January 17, 2005: Car, play me Eminem's latest hit. By John Borland. CNET News.com. "The company says it's developing voice-recognition software that will help drivers maneuver though hard drive-based car music systems that hold thousands or even tens of thousands of songs. ... .'Pushing buttons can be challenging when you're driving down the road at 80 miles an hour,' said Ross Blanchard, Gracenote's vice president of business development. 'The reason we thought we could do this now is that they've worked out the problems with voice recognition in the navigation and telematics market.'"
>>> Speech, Natural Language Processing, Interfaces, Transportation, Applications

January 17, 2005: Together in electric dreams - A computer program is changing the face of the music business by allowing record labels to predict a hit at the click of a mouse. By Jo Tatchell. The Guardian. "The magic ingredient set to revolutionise the pop industry is, simply, a piece of software that can 'predict' the chance of a track being a hit or a miss. This computerised equivalent of the television programmer Juke Box Jury is known as Hit Song Science (HSS). It has been developed by a Spanish company, Polyphonic HMI, which used decades of experience developing artificial intelligence technology for the banking and telecoms industries to create a program that analysed the underlying mathematical patterns in music."
>>> Machine Learning, Music, Banking, Telecommunications, Applications

January 15, 2004: McDonald makes it official. By Helen Colwell Adams. Sunday News & Lancaster Online.com. "Steve McDonald was speaking at a seminar in York about the digital transformation of the Lancaster County recorder of deeds office. ... Lancaster County’s recorder was the first in the state, and one of the first in the nation, to begin electronic recording of deeds and mortgages. It was the first in the state, and sixth in the nation, to record mortgage satisfactions digitally. It was the first in Pennsylvania to allow 'full and free' access to records at www.lancasterdeeds.com, and first in the state and one of five nationwide to use 'artificial intelligence software' to automatically capture data on documents. ... 'This is not your father’s recorder of deeds office,' he said."
>>> Knowledge Management, Applications

January 14, 2005: Hi-tech strategist. By Helen Knight. The Engineer. "Dstl's [Defence Science and Technology Laboratory] researchers aim to determine how best to harness various technologies to ensure that military commanders have the information at their disposal to make the best operational decisions. They are concentrating on a number of areas of growing importance to the MoD [Ministry of Defence], such as Network Enabled Capability (NEC), where they are investigating advances in sensors, information technology, artificial intelligence and neural networks. 'Whereas in the past we might have carried out research into something like an infrared detector, we're now working more at the systems level --- on how you might use an infrared sensor to gather information and present it to a commander or someone in the field,' said [Dr Frances] Saunders."
>>> Military, Systems, Machine Learning, Applications

January 12/19/ 2005: Video organizes paper. By Kimberly Patch. Technology Research News. "With the notion of the paperless office fading into history, researchers from the University of Washington are working to more closely integrate the paper world -- still on the rise -- with the world of electronic data. The researchers' system uses a computer and overhead video camera to track physical documents on a desk and automatically link them to appropriate electronic documents. The researchers have constructed a pair of prototypes that track paper documents and sort photos. ... The researchers' system uses a combination of computer vision techniques to infer the structure of a stack of papers."
>>> Interfaces, Vision, Information Retrieval, Applications

January 12/19, 2005: Conversations control computers. By Eric Smalley. Technology Research News. "Because information from spoken conversations is fleeting, people tend to record schedules and assignments as they discuss them. Entering notes into a computer, however, can be tedious -- especially when the act interrupts a conversation. Researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology are aiming to decrease day-to-day data entry and to augment users' memories with a method that allows handheld computers to harvest keywords from conversations and make use of relevant information without interrupting the personal interactions. ... The researchers' system protects privacy by only using speech from the user's side of the conversation, said [Kent] Lyons."
>>> Interfaces, Speech, Agents, Natural Language Processing, Applications

January 10, 2005: First Digital Tools for Arabic Handwriting Being Developed by Biometrics Researchers at UB. By Ellen Goldbaum. UB News. "While more students now may be taking courses in the Arabic language, the lack of digital tools to access Arabic documents on the Web puts these fields of study and those who pursue them at a distinct disadvantage. Computer scientists at the University at Buffalo's Center for Unified Biometrics and Sensors (CUBS) are remedying that by developing the first optical character recognition (OCR) software for handwritten and machine-printed Arabic documents. ... 'The whole Internet is skewed toward people who speak English,' observed [Venu] Govindaraju. 'The fear is that if an OCR is not developed for a particular language, then all the classic texts in that language will disappear into oblivion. The automation of the interpretation of written Arabic will have major benefits for numerous applications.' ... '[I]n addition to the benefits for readers of Arabic, this project will help push the frontiers of computer vision, pattern recognition and artificial intelligence in general,' he said."
>>> Image Understanding, Pattern Recognition, Libraries, Vision, Machine Learning, Applications

January 10, 2005: Digital lifesaver - Ex-dropout turns disaster into thriving retrieval firm. By Julie Poppen. Rocky Mountain News. "[Brady] Essman's story began with a crashed hard drive that resulted in critical sales information being lost. ... 'It came out of a personal disaster of my own,' Essman said, describing the company's origins. 'I just lost a hard drive and went through a data recovery nightmare. I paid an exorbitant fee for data recovery. My server was never truly given successfully back to me.' Thus the concept behind digitalmedix was born in 1999. ... [Jeremiah 'Bray'] Weaver developed an in-house operating system for digitalmedix that is always updated to find data patterns and fill in missing chunks of information based upon probability models. Each new generation of hard drives brings new challenges. ... Essman said Weaver is the only person anywhere who has programmed artificial intelligence in data recovery. Digitalmedix has spent more than $1 million on research and development in the past three years."
>>> Business, Probability, Applications

January 8, 2005: Voicemail software recognises callers' emotions. By Celeste Biever. New Scientist Magazine. "A voicemail system that labels messages according to the caller's tone of voice could soon be helping people identify which messages are the most urgent. The software, called Emotive Alert, is designed by Zeynep Inanoglu and Ron Caneel of the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. ... Another British company, Edinburgh-based Affective Media, will soon be selling software for cars that detects drowsiness and frustration in a driver's voice as he or she asks the in-car navigation system for directions, and will attempt to wake the driver up or calm them down, as appropriate. It could also be used in computer games to detect boredom levels and spice up the action accordingly."
>>> Speech, Machine Learning, Emotion, Interfaces, Natural Language Processing, Telecommunications, Transportation, Video Games, Cognitive Science, Applications

January 6, 2005: Solar robots. e4engineering.com. "A group of researchers is working to develop a network of distributed sensing devices and water-monitoring robots, including solar-powered autonomous underwater vehicles (SAUVs). ... The goal of ongoing experimentation by the researchers at Rensselaer's Darrin Fresh Water Institute (DFWI) on Lake George, NY is to develop SAUVs that will communicate and network together, thus allowing a coordinated effort of long-term monitoring, according to Art Sanderson, professor of electrical, computer, and systems engineering at Rensselaer. ... 'This research is a significant step toward obtaining real-time monitoring of water quality,' said Sandra Nierzwicki-Bauer...."
>>> Autonomous Vehicles, Natural Resource Management, Robots, Applications

January 6, 2005: With Japan aging, Toyota to staff factories with robots. Agence France Presse / available from Channel NewsAsia. "Toyota Motor will introduce robots which can work as well or better than humans at all 12 of its factories in Japan to cut costs and deal with a looming labor shortage as the country ages, according to a press report. The robots would be able to carry out multiple tasks simultaneously with their two arms, achieving efficiency unseen in human workers and matching the cheap wages of Chinese laborers, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun said. ... Toyota has been increasingly turning to robot development and plans to welcome visitors to its pavillion at the World Expo in Japan in March with humanoid robots jamming in a brass ensemble and performing hip-hop."
>>> Robots, Manufacturing, Applications, Ethical & Social Implications

January 6, 2005: Search Looks at the Big Picture. By John Gartner. Wired News. "Searching the internet for images or videos often leads down a blind alley or worse -- to deceitful advertisers or unsuitable content. Researchers are developing visualization technologies that can 'see' inside images, reducing search engines' reliance on text-based image tags that are easily manipulated. ... The image-processing software looks for 'key patches' in an image to determine the relative positions of different shapes, such as tires and a car body, or a beach and ocean waves, to categorize the image's contents, [Christopher] Dance said. The software has learned hundreds of objects since development began in 2002, and 'can be used to categorize images and automatically create image tags,' Dance said. With the software, search engines could retrieve only images that contain people, which would help find those whose surnames are also nouns, such as Bush, Seal or Bonds, according to Dance. The software can look for images similar to those it has already scanned and 'knows,' he said."
>>> Information Retrieval, Image Understanding, Applications, Vision, Machine Learning

January 5, 2005: Schools grow as gaming industry comes of age. By Victor Godinez. The Dallas Morning News & Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services // available from MENAFN. "The industry that once relied on self-taught tinkerers is growing up, and SMU [Southern Methodist University] is among the universities rushing to prepare the next generation of gaming professionals. [Brian] Harris is a student in SMU's Guildhall, which offers an 18-month certificate program in the art and science of video game development. ... Game makers have been mostly home-schooled up to now, fiddling with code on their personal computers or designing add-on levels for existing games. But budgets for blockbuster titles are now $10 million to $20 million, and development teams of programmers, designers, artists, animators, musicians and artificial intelligence experts often number 100 or more. 'Because games are getting much more complex and teams are growing, it's becoming more of a structured discipline,' said Tim Willits, co-owner of id Software and lead designer at the company. ... Among the highest profile of the new video game courses is the Electronic Arts Interactive Entertainment Program in the University of Southern California's School of Cinema-Television. It's a three-year master of fine arts program created earlier this year when EA, the industry's largest publisher, invested $8 million to create a training ground for designers and developers."
>>> AI Courses & Careers in AI (@ Resources for Students), Software Development, Video Games, Applications

January 5, 2005: The Business of Fighting Terror. By Ryan Singel. Wired News. "Antiterrorism is an industry. Since the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon in 2001, the news has been filled with stories on proposed surveillance and data-mining programs, ranging from the Total Information Awareness system and the MATRIX to CAPPS II and journalist Steven Brill's drive for a private, biometric identification card. Antiterrorism books also form an industry -- albeit a smaller one -- but until Robert O'Harrow Jr., a reporter for The Washington Post, published No Place to Hide ($26, Free Press) this week, the true nature of an ever-growing national surveillance complex was largely unknown."
>>> Law Enforcement, Data Mining, Biometrics (@ Image Understanding), Machine Learning, Applications, Ethical & Social Implications

January 4, 2005: Building a Smarter Search Engine. Startup profile by Heather Green. BusinessWeek Online. "While watching an academic presentation of video-search technology at Carnegie Mellon University six years ago, Valdes-Perez, then a full-time computer-science professor, became exasperated with screen after screen of seemingly nonsensical results. 'Wherever we looked, information seemed to be disorganized,' says Valdes-Perez. So, along with two other CMU researchers, he set out to come up with a smarter way to return search results. Armed with their research in using artificial intelligence to help organize scientific discovery, the three computer scientists founded a search startup four years ago. Called Vivisimo.... Now, Pittsburgh-based Vivisimo is trying to streamline search for consumers with a new service called Clusty. Since its launch three months ago, Clusty has generated buzz for its clean design and clever approach. Using artificial intelligence, Clusty groups search results into different categories."
>>> Information Retrieval, Scientific Discovery, Applications

January 2, 2005: How to Pick an Orange? The choice between back-breaking human labor and efficient fruit-harvesting machines is approaching fast, just as it did more than 40 years ago when the mechanical tomato harvester revolutionized California agriculture. So why is there no easy answer to the question? By Karen Brandon. Los Angeles Times Magazine. "Part robot, part tractor, the contraption is an unusual combination of one internal-combustion engine, four rubber tires, eight digital cameras, eight electronic arms and an excruciating number of computer algorithms that choreograph every movement. Its metal arms maneuver among the branches, where 'eyes' spot the fruit and suction-cup 'hands' grasp them even more gently than human hands, which is what they are designed to replace. ... For now, this machine exists exclusively in a virtual citrus orchard on a computer screen in an unassuming second-story office in Sorrento Valley, San Diego's corridor of high-technology entrepreneurship. It was conceived by two Massachusetts Institute of Technology-educated inventers, Bret Wallach and Tony Koselka, who founded Vision Robotics Corp., a 4-year-old company whose most recent success was the invention of a robot vacuum cleaner capable of cleaning the carpet by itself while dodging table legs and other obstacles. ... Many agricultural researchers say machines may offer the best hope for many types of American agriculture that now depend on an immigrant workforce, subsidies and tariffs. Many believe machines offer a better, cheaper and possibly more humane way to harvest the labor-intensive crops that are the hallmark of farming in California, a nearly $28-billion industry. ... California --- the state with the nation's largest and most complicated agricultural labor market --- has been down the road to mechanization before, when the tomato harvester revolutionized production of that crop more than 40 years ago. But now, as then, the questions raised by the technology are rife with political, social and economic implications. ... César Chávez, quoting fearful farmworkers in a 1978 article in the Nation, called such machines 'los monstruos,' the monsters. ... Clearly, machine harvesting was a better way to get tomatoes out of the field. Not everyone, however, agreed that ought to be the only goal."
>>> Agriculture, Robots, Ethical & Social Implications, History, Household Appliances, Applications

January 1, 2005: Ernestine, Meet Julie - Natural language speech recognition is markedly improving voice-activated self-service. By Karen Bannan. CFO Magazine. "If only Amtrak's Web designers were as attentive as the makers of the railroad's telephone self-service system. That system, which features the digitized voice of an operator named Julie, is a primer on good customer service. Rather than requiring Amtrak's 20 million or so yearly callers to punch in numbers, the system allows them to voice responses to questions like 'What city are you departing from?' And unlike many Web-based self-service setups, Amtrak's voice-activated operator does most of the legwork for the customer. Expect to bump into more Julies out there. A new technology, called natural language speech recognition, is markedly improving voice-activated self-service. Powered by artificial intelligence, these speech-recognition systems are altering consumer perceptions about phone self-service, as calls for help no longer elicit calls for help. That, in turn, is spurring renewed corporate interest in the concept of phone self-service. In 2004, sales of voice self-service systems topped $1.2 billion. 'We've seen voice systems move from emerging technology to applied technology over the last few years,' says Steve Cramoysan, principal analyst at Stamford, Connecticut-based research firm Gartner. 'It's still fairly immature. But it's proven and moving toward the mainstream.'"
>>> Natural Language Processing, Speech, Customer Service, Industry Statistics, Applications

January 2005: Keeping Up the Fleet - Improving Maintenance of Military Gear requires Access to Information. By Joe Pappalardo. National Defense Magazine. "Wih a growing backlog of equipment repair and maintenance work, the U.S. military services and contractors are finding that, in order to expedite the job, they need computer systems that can share information across the supply chain. ... A number of programs have been established within the Air Force to facilitate the repair and servicing of equipment. An intelligent logistics monitoring system is at the heart of a program called expeditionary logistics for the 21st century, or eLog, which aims for a 20 percent increase in system availability by 2007. The software in eLog organizes spare-parts requests, helping to reduce the downtime of damaged equipment. The program’s artificial intelligence turns data into maintenance predictions by warning of impending mechanical component failures in motorized vehicles."
>>> Military, Applications

January 2005: Considerate Computing- Digital gadgets demand ever more of our attention with their rude and thoughtless interruptions. Engineers are now testing computers, phones and cars that sense when you're busy and spare you from distraction. By W. Wayt Gibbs. Scientific American (subscription req'd.). "'If we could just give our computers and phones some understanding of the limits of human attention and memory, it would make them seem a lot more thoughtful and courteous,' says Eric Horvitz of Microsoft Research. Horvitz, [Roel] Vertegaal, [Ted] Selker and [Rosalind] Picard are among a small but growing number of researchers trying to teach computers, phones, cars and other gadgets to behave less like egocentric oafs and more like considerate colleagues. To do this, the machines need new skills of three kinds: sensing, reasoning and communicating. First a system must sense or infer where its owner is and what he or she is doing. Next it must weigh the value of the messages it wants to convey against the cost of the disruption. Then it has to choose the best mode and time to interject. Each of these pushes the limits of computer science and raises issues of privacy, complexity or reliability."
>>> Interfaces, Ethical & Social Implications, Reasoning, Vision, Transportation, Systems, Applications

January 2005: You, Robot - He says humans will download their minds into computers one day. With a new robotics firm, Hans Moravec begins the journey from warehouse drones to robo sapiens. By Chip Walter. Scientific American. "The 56-year-old Moravec should know. Born in Kautzen, Austria, and raised in Montreal, he has been pushing the envelope on robotics theory and experimentation for the past 35 years, first as the graduate student at Stanford University who created the 'Stanford Cart,' the first mobile robot capable of seeing and autonomously navigating the world around it (albeit very slowly), and later as a central force in Carnegie Mellon's vaunted Robotics Institute. His iconoclastic theories and inventive work in machine vision have both shocked his colleagues and jump-started research; Seegrid [Corporation] is just the next logical step. ... Industrial robots already flourish in tightly constrained environments such as assembly lines. Where they fail is in locations loaded with unpredictability. So Seegrid concentrated on creating vision systems that enable simple machines to move supplies around warehouses without any human direction. Not exactly the stuff of science fiction, Moravec agrees, and a long way from superintelligent robots, but he says you have to start somewhere. ... The same themes run through his view of the future of robotics. Evolution moves in tiny steps, Moravec notes, but accomplishes amazing things. Machine evolution will do the same as it incrementally nudges robots from their clumsy beginnings to the heights of human-level intelligence and mobility."
>>> Robots, Vision, History, AI Overview, Business & Manufacturing, Applications, Careers in AI (@ Resources for Students)

December 31, 2004: Analysis - The triumph of the robots. By Phil Berardelli. United Press International / available from The Washington Times. "NASA's robotic craft exploring Mars and the Saturnian system in 2004, however, have carried off feats that are unparalleled in human history -- and they promise to deliver more wonders in the new year. ... Cassini and Huygens, like the twin Mars rovers, represent perhaps the most sophisticated robotic craft built so far. They are designed to act largely independently because the rovers -- and the Saturn craft even more so -- are beyond the range of direct control from mission scientists. ... The situation is much more so for Cassini and Huygens, which currently are about 800 million miles away from Earth."
>>> AI Overview, Robots, Space Exploration, Applications, History

December 31, 2004: The top 10 news stories of 2004 - 8. Photo recognition software gives location. By Sean O'Neill. NewScientist.com news. "The program matches the photograph to a database of three-dimensional images, meaning its accuracy is better than GPS or cellphone positioning."
>>> AI Overview, History, Image Understanding, Vision, Machine Learning, Applications; and see the related article from April 2004

December 31, 2004: Simplicity sets tone for cell phones. Editorial by Nicholas Negroponte. The Straits Times (Singapore) Asia News Network / available from The Korea Times. "A scenario even more futuristic than the tooth telephone is a new class of device, one with reasoning and common sense. An example might be a mobile phone that neither rings nor vibrates: instead it answers itself or reads the message and takes appropriate action, like a well-trained butler who knows when and how to interrupt you. This level of intelligence, which probably will not be available for another 10 to 20 years, requires familiarity with you, your life and your moods, the kind you would expect to find in the world's best human secretary. But this artificial intelligence also requires a familiar understanding of the world around us and how we live in it. None of these advances will happen tomorrow. Instead we will evolve through a handful of smaller changes that can be expected with greater speed and certainty."
>>> Telecommunications, Interfaces, Commonsense, Reasoning, Applications

December 30, 2004: These content apps were kings. By L. C. Wong. The Star Online TechCentral. "What does a virtual girlfriend, a navigation system, a celebrity look-alike service and a barcode solution have in common? They were the mobile applications that beat 200 others from around the world to bag the top prizes at this year’s Ericsson Mobile Application Awards. ... Hong Kong’s Artificial Life Inc (www.artificial-life.com) bagged the top prize in the Best Mobile Gaming category for its Virtual Girlfriend or V-Girl application, which uses an interactive 3D role-playing engine to simulate a 'real-life' relationship. ... With [Eberhard] Schoneburg’s background in artificial intelligence (AI) technology, Artificial Life started creating 'virtual people' applications for the Internet in 1993, but only recently discovered a niche for AI applications on the mobile platform. ... Artificial Life plans to penetrate other markets, and is also working on using the same AI technology on applications for other market segments. It has already developed a 'virtual assistant' application that can take over some of the functions of the mobile phone. 'These virtual assistants can filter and read e-mail, manage the calendar function and send messages,' Schoneburg claimed."
>>> Telecommunications, Video Games, Interfaces, Agents, Applications; also see the related article, Sex, lies and AI (November 18, 2004)

December 30, 2004: Cabinet okays ban on use of child jockeys in camel races. QNA/AFP - available from The Peninsula. "Qatar said yesterday that it was banning the use of children as jockeys in camel races, a favourite sport in the Gulf region that has been widely criticised over the use of children brought from southern Asia. ... The move follows an announcement by Doha that it was preparing to substitute robots for jockeys from next year. ... Sheikh Hamad had told in October that the robot was being developed by a Swiss company and would be ready in 2005. Property rights for the robot have since been registered for Qatar. Sheikh Hamad announced last March that robot-jockeys had been used in a camel race for the first time."
>>> Robots, Sports, Applications

December 29, 2004: Believe the Hype, or Be Left Behind - Carnegie Mellon's Frank Demmler says that older executives have a bias against technology, and it's up to CIOs to recognize this and adjust their messages to the board accordingly. Higher Learning report by Frank Demmler. CIO. "As I was preparing to write this article, I searched the CIO.com website to see if my topic had a name. Lo and behold, not only did it have a name, but Tom Davenport wrote an article about it. [Decision Evolution; October 1, 2004.] 'It' is what he called, 'automated decision systems.' In his article, Mr. Davenport observed that we have moved beyond decision support systems to something that is more powerful and more useful than has been realized in the past. The promise of artificial intelligence, and all of its successors, is beginning to be realized in real world applications. I found myself agreeing with his main points while experiencing keen a sense of déjà vu. Over the years, I've read similar comments about earlier generations of the next big thing in IT that did not live up to the hype, including artificial intelligence (AI), as Davenport notes. In his concluding paragraph, he states: 'This brave new world has been along time coming, but it is clearly upon us now. Businesses need to incorporate automated decision making into their strategies and processes or they won't be successful very long…' Is he accurately predicting the future, or will this be another case of over-promise, under-deliver? As CIO, you will need to make that call. Make the right decision and you're a hero. Guess wrong and you're not. For what it's worth, after much soul searching, I agree with Davenport. This time it's for real. His call for action is prudent, and CIOs need to act now."
>>> AI Overview, Expert Systems, Machine Learning, Business, Applications, The AI Effect; also see the Davenport article reference in the October news archive

December 29, 2004: Math + software = learning. By Lynn Thompson. The Seattle Times. "A half-dozen high-school math students tell a remarkably similar story. Last year they didn't understand algebra. They came to class, listened to the teacher, tried to do the homework and failed. This year, using a computer-based program called Cognitive Tutor, these students are progressing steadily and staying engaged. ... Research indicates that Cognitive Tutor, an interactive program that analyzes students' strengths and weaknesses and allows them to work at their own pace, significantly increases math skills."
>>> Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Education, Applications

December 29, 2004: Intelligent joint supports use wireless technology. E-Health Insider. "Joint supports for patients with arthritis or poor muscle strength could soon get an injection of artificial intelligence and wireless technology, thanks to the Instituto de Automácia Industrial (IAI) in Madrid. The device, called 'GAIT', incorporates electronic sensors into each support bandage (orthosis) that respond to the way the ankle, knee or elbow is moving, calculate the best way of responding, and then mechanically manipulate the bandage so it eases the flow of energy through the joint."
>>> Assisitive Technologies, Applications, Systems

December 27, 2004: Just How Old Can He Go? By Steve Lohr. The New York Times (reg. req'd.). "'Genes are sequential programs,' [Ray Kurzweil] said. 'We are learning how to manipulate the programs inside us, the software of life. And personally, I really believe that what I'm doing is reprogramming my biochemistry.' His new book shows a different side of Mr. Kurzweil's continuing fascination with the connection between humans and computers. In 'The Age of Spiritual Machines,' published in 1999, Mr. Kurzweil made the case for why computers will exceed human intelligence within a few decades. ... He has few qualms about technology, which he says is 'the continuation of evolution by other means.' Just as the boundaries of computing will soon seem limitless, Mr. Kurzweil insists that improving knowledge and technology will make death avoidable. The book describes three stages - the authors call them 'bridges' - over the next 20 to 25 years. By the late 2020's, Mr. Kurzweil predicts, the fruits of artificial intelligence and nanotechnology, a technology that permits changes to the body at the cellular level, will really kick in so that science will enable people to rebuild their bodies, any way they want to. In 15 to 20 years, he contends that advances in the understanding of gene processes will make it possible for biotechnology therapies to turn off and reverse disease and aging. ... In 1965, as a teenager, he appeared on the television program, 'I've Got a Secret,' hosted by Steve Allen, for having written a computer program that composed piano music."
>>> Bioinformatics, Medicine, Systems, Ethical & Social Implications, Music, Assistive Technologies, Applications

December 26, 2004: At I.B.M., That Google Thing Is So Yesterday. By James Fallows. The New York Times (reg. req'd.). "Suddenly, the computer world is interesting again. ... The most attractive offerings are free, and they are concentrated in the newly sexy field of 'search.' ... [T]oday's subject is the virtually unpublicized search strategy of another industry heavyweight: I.B.M. ... I.B.M. says that its tools will make possible a further search approach, that of 'discovery systems' that will extract the underlying meaning from stored material no matter how it is structured (databases, e-mail files, audio recordings, pictures or video files) or even what language it is in. The specific means for doing so involve steps that will raise suspicions among many computer veterans. These include 'natural language processing,' computerized translation of foreign languages and other efforts that have broken the hearts of artificial-intelligence researchers through the years. But the combination of ever-faster computers and ever-evolving programming allowed the systems I saw to succeed at tasks that have beaten their predecessors. ... ... Jennifer Chu-Carroll of I.B.M. demonstrated a system called Piquant, which analyzed the semantic structure of a passage and therefore exposed 'knowledge' that wasn't explicitly there. After scanning a news article about Canadian politics, the system responded correctly to the question, 'Who is Canada's prime minister?' even though those exact words didn't appear in the article. ... The Semantic Analysis Workbench, demonstrated by Eric Brown and Dave Ferrucci, showed another way of exposing latent meaning."
>>> Information Retrieval, Machine Translation, Natural Language Processing, Customer Service, Knowledge Management, Machine Learning, Expert Systems, Applications

December 25, 2004: ID System Gets in Face of Criminals - LAPD officers field-test a hand-held computer using facial recognition to identify suspects. Critics raise issues of privacy and reliability. By Richard Winton. Los Angeles Times (reg. req'd.) "The potential of the facial-recognition technology could be seen in a recent police stop on Alvarado Street just west of downtown Los Angeles, where police have been testing the cameras. ... As they questioned the pair, Rampart Division Senior Lead Officer Mike Wang pointed a hand-held computer with a camera attached toward the man on the bicycle seat. Facial-recognition software in the device compared the image with those in a database that includes photos of recent fugitives, as well as 78 members of the Mara Salvatrucha gang and 45 members of the 18th Street gang. ... Within seconds, the screen had displayed a gallery of nine faces with contours similar to the man's. The computer concluded that one of those images --- of Jose Hernandez, an 18th Street member subject to the civil injunction --- was the closest match, with a 94% probability of accuracy. ... The LAPD has been using two of the computers donated by their developer, Santa Monica-based Neven Vision. The firm, a pioneer in facial-recognition technology, was looking to have its products field-tested. ... Hartmut Neven, developer of the software the LAPD is trying out, says his system uses an algorithm to translate various parts of the face into complex mathematical patterns employed to develop unique numerical templates."
>>> Image Understanding, Vision, Law Enforcement, Ethical & Social Implications, Applications

December 23, 2004: Robocopters dodge obstacles. By Michael Kanellos. CNET News.com. "University of California researchers are tinkering with technology that will, ideally, let helicopters fly themselves. The Berkeley Aerial Robot (BEAR) project passed a significant milestone earlier this month, when a 130-pound model of a helicopter successfully guided itself through a course that included random obstacles that weren't on its internal map -- a first, according to the university. ... Last year, BEAR researchers flew two helicopters at each other in a game of chicken. 'They flew toward each other, sensed each other and adjusted their course,' said a UC Berkeley spokeswoman. ... While the obstacle avoidance system tested this month relies on lasers, researchers will start to dedicate more energy to computer vision systems. In these, sensors feed digital images to onboard computers, which then, through probability and artificial intelligence, try to chart a safe course."
>>> Autonomous Vehicles, Vision, Robots, Probability, Military, Hazards & Disasters, Applications; also see our AI NewsToons

December 21, 2004: Television broadcast of The Charlie Rose Show: A Conversation About Artificial Intelligence, with Rodney Brooks (Director, MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory & Fujitsu Professor of Computer Science & Engineering, MIT), Eric Horvitz (Senior Researcher and Group Manager, Adaptive Systems & Interaction Group, Microsoft Research), and Ron Brachman (Director, Information Processing Technology Office, Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, and President, American Association for Artificial Intelligence). "Rose: What do you think has been the most important advance so far? Brachman: A lot of people will vary on that and I'm sure we all have different opinions. In some respects one of the - - - I think the elemental insights that was had at the very beginning of the field still holds up very strongly which is that you can take a computing machine that normally, you know, back in the old days we think of as crunching numbers, and put inside it a set of symbols that stand in representation for things out in the world, as if we were doing sort of mental images in our own heads, and actually with computation, starting with something that's very much like formal logic, you know, if-then-else kinds of things, but ultimately getting to be softer and fuzzier kinds of rules, and actually do computation inside, if you will, the mind of the machine, that begins to allow intelligent behavior. I think that crucial insight, which is pretty old in the field, is really in some respects one of the lynch pins to where we've gotten. ... Horvitz: I think many passionate researchers in artificial intelligence are fundamentally interested in the question of Who am I? Who are people? What are we? There's a sense of almost astonishment at the prospect that information processing or computation, if you take that perspective, could lead to this. Coupled with that is the possibility of the prospect of creating consciousnesses with computer programs, computing systems some day. It's not talked about very much at formal AI conferences, but it's something that drives some of us in terms of our curiosity and intrigue. I know personally speaking, this has been a core question in the back of my mind, if not the foreground, not on my lips typically, since I've been very young. This is this question about who am I. Rose: ... can we create it? Horvitz: Is it possible - - - is it possible that parts turning upon parts could generate this?"
>>> AI Overview, Philosophy, Applications

December 20, 2004: Wear a phone, send a kiss: let the future get under your skin. By Adam Luck and Alan Hamilton. Times Online. "Following in the footsteps of Nostradamus and Old Moore, a new breed of professional futurist is taking centre stage in government and big business. ... Ian Pearson, who leads BT’s futurist section, said: 'In the early 1990s we pretty much predicted the world wide web, text messaging, PDAs (personal digital assistants) and the growth in portable computers. Now we are looking forward to a world where a lot of that technology will disappear. It will be invisible and embedded. ... Mr Pearson added: 'The growth of artificial intelligence is inevitable, so you will have a DVD recorder that knows your own tastes and will record programmes to suit those tastes.' By 2010-15, he says, we will be able to build devices into our bodies using nanotechnology."
>>> AI Overview, Applications, Systems

December 19, 2004: Weapons detector could help soldiers see the unseen in Iraq. By Clay Holtzman. New Mexico Business Weekly / available from MSNBC. "A pair of New Mexico companies have developed a concealed weapons detection technology that, lately, has been raising as many eyebrows as it has alarms. he weapons detection system, developed by Electro Science Technologies LLC of Albuquerque, is capable of spotting hidden guns, bombs and even large knives secretly and from a distance. ... The system detects weapons or bombs by emitting low power radar waves that rebound off of a target and are interpreted by a sensor. Instead of looking for metal or forming an image of the target, the device looks for patterns that have been programmed into its artificial intelligence software."
>>> Military, Pattern Recognition, Image Understanding, Machine Learning, Applications

December 17, 2004: Talon Today Is U.S. Military's Real-Life 'RoboCop'. By David Isaac. Investor's Business Daily (reg. req'd). "Science-fiction buffs seeing the military's armed Talon robot for the first time can't help but make comparisons to famous movie robots. Most say it looks like Number Johnny 5 from the 1986 film 'Short Circuit,' the story of a robot that becomes intelligent when struck by lightning, says Noah Shachtman, editor of the site Defensetech.org. The Talon reminds this reporter of one of the more menacing robots of the movies, ED-209, which goes berserk in the 1987 film 'RoboCop.' What makes the Talon important is that it's the first ground robot to carry arms. 'It's a bit of a turning point,' Shachtman said. 'It's a step everyone knew was coming at some point. It's still a little surprising when it finally hits.' ... The Department of Defense is pushing for more robots in all its branches. It's part of its Future Combat Systems program, a major overhaul of the military in which robots will play a central role. ... 'The day of fully autonomous large, unmanned ground vehicles is probably still six years away,' [Stephen DiAntonio of the the National Robotics Engineering Consortium] said."
>>> Military, Autonomous Vehicles, Robots, Science Fiction, Ethical & Social Implications, Applications

December 16, 2004: Technologies for the blind. Design Engineering. "Researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, are developing new assistive technologies for the blind based on advances in computer vision that have emerged from research in robotics. A 'virtual white cane' is one of several prototype tools for the visually impaired developed by Roberto Manduchi, an assistant professor of computer engineering, and his students. ... Before coming to UC Santa Cruz in 2001, Manduchi worked for several years at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, applying computer vision technology to autonomous robotic systems. 'It is a natural evolution from helping a robot drive around to helping a blind person navigate their environment,' he said."
>>> Assisitive Technologies, Vision, Robots, Applications

December 16, 2004: When Shots Ring Out, a Listening Device Acts as Witness. By Cyrus Farivar. The New York Times (reg. req'd.). "In an unusual application of neuroscience research, police agencies around the country may soon be able to equip street corners with microphones and video cameras to fight gun-related crime. The system [Setri: Smart Sensor Enabled Neural Threat Recognition and Identification], based on work by Dr. Theodore Berger, director of the Center for Neural Engineering at the University of Southern California, uses the equipment and a computer to recognize gunshots, pinpoint where they came from and transmit the coordinates to a command center. It relies on software that mimics the way the human brain receives, processes and analyzes sound. ... In the summer of 2002, Dr. Berger had been working on applying his research to voice recognition software, and discovered that it worked even in very noisy environments."

• Also see: Waiting for the Gun. By Eric Mankin. USC News (November 30, 2004). "Algorithms devised by Berger, who holds the David Packard Chair in the USC Viterbi School of Engineering's department of biomedical engineering, are at the heart of the SENTRI system built by an Oak Brook, Ill.-based firm named Safety Dynamics, a company in which Berger serves as chief scientist. ... Working with computer specialists, however, Berger has created neural-like computer systems that can model the neural time coding and make distinctions the way nerves do. Four years ago, he and a colleague used the technique to demonstrate the first speech recognition system that could pick words out of ambient noise as well as humans can. While work continues on speech-recognition applications, the systems need training to learn individual signals. For language, this is very time consuming because the system has to learn each individual word."

>>> Speech, Neural Networks, Machine Learning, Law Enforcement, Assisitve Technologies, Applications

December 15, 2004: Building thinking robotics for the real world. IST Results. "Researchers at the Bayesian Inspired Brain and Artefacts (BIBA) project are using a novel application of Bayesian reasoning to design artefacts (objects produced or shaped by human craft) that can learn to act rationally with incomplete information. ... BIBA project researchers use Bayesian reasoning to understand the behaviour of animals and then apply this same logic to create artefacts for the 'real world'. Pierre Bessière, Scientific Manager of the IST programme-funded BIBA project at INRIA’s GRAVIR laboratory in France explains: 'Both living organisms and robotic systems face the difficulty of how to use an incomplete model of their environment to perceive, infer, decide and act efficiently.' ... BIBA researchers developed probabilistic programming methods for the Cycab that use biologically plausible techniques to define the obstacle avoidance system as a survival instinct. The goal is to create a completely automatic car that doesn’t need a human driver and can safely navigate streets that are beset with unpredictable occurrences."
>>> Uncertainty / Probability, Bayes (@ Namesakes), Reasoning, Robots, Autonomous Vehicles, Transportation, Video Games, Applications

December 15, 2004: Making books readable on computer proves trying task. By Michelle Kessler. USA Today. "It's not very easy to teach a computer to read. Turning paper books into searchable digital files requires artificial intelligence. It's tough for computers to pick up on visual clues that humans use when they read a book. Think about it: In many type fonts, the number '1' and lower-case letter 'l' are identical. How can a computer figure out the difference? Scientists have worked on the problem for more than 20 years. They're making big strides, but the results are imperfect. ... Special software, called optical character recognition (OCR), allows computers to look at a picture and pick out words. ... Carnegie Mellon University's 'Million Book Project' aims to put a million books online in partnership with 18 universities in India and China. Although the project will promote the schools' libraries, it's mainly a research problem for its computer science department, says Gloriana St. Clair, Carnegie Mellon's dean of libraries."
>>> Image Understanding (@ Vision), Libraries, Applications

December 14, 2004: Grant to help out PNNL cancer project. By John Trumbo. Tri-City Herald. "A $9.7 million research grant for the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle to fight cancer will draw on emerging research efforts at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland. ... The aim of the grants is to fund research that will identify proteins in the blood that by themselves or in combination with other biomarkers will indicate people with cancer or at high risk of developing cancer. ... The field of proteomics, which involves identifying proteins and their role in biology, has become a major area of interest at the Richland lab in recent years. The work involves extracting proteins from blood, urine or body tissues, then using mass spectrometry to analyze the protein fragments. By using an artificial-intelligence computer program to compare the fragments, called protein signatures, researchers hope to find the biomarkers that point to cancer."
>>> Bioinformatics, Medicine, Applications

December 13, 2004: WebMed dispenses advice to students. By Robyn Shelton. Orlando Sentinel. "The site -- 24/7 WebMed -- takes students through questions, judges the severity of their symptoms and offers guidance for what to do next. ... 'It's decision-support systems, or artificial intelligence in a way,' said Dr. Scott Gettings, DSHI medical director. 'The system learns about you as you flow through and answer questions and determines how ill you are.' It makes no attempt to go further and diagnose the patient's illness -- but gauges the seriousness of the symptoms. 'This is not intended to take the place of human interaction, but to augment it,' said Dr. Michael Deichen, associate director of clinical services at the UCF Student Health Center. 'It really just helps the students know with what urgency they should be evaluated.'"
>>> Expert Systems, Medicine, Applications

December 13, 2004: Providence team seeks high-tech solutions for amputee vets. Providence Business News. "A Providence-based research team has launched $7.2-million project financed by the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs to develop better ways to restore arm and leg function to amputees, including many returning from the war in Iraq. ... The scientists’ ultimate goal is to create 'biohybrid' limbs that will use regenerated tissue, lengthened bone, titanium prosthetics and implantable sensors that allow an amputee to use nerves and brain signals to move the arm or leg. ... [Dr. Roy] Aaron will oversee nine investigators at Brown and one at MIT. All have research appointments at the Providence VA. Together, the team has expertise in orthopaedic surgery, physical rehabilitation, community health, tissue engineering, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, robotics and materials science."
>>> Assistive Technologies, Applications, Robots

December 12, 2004: An Adventurous Thinker. Interview with Ray Kurzweil. DevSource. "DevSource: In your writing, you've mentioned that the human tendency to pervasively accept innovations --- such as AI and machine intelligence --- causes it to become invisible. And, as a result, AI has become 'the pursuit of difficult computer science problems that have not yet been solved.' That's surely true for my 85-year-old Mom, who isn't quite sure how e-mail works and simply accepts the magic as delivered. Are developers (the people creating tomorrow's innovative solutions, or at least tomorrow's payroll processing) equally blind? Should they be? Ray: As we master and understand a technique, we think in terms of that technique --- Markov models, genetic algorithms, search techniques, signal processing methods --- and not generally about 'AI.' As we progress through the reverse-engineering of the human brain, we will expand our AI tool kit to incorporate the brain's methods for learning, pattern recognition, and decision making. Brain reverse engineering has not contributed that much to AI to date because we have not until recently had the tools to see the brain in action at sufficient temporal and spatial resolution. ... Most mainstream applications in a wide range of fields incorporate techniques that were AI research projects only a decade ago. Examples include search engines, automated investing, credit card fraud detection, automated analysis of electrocardiograms and blood cell images, monitoring intensive care units, flying and landing airplanes, guiding weapon systems, and many others."
>>> AI Overview, Cognitive Science, Applications, Systems, Interviews

December 8, 2004: Remember Roomba? Holiday shoppers do. By Margaret Kane. CNET News.com. "The vacuums, which launched a few years ago, are now making a comeback, said Michael Trebony, general manager at Best Buy in West Patterson, N.J. 'It came out, and we did a lot of displays had some interest, then it waned,' he said. 'Now it's making a comeback. That's what usually happens with new tech items, people get nervous. But now people are giving it a second shot, saying, 'Is this going to change my life?''"
>>> Household Appliances, Robots, Applications

December 7, 2004: Bill Clinton helps launch search engine. By Desmond Butler. Associated Press / available from The Modesto Bee & Modbee.com. "Former president Bill Clinton on Monday helped launch a new Internet search company backed by the Chinese government which says its technology uses artificial intelligence to produce better results than Google Inc. ... Accoona takes its name from the Swahili phrase, 'accoona matata,' for 'no worries,' popularized by Disney's film, 'The Lion King.' The company seeks to distinguish itself from Google, Yahoo Inc. and growing list of other search engine players by using artificial intelligence to make the results more relevant, said [Eckhard] Pfeiffer."
>>> Information Retrieval, Applications

December 6, 2004: Robots making good on futuristic promise. By Gerard Voland. Journal Gazette & FortWayne.com. "Once upon a time, there was a world in which robots did so much for people, from mowing lawns and exploring other worlds to fighting wars and helping surgeons perform life-saving operations. And the people wondered what could be next for robots to do in this world. Of course, this time is now, and the world is our own. Robots no longer exist only in science fiction stories, and their roles in society are significant and varied. ... Although robots are gradually becoming more popular machines around the home, they have been vital to the industrial world since the introduction in 1961 of the 4,000-pound Unimate robotic arm at General Motors’ manufacturing operations. ... But what of tomorrow’s world of robots? Some people might imagine that future robots will resemble humans, with two arms, two legs, eyes and articulated body movements. ... Future robots also can be expected to evolve into new forms and behaviors."
>>> Robots, History, Manufacturing, Applications

December 6, 2004: Travelin' shoes - Technologies for road, rail and port security get new attention. By Brian Robinson. FCW.com. "The skies may still be unfriendly, but officials and experts concerned with transportation security are starting to turn their attention to other modes of transport. Although the Transportation Security Administration has spent more than 90 percent of its funding so far on airports and airlines, members of the 9-11 Commission also see land and sea transportation as soft spots. ... Not all the solutions have to be brand-new. The Automated Commercial Environment (ACE), for example, is a recast version of a software system Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials have used for years to receive trade data from industry and for industry to settle trade accounts. ACE's goal is to help streamline and speed the U.S. trade system, but it's also used to detect signs of trouble. Previously, it was a rules-based system that required significant input from intelligence officers to make sense of the data and find any anomalies in suspicious shipments that warranted a closer look. The new ACE, which is being tested now, will use artificial intelligence technology so the system will learn for itself and, presumably, be less fallible to missing potential terrorist activity."
>>> Law Enforcement, Knowledge Management, Banking & Finance, Machine Learning, Expert Systems, Applications

December 6, 2004: Technies look to make computers smart. By Tracey Drury. Buffalo Business First. "An Amherst company has a solution for all those people out there who damn their computer and become frustrated with the thousands of irrelevant responses that come back during an online search. As It Is Inc., better known as Ai3, has been quietly working from offices at the University at Buffalo Incubator - and from home offices around the country - to develop what they call the world's first 'intelligent' search site. What's so 'smart' about this site? It uses artificial intelligence technology to teach computers how to think like their users."
>>> Information Retrieval, Applications

December 3, 2004: Nanoscience and nanotechnologies: opportunities and uncertainties. Royal Academy of Engineering / reported by EurActiv.com. "Although many people believe that nanotechnologies will have an impact across a wide range of sectors, a survey of experts in nanotechnologies across the world identified hype (‘misguided promises that nanotechnology can fix everything’) as the factor most likely to result in a backlash against it.  Against this background of increased research funding and interest from industry, several nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and some nanotechnologists have expressed concerns about current and potential future developments of nanotechnology. These include uncertainties about the impact of new nanomaterials on human health, questions about the type of applications that could arise from the expected convergence, in the longer term, of nanotechnologies with technologies such as biotechnology, information technology (IT) and artificial intelligence, and suggestions that future developments might bring self-replicating nano-robots that might devastate the world. ... In January 2003 the Better Regulation Task Force (BRTF) published its report Scientific Research: Innovation with Controls (Better Regulation Task Force 2003), which included a consideration of nanotechnologies. Its first recommendation was that the UK Government should enable the public, through debate, to consider the risks of nanotechnologies for themselves. ...  In June 2003, following its response to the BRTF, the UK Government commissioned the Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering (the UK’s national academies of science and of engineering, respectively) to conduct an independent study on nanotechnology." A link to the report is provided.
>>> Applications, Ethical & Social Implications

December 3, 2004: Disney by the Numbers. By Denny Lee. The New York Times (no fee reg. req'd.). "Whenever Len Testa goes to Disney World, he takes along his homework. ... Afterward, the data would be fed into an artificial-intelligence program that would spit out the magic circuit. 'The software will tell you the most efficient tour plan for any particular day, in any of the Disney theme parks, for any particular arrival time and for any particular set of attractions,' explained Mr. Testa, who was on his 12th reconnaissance trip to Disney World. His unpaid pursuit might sound anal-retentive, pointy-headed and, not least of all, geeky. But it is anything but trivial. At its core is a question that has dogged computer scientists for decades: What is the most efficient way to dispatch a person to multiple destinations, taking into account fleeting factors like travel delays and weather. As any truck driver knows, the quickest delivery route may not be the shortest distance between points, but a circuitous path that bypasses rush-hour traffic. In a sense, Disney visitors face the same challenge. ... Computer scientists call it 'the time-dependent traveling salesman problem.' Or, as Mr. Testa would put it: How to visit Space Mountain, Mickey's Country House and Pirates of the Caribbean without wasting hours in lines?"
>>> Traveling Salesperson Problem, Machine Learning, Games & Puzzles, Applications

December 2, 2004: Rover data makes return a must. BBC News. "Data from Nasa's Mars rover Opportunity shows its unique landing site is a prime spot for a return mission to look for life, scientists say. ... A raft of Mars missions are currently in the pipeline. The next one to reach the surface will probably be a low-cost "scout" mission called Phoenix in 2007. Future landing missions could speed up the process of selecting interesting targets in the landscape by using artificial intelligence (AI). 'The rovers used quite advanced technology to explore Mars. But there is only a small amount of AI in the robots. Most of the geology is done by a large team of people,' said Dr Patrick McGuire of the Centre for Astrobiology in Madrid, Spain. Dr McGuire and colleague Jens Ormö have devised a wearable computer system which uses intelligent software to select interesting rocks. They have named the system the cyborg astrobiologist."
>>> Space Exploration, Robots, Applications; also see this related article

December 2, 2004: The laboratory shaping our future. CNN. "It is codenamed 'Oxygen' and its achievements are likely to affect the way we live and work for decades to come. That at least is the intention of researchers working on some of almost 400 separate projects that make up the Computer Sciences and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory's (CSAIL) grand research project into 'pervasive computing.' 'Project Oxygen is about pervasive human-centered computing -- that's our buzz phrase,' explains CSAIL director Rodney Brooks. 'How -- with so many computers, so many embedded systems, so many speech-based systems, so many tablets and computers -- are we going to interact with them? How are we not going to be overwhelmed by them? How is it going to be easy enough to use them without adding more and more complexity?'"
>>> Systems, Interfaces, Applications

December 2, 2004: Street Smarts: A Device to Help the Blind Find Crosswalks. By Ian Austen. The New York Times (no fee reg. req'd.). "[R]esearchers in Japan have developed a software system for detecting crosswalks that may help the blind when crossing streets. The system, developed by Tadayoshi Shioyama and Mohammad Shorif Uddin at the Kyoto Institute of Technology, takes images of the street with a camera; the software then determines if there is a painted crosswalk in the image. A fixed camera is used now, but Dr. Shioyama said that eventually, a miniature digital camera and processor could be fitted into a pair of eyeglasses. When a blind person wearing the glasses came upon a crosswalk, the system would alert the user through a synthesized voice piped through a small speaker. For now, the software can recognize and measure only a style of crosswalks not commonly used in North America. Known as zebra crossings in Britain, they feature a series of thick white bands that run in the same direction as the vehicle traffic."
>>> Assisitive Technologies, Image Understanding, Vision, Applications

December 1, 2004: Cyber detective links up crimes. By Duncan Graham-Rowe. New Scientist News. (This article also appears on page 25 in the December 4, 2004 issue of New Scientist Magazine as: Neural networks to catch serial killers.) "Many more crimes might be solved if detectives were able to compare the records for cases with all the files on past crimes. Now an artificial intelligence system has been designed to do precisely that. Working 24 hours a day, seven days a week, it could look for telltale similarities in crime records and alert detectives when it finds them. Developed by computer scientists Tom Muscarello and Kamal Dahbur at DePaul University in Chicago, the system uses pattern-recognition software to link related crimes that may have taken place in widely separated areas whose police forces may rarely be in close contact. Called the Classification System for Serial Criminal Patterns (CSSCP).... The neural network the DePaul team uses, called a Kohonen network, is particularly good at finding patterns in a set of input data without any human intervention, Muscarello says. Some neural networks require an operator to 'train' them to find patterns in data sets -- but this requires foreknowledge of the pattern."
>>> Neural Networks, Pattern Recognition, Law Enforcement, Knowledge Management, Machine Learning, Applications

December 1, 2004: More Robot Grunts Ready for Duty. By Noah Shachtman. Wired News. "Hunting for guerillas, handling roadside bombs, crawling across the caves and crumbling towns of Afghanistan and Iraq -- all of that was just a start. Now, the Army is prepping its squad of robotic vehicles for a new set of assignments. ... In a warren of hangar-sized hotel ballrooms in Orlando, military engineers this week showed off their next generation of robots, as they got the machines ready for the war zone. ... The Robotic Extraction Vehicle, or REV, is a 10-foot-long, 3,500-pound robot that can tuck a pair of stretchers -- and life-support systems -- beneath its armored skin. The idea is for battlefield medics to stabilize injured soldiers, and then send them back to a field hospital in the REV. ... But this early version will be limited, [Patrick] Howe said. Ideally, the REV would drive around on its own, with no help from human operators. In practice, the robot would either be driven by a person with a joystick, or it would get around by itself by sticking to carefully preplanned routes. As the limited performances in the Pentagon's robot off-road rally in March showed, unmanned drivers are still pretty lousy at handling open, unknown terrain. ... GlobalSecurity.org's [John] Pike isn't worried about the Talon going haywire. He's concerned about what the armed UGV represents for the future. 'This opens up great vistas, some quite pleasant, others quite nightmarish. ...'"
>>> Robots, Military, Autonomous Vehicles, Ethical & Social Implications, Applications

December 2004: AI Revisited - Pieces of the AI Puzzle are Already Deployed, but Much Remains to be Done. Bart Eisenberg's Pacific Connection series in Software Design Magazine. "'There's a joke in the AI community that as soon as AI works, it is no longer called AI,' says Sara Hedberg, a spokeswoman for the American Association for Artificial Intelligence. Hedberg, who has written about AI for the past 20 years or so, has done her share of trying to enlighten reporters who are ready to declare AI dead. 'Once a technology leaves the research labs and gets proven, it becomes ubiquitous to the point where it is almost invisible,' she says. ... The American Association for Artificial Intelligence serves as a kind of crossroads for AI researchers. Ahead of its 2004 conference, the organization identifie