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August 31, 2004: Blabble
Releases Beta Of Blog-Tracking Service. InternetWeek.
"Blabble has released the beta version of its research
and analysis blog-tracking service for monitoring the
viewpoints of blog postings. The service can track,
aggregate, and evaluate opinions from more than two
million blogs. ... 'The Blabble difference is our natural
language processing. By using language processing, we
break down and group intended thoughts in valuable ways,'
said Blabble founder Matt Rice in a statement." August 31, 2004: Sharper,
smarter dirt robots. Devices a hit despite some
hang-ups. By Mark Jewell. Associated Press / available
from Milwaukee Journal Sentinel & JS Online (8/30/04).
"A new generation of robotic vacuums is ready to
do battle with dirt, dust and dog hair with more cleaning
power and cunning than their ancestors could muster.
Faced with the usual obstacles - furniture, stairs,
low-hanging bed skirts and stray socks - they intelligently
and acrobatically extricate themselves from most tight
spots and largely avoid getting stuck or sucking in
what they shouldn't. ... [T]heir artificial intelligence
is impressive. The Discovery employs some of the technologies
iRobot developed for military mine-sweeping. What limits
these competing robovacs' performance isn't related
to their artificial intelligence so much as to their
small size and lightweight batteries." August 31, 2004: Will
Mario fold under pressure in 'Paper' sequel? Here's
a closer look at what's making headlines in the world
of interactive entertainment. By Marc Saltzman. USA
Today. "Game of the Week: The Political Machine.
... Securing the most Electoral College votes is the
goal of this lighthearted and timely simulation. You
can choose to represent George W. Bush or John Kerry,
or other contemporary or historical political figures....
You play against the computer's artificial intelligence
or log onto the Internet for multiplayer matches." August 31, 2004: Hard-drive
hi-fi. By Sholto Macpherson. Australian IT. "Bose
Australia will launch its Lifestyle 48 DVD system in
October. Its uMusic management program uses artificial
intelligence to decide which songs you like most and
make selections according to your mood. It records up
to 340 hours of music...." August 30, 2004: Always
on watch August 30, 2004: In
Search Of Better Video Search. IBM, Microsoft, and
academic researchers are trying to invent ways to find
specific images in video footage. By Aaron Ricadela.
InformationWeek. "At a conference in Cambridge,
England, last week, an IBM researcher gave the first
public demonstration of a computer system called Marvel
that uses statistical techniques to learn about relationships
between colors, shapes, patterns, sounds, and other
clues from video footage that can help identify its
content. IBM's prototype then labels the footage so
users can go back and find individual shots. That could
be a boon not only to TV news producers but intelligence
analysts watching surveillance video and even PC users
editing home movies. Today's state of the art relies
on searching for keywords embedded in video files, says
IBM Research senior manager John Smith, who heads the
project. ... Smith's team also is working with Columbia
University's digital video multimedia lab on a project
to search news footage from U.S. and foreign broadcasters
for related topics, combining computer vision and image
understanding with machine learning approaches that
analyze each station's signature approach to a story." August 30, 2004: Coming
soon - Robo-greeter. Automation has slashed factory
jobs and is streamlining services and high-tech - but
at what cost? By Gregory M. Lamb. The Christian Science
Monitor. "In 19th-century England, craftsmen donned
masks and rioted to force the destruction of textile
machines that were stealing their jobs. The rebellion
was crushed and the followers of Ludd - or Luddites
- have come to be viewed as hapless rubes standing in
the way of progress. But they had a point: Automation
causes unemployment. The wave of automation now crashing
onto the economy looks especially broad and powerful.
Although its full impact is unclear, it could cause
worker dislocation on a scale not seen since the Industrial
Revolution, experts say. Eventually, technology creates
more jobs than it takes away, they add. But in the short
term, it's affecting more sectors of the labor market
than in past eras of rapid technological change. ...
Take industrial robots. Over the past 10 years, companies
have spent some $100 billion installing them. Nearly
1 million are now on the job. The investment has proven
spectacularly effective. The productivity of these machines
has risen about 7 percent a year for the past decade.
But the human cost has been immense. ... 'Smart systems,'
computers that can do relatively routine tasks well,
are beginning to gobble up jobs ranging from check-out
clerks at Home Depot to airline ticket agents and hotel
desk clerks - even to insurance underwriters and software
customer support staff. ... So far, though, automation
doesn't appear to have had a deep impact on job loss.
For example, despite its airline kiosks and a tough
travel economy, Continental says it has seen only a
4 percent decrease in ticket agents since 9/11. Kinetics
is also running a pilot program at 55 McDonald's restaurants,
where customers can order food at kiosks. Some restaurants
have actually had to increase employment in the kitchen
because of the faster customer turnover out front, says
Jim Brown, a spokesman for Kinetics in Lake Mary, Fla.
... New technology becomes irresistible to businesses
because it boosts productivity: That's bad for workers
who lose jobs, but good for consumers who receive faster
service and better products at lower prices. And it's
perplexing for lawmakers." August 30, 2004: An
apple for the computer - Machines are so sophisticated
they can be used to grade essays. But in some ways,
artificial intelligence still lacks common sense. By
Faye Flam. Philadelphia Inquirer. "First, computers
learned to beat people at chess, then they started answering
411 calls. Now, computers endowed with artificial intelligence
are going where only teachers ventured before: They're
grading essays. At least three companies are marketing
computerized essay graders, and thousands of schools
across the country are using them as teaching tools
and to score standardized tests. ... Jill Burstein,
[E-rater's] lead scientist and a computational linguist,
said the computer is 'trained' by feeding it thousands
of essays that have already been scored and then asking
the system to look for patterns that distinguish the
good from the bad. ... [E]ssay-scoring programs will
work for students who make a good-faith effort, said
Harry Barfoot, vice president for marketing and sales
at Vantage Learning. 'It can't score poetry and creative
writing,' he said, but that was never promised. ...
[Henry] Lieberman and other artificial intelligence
researchers say computers could become dramatically
smarter and more humanlike in the future. The brain
is just a physical machine, albeit a complicated one
we don't yet understand, they argue. 'People have this
illusion that what we do is magic and it will never
be automated,' said University of Pennsylvania computer
science professor Lyle Ungar. When he first started
studying artificial intelligence, he said, no one thought
a computer could play chess well enough to beat the
masters. Today, computers can beat everyone at chess,
he said, and we're no longer impressed." August 30, 2004: Robotics
firm refigures military technology for commerical markets.
By Joyce Gannon. Associated Press / available from SunHerald.com.
"Even though Carnegie Mellon [University] has attracted
millions of dollars worth of defense contracts to develop
military robots, only a handful of companies actually
are working on ways to apply robotic technology in the
commercial market. [Keith] Moore cited industry veteran
RedZone Robotics as 'one I see the most immediate potential
for.' Also a Carnegie Mellon spinout, RedZone earned
a high profile in the 1980s and 1990s as it created
robots that could handle hazardous nuclear waste removal
for the government. But its government contracts weren't
enough to sustain it and in 2002, it filed for Chapter
11 bankruptcy. A year ago, it emerged with new management
and a new focus on developing automated equipment to
inspect and repair sewer lines and municipal water tanks.
... For the handful of local companies involved in robotics
to make its mark as a booming industry, researchers
and engineers have to 'manage expectations,' [Jorgen]
Pedersen said. "The problem in the past has been a technology
push rather than a technology pull. ... People hear
the term robotics and think of Rosie (the maid) from
The Jetsons'. But robotics won't be anywhere near the
cognitive ability of human ability anytime soon." August 29, 2004: Thought
leadership. By Joseph Divanna. Moneyweb. "I
was in Johannesburg recently, and Moneyweb's Alec Hogg
posed to me an interesting set of questions surrounding
the origins and nature of thought leadership that caused
me think about thinking. Alec wanted to know what is
a thought leader and how does someone create thought
leadership. Here is how I would answer him. 1) What
is thought leadership? Thought leadership is the
product of associative aggregation that formulates a
new state or condition to a specific problem. Simply,
the process of connecting an idea, concepts, or product
to a business process or condition that may or may not
be typically associated with one another to either create
or enhance a value proposition or determine the relativity
of one item to another. For example, collaborative technologies
that facilitate the rapid exchange of data can be aggregated
together to streamline the mortgage application process.
Similarly, technologies like artificial intelligence
and expressive systems can be combined to analyze a
customer's financial status and previous history and
eliminate the mortgage application process entirely
leaving only the settlement process. ... 2) How
do Thought Leaders create materials and where do you
get the ideas? ... Conversely, ideas also spring
from a variety of unrelated sources brought together
over time when a new challenge presents the right conditions.
For example: a military software application that rates
the probability of incoming missiles on a battlefield
could be adapted to rank the probability of daily stock
market fluctuations based on an array of data points...." August 29, 2004: It's
a second pair of eyes. By Patrick Springer. In-Forum
News. "Even highly trained radiologists can miss
an irregularity that, if spotted, could mean early intervention
against breast cancer. Now they have another set of
eyes to help point to areas that need more attention
-- a computer that provides a second read of the mammogram.
The technology, called computer-aided detection, has
been used in mammography screening at Innovis Health
in Fargo for three months. ... At Innovis, the computer
is prompting doctors to take more second looks. Most
of the time, the abnormalities are benign. 'We're doing
a lot more of the additional views,' [Paula] McGuinty
said. That means calling the patient back for another
mammogram, this time targeted at the suspicious area.
In fact, the technology originally was used by the military
for automatic target recognition. It combines image
processing and artificial intelligence to sift through
the clutter and zero in on potential trouble spots.
Most studies have shown that more than 20 percent of
cancers missed by a radiologist will be detected by
the technology." August 27, 2004: Toyota
Concepts set for Paris debut. motoring.iafrica.com.
"A new six-speed manual transmission is standard
on the new Land Cruiser, designed to be compact and
lightweight and to permit quick, smooth gearshifts.
At the same time, the four-speed automatic gearbox is
replaced by a five-speed unit that is equipped with
AI-SHIFT, an artificial intelligence feature that adapts
the gearchange pattern to suit road conditions and driver
inputs. The addition of a linear solenoid valve reduces
the shock when shifting gears, making for smoother and
more refined operation." August 27, 2004: What
awaits this year's GCSE generation? By Jenny Rees.
The Western Mail / available from ic Wales. "Thousands
of children in Wales picked up their GCSE [General Certificate
of Secondary Education] results yesterday and started
to make one of the biggest decisions of their lives
- what do I do next? Here Jenny Rees takes a look at
what life may be like when their children reach exam
age. Ian Neild, of the BT research centre, looks at
new and emerging technologies, and says that while the
pace of change is rapid, in some cases very little has
changed.... As the internet and technology becomes more
sophisticated young people are unlikely to see the relevance
of learning foreign languages. 'We use the language
of the web, it's the Microsoft language,' said Mr Neild.
And if we're ever stuck without a dictionary in our
chosen language, 'there are all these lovely language
translators on line,' he added. ... Teaching is set
for possibly the biggest change, our crystal ball tells
us. 'Teaching numbers will be in decline because no
one will want to teach the children so there will be
an increasing use of artificial intelligence to give
personal teaching,' said Mr Neild. 'Just as you have
typing tutors, these sorts of things will let you learn
in different way.'" August 26, 2004: From
factoids to facts. At last, a way of getting answers
from the web. The Economist. "Ask MSR is still
a prototype, although Microsoft is trying to improve
it and it may be launched commercially under the name
AnswerBot. Dr [Eric] Brill, meanwhile, has moved to
a more difficult task. One of his most recent papers,
written jointly with Radu Soricut of the University
of Southern California, is entitled 'Beyond the Factoid'.
It describes his efforts to build a system capable of
providing 50-word answers to questions such as "What
are the rules for qualifying for the Academy Awards?"
This is harder than finding a single-word answer, but
Dr Brill thinks it should be possible using something
called a 'noisy channel' model. Such models are already
employed in spell-checking and speech-recognition systems.
They work by modelling the transformation between what
a user means (in spell-checking, the word he intended
to type) and what he does (the garbled word actually
typed). ... Rather than relying on a traditional 'artificial
intelligence' approach of parsing sentences and trying
to work out what a question actually means, this quick-and-dirty
method draws instead on the collective, ever-growing
intelligence of the web itself." August 25, 2004: Card
fraud prevention 'pays off'. BBC News. "Market
analyst Datamonitor said credit card fraud fell 5% to
£402.4m last year, from £424.6m in 2002. ... 'The efforts
spent by the various players in preventing card fraud
are finally paying off,' report author Karina Purang
said. She added that the introduction of new technology
- such as neural network systems which flag up transactions
that do not match a cardholder's usual spending behaviour
- had helped to curtail card fraud." August 25, 2004: University
of Maryland to Host Media Briefing on IT and Terrorism.
TelecomWeb. "Current and future information technology
(IT) applications for the prevention of terrorist attacks,
as well as the exploitation of the Internet and other
IT by terrorists will be the subjects of a University
of Maryland media briefing at the National Press Club
on Sept. 1. Experts from the university will assess
technological developments and policy issues in many
different areas, including gait and facial recognition
surveillance systems; computer translation and artificial
intelligence for sifting through batches of information;
and information architecture and information sharing
in the intelligence community." August 25, 2004: EA's
Gordon: Entertainment's future is interactive. By
John Gaudiosi. The Hollywood Reporter. "Bing Gordon
has been with Electronic Arts since its humble beginnings
22 years ago and now presides as executive vp and chief
creative officer. He spoke with The Hollywood Reporter's
video game reporter John Gaudiosi about the future of
entertainment, which Gordon believes is clearly interactive.
... THR: What aspect of these impending new
game platforms is most exciting to you? Gordon:
The holy grail of movies is "story," which actually
means 'surprise based on plot and character.' The next
few years of game design creativity will be focused
on surprises based on world dynamics, physics, artificial
intelligence and other people's intelligence. THR:
What are some things that the game industry can do better?
Gordon: The games business needs to reach more
people. We need more visionary women to make games for
girls and women. We need games for the indigenous tastes
of India and China. And we need to make games for people
who have as much free time as teenagers: seniors." August 24, 2004: Cognitive
radios would deliver signal - Built-in software
would be smart enough to configure the signal to overcome
obstacles. By Andrew Kantor. The Roanoke Times &
roanoke.com. "Virginia Tech's Center for Wireless
Telecommunications is developing a high-capacity communications
system that would be smart enough to configure itself
to work through all sorts of interference. That makes
it a potential boon to military and emergency services
personnel, who often have to deal with rubble-strewn
streets or smoke-filled rooms. But just as important,
it will allow communications systems to make much better
use of the airwaves around them, potentially reducing
or even eliminating the need for the government to divide
the radio spectrum. Called 'cognitive radio' - a term
coined in the late 1990s by Dr. Joseph Mitola. ... Cognitive-radio
networks might be the answer, according to Dr. Charles
Bostian, engineering coordinator of the CWT, who describes
it as 'a merger of artificial intelligence with radio
technology.' ... Further, he said, having several cognitive
radios connected can create an entire high-speed network
that can adjust itself based on its surroundings." August 23, 2004: New software makes debut in tanker sector - Tankers International uses system to manage scheduling across its VLCC fleet. By Hugh O'Mahony. Lloyd's List (subscription req'd.). "Cutting-edge software deployed to accelerate complex decision-making in the logistics sector is being applied for the first time in oil tanker operations to optimise scheduling. ... After two years of trials Tankers International plans to take live a 'multi-agent' software package next month from London developer Magenta to manage scheduling across its very large crude carrier fleet. Multi-agent software uses the artificial intelligence principle of ontology to assess the factors subject to change - 'agents' - that act on a set of assets, devising optimal deployment in relation to prevailing requirements. ... When a new cargo is offered, 'agents', amounting to individual software programmes, 'negotiate' the optimum vessel for the cargo by comparing alternative routes, vessels, ports, costs, freight rates, fuel against propulsion, speed and distance."
August 23, 2004: WebGen
keeps rooms cool and electric bills down at UM. The
Miami Herald & Herald.com. August 23, 2004: Mars
Probes to Yell 'Geronimo!' By Christopher Genna. Wired
News. "Earlier this week, Boeing won a three-year
$1.5 million contract from NASA to develop parachute guidance
technology that would help future robotic missions to
Mars land within 2.5 miles of a target area, a crucial
development for future manned missions. ... Earth-based
vehicles do have controllable parachutes, but the system
to be designed for Mars would be controlled by on-board
computers, since commands from earth take about 14 minutes
to reach Mars -- a lot of time for things to go wrong
in an atmosphere that's 1/100 as dense as Earth's." August 23, 2004: Ideas
from Thin Air - The golden era of pure industrial
research is over everywhere, with one giant exception
-- Microsoft. By Sarah Sennott. Newsweek International
/ available from MSNBC. "The camera tries to take
a picture only when something's happening -- it has sensors
that detect movement and changes in temperature and light.
And Microsoft has developed software that makes it possible
to catalog and search through all the data. This summer
Williams plans trials with patients from a local hospital
suffering from memory loss. Don't expect to see the gadget
on sale any time soon, though. 'Microsoft has no plans
to productize or launch the device in the near future,'
says Williams. That kind of research for research's sake
is typical; for years Microsoft has been bucking the trend
toward smaller dreams and tighter budgets in R&D. Even
now, in times of cost-cutting and slower growth, the company
maintains a commitment to spending on new ideas and products
that is rare, even spendthrift, by today's standards.
Nowadays rivals turn to alliances with universities, start-up
companies and the occasional acquisition in order to develop
new products. Microsoft's annual research-and-development
budget, on the other hand, is $6.8 billion. ... The Redmond
giant, whose researchers are exploring more than 50 different
areas of computer science -- from speech recognition and
natural language processing to graphics -- and operating
systems -- doesn't seem concerned. According to Microsoft
managers, only 50 percent of the researchers' work in
a two- to three-year period should make it into a product." August 22, 2004: The
Making of an X Box Warrior - The military has quietly
become an industry leader in video-game design, creating
games to train and even recruit the soldiers of the PlayStation
generation. Will virtual boot camp make combat more real
or more surreal? By Clive Thompson. The New York Times
Magazine (no fee reg. req'd.). "It was only a virtual
Baghdad, baking under a virtual sun. As in real life,
though, troops were dodging gunfire. I was at the Institute
for Creative Technologies in Marina Del Rey, Calif., playing
a new X box video game called Full Spectrum Warrior. ...
For the past three years, the military has been entertaining
the surprising idea that video games, even those that
you play on a commerical system like Microsoft's Xbox,
can be an effective way to train soldiers. In fact, the
Army is now one of the industry's most innovative creators,
hiring high-end programmers and designers from Silicon
Valley and Hollywood to devise and refine its games. Some
of these games are action-packed, like Full Spectrum Warrior.
Others, like one that the military's Special Operations
Command is currently designing to help recruits practice
their Arabic, are less so. All the games, however, speak
to the military's urgent need to train recruits for the
new challenges of peacekeeping efforts in places like
Iraq. ... Not everyone in the military is convinced that
receiving training in a game is possible or even useful.
... One of the biggest concerns that skeptics voice is
the danger of so-called negative training. If a game is
programmed with unrealistic physics and behavior, it can
teach soldiers incorrect techniques -- potentially deadly
when they eventually enter combat. In a game like Full
Spectrum Warrior, where the enemy is made up of computerized
opponents with artificial intelligence, the obvious concern
is that the preparation will not give a human-enough sense
of how devious, or inept, a real enemy can be." August 21, 2004: Robot, Fembot, Ribbon. Studio 360. Radio broadcast (and more) from Public Radio International and WNYC New York Public Radio.
>>> Robots, Music, Science Fiction, Applications, Interviews August
20, 2004: The
War Room. By Steve Silberman. Wired News (This article
will appear in the September 2004 issue of Wired Magazine.)
"The installation is the brainchild of the Institute
for Creative Technologies, an Army-funded R&D group at
the University of Southern California. ICT brings together
videogame developers, f/x artists, research scientists,
and Pentagon experts to create faster, cheaper, and more
effective ways of preparing recruits for their jobs on
the front lines. ... The backbone of military training
for centuries was rote learning. The goal of the punishing
routines and endless drills was to replace thinking with
instinct so that at the sound of gunshots, a soldier would
automatically return fire. But this kind of schooling,
the Pentagon now believes, is inadequate to prepare soldiers
for hot spots like the Sunni Triangle, where it's not
enough to be a good marksman. These days, grunts fresh
out of basic training must also be versed in the nuances
of street-level diplomacy with an increasingly hostile
citizenry in densely populated neighborhoods where allies
can turn into opposing forces overnight. To teach recruits
how to navigate complex situations, ICT's virtual training
packages are built around the oldest form of immersive
experience: storytelling. 'Instead of moving the classroom
into the field, we're moving the field into the classroom,'
says Randy Hill, the institute's deputy technology director.
An ICT software package for desktop PCs called Think Like
a Commander engages captains-in-training in conflict scenarios
derived from interviews with senior officers who served
in Bosnia or Afghanistan. In one story line, warlords
descend on a food-distribution outpost, and the trainee
must quickly determine who to trust and how to build alliances
with the locals. The roles of the coalition soldiers,
tribal leaders, and villagers are played by lifelike avatars
programmed with megabytes of artificial intelligence,
Army doctrine, and speech-and-text recognition software.
... Studies by academic researchers have shown that immersion
in simulated environments increases learning speed and
retention for a range of tasks, from making laparoscopic
incisions to rescuing people from burning buildings. ...
Virtual military training dates back to 1929, when Ed
Link, the son of an organ manufacturer, invented the first
flight simulator.... Impressed by Link's teaching tool,
the Navy set about creating a simulator that relied on
a computer instead of pumps and valves. The effort, dubbed
Project Whirlwind and spearheaded at MIT, produced the
first digital computer (manufactured by an upstart calculator
maker called IBM) and many of the technical foundations
of the modern networked age...." August 20, 2004: Diverse
Sciences Propel Bioinformatics. By Jessica D. Tenenbaum.
eWeek. " At conferences in computational biology,
speakers generally start with questions: 'How many people
in the room are biologists? Computer scientists? Other?'
It can be hard to predict what kinds of experts will show
up in the audience. This year's Computational Systems
Bioinformatics Conference, the third of its kind, was
no exception. The CSB 2002 Web site described the conference's
goal as bringing together 'biology and computer science'
experts. This year, the conference organizers hope to
'promote a systems biology approach that links biology,
computer science, mathematics, chemistry, physics, medicine
and engineering.' That's five new disciplines in two years.
Even so, we've left out statistics. ... One is struck
both by how far the field has come in a relatively short
period of time, and also by how far it has yet to go.
In the past 10 years, the numbers of sequences stored
in public databases such as GenBank, SwissProt and even
the Protein Data Bank all have increased exponentially.
... The conference agenda itself highlighted how interdisciplinary
this field is. ... Other presentations included methods
from high-throughput microscopy, text processing, data
mining, artificial intelligence and more. Fusions of fields
are not just expected but required. Stephen Wong of Harvard
University explained how to use robotic automation and
digital microscopy to screen thousands of cells simultaneously
for, among other tasks, high-throughput drug screening." August 20, 2004: Computers
Can Argue, Researcher Claims. To resolve conflicts
through negotiation, computers need artificial intelligence
programs, researcher Nick Jennings says. 'To improve their
performance, we need to ensure they have the ability to
overcome real-world problems such as conflict.' By Mike
Martin. NewsFactor Network - Innovation. "[Nick]
Jennings -- a computer science professor at the University
of Southampton -- assesses the effectiveness of so-called
'argumentation-based negotiation' (ABN) for computer agents
in a recently published paper. Agents are computer systems
to which an operator can delegate tasks. Considered autonomous
in comparison to programs that depend on every keystroke,
agents are increasingly used in a wide range of industrial
and commercial domains, including robotics, e-commerce,
computer games and information retrieval. In systems with
more than one agent, where 'autonomous entities pursue
their own goals, conflict is inevitable,' Jennings explained." August 19, 2004: Future
Route releases AI-based fraud detection product. finextra
news. "UK-based Future Route is releasing a new card
fraud detection system, iHex, based on artificial intelligence
technology developed at Oxford University's computing
laboratories for bio-informatics. The product has been
designed for use by financial services firms, government
agencies and corporations. IHex detects fraud using Inductive
Logic Programming (ILP) techniques - an artificially intelligent
method of identifying fraud patterns and anomalies. The
vendor says unlike many other pattern detection products,
the system automatically generates and continuously enhances
underlying rules." August 19, 2004: Gauging
the Google Effect. By Keith Regan. E-Commerce Times.
"As Google lurched into its new life as a public
company, debuting Thursday as the newest member of the
Nasdaq, the impact of the search engine's still-blockbuster
IPO on the tech industry as a whole was already being
debated. ... [Rob] Enderle said the impending fierce competition
among the search heavyweights, as well as contributions
from startups, could result in accelerated development
of technology and tools that will make a difference in
the business world. 'Finding things has become a problem
for every industry and virtually ever person in it. A
strong search technology has a huge potential impact on
global productivity,' he added. 'We may actually see the
first thing approaching a real artificial intelligence
in search because of the money focused on the related
problems and the tremendous need for search to be adoptive
and intelligent.'" August 19, 2004: IT
trends transform everyday activities. By Kim Sa-hyuk.
The Korea Herald. "It could be said that information-technology
is revolutionizing every existing structure and method
of business and everyday life. With the rapid development
in technology, it is becoming increasingly difficult to
predict the future of Korea's information-technology industry
and service market. However, analysts are pointing to
a number of 'mega-trends' that could have a fundamental
impact in the future. Digitalization, expansion of mobile
and ubiquitous computing, expansion of broadband infrastructure,
convergence of digital media, personalization of information-technology
services and development of intelligent-agent technologies,
are a few of the trends that garner attention." August 18, 2004: Robovacs
more amusing than thorough. Product review by Mark Jewell.
Associated Press / available from Boston.com. "A new
generation of robotic vacuums is ready to do battle with dirt,
dust and dog hair with more cleaning power and cunning than
their ancestors could muster. ... [T]heir artificial intelligence
is impressive. The Discovery employs some of the technologies
iRobot developed for military minesweeping. What limits these
competing robovacs' performance isn't related to their artificial
intelligence so much as to their small size and lightweight
batteries." August 18, 2004: Popular
stock market invt theories. By Richard J. Maturi. Sify.com.
"There's a myriad of broad based investment theories
within which numerous investment strategies can be implemented.
Here we will look at the rationale behind these theories and
how they work. ... Jerry Felson offers an alternative to the
efficient market theory in his book, Cybernetic Approach to
Stock Market Analysis (Exposition Press, 1975) in order to
bypass its perceived limitations and deficiencies. ... Using
cybernetics concepts (the science and control of communication,
and mathematical analysis of the flow of information) and
artificial intelligence (advanced cybernetics) techniques,
Felson proposes developing judgmental decision-making processes
by weighing evidence and formalizing investment analysis.
In plain language, the cybernetics approach automates the
investment decision-making process through the use of pattern
recognition, learning system theory, and other methods, removing
the imperfect human factor and theoretically improving investment
returns" August 17, 2004: Moving
heads. Technology Chatroom article by Stan Beer. The Age.
"Robotics expert, Dr Alex Zelinsky has started as full-time
director of the CSIRO ICT Centre after a transitional period
from his former role as chief executive of computer vision
company Seeing Machines. Dr Zelinsky is a robotics and computer
vision specialist and a globally recognised scientist in the
field of human-machine interaction." August 17, 2004: Robot
in line for top job. By Sonia Verma. The Toronto Star.
"Once upon a time, most of the people who wound up working
here were little kids with big dreams. Those dreams usually
involved distant, faraway things in outer space. So when they
grew up they wanted to figure out a way to grab them. At least
that's the story most of the aerospace engineers at Brampton's
MD Robotics will tell you when you ask how they ended up here,
inside a sun-starved room filled with working testaments to
Canada's space program -- a program they helped build. Dressed
in a regulation lab coat and itchy hairnet, company vice-president
Paul Cooper breezes through the lab with the brisk purpose
of a surgeon in an operating room. He talks about the robots
that surround him as if they were past patients. Some are
in need of a tune-up after coming back from a big mission.
Others are still waiting for their turn in outer space. Strewn
around the room like scattered toys are the disassembled parts
from several enormous Canadarm robots, one of this country's
most important contributions to the space program. Put together,
they are shaped something like a hockey stick and have been
used in the past to place satellites into orbit and rescue
malfunctioning ones for repair. But what concerns Cooper these
days is the future. And at the moment, its name is Dextre:
a Canadian-engineered headless robot with 2-metre trunk with
3.5-metre arms, which has just been tapped for a very big
job: fixing the aging Hubble Space Telescope." August 17, 2004: Funding for UCD-based Lightwave. Radio Telefís Éireann (RTÉ), the Irish Public Service Broadcasting Organisation. "Lightwave is close to developing its first product, called ICE (Intelligent Control of Energy), which uses artificial intelligence techniques to anticipate how a building will react to new conditions such as the outside temperature or the number of people occupying the building."
August 17, 2004: The
'Nose' Knows A Sweet Smell Of Success. SpaceDaily. "What
about detecting chemical leaks in enclosed spaces, like the
International Space Station or Space Shuttle? NASA built 'E-Nose'
to come to the rescue. The Agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory
in California and the California Institute of Technology jointly
developed a method for a machine to 'smell.' ... E-Nose technology
has the ability to send a signal to an environmental control
system where a central computer decides how to handle the
problem, without human interaction. The device also can be
'trained' in one session to detect many specific contaminants.
... Commercial companies were quick to see E-Nose's potential.
In March 1997, JPL licensed the technology to Cyrano Sciences,
of Pasadena, Calif. The company renamed the device 'Cyranose
320' and put it to work in the food industry, testing for
spoilage. The technology is also being tested to detect toxic
materials, water pollutants and chemical leaks." August 16, 2004: Greatest
computer-generated movie sequences - The Lord of the
Rings. By Miya Knights. vnunet.com. "The Battle for
Minas Tirith in The Return of the King uses advanced
computer-generated imagery to recreate the battle scenes from
J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Pioneering
work in artificial intelligence development by Weta Digital,
the technology-based half of director Peter Jackson's production
company, was used to create a simulation of every 'agent' in
the scene. The software, called Massive, was originally developed
by Weta Digital guru Steven Regelous for work on a remake of
King Kong in 1997. It uses artificial intelligence
engines to control the movements and behaviour of crowds or
animated creatures. ... Jackson has said since that Regelous
and his team knew they were on to something with the artificial
intelligence when they pitted 1,000 randomly generated silver
men against the same number in gold in the first battle simulation,
and three or four on the edges simply turned and ran for the
hills." August 14, 2004: Gadget
of the week - Hearing aids with 'artificial intelligence.'
The New York Times / available from The International Herald
Tribune. "A new hearing aid from Oticon, the Syncro, goes
a step further, incorporating artificial intelligence software.
The hearing aid ... uses an algorithm to adapt to the wearer's
environment by constantly adjusting its digital sound processor's
signal-to-noise ratio. The software aims to mimic natural hearing,
in which the brain is constantly scanning for meaningful sounds
and screening out noise." August 13, 2004: Your
CV has a fatal error. You haven't been rejected until you've
been rejected by a computer. By Steve Dow. Fairfax Digital,
smh.com.au & The Sydney Morning Herald. "If you've
applied for a job in recent months - and been turned down -
get ready for a shock. It's likely your resume never made it
into human hands. Every day thousands of job applications are
being automatically assessed and rejected by an artificial intelligence
technology developed in Sydney. ... 'Ease of application has
created an email bottleneck,' says the website of the Sydney
firm Recruit Advantage. There are 'masses of unqualified job
applicants' and there is 'no time to respond to job applicant
emails'. So Recruit Advantage invented a software program that
did it automatically. The program, TurboRecruit, 'automatically
pre-screens job candidates to YOUR requirements'. The technology
can spit out hundreds of 'thanks, but no thanks' letters every
morning before employment agency consultants even switch on
their computers. ... The technology is already being used by
companies such as Coca-Cola Amatil and government departments,
including Centrelink, Sydney Water and the Department of Defence.
It is in place at many of the big recruitment agencies.... Some
job seekers have wondered at the speed with which rejection
letters are appearing in their inboxes." August 12, 2004: Amid
the Cacophony, a Quiet Conversation. By Anne Eisenberg.
The New York Times (no fee reg. req'd.). "Background noise
gets in the way of many cellphone conversations. It can be hard
to hear what the person on the other end is saying when there
is competition from traffic or nearby people who are also talking.
But several electrical engineers and other scientists are working
to reduce or mask the distracting noises that can reach a cellphone
and disrupt a conversation. At the University of Toronto, [Parham
Aarabi] has devised a two-microphone
system that can focus on the speaker's voice and filter out
other noises, turning competing conversations into a mild hum.
... The device may also be useful in improving the accuracy
of voice recognition interfaces used with computers and in cars,
where voice commands are used to activate cellphones and navigation
systems. Cars can be a difficult environment for speech recognition
systems because of traffic and wind noise.Background sounds
have long been a barrier to the widespread adoption of speech
recognition systems, said Li Deng, an electrical engineer and
senior researcher in the speech technology group at Microsoft
in Redmond, Wash. Like Dr. Aarabi, Dr. Deng has developed software
algorithms to improve speech recognition by reducing background
noise." August 12, 2004: Computer
Graded Writing. Written by Nancy Steinbach and reported
by Steve Ember. VOA News broadcast. "Educators know that
teaching students to write well is not easy. One problem is
the amount of time needed to read through large amounts of work.
So some companies have developed computer programs. These can
grade student writing much more quickly than a human can. Writing
tests can also cost less to administer by computer than by paper-and-pencil.
These computer systems are known as e-raters. They use artificial
intelligence to think in a way like teachers. In the state of
Indiana, computer grading of a statewide writing test began
with a test of the system itself. For two years, both a computer
and humans graded the student writing. Officials say there was
almost no difference between the computer grades and those given
by the human readers. ... How do teachers feel about all this?
..." August 10, 2004: NASA
Develops Robust Artificial Intelligence for Planetary Rovers.
By John Bluck. NASA.gov. "NASA is planning to add a strong
dose of artificial intelligence (AI) to planetary rovers to
make them much more self-reliant, capable of making basic decisions
during a mission. Scientists at NASA Ames Research Center, in
the heart of California's Silicon Valley, are developing very
complex AI software that enables a higher level of robotic intelligence.
n the past, very simple artificial intelligence systems on board
rovers allowed them to make some simple decisions, but much
smarter AI will enable these mobile robots to make many decisions
now made by mission controllers. ... 'State-of-the-art artificial
intelligence software will deliberate on board the rovers. One
such state-of-the-art, complex, AI-based agent software is based
on an ambitious architecture called Intelligent Deployable Execution
Agents, or IDEA, developed at NASA Ames over the last 4 years,'
[Kanna] Rajan explained. An agent is software that mimics the
human thought process to do things a human being wants to be
done. ... 'Creating strong AI software is a very exciting and
challenging problem, and it inspires us and our students to
work on this bold effort,' said noted artificial intelligence
expert professor Milind Tambe of the University of California,
Los Angeles, who has worked with Rajan." August 7, 2004: AI
vital in charting direction. Daily Express, Sabah, Malaysia.
"Artificial intelligence (AI) and its applications are
inevitable components in mapping a direction very much in line
with the Government's objectives to advance in science and technology,
said Chief Minister Datuk Seri Musa Aman. 'It provides fundamental
benefits to our society,' he said. ... Musa said this while
launching the 2nd International Conference on Artificial Intelligence
Applications in Engineering and Technology (ICAIET) 2004 at
Pacific Sutera Resort & Spa, here, Wednesday. ... 'It is clear
that the development in AI had grown exponentially. This indicates
the AI applications are unlimited,' he said. He pointed out
that several products, equipment and processes using AI had
attained a high degree of success in daily life such as the
washing machine, rice cooker, video games as well as advanced
vehicle brake system." August 6, 2004:
Italy's Sky-X Demonstrator Explores Artificial Intelligence.
By Tom Kington. ISR Journal. " The unmanned combat aerial
vehicle (UCAV) technology demonstrator Sky-X, being developed
by Alenia Aeronautica, is evolving into a stealthier, more silent
aircraft as it nears its planned spring 2005 debut flight. Planners
decided to delay the flight -- originally set for June this
year -- to create a longer, more angular form and to investigate
stealthier materials. Meanwhile they are seeking ideas on artificial
intelligence that would allow a UCAV to make more decisions
in flight, thus reducing communications in enemy territory that
can be spotted, jammed or break down. 'Our interest in ways
to allow the aircraft to decide to change plans in flight stems
from the new frontiers in [network-centric] operations,' said
Carmelo Cosentino, executive vice president and general manager
for military programs at Alenia Aeronautica, a Finmeccanica
unit. 'Net-centric operations is all about making decisions
without needing to go up the chain of command every time, and
artificial intelligence can assist this.'" August 3, 2004: The
Human Element - August 2, 2004: Voice
and language recognition yields city information. IST Results.
"New in town and don't know a soul! An evening free, but
no idea where to go. What do you do? According to CATCH-2004,
you consult one of their interactive systems for the information
you need in your native language, and go straight to your preferred
venue! ... To achieve their ends, the project participants developed
a multilingual interface that could handle both direct and spoken-language
interrogation, a unified architecture that could handle input
from a variety of client devices, and voice-enabled access to
the Web databases connected to this architecture." August 2, 2004: Feds
launch bioinformatics centers - Institute contracts for
databases and portals to compile info on diseases. By Michael
Hardy. FCW.com. "Officials at the National Institute of
Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) are enlisting private
companies and universities to help make data available about
disease-causing organisms. ... Officials at NIAID, which is
part of the National Institutes of Health, have awarded seven
Bioinformatics Resource Center (BRC) contracts, and one more
is in negotiations, [Valentina Di Francesco, bioinformatics
program director] said. ... The study of how an organism's genes
are arranged and interact is called genomics. Genes order the
body's cells to produce proteins, which affect the body's processes.
The study of the proteins is called proteomics. The BRCs will
support both disciplines and related fields. The other component
of the BRC project is to develop and distribute open-source
software for researchers to use in viewing and managing data,
Di Francesco said. This includes developing a set of standards
for systems to freely exchange genomic data. Bioinformatics
is a difficult field to work in because it requires collaboration
between biologists and computer scientists to develop systems
that address the data's complexity and are useful to researchers,
she said." August 2, 2004:
Animated
face helps deaf with phone chat. By Will Knight. New Scientist
News. "Software that creates an animated face to match
someone talking on the other end of a phone line can help people
with hearing difficulties converse, suggests a new study. The
animated face provides a realistic impersonation of a person
speaking, enabling lip-readers to follow the conversation visually
as well as audibly. ... The neural network used by SimFace identifies
particular sounds, or 'phonemes', rather than entire words.
This has been shown to be a particularly fast way of matching
words to animation. By concentrating on sounds the system can
also represent words that it has not encountered previously.
... The system was developed by researchers at Royal Institute
of Technology, in Stockholm, Sweden, University College London,
UK as well as Dutch software company Viataal and Belgian voice
analysis firm Babletech." August 2, 2004: Tiny
Robots To The Rescue - Special Machines Going Where Humans
Can't. By Therese Poletti. Mercury News / available from SiliconValley.com.
"The San Jose McEnery Convention Center looked like a bomb
had hit it. Amid collapsed walls and debris, arms and legs of
survivors waved through the rubble. The body parts were artificial.
But they were the most important component of a mock disaster
area set up at an artificial intelligence conference last week.
Groups of small robots, some only about a foot high, rumbled
over the wreckage on a mission to learn how to save lives. The
robots had to negotiate the debris, find bodies that generated
heat and communicate their location. Some robots were equipped
with microphones to record sound, digital cameras and sensors
to map the site and wireless gear to communicate with each other.
... Robin Murphy, who heads the Center for Robot Assisted Search
and Rescue at the University of South Florida, took robots to
the World Trade Center disaster area after the Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks. ... Murphy's robots, which look like mini-tanks on
tracks, searched for victims as well as for paths through the
rubble. Rescue workers also deployed the bots to determine the
structural integrity of damaged buildings." August 2, 2004: Defense
Dept. hopes to enlist AI in war against terrorism. August 1, 2004: Computers
Weighing In On the Elements of Essay - Programs Critique
Structure, Not Ideas. By Jay Mathews. The Washington Post /
also available from MSNBC (Computers
help grade essays; August 2, 2004). "[E]ssay-grading
computers are quietly making significant gains in the booming
U.S. testing industry. More than 2 million essays have been
scored by e-rater since it was adopted for the GMAT in 1999,
and the technology is being considered for use in the Graduate
Record Examination, for graduate school admissions, and the
Test of English as a Foreign Language, which assesses the English
proficiency of immigrants entering U.S. schools. SAT and ACT
may be next Testing experts predict that machines eventually
will help grade the SAT and the ACT, which will add writing
sections in their 2005 college admissions tests, because computers
cost less money and work faster than humans. Before technology
entered the picture, teams of people graded each GMAT essay.
Now one person's judgment is compared with the machine's conclusion.
... The e-rater was developed in the 1990s by subjecting essays
to a 'natural language processing technology' that identifies
grammar, sentence structure and strength of vocabulary. The
computer also is programmed to scan for the elements present
in a well-supported essay, said Richard Swartz, an executive
with Educational Testing Service, which developed e-rater. ...
Swartz emphasized the modest goal of computerized scoring: to
judge the structure and coherence of the writing, rather than
the quality of the thoughts and originality of the prose. In
college, he said, professors grade the development of ideas,
while essay-rating computers 'are better suited to judgment
about more basic-level writing.'" August 2004: A
Machine With a Mind of Its Own - Ross King wanted a research
assistant who would work 24/7 without sleep or food. So he built
one. By Oliver Morton. Wired Magazine (Issue 12.08). "For
a machine that's changing the world, the device on the lab bench
in front of me doesn't look very impressive - it just goes back
and forth, back and forth, back and forth. ... [Ross] King's
humble robot is based on a Biomek 2000, a low-rent fluid-handling
device that goes for only $37,900. But it can do something its
more nimble cousins can't. Its components - the tireless robot
arm, an incubator in which cells cultured on the platter either
wither or thrive, and a plate reader that examines the little
depressions to see whether anything is growing there - are linked
up to a much more exceptional brain. The artificial intelligence
routines in that brain can look at the results of an experiment,
draw a conclusion about what the results might mean, and then
set off to test that conclusion. The 'robot scientist' (King
has resisted the temptation of a jazzy acronym) may look like
a mere labor-saving gizmo, shuttling back and forth ad nauseam,
but it's much more than that. Biology is full of tools with
which to make discoveries. Here's a tool that can make discoveries
on its own. ... Studying AI at the Turing Institute in Glasgow,
[King] set about using machine-learning techniques to predict
the shapes of proteins, one of the fundamental challenges of
bioinformatics. King, though, found a twist. With his friend
Colin Angus, whom he'd met at Aberdeen, he developed software
that translated protein structures into musical chord sequences....
Stephen Muggleton argues that the life sciences are peculiarly
well suited to machine learning. 'There's an inherent structure
in biological problems that lends itself to computational approaches,'
he says. In other words, biology reveals the machinelike substructure
of the living world; it's not surprising that machines are showing
an aptitude for it." July 28 - August 4, 2004: Summarizer
gets the idea. By Kimberly Patch. Technology Research News.
"The flow of a document, including the topics covered and
the ways those topics relate to each other, is clear to people.
It would be useful if computer systems that process documents
-- like search engines and programs that generate summaries
of news articles -- could also learn to consider topic information.
Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and
Cornell University have developed a system that does the equivalent
of putting pieces that show parts of a mountain and pieces that
show parts of the sky into separate groups, and putting the
sky pieces above the mountain pieces, said Lillian Lee, an associate
professor of computer science at Cornell University. The researchers'
automatic classification algorithm, or content model, is trained
on subject-specific sets of documents and document summaries.
It can then extract the topic structure of a group of related
topics. The system selects and orders topics to generate a summary.
... The researchers' content model algorithm is based on the
hidden Markov model, a method commonly used to delineate words
in speech recognition programs and genes in computational biology." July / August 2004: AI
in Australia and New Zealand. By the Australian Computer
Society National Committee for AI. IEEE Intelligent Systems.
"To provide an overview of AI in Australia and New Zealand,
we offer snapshots of AI research throughout the region’s
institutes and universities and review its industry and conference
activities." July / August 2004: Spotting
Cancer Sooner - Blood tests that detect cancer in its early
stages would save countless lives. The first could arrive within
a year. By Ken Garber. Technology Review. "The individual
fates of the 1.3 million Americans diagnosed with cancer this
year will be largely decided by one simple factor: at what stage
was the disease spotted? ... The problem, of course, is that
cancers, which begin with just a few deviant cells, are by their
very nature hard to diagnose early. In the last few years, though,
a new method has emerged that promises to deliver simple blood
tests that identify the telltale molecular profiles of various
cancers easily and accurately. ... Like [George] Wright, [Emanuel]
Petricoin and [Lance] Liotta used a Ciphergen system to generate
protein profiles from blood samples. Their early attempts to
find cancer patterns failed, though, because they were simply
trying to juggle too much information. Then, in June 1999, a
solution appeared. Petricoin and his friend Peter Levine, a
Maryland lawyer with a background in data analysis, were chatting
about the problem over brunch; Levine suggested using pattern
recognition algorithms to make sense of the massive amount of
data. Levine, who had considered using such algorithms to analyze
stock market trends and commodities trading, sketched out the
cancer idea on a napkin. 'In about five minutes, we both realized
this would be a really fascinating approach,' Petricoin recalls.
So they tested it, together with Ben Hitt, a software engineer
who borrowed the necessary algorithms from artificial-intelligence
theory. In fact, cancer patterns did emerge, and in 2000 Levine
and Hitt founded Correlogic Systems to develop blood tests for
cancers. In early 2002, the researchers published results in
the British medical journal Lancet , showing they could use
a specific protein pattern to spot ovarian cancer." July / August 2004: Rethinking
the Computer - Project Oxygen is turning out prototype computer
systems. By Lisa Scanlon. Technology Review. "[Howie] Shrobe's
computerized office is just one of dozens of pervasive-computing
technologies being developed as part of Project Oxygen, the
lab's five-year, $50 million effort to design computer systems
that are as ubiquitous as the air we breathe and as easy to
communicate with as other people. The end result, as originally
envisioned by Michael Dertouzos, PhD '64, the late director
of the Laboratory for Computer Science, is expected to be a
collection of technologies embedded in workplaces and homes
working together seamlessly-and often behind the scenes-to help
us go about our daily lives. ... Now in its fourth year, the
project is turning out working prototypes, including workspaces
that adjust themselves according to their inhabitants' habits,
location-aware sensors that help people find their way around
buildings, and computer chips that configure themselves to best
suit different applications. In the process, the project has
brought together researchers from many disciplines who may not
have otherwise collaborated, often with unexpected results.
When Project Oxygen began in 2000, one of its first undertakings
was to further Shrobe's prior work on an intelligent conference
room that helps people run more efficient meetings. The latest
version of the room can, when prompted by spoken commands, show
agenda items on a wall display, transcribe and save participants'
comments, or find pertinent video clips from previous meetings.
... 'One of the things about Oxygen is that it's not trying
to develop [stand-alone] technologies in networking, speech,
and vision,' says [Victor] Zue. 'Increasingly, it's the integration
of these technologies.'" July 28, 2004: Amplified
Intelligence - The AI Problem. Interview with Ken Ford.
Astrobiology Magazine. "Astrobiology Magazine (AM):
The IMHC [Interdisciplinary Study of Human & Machine Cognition]
research agenda broadly seems to cover robotics, cognition and
simulations. Are there parts of machine intelligence that your
research institute doesn't cover today, but that you see as
growth areas? Ken Ford (KF): Don't forget that second
letter is 'H'. Although a lot of our research could be categorized
as AI, and five of our researchers are AAAI (American Association
for Artificial Intelligence) Fellows, IHMC is not a traditional
machine intelligence laboratory. The focus and theme of our
research is what has become known as human-centered computing
which, in a nutshell, is about fitting technology to people
instead of fitting people to technology. The human is part of
the system, and it is the performance of the whole system, including
the human, that we are interested in. This requires that machines
should be designed to fit us physically, cognitively, and perhaps
even socially. We think of AI as meaning 'Amplified Intelligence.'
The interesting thing is that many traditional AI technologies
in fact are being used in just this way. We like to refer to
it as building cognitive prostheses, computational systems that
leverage and extend human intellectual capacities, just as eyeglasses
are a kind of ocular prosthesis. Building cognitive prostheses
is fundamentally different from AI's traditional Turing Test
ambitions -- it doesn't set out to imitate human abilities,
but to extend them. ... AM: In your opinion, how well
do the machine intelligence problems (like navigation, data-mining,
or simulations with agents) map to the basic computer science
[CS] problem of efficient 'search'? KF: Wow, efficient
search is a 'basic computer science problem'? Not long ago,
search was being suggested as a defining characteristic of AI
to distinguish it from 'mainstream' CS. But to return to the
question: search is certainly a central technique in AI, but
the search spaces arising in AI are often impossibly huge, and
a more interesting aspect is not so much how to search them
efficiently as how to re-cast problems so that the search space
itself is reduced in size. Searching is what you do when you
can't think of anything smarter." July 27, 2004: Oticon
hearing aid thinks before it acts. By Linda A. Johnson.
Associated Press / available from nj.com and The Star-Ledger.
"Since George Pankey began using his new hearing aids,
he can understand his 4-year-old grandson, he gets involved
in conversations at family gatherings and he's resumed taking
his wife to the noisy pizza restaurant she likes. ... Pankey,
who lost 85 percent of his hearing from a nearby explosion while
serving in the Korean War, is among the first customers to get
Oticon's new Synchro hearing aids. Hailed as the first-ever
hearing device powered by artificial intelligence, it 'listens'
to the area around the user 20,000 times each second, continually
making adjustments to produce the optimum sound -- much like
the way the brain works in someone with good hearing. ... The
system's two tiny microphones automatically and continuously
pick up nearby sounds, evaluate them and apply settings to boost
the volume of speech and reduce background noise...." July 21, 2004: Robots
get bookish in libraries. By Jo Twist. BBC News. "Robots
have disappointed humans so far in their ability to mix and
help people in their everyday lives. Other than industry and
research, they have mostly been for entertainment. But a group
of robotics researchers at University Jaume I in Spain is working
on a robot librarian which could deliver the promise of a helpful
bot. The prototype has cameras, sensors and grippers so it can
locate and collect a book. The hope is that one day teams of
service robots could work in libraries. ... Because the database
will only give an approximate location, the robot will navigate
its way to the bookshelf, using its infrared and laser guidance
system, and scan books within a four-metre radius. 'Once it
is in there, it starts using its cameras. By moving the arm
with the cameras, it takes an image of the bookshelf,' said
Professor [Angel del] Pobil. 'It can read the labels and the
position of the book using its image processing and optical
character recognition software,' the professor said." July 19, 2004 [issue date]: Ready
To Buy A Home Robot? -- C-3PO they're not -- yet -- but more
smart devices are available than you might think. By Ian Rowley,
Andrew Petty, Ariane Sains and Adam Aston. Business
Week Magazine (subscription req'd.). " Can you run
to the store and buy a robot? Chances are, you already have.
By the definitions of many engineers, your TiVo digital video
recorder and microwave oven are robotic simply because they
contain sensors, microprocessors, and rudimentary artificial
intelligence that allow them to do repeated tasks without human
intervention. ... For a glimpse into the future, BusinessWeek
checked out some of the most intriguing robotic developments
-- things your digital home could grow to love. Many are still
laboratory fantasies costing millions of dollars to make. But
researchers say costs will come down rapidly over the next decade
or so as engineers perfect and mass-market the devices." July 18, 2004: Face
of the future? Some scientists think robots will do domestic
tasks and be as common as TVs. By Robin McKie and David Smith.
The Observer. "Among those who enthusiastically endorse
the imminence of the robot age is the industry analyst, Future
Horizons, which has noted that applications currently under
discussion include the development of baby robots for mother
training, robots for house cleaning, support for the old, disaster
rescue, fast-food serving staff, nursing, opponents in board
games, security, and window cleaning. The report predicts that
total robot revenue will grow from $4.4 billion (£2.3bn) in
2003 to $59.3bn in 2010. 'A robot will be like a TV or a washing
machine - almost every home will have one,' said Malcolm Penn,
chairman of Future Horizons. 'They are clumsy now but it won't
be long before the technology marches on. In five to 10 years
you'll have a robot doing chores like dispensing medicine, feeding
the cat, making cups of tea, taking food out of the freezer
and cooking it in a microwave. We could see the first humanoid
robot football match in five years' time'. Jonathan Elvidge,
founder of The Gadget Shop chain, agrees. He travels the world
to sample cutting-edge technology for consumers. 'Next year
we can expect miniature robots that wander around your desk,
or a robot head you can talk to and which talks back to you.
'In the future you might have a robot that can follow you around
and you can ask it to pay bills or ask what time a film is on
and get it to order your tickets.' ... Household chores are
the domain of domestic appliance robots such as self-navigating
lawnmowers or vacuum cleaners. Sales reached 39,000 units in
2003 and are forecast to hit 20 million by 2008." July 16, 2004: I.T.
May Help Clean a Polluted Sea, Say Researchers. By Mike
Martin. NewsFactor Network. "If an article in this week's
journal Science is on target, air pollution fouls not only our
skies but our oceans as well. ... But software and information
technology may play an equally important role, claim the authors
of a study published in a recent special issue of the journal
Management of Environmental Quality, which is devoted to 'information
technologies in environmental engineering.' 'Rapid environmental
changes call for continuous surveillance and online decision-making
-- two areas where I.T. can be valuable,' say study authors
Ioannis Athanasiadis and Pericles Mitkas. Both are computer
science researchers at the Informatics and Telematics Institute
Center for Research and Technology in Thessaloniki, Greece.
In their study, entitled 'An Agent-Based Intelligent Environmental
Monitoring System,' the researchers 'present a multi-agent system
for monitoring and assessing air-quality attributes, which uses
data coming from a meteorological station.' Their system, the
study explains, uses a 'community of software agents to monitor
and validate measurements coming from several sensors to assess
air-quality.' Software agents are computer systems to which
an operator can delegate tasks. Like the robots in the new movie
'I, Robot,' software agents are more autonomous, proactive and
adaptive than the everyday software we normally use. ... Using
agents to monitor the environment is a branch of 'enviromatics
-- the research initiative examining the application of information
technology in environmental research, monitoring, assessment,
management and policy,' Athanasiadis explains. ... 'In O3RTAA,
several software agents operate in a distributed-agent society
in order to monitor both meteorological and air pollutants,
to evaluate air quality and, ultimately, to trigger alarms'
about environmental damage, Mitkas explains, adding that the
system uses machine-learning algorithms and data-mining methodologies
for 'extracting knowledge.'" July 15, 2004: All eyes on Blinkx - Victor Keegan spoke to the woman taking on Google. The Guardian. "Less than a month ago, Kathy Rittweger went to the office of the technology magazine Business 2.0 in San Francisco to demonstrate Blinkx, a late entrant to the search engine market. ... This week, the site - which is only launched today - has been recording 6m links or hits a day solely from word-of-mouth publicity. ... Blinkx (http://www.blinkx.com) has two selling points. First, it doesn't only search the web but simultaneously scours news sites, emails, attachments and your own hard disk. ... The second selling point is that, unlike Google, it uses artificial intelligence to rate stories, not page rankings. 'What it is trying to say,' she explains, 'is that all words are not equal in a sentence... Quite critically, if you are looking at a document and trying to figure out what it means, Blinkx reads everything you are reading and sorts out what are the key ideas.'"
July 15, 2004: Sizing
up robots. By Julie Moran Alyerio. The Journal News.com. "In
the new movie 'I, Robot,' thinking machines are a part of everyday
life -- watching the kids, walking the dog and cleaning the house.
... Science fiction writers have created dozens of intelligent
robots, from Robby the Robot to R2-D2 to Data on 'Star Trek: The
Next Generation,' but scientists haven't mastered the art of building
human-like mechanical beings to do our bidding. But to a degree
that would surprise many people, robots are part of our lives
in ways that aren't always visible. ... What do these fantasy
robots have that real robots don't? ... Robot scientists call
[intelligence] the missing element, the juice, the spark, said
Jonathan Connell, an IBM researcher and graduate of the famous
artificial intelligence program at Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. 'The question is, 'What is this magic juice that's
missing?' 'he said. 'Once we understand what human-like thought
is, we'll be able to make it.' Intelligence isn't just number
crunching, which computers can easily do today. The first tasks
A.I. researchers tackled were highly cerebral, such as chess and
taking the SATs. 'They solved those. Those were easy. It's the
stuff like tying a shoe or understanding a newspaper article that
turned out to be so much more difficult,' Connell said. ... 'Asimov
always said he was really tired of reading stories about robots
where they turn into Frankenstein's monster. He wanted to write
different stories about robots that were more logical puzzles,'
said Connell, who worries the new movie will stray from Asimov's
view of robots. Robotics pioneer Joseph Engelberger, a friend
of the late Asimov and founder of the first company to make industrial
robots, is more concerned that scientists are adrift from the
author's vision of robots playing a positive role in people's
lives." July 14, 2004: Attack
of the killer vacuum cleaners. By Charles Arthur. The Belfast
Telegraph Digital. "Things are about to happen with robots,
because the element they need to make them truly useful - the
software, which needs to be able to adapt to a wide range of situations
- is getting cheaper all the time. Future Horizons, a semiconductor
analyst based in Kent, forecasts that by 2010 there will be 55.5
million robots, in a world market worth £30bn - up from £2.4bn
last year. 'The electronics industry is on the cusp of a robotics
wave, a period in which applications are aimed at labour-saving
and extending human skills,' it reports. Of those, it says that
39 million will be domestic robots, and 10.5 million 'domestic
intelligent service' robots. That is because there's a growing
need for robots to help the elderly and handicapped. ... But the
real explosion in robotics is coming among the 'immobots' - or,
more simply, just 'bots'. These are bits of software that are
incorporated into larger objects, and that remove a lot of the
strain of having to decide what to do next. We're getting glimpses
of how good these could be at present: the tiny number of Britons
with a TiVo personal video recorder have something that decides,
based on the programmes they choose to record, what other programmes
they might like to see, and records those, too. ... The reason
why we can't yet declare 'The Year of the Robot', however, is
that researchers are still fundamentally split about how robots
should behave and learn. One group favours the 'top-down' approach,
in which all the behaviour of the robot is mapped out, and its
software is written to fill out that behaviour. The Roomba vacuum
cleaner is a classic example.... The alternative is something
assembled from smaller, self-contained units, which creates a
gestalt of behaviour based on that. Thus the system that controls
the legs learns to 'walk' independently.... Sony's Aibo draws
on a form of this.... July 14, 2004:
I, robot psychiatrist. By Rachel Sauer. PalmBeachPost.com.
"Aibo accidentally lurched into Roomba and didn't know what
to do. The circuits in his small robo-canine brain fired. Stumble
on? Turn back? Weave around? ... So here's the thing to know about
the Boca Raton home that Joanne Pransky shares with her husband
and 7-year-old daughter: It is a nest for robots.... In her home
-- unlike in the movie I, Robot, which opens Friday -- robots
are not feared. They are beloved. They serve a purpose, whether
it's work or entertainment. They are physically and mentally healthy.This
is because Pransky is the world's first robotic psychiatrist.
Yes. It is a term she coined for herself, tongue firmly in cheek
(see her Web site at www.robot.md), when she began working with
robots more than 20 years ago, having gotten into electronics
through computer sales and training. ... So she has a thing or
two to say about robots and our relationship with them. ... Q:
Why do we need or want robots? ... Q: Then why are robots so often
villains in movies? ... Q: But is it OK to treat them like humans?
... Q: Could robots evolve and take over, like in the movies?
... " July 13, 2004: Is
I, Robot Our Future? Opinion by Lance Ulanoff. PC Magazine.
"I'll admit it, I'm a robot snob. This has little to do with
knowledge and virtually everything to do with my insistence that
I think I know what makes a true robot. At least I thought I did,
until recent conversations with robotics experts -- the people
in the trenches building, developing, and programming robotics
technologies. Some new robot developments and a glimpse of this
summer's anticipated blockbuster I, Robot got me thinking that
I may need to broaden my definition, or better yet, step back
and reconsider the whole thing. ... I was beginning to come to
terms with the fact that a robot is less a concrete set of characteristics
than an 'I know it when I see it' kind of thing. Why? Movies.
Television. Books. Robots were a part of our fantasy world long
before we had the technology to actually produce them. ... But
here's the really exciting thing I learned during my panel discussion:
The dream and the reality are beginning to converge. This became
evident when MIT's Cynthia Breazeal opened her brief introduction
with a handful of remarkable videos, featuring her social-robot
project, Leonardo. Developed in conjunction with movie special-effects
impresario Stan Winston, Leonardo is one of the most remarkable
robots I've ever seen. ... [The movie I Robot is] the
future we've always dreams of -- sort of: robots everywhere, helping
us do everything we never wanted to do (or could do). But does
it have any relation to reality? Are we actually on a trajectory
that will take us from Sony's QRIO and Honda's Asimo straight
to I, Robot's stunning central robotic character, Sonny? Again,
I turned to our experts. Will robots like Sonny exist in roughly
30 years? ... Our robotic destinies will be as varied as the world's
many tongues. I will continue to try to set expectations by examining
and discussing all robotics developments. I will also embrace
all forms of robots and accept the small (Robosapien) and large
(Leonardo) advances with equal enthusiasm and prepare for the
day when I, Robot's Sonny is as real as the iRobot Roomba." July 13, 2004 [issue date]: Pushing The Limits. By Carol Levin. PC Magazine (Volume 23, Number 12). "As PC Magazine editors and analysts, we spend our days staying ahead of the curve so our readers can be the first to learn about the latest technology products for their homes and offices. But once a year, we turn our attention not to products you can buy today but to those technologies that are gathering momentum, poised to make an impact on the future. The past twelve months have delivered an ample assortment of candidates. For our first story, 'Top Ten Tech Trends,' we take you on a tour of what we think are the most promising technologies. ... Technological advancement and cultural change go hand in hand, so this year we explore the intersection of technology and society in four essays. ... In 'The New Geek,' Steve Lohr, a technology writer at The New York Times, speaks with several of the new-generation high-tech workers about computer science as the new liberal-arts degree. Along the way, he shows how technology's impact on productivity is changing. In 'Nowhere to Hide,' business reporter Alan Cohen takes on the emerging collision between privacy and security."
>>> AI Overview, Computer Science, Assisitive Technologies, Machine Translation, Natural Language Understanding, Resources for Students, Ethical & Social Implications, Natural Language Processing, Applications July 12, 2004: Mini-robot
helps surgeons operate on spine. By Charles Choi. United Press
International / available from MedlinePlus
/ also
available from SpaceDaily. "A
miniature robot designed to help surgeons operate more precisely
and successfully on the spine is expected to enter the market
sometime near the end of this year, researchers told United Press
International. SpineAssist, as the soda-can-sized machine is called,
attaches directly to the patient's body. Surgeons insert surgical
instruments such as drills or needles through the arm of the robot,
and the device helps position the surgeon's hand. The hope is
to minimize the risk of nerve damage, blood loss and infection.
'Another advantage of the robot is that it helps make such surgery
minimally invasive,' Moshe Shoham, creator of the device and director
of the robotics lab at Technion-Israel Institute of Technology
in Haifa, Israel, told UPI. 'You don't have to perform an operation
along the entire back. With the robot guiding a surgeon, you can
just perform through a keyhole lesion.' Robot-assisted surgery
is a steadily growing field, with a few dozen surgical robot prototypes
developed since the early 1990s. The most prominent is ROBODOC,
from Integrated Surgical Systems in Davis, Calif., as well as
Da Vinci and Zeus, from Intuitive Surgical in Sunnyvale, Calif." July 12, 2004: The
Coming Robot Revolution - They could fight wars, drive cars
and patrol data centers. Future Watch by Lucas Mearian. Computerworld.
"Robots, from mechanical dogs that can learn new tricks to
automated vacuum cleaners that avoid furniture, are steadily becoming
a part of everyday life. But the real robot boom lies just ahead,
experts say. In the future, robots could help determine the outcome
of wars and identify problems in data centers. Office buildings
may come to life as they use Wi-Fi to dispatch robots to control
human access, test heating and cooling systems, and fetch tools
for workers. Computerworld recently spoke about the future of
robots with three experts: Chuck Thorpe, director of Carnegie
Mellon University's Robotics Institute; Jeanne Dietsch, CEO of
MobileRobots.com in Nashua, N.H.; and Vijay Kumar , a professor
in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics
at the University of Pennsylvania. Here's what they said: ...
" July 12, 2004: New
Roomba Vacuum Finds Its Way Home - IRobot updates its high-tech
tool for cleaning your house. By Tom Krazit. IDG News Service
/ PC World. "The newest generation of the Roomba robot vacuum
cleaner has learned how to charge itself at a docking station,
detect the best cleaning pattern for a given room, and seek out
dirt particles the size of finely ground pepper. If only it could
take out the trash and wash the windows." July 11, 2004: New
Hires Give Virtual Edge to Two Lakeland Businesses - Computer-generated
employees interact with consumers via company Web sites. By Adrian
Zawada. The Ledger Online. "Abby and Gigi recently found
jobs in Lakeland, and they don't ever call in sick, take breaks
or need health insurance. They work for two prominent Lakeland
entities that have taken their Web sites to the cutting edge by
hiring computer-generated virtual employees. ... Hired as the
virtual customer service representative for www.michaelholleychevrolet.com,
[Abby] relies on a sophisticated natural language processing program
and learns by artificial intelligence. "If there is a question
not known or off-the-wall, and if artificial intelligence and
natural language doesn't cover it, the administrator can enter
it into the knowledge base," said Wayne Scholar, co-founder of
Pittsburgh based Eidoserve, which created Abby for Michael Holley
Chevrolet. Abby and Gigi provide more than just amusement for
visitors to their respective Web sites. A virtual employee has
the ability to turn a casual Web surfer browsing for cars into
a bona fide customer, Scholar said. After all, he estimates 82
percent of automobile customers research the Web before they come
in to buy." July 7, 2004: Software
aids future tennis stars. BBC News. " As Britons bemoan
another year without a Wimbledon hero, there could be some hope
in a computer model being worked on at Kingston University in
London. ... It will create a computer-generated competitor which
rival players can pit themselves against. The system will analyse
video footage of champions and allow other players to explore
tactics to beat them. ... The research will focus initially on
tennis but will move on to look at more complex sports such as
football and basketball. 'As well as helping specialised sports
training, the technology we are developing could have benefits
in fields such as realistic computer gaming, virtual reality and
surveillance,' said Dr Ahmed Shihab of the School of Computing
and Information Systems at Kingston University." July 6, 2004: Robots may scout fields on farms of the future. By Doug Peterson, University of Illinois Extension. @griculture Online. "Farm equipment in the future might very well resemble the robot R2D2 of Star Wars fame. But instead of careening through a galaxy far, far away, these ag robots might be wobbling down a corn row, scouting for insects, blasting weeds and taking soil tests. University of Illinois agricultural engineers have developed several ag robots, one of which actually resembles R2D2, except that it's square instead of round. The robots are completely autonomous, directing themselves down corn rows, turning at the end and then moving down the next row, said Tony Grift, University of Illinois agricultural engineer. The long-term goal, he said, is for these small, inexpensive robots to take on some of the duties now performed by large, expensive farm equipment. ... Robots have been a part of industrial environments for decades now, but Grift said the time may be right for robots to adapt to the more rugged environment outdoors. His partner, [Yoshi] Nagasaka, has had considerable experience with ag robots, developing autonomous rice planters for the challenging landscape of rice paddies in Japan."
July 6, 2004: Courier
robots get traction in hospitals after fits and starts. By
Mike Crissey. Associated Press / available from USA Today. "Near
a pair of swinging doors at a local hospital, a cart sits apparently
abandoned. Yet at the push of a button, it perks up to say, 'thank
you' and rolls itself out the door toward the pharmacy. The 50-pound
machine, which looks like a vacuum cleaner mated to a cabinet,
is designed to autonomously ferry loads of linens, medical supplies,
X-rays, food and other materials. In a push to lower costs and
free up workers for more critical tasks, hospital officials are
turning more and more to robots like TUG to ply their hallways.
Other robots include the RoboCart -- a motorized table -- and
the droid-like HelpMate, a 4-foot tall cabinet with flashing lights
and turn signals that would be welcome in any sci-fi movie. ...
[TUGs'] 'brains' are packed with detailed maps of hospitals and
computer programs to help them keep track of where they are, where
they're going and the right time to jump on an elevator. ... They
aren't problem-free, however. On a recent run in the University
of Pittsburgh's Magee Women's Hospital, a TUG en route from the
pharmacy to another floor went silent and idle for several minutes
while waiting for an elevator. The robot's behavior baffled Aethon
president Aldo Zini, but after a call to headquarters, he figured
it out. The TUG was being too cautious. It won't get on an elevator
if it thinks the elevator is too full. ... [H]ospitals could soon
turn to self-guided robots to counteract financial and staffing
shortages." July 6, 2004: Virtual
Camp Trains Soldiers in Arabic, and More. By Margaret Wertheim.
The New York Times (no fee reg. req'd.). "Sergeant Smith
is not a real soldier, but the leading character in a video game
being developed at the University of Southern California's School
of Engineering as a tool for teaching soldiers to speak Arabic.
Both the game's environment and the characters who populate it
have a high degree of realism, in an effort to simulate the kinds
of situations troops will face in the Middle East. Talle is modeled
on an actual Lebanese village, while the game's characters are
driven by artificial-intelligence software that enables them to
behave autonomously and react realistically to Sergeant Smith.
The Tactical Language Project, as it is called, is being developed
at U.S.C.'s Center for Research in Technology for Education, in
cooperation with the Special Operations Command. ... One of the
tools the Carte team has developed is a virtual tutor that uses
artificial intelligence software to coach individual students
through the minefield of pronunciation. To do this, the researchers
have had to design speech recognition software tailored specifically
for language learners. ... Developing so-called intelligent agents
is currently a hot research topic and U.S.C.'s Information Sciences
Institute, where Carte is based, is home to world leaders in this
field. Two institute scientists, Dr. David Pynadath and Dr. Stacy
Marsella, have developed a program called PsychSim to model individual
and group behavior among agents." July 6, 2004: Programmer
seems to have a technology that does everything. By Rachel
Melcer. St. Louis Post-Dispatch / STLtoday.com. "Steven Thaler,
founder of Imagination Engines Inc. in Maryland Heights, says
he has a unique challenge: figuring out what to do with a technology
that does everything. He and his supporters say his creation,
a computer program called the Creativity Machine, has huge economic
potential. It could be the first successful form of artificial
intelligence, a machine that learns and thinks by simulating the
human brain's activity. ... Imagination Engines also is experimenting
with spinoff companies that license the core technology and adapt
it for specific uses. ... The first spinoff, Synaptrix Financial
Prediction LLC, was created last year as a partner for Stann Financial.
It aims to analyze a real-time flow of information on trades in
the financial markets to predict the best time to buy or sell
a particular stock. The project showed early promise, reaching
a 60 percent to 65 percent accuracy rate, but it stalled over
problems with the information feed and the need to refine its
programming, [John] Stann said. ... Synaptrix Parts Inspection
LLC, another of his spinoffs, combines an ordinary video camera
with the Creativity Machine's neural network and custom software
to perform quality-control checks in manufacturing. The system
is 'shown' a variety of objects that it can learn to instantly
identify for sorting or to use as an ideal to spot defects and
variations. ... On the government side, Imagination Engines is
part of a consortium developing an airport-security system for
the Department of Homeland Security. The group recently got an
18-month, $800,000 grant to design and test a series of smart
sensors at an airport in Butte, Mont. The system would be able
to identify vehicles on airport property, monitor them, spot and
warn of suspicious activity, Thaler said." July 5, 2004: Can
Computers Argue? Innovations Report. "The effectiveness
of argumentation-based negotiation (ABN) for computer agents operating
in multi-agent systems is assessed in a new paper co-authored by
Professor Nick Jennings of the School of Electronics and Computer
Science at the University of Southampton. Professor Jennings will
be presenting the paper next week in New York, at AAMAS 2004, one
of the largest conferences in the world of computer research. Agents
are autonomous computer systems increasingly used in a wide range
of industrial and commercial domains, including robotics, e-commerce,
computer games, and information retrieval. They are regarded as
one of the most significant new technologies in computer science--not
only a promising new technology, but also a new way of thinking,
fundamental to the successful development of the next generation
of distributed, open and dynamic computer systems. ... 'Conflicts
are inevitable in a multi-agent system,' says Professor Jennings,
'in which autonomous entities pursue their own goals. If the agents
are to be able to resolve these problems -- which can arise due
to pressure on resources or as a result of conflicts of information
-- then ABN provides a meaningful interaction, enabling the agents
to work towards the best result.'" July 3, 2004 [issue date]: Let
software catch the game for you. By James Randerson. New Scientist
Magazine (Computers that understand the action are compiling highlights
packages - page 24). Software that can identify the significant
events in live TV sports broadcasts will soon be able to compile
programmes of highlights without any help from people. The technology
will save broadcasters millions in editing costs - and should eventually
lead to new generations of video recorders that will let people
customise their own sports highlights packages. But developing software
that understands sport is no easy task. ... Anil Kokaram and colleagues
at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland are among the teams trying
to turn the idea into reality. ... The Trinity team's PC-based software
uses the edges of the table and the positions of the pockets to
work out where the balls are on the table. The software has the
rules of the game programmed in, so it can track the moving balls
and work out what has happened. ... Carlo Colombo and colleagues
at the University of Florence, Italy, are trying out another idea.
They found that they can compile highlights from soccer footage
without tracking the ball or the moving players. ... Ahmet Ekin,
a computer scientist from the University of Rochester in New York,
may be close to solving that problem. He has designed software that
looks for a specific sequence of camera shots to work out whether
a goal has been scored." July 1, 2004: Battlefield
Robots Leap From Science Fiction to Reality. By Brian Handwerk.
National Geographic News. "Once the fantasy of science fiction,
battlefield robots are now a reality. 'The whole idea is to take
the war fighter out of harm's way,' Robin Laird said. Laird is supervisor
of the Unmanned Systems Branch of the U.S. Navy's Space and Naval
Warfare Systems Center (SPAWAR) in San Diego. 'In my mind, someday
we'll be doing battle with robots -- not killing people,' said Laird,
whose program serves all four branches of the U.S. military. ...
Military robots can be used for disposing of explosives, combat
engineering tasks like clearing mines or placing explosives, reconnaissance,
detecting nuclear and biological agents, and hazardous materials
cleanup, among others tasks. ... Though the goal is to disarm explosives
without detonating them, the loss of a U.S. $50,000-robot is seen
positively. 'We have lost robots because we [were] doing inspections
-- and that makes us ecstatic,' Laird said. 'That means somebody
didn't lose an arm. That's why were doing this. So those losses
are successes.'" July 2004 [issue date]: Homeland
Security as Catalyst - Innovative software firms are answering
the call from U.S. government agencies for advanced analytics to
help combat terrorism and criminal activity. What's the potential
of this software for strategic business applications? By Jesus Mena.
Intelligent Enterprise Magazine. "Ever heard of NORA? Or how
about these guys: InferAgent, CopLink, NameHunter, Bladeworks, and
Sentinel? These ominous-sounding fellows are products from tiny
software firms that are developing some of the most advanced analytic
technologies today for homeland security. Some provide solutions
for the conversion of garbled text into knowledge discovery. Others
tend to the unearthing of associations of individuals to actions,
locations, and events from hundreds of thousands of internal and
external records. Still others offer innovative methods for detecting
fraud, categorizing foreign names, and virtual, remote analysis
of data or text from any database in the world for agencies such
as the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Terrorist Threat Integration
Center (TTIC). Given the growing diversity and globalization of
business enterprises, is it possible that these innovative technologies,
finding clear purpose for homeland security, could also be of interest
to private business enterprises? In this article, I will describe
some of these new technologies and how they may be applied to your
company today and tomorrow. Who Are These Guys? Innovative
products I mentioned at the beginning are commercial off-the-shelf
(COTS) software -- a term favored by military and government agencies
-- originating from such companies as Attensity, InferX, Infoglide,
Knowledge Computing Corp. (KCC), Language Analysis Systems (LAS),
Searchspace, System Research & Development (SRD), and others. Almost
all have developed applications based on artificial intelligence
technologies to meet demand from first military and intelligence
communities, and now from the emerging homeland security market." THERE'S MORE ! SEE THE APPLICATIONS NEWS ARCHIVE |
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