interaction with virtual peers releases hidden social skills in these children. ... At a press briefing yesterday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (ScienceNOW's publisher), Cassell said that she and her colleagues originally developed virtual children 10 years ago, in part to study how literacy and conversation skills develop in normal children. But 'every time I presented the work,' she said, a parent of an autistic child would come to her and ask, 'Please, can I get a copy of this software for my child?' ... Cassell says autistic children may be more at ease with virtual playmates because the virtual children are more predictable, which could make them seem less threatening."

  • Also see: Virtual teachers outperform real thing - Digital tutors help children and adults develop advanced skill. By Robin Lloyd. LiveScience via msnbc.com (February 21, 2008). "Virtual characters and digital tutors are helping children and adults develop advanced social and language skills that can be tough to learn via conventional approaches, according to researchers who briefed reporters here last week at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. ... Along similar lines, Dominic W. Massaro of the University of California, Santa Cruz, has developed software that presents 3-D animated 'tutors' or talking heads that are useful in teaching remedial readers, children with language challenges and anyone learning a second language. His teachers are less cartoonish than Cassell's, and the focus is on speech accuracy. ... Digital teachers are better teachers than humans along some dimensions, says Jeremy Bailenson, a communications researcher at Stanford University, who has conducted numerous experiments demonstrating the benefits that virtual environments have over reality."

>>> Education, Cognitive Science, Applications; also see 1) AI Crossword Puzzle #2: 167 Down; and 2) AI Videos: Washburn Lecture Series at the Museum of Science, Boston: "2001: A Space Odyssey. Are we there yet?" Lecture one (of three) - Human/Computer Conversation: HAL and Beyond, with Justine Cassell, Ph.D.
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February 15, 2008: Leading thinkers identify greatest challenges facing humanity. By Alok Jha. guardian.co.uk. "The 18-strong team of scientists, entrepreneurs and thinkers was convened by the US National Academy of Engineering (NAE) to identify problems for technology in the 21st century that, if solved, would change the world. The group included biologist Craig Venter, inventor Dean Kamen, Google co-founder Larry Page and Harvard University professor of international development Calestous Juma. They presented their report and list of challenges today at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting in Boston. ... The NAE report also hailed the potential of advanced computer intelligence, which it said would enable automated diagnosis and prescriptions for treatment. [Ray] Kurzweil went further on artificial intelligence. 'Once non-biological intelligence matches the range and subtlety of human intelligence, it will necessarily soar past it because of the continuing acceleration of information-based technologies, as well as the ability of machines to instantly share their knowledge.' He added: 'Intelligent nanorobots will be deeply integrated in the environment, our bodies and our brains, providing vastly extended longevity, full-immersion virtual reality incorporating all of the senses … and enhanced human intelligence.'"

  • Also see:
    • Expert - AI computers by 2020. UPI.com (February 17, 2008). "Ray Kurzweil was one of 18 people chosen by the American Association for the Advancement of Science to speak on future technological challenges, The Independent reported. He said that in the future artificial intelligence will advance far beyond human intelligence. 'Three-dimensional, molecular computing will provide the hardware for human-level "strong artificial intelligence" by the 2020s,' he said."
    • Machines 'to match man by 2029.' By Helen Briggs. BBC News (February 15, 2008). "Humanity is on the brink of advances that will see tiny robots implanted in people's brains to make them more intelligent, said Ray Kurzweil. The engineer believes machines and humans will eventually merge through devices implanted in the body to boost intelligence and health. 'It's really part of our civilisation,' Mr Kurzweil explained. 'But that's not going to be an alien invasion of intelligent machines to displace us.' Machines were already doing hundreds of things humans used to do, at human levels of intelligence or better, in many different areas, he said.

>>> The Future, Nanotechnology (@ Systems), Medicine, Bioinformatics, Robots, Applications
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February 15, 2008: Data mining company arms geologists with the right tools to strike gold. By Peter Hadekel. The Gazette (Montreal). "With soaring prices for commodities like minerals, oil and gas, geologists have a big incentive to find the next big gold claim or oil deposit. ... Diagnos has developed software tools that combine both data mining and artificial intelligence. The company can identify patterns in large sets of data and then make predictions based on those patterns. Geophysicists are currently collecting more data than they can properly absorb, [André] Larente says. Instead of looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack, they can use these tools to narrow their search of large properties to a few highly probable areas. ... Diagnos was founded in 2000 by a group of researchers in Quebec and Lyon, France, who had developed data-mining software. ... Currently, 90 per cent of annual revenues are expected to come from mineral exploration clients, but Larente expects to diversify into other areas including oil and gas, health care, financial markets and security."
>>> Data Mining, Machine Learning, Petroleum Industry, Applications
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February 15, 2008: Robots could reduce animal tests. By Helen Briggs. BBC News. "US scientists are taking the first step towards testing potentially hazardous chemicals on cells grown in a laboratory, without using live animals. Two government agencies are looking into the merits of using high-speed automated robots to carry out tests. The long-term goal is to reduce the cost, time and number of animals used in screening everything from pesticides to household chemicals. The move follows calls for scientists to rely less on animal studies. ... The five-year research programme will use high-speed automated screening robots developed during the human genome project. This will allow them to complete over 10,000 screens on cells and molecules in a single day compared with 10 to 100 studies a year on rodent models."
>>> Robots, Bioinformatics, Applications
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February 14, 2008: How to reengineer an engineering major at a women's college - A Smith College professor's program may provide a pattern for how to attract and keep women engineers. By Stacy Teicher Khadaroo. The Christian Science Monitor. "The first women's college to offer an engineering degree, Smith is forging new paths in a field that's eager to swell its ranks in the United States. Women receive only 20 percent of bachelor's degrees in engineering, according to a new report by the National Science Board (NSB). Like a handful of other liberal arts colleges, Smith is producing graduates who've had a different type of engineering education – one that goes beyond technical training to focus on a broader context for finding solutions to humanity's problems; one that emphasizes ethics and communication; one so flexible that about half the students study abroad, which is rare, despite the multinational nature of many engineering jobs. ... 'It is just not good enough to teach the way that we were taught,' [Glenn Ellis] said during the award ceremony in Washington. 'We know that doing so in engineering will surely exclude many of the young people we need to attract.' ... Ellis offers an education course at Smith to prepare people to teach math and science at the K-12 level and he conducts workshops for teachers. 'If you care about getting women in engineering, you had better go to the high school, middle school, and elementary level,' he says. He and a colleague are working on a fiction book that will be packaged with preengineering activities for middle-schoolers. It features an eighth-grade girl who faces an ethical dilemma similar to one that her mother, an engineer, is experiencing at work. Students who get hooked into the story will have a chance to learn the basics of computer-aided design by drafting a bedroom setup; they'll explore artificial intelligence through conversations with 'chatterbots' -- computer programs that imitate human conversation.

  • Watch the videos from the 2007 U.S. Professors of the Year Awards Luncheon, sponsored by The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and administered by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, held in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 15, 2007. Videos include:
    • Glenn W. Ellis, Outstanding Baccalaureate Colleges Professor, introduced by former student Linda Sorto.

>>> Resources for Educators, Academic Departments (@ Resources for Students), Chatbots (@ Natural Language Processing)
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February 14, 2008: Attention please! Next-generation e-learning is here. ICT Results. "Take an e-learning platform, mix in a large dose of social networking, sprinkle liberally with intelligent software agents to stimulate users and, according to a team of European researchers, you have a recipe to keep students’ attention even during the most testing training courses. ... 'Artificial agents are autonomous entities that observe users’ activities and assess their state of attention in order to intervene so as to make the user experience more effective,' [Thierry] Nabeth says. 'The interventions can take many forms, from providing new information to the student, guiding them in their work or alerting them when other users connect to the platform.' In an e-learning context, the agents provide a smart form of proactive coaching for students, assessing, guiding and stimulating them. ... In the AtGentSchool pilot, pupils stimulated by 'attention aware' artificial agents have shown a higher level of satisfaction and motivation. However, whether the learning process is more effective is a question that will require future investigation, says Nabeth."
>>> Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Education, Agents, Applications
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February 14, 2008: Robots - They're alive. By Ann Geracimos. The Washington Times. "An android is a robot that 'looks exactly like a human,' explains knowledgeable, robot-friendly writer Tim Hornyak. ... The author of 'Loving the Machine: The Art and Science of Japanese Robots,' a history of that country's robotic forms and their cultural underpinnings, Mr. Hornyak came to the District recently to take part in the Kennedy Center's current Japan! Culture+Hyperculture festival. ... Mr. Hornyak sees the work being done by these robot pioneers ('roboticists') and others elsewhere in relation to the ongoing pursuit of a sophisticated artificial intelligence. 'It's a moon shot,' he says, in which the Japanese 'have conquered the engineering phase ... to make robots move like a man.' The next challenge is language processing, which he estimates will take several decades."

  • Watch the related video: Robots invade Kennedy Center - The Robotopia Rising exhibit is part of the Kennedy Center's "Japan! Culture + Hyper Culture" festival. Washington Times video by Barbara L. Salisbury. See Actroid DER2, Honda's ASIMO, Toyota's Partner Robot, Paro - the theraputic robot seal, Mitsubishi's Wakamaru, Sony's AIBO, and more.

>>> Robots, Applications, Events (@ Resources for Students); also see this related article
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February 14, 2008: RightNow powers Obama’s Answer Center. By Rutrell Yasin. Government Computer News. "As Illinois Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign steamrolls toward the Wisconsin Democratic primary, more people might check out the 'Answer Center,' a database of questions and answers on the candidate’s web site that is powered by RightNow Technologies’ customer relationship management applications. ... The Obama campaign is using RightNow’s service solution, which contains a self-learning knowledge base that uses artificial intelligence technology to learn how users and contact center staff search for information and automatically applies that insight to make it easier for them to find what they're looking for, Jones said."