AI in the news
AUGUST 2008
August 29, 2008: UMass startup's uBot builds other robots. Academic robotics research often includes building a robot from scratch, a labor-intensive process that a base robotics platform could eliminate. The uBot balances on two wheels, can pick objects up with its arms, and can interact via Skype using a camera and a computer monitor for a “head,” giving researchers the core robotic functions they might need when developing their own specialized robot. (info) 
August 29, 2008: Paraplegics take first steps with robotic legs. The device, called ReWalk, is the brainchild of engineer Amit Goffer, founder of Argo Medical Technologies, based in Israel. ReWalk consists of motorised leg supports, body sensors and a back pack that contains a computer and rechargeable batteries. Users still need crutches to help with balance. Goffer himself became paralysed in an accident in 1997, but because he lacks full use of his arms cannot use his own invention. To move, the user picks a setting with a remote control wrist band – "stand", "sit", "walk", "descend" or "climb" – and then leans forward, activating the body sensors and setting the robotic legs in motion. ReWalk is in clinical trials in Tel Aviv's Sheba Medical Centre, with more scheduled at the Moss Rehabilitation Research Institute in Pennsylvania, US. (info)
August 28, 2008: Don't dismiss robot surgeons. Lord Winston in his new BBC1 series, Superdoctors ...worries "...that robotic nurses and robotic doctors are completely contrary to what medicine is about." ... The second half of Superdoctors dealt with two robot surgical assistants. First was a da Vinci robot, the most widely used in the world, performing laparoscopic surgery on an infant. Second was a £12m Canadian neuroArm assisting in the removal of a brain tumour. Unlike human surgeons, neuroArm can operate inside an MRI scanner to make brain surgery extremely accurate. This time the criticisms were that the instruments were too large, which is not hard to fix, and that human surgeons could have performed the operations just as well. Lord Winston concludes, "I hate the idea of the surgeon being removed from the patients." But surely distant control is the biggest advantage of using robots. Human contact is certainly important in medical treatment but it can come from other carers at the site. (info)
August 28, 2008: Computer Beats Pro At US Go Congress . In a historic achievement, the MoGo computer program defeated Myungwan Kim 8P Thursday by 1.5 points in a 9-stone game. “It played really well,” said Kim, who estimated MoGo’s current strength at “two or maybe three dan,” though he noted that the program – which used 800 processors, at 4.7 Ghz, 15 Teraflops on borrowed supercomputers – “made some 5-dan moves,” like those in the lower right-hand corner, where Moyogo took advantage of a mistake by Kim to get an early lead. “I can’t tell you how amazing this is,” David Doshay -- the SlugGo programmer who suggested the match -- told the E-Journal after the game. “I’m shocked at the result. I really didn’t expect the computer to win in a one-hour game.” (info)
August 28, 2008: Robot fliers racing to catch the Zephyr. The Pentagon's hope of having a squadron of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) capable of staying in the air and performing surveillance for years rather than hours recently took a small step forward. Working with U.K.-based idea factory QinetiQ Group PLC, researchers from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) managed to keep the solar-powered Zephyr high-altitude, long-endurance aircraft in the air over the Arizona desert for 82 hours 37 minutes. ... The flight, which took place between July 28 and 31, researchers guided the Zephyr by remote control to an operating altitude in excess of 60,000 ft (18 km), according to BBC News. After that, the aircraft, which carried a 4.4-pound (2-kilogram) payload, flew on autopilot and via satellite communication. (info)
August 28, 2008: MIT Model Helps Computers Think Like Humans. In a development that will extend the eternal quest of creating computers that think like humans, two researchers working at Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a model that helps computers recognize patterns in the same way as humans do. The two researchers, associate professor of brain and cognitive sciences Josh Tenenbaum and recent MIT PhD recipient Charles Kemp, produced a broad algorithm that examines several different approaches of looking at data that is similar to the way humans typically size up different situations. "Instead of looking for a particular kind of structure, we came up with a broader algorithm that is able to look for all of these structures and weigh them against each other," said Tenenbaum, the senior author of the paper. (info)
August 18, 2008: Flying Saucers and Mini-Tanks Highlight Spy Robot Competition. Eleven teams, including universities, defense contractors and small companies, are competing in the British Ministry of Defense’s Grand Challenge with autonomous information-gathering vehicles that include flying saucers, a mini tank, several mini-helicopters and darts, among other machines. ... During the competition, the robots have to identify threats such as potential snipers and enemy vehicles and other threats, with minimal human guidance. The machines then have to report the information back to troops preparing for an assault. The judges will reward accuracy and autonomy. (info)
August 18, 2008: 400,000 Essays Later, Vantage Learning Spells Success in Over Half of Utah's School Districts. Utah's students are boosting critical writing, reasoning, and computer skills in the classroom, thanks to a licensing agreement for MY Access! the award-winning online writing tool developed by Vantage Learning. Twenty four districts have decided to use MY Access! this school year after teachers, directors and administrators from across the state saw a marked improvement in student performance. Students submitted over 400,000 essays to MY Access! in one school year and administrators decided to expand their use of MY Access! to over 70,000 licenses in over twenty four school districts throughout the Utah school system. ... To use MY Access!, students write an essay based on a teacher's assignment, and submit it to the Web-based system. The program instantly analyzes over 350 semantic, syntactic, and discourse characteristics, and scores the students on focus and meaning, organization, content and development, language use and style, mechanics and conventions, and overall writing proficiency. (info)
August 18, 2008: Gates foresees another revolution. MICROSOFT chairman Bill Gates said last week the dramatic growth of the internet would help to eventually eliminate "the last constraints we have", leading to a software-writing revolution. ... The way people used computers would expand "to encompass all interactive techniques: the touch, the speech, the vision", said Mr Gates, who stepped down in June from his full-time role at Microsoft, which he co-founded. Major developments in internet services and computer interfaces, "because they're fairly developed in the labs, I can say that in 10 years will be widespread", he said. As for the following decade, he predicted: "You might get artificial intelligence or robotics, but those are still so undeveloped, at least in widespread impact.". (info)
August 15, 2008: A website that hopes to speak the language of freely available data . Flummoxed by a document in Welsh? Now you can get a free translation at cymraeg.org.uk. The Apertium-cy software, described as the first free automatic translator from Welsh to English, is the fruit of a multilingual effort involving developers in Spain, Wales and Ireland pushing forward the possibilities of open-source software and, they hope, free public-sector data. ... Work on the Welsh-language version was led by Francis Tyers and Kevin Donnelly. It contains about 10,000 words in Welsh and English and 150 grammatical rules - enough to get the gist of the text, the developers say. The idea is to provide an easy way for people who don't speak Welsh to keep an eye on Welsh-language media reports in an area of interest, and to provide a "first-pass" translation of documents, improving the productivity of human translators. (info)
August 15, 2008: Rapid7's NeXpose Named SC Magazine Recommended Product This Month. In a review published in the August issue, SC Magazine's technology editor and product tester, Peter Stephenson, identifies NeXpose's strengths as "vulnerability assessment and risk analysis in one box" and reports that there are no weaknesses to be found. He describes NeXpose as a "tool that always goes beyond expectations," and points out that NeXpose "can not only scan for network-based vulnerabilities, but also looks inside web apps and databases for potential threats." ... NeXpose discovers the vulnerabilities that hackers most exploit and other products fail to detect by using an expert system to chain together individual external vulnerabilities to reveal potentially hidden vulnerabilities at deeper levels of the systems.. (info)
August 15, 2008: 'Frankenrobot' Has Biological Brain. Meet Gordon, probably the world's first robot to be controlled exclusively by living brain tissue. Stitched together from cultured rat neurons, Gordon's primitive grey matter was designed at the University of Reading by scientists who unveiled the neuron-powered machine on Wednesday. Their groundbreaking experiments explore the vanishing boundary between natural and artificial intelligence, and could shed light on the fundamental building blocks of memory and learning, one of the lead researchers said. (info)
August 15, 2008: The Night Sessions (Book Review). Review of book by Ken MacLeod in which "Detective Inspector Adam Ferguson harbours a deep mistrust of religious faith and not a little unease at the recollection of the brutal methods with which he helped to suppress the religious minority. When a priest is murdered, then a bishop, atheists are at first suspected, and later aggrieved religious fundamentalists. But Ferguson's investigations soon uncover a more sinister plot involving artificial intelligence." (info)
August 15, 2008: Handle With Care . “The complexity of newly engineered systems coupled with their potential impact on lives, the environment, etc., raise a set of ethical issues that engineers had not been thinking about,” said William A. Wulf, a computer scientist who until last year headed the National Academy of Engineering. As one of his official last acts, he established the Center for Engineering, Ethics, and Society there. Rachelle Hollander, a philosopher who directs the center, said the new technologies were so powerful that “our saving grace, our inability to affect things at a planetary level, is being lost to us,” as human-induced climate change is demonstrating. ... “It’s a hot topic,” said Ronald C. Arkin, a computer scientist at Georgia Tech who advises the Army on robot weapons. “We need at least to think about what we are doing while we are doing it, to be aware of the consequences of our research.” ...Dr. Arkin said robotics researchers should consider not just how to make robots more capable, but also who must bear responsibility for their actions and how much human operators should remain “in the loop,” particularly with machines to aid soldiers on the battlefield or the disabled in their homes. (info)
August 15, 2008: iRobot preps pared-down PackBot for civilians. iRobot announced a new addition to its lineup of industrial robots Wednesday.... Like the PackBot, the Negotiator can climb stairs, work by remote control, and be outfitted with tools for reconnaissance and chemical detection.. (info)
August 15, 2008: Cell phone tech for swarm robots. The tiny motors normally used to vibrate cell phones can provide researchers with a significantly more affordable option for building robots. A team of students led by Alexis Johnson at the University of Southampton's electronics and computer science school realized the tiny motors intended for cell phone vibration are already designed and manufactured to be attached to circuit boards making them ideally suited for use in swarm robots. (info)
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