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


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

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Articles

October 31, 2007: Cellphones team up to become smart CCTV swarm. By Tom Simonite. NewScientist.com news. "Software that turns groups of ordinary camera cellphones into a 'smart' surveillance network has been developed by Swiss researchers. The team says it will release the [Facet] software for programmers and users to experiment with. The software employs Bluetooth, a short-range wireless technology included in many modern phones, to automatically share information and let the phones collectively analyse events that they record. This provides a platform for a group of phones to act as smart network capable of, for example, spotting intruders or identifying wildlife. Other researchers are developing similar intelligent camera networks."
>>> Telecommunications, Multi-Agent Systems, Applications
-> back to headlines

October 31, 2007: Robot Boats Hunt High-Tech Pirates on the High-Speed Seas - As maritime crime heats up, will the U.S. Navy follow Israel and Singapore’s lead to stock up on new unmanned surface vessels? And could they stop Al Qaeda? By Erik Sofge. Popular Mechanics. "For years now, law enforcement agencies across the high seas have proposed robotic boats, or unmanned surface vessels (USVs), as a way to help deal with 21st-Century techno Black Beards. ... This past summer, Florida-based Marine Robotic Vessels International (MRVI) unveiled a USV that emphasizes reconnaissance over firepower. The 21-ft.-long Interceptor can travel at up to 55 mph, and is designed to be piloted both remotely and autonomously. For a patrol boat, autonomous control would be a huge advantage, allowing it to traverse huge stretches of open sea, instead of having to remain within radio range of a given vessel. While the Interceptor could be fitted with a water cannon or other non-lethal offensive system, its primary mission is to serve as a sentry."
>>> Robots, Autonomous Vehicles, Military, Law Enforcement, Applications
-> back to headlines

October 31, 2007: Newsmaker - Takeo Kanade. By Mike Wereschagin. Pittsburgh Tribune-Review (pittsburghlive.com). "He is the U.A. and Helen Whitaker University Professor of Computer Science and Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University and director of the university's Quality of Life Technology Engineering Research Center. Noteworthy: He is the 2007 recipient of the Okawa Prize."
>>> AAAI Fellows
-> back to headlines

October 31, 2007: Researcher - Humans will love, marry robots by 2050. By Sharon Gaudin. Computerworld. "An artificial intelligence researcher predicts that robotics will make such dramatic advances in the coming years that humans will be marrying robots by the year 2050. Robots will become so human-like -- having intelligent conversations, displaying emotions and responding to human emotions -- that they'll be very much like a new race of people, said David Levy, a British artificial intelligence researcher whose book, 'Love and Sex with Robots,' will be released on Nov. 6. Gone, he says, will be the jerky movements and artificial-sounding voices generally associated with robots. These will be highly human-like machines that people fall in love with, becoming aides, friends and even spouses. It may sound like science fiction, but Levy, who turned his book into an academic Ph.D. dissertation at Maastricht University in The Netherlands this fall, said it's something we've been moving toward for decades now."
>>> Robots, Ethical & Social Implications, The Future; also see these related articles
-> back to headlines

October 30, 2007: Next wave of robots cheaper, smarter [video]. Associated Press. "For decades robots have been the stuff of science fiction. But the bots unveiled at the RoboDevelopment Expo in SanJose, California show how they are now becoming essential to manufacturing, technology and entertainment."
>>> Robots, Toys, Manufacturing, Applications, Events (@ Resources for Students)
-> back to headlines

October 30, 2007: iRobot winner offers simple home help [with video]. Tech News Blog post by Candace Lombardi. CNET News.com. "The winner of iRobot's amateur robot-building contest is a multi-functional home robot designed by Danh Trinh of Towson, Md., the company announced Tuesday. Trinh's winning robot, called simply 'Personal Home Robot,' is a teleoperational robot controlled from a laptop using Microsoft NetMeeting. It's capable of doing things like watering plants, controlling appliances, giving out reminders, dancing, and acting as a media center."
>>> Robots, Household Appliances; also see these related articles
-> back to headlines

October 30, 2007: CajunBot survives problems. 2theadvocate.com. "The University of Louisiana at Lafayette’s Team CajunBot finished its third day of qualifying Monday for the 2007 Urban Challenge, which pits robotic vehicles against each other in a city street setting. ... On Sunday, officials with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency announced additional qualifying rounds. Each team will once again run through the three testing areas. Today, CajunBot II must react to oncoming traffic in intersections. Finalists for the 2007 Urban Challenge are expected to be announced Thursday. The top 20 teams will compete against one another Saturday. ... For more information, or to watch Saturday’s event live, visit http://www.grandchallenge.org."
>>> Autonomous Vehicles, Transportation, Grand Challenges, Applications; also see these related articles
-> back to headlines

October 30, 2007: New generation of robots makes its debut. People's Daily Online (China). "When the computer entered the public eye more than 20 years ago, no one would have believed how quickly the PC and internet have developed. Today, many robots such as the US's 'ROOMBA,' Japan's 'ASIMO,' France's 'NAO,' and South Korea's 'IROBI' have made their debut. Is the era of the robot approaching? ... At present, there are about 900 million robots working in factories, hospitals, mines and institutes worldwide. A new generation of robots will gradually enter the family home and quietly change people's lives. Scientists generally believe that computer technology had the most significant influence on human life in the 20th Century and robots will continue to affect human life in the 21st Century. They are no longer simply mechanical hands; the new generation of robots essentially represents an intelligent manipulation system. ... A major problem now is the way humans evaluate intelligent robots. ... French scientists pointed out that the flourishing of robot development does not only foreshadow a technological revolution; but also sends out an irrefutable invitation to mankind. As a result, humans have to reconsider their future; and move in the direction of artificial intelligence research."
>>> The Future, Robots, Ethical & Social Implications, Applications, Industry Statistics
-> back to headlines

October 29, 2007: Robotics - Indian schools look at fun way of teaching. The Economic Times. "As select Indian school children prepare to participate in the World Robot Olympiad to be held in Taiwan, next month, schools across the country are displaying interest in introducing to students the fascinating and engaging field of robotics. Sixty teams competed in the recently-held Indian Robotic Olympiad in the capital, which saw participation from 180 schools, a big leap from last year's figure of 18 schools in a competition that required contestants to build and program robots from a specially designed robotics kit. ... The Indian Robotics Organisation, the Indian chapter of the World Robotics Organisation, of which 23 countries are a member, conducts competitions for children annually. Last year it held the competition for the first time and took the winners to Naning in China. ... Though there is no available official figures the robotic industry is the country is estimated to be around Rs 500 crore. ... 'Right now the physics curriculum that we have is very boring and very conceptual. So these robotics courses if they are integrated into the syllabus can sustain the interest of the children and make learning more exciting,' says Bindu Balakrishnan."
>>> Robots, Competitions (@ Resources for Students), Resources for Educators, Industry Statistics
-> back to headlines

October 29, 2007: Is Zeno the future of home entertainment? [video]. Reported by Michael Kanellos. CNET News.com. "Low-priced humanoid robot coming in 2009. Zeno, a humanoid robot with a $300 price tag, is set to be released in 2009. CNET News.com's Michael Kanellos takes a look at a prototype and asks why this one may be different than others that have come before it."

  • Also see: Vision for the robotic future [video]: "Robot development takes center stage From the RoboDevelopment Conference and Exposition in San Jose, Calif., CNET News.com's Michael Kanellos takes a look at the show's most impressive robotic developments, including a robotic hand for the disabled." (October 29, 2007).

>>> Robots, Toys, Assisitive Technologies, Applications
-> back to headlines

October 29, 2007: Riding With Robots 2.0. John Markoff's post to Bits, The New York Times' Technology Blog. "How smart can cars become? Quite a bit smarter. That was my conclusion after a test ride in Junior, a Volkswagen Passat filled with computers and navigation gear that will compete Saturday in the third autonomous vehicle grand challenge, held by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. ... The autonomous vehicle grand challenge, which will be held in Victorville, Calif., promises to be the most exciting yet. During the first two races the robots were basically very smart crumb followers. ... But in the Urban Grand Challenge the cars will be given a set of missions to complete in a simulated urban setting (a military training city.) They will have to figure out how to get from point A to B and then C, etc. Better still, other robot competitors will be busily attending to their own competing missions at the same time. ... Several days ago I took my second drive, this time in Junior, also designed by the group led by Mr. Thrun and Mr. Montemerlo. ... Whereas Stanley [my first test drive] was only able to follow its route, Junior actually 'thinks' about the route and can choose alternatives. ... At one point, for example, when both lanes of our course were blocked by cars, Junior made a three-point turn and got to its destination by a secondary route."
>>> Autonomous Vehicles, Transportation, Grand Challenges, Applications
-> back to headlines

October 29, 2007: Are created men created equal? Editorial by Stephanie McPherson. The Massachusetts Daily Collegian Online Edition. "There's no denying that artificial intelligence is a growing trend, and will eventually have to be accepted into mainstream society in some form. But to make A.I. so human-like seems too strange. It is too reminiscent of a science fiction movie. First, a robot husband or wife, then robot teachers. How long until a robot is running the country? Maybe that's the way nature is heading, though."
>>> The Future, Robots, Science Fiction
-> back to headlines

October 29, 2007: The Semantic Web Goes Mainstream - Radar Networks is unveiling a new tool that provides a smarter way to find information and increase productivity. By Kate Greene. Technology Review. "Radar Networks, based in San Francisco, is releasing a free Web-based tool, called Twine, that it hopes will change the way people organize their information. Twine is a website where people can dump information that's important to them, from strings of e-mails to YouTube videos. Or, if a user prefers, Twine can automatically collect all the Web pages she visited, e-mails she sent and received, and so on. Once Twine has some information, it starts to analyze it and automatically sort it into categories that include the people involved, concepts discussed, and places, organizations, and companies. This way, when a user is searching for something, she can have quick access to related information about it. ... The idea underlying Twine's function and technologies is known as the Semantic Web, a concept, long discussed in research circles, that can be described as a sort of smart network of information in which data is tagged, sorted, and searchable. ... In addition to employing the Semantic Web standards, Twine is also using extremely advanced machine learning and natural-language processing algorithms that give it capabilities beyond anything that relies on manual tagging. ... Twine will open up to invited users starting today."
>>> Interfaces, Representation, Web-Searching Agents, Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Applications; also see these related articles
-> back to headlines

October 29, 2007: Robot Sweeps Through Tokyo Apartment to Increase Productivity. By Toru Fujioka. Bloomberg.com. "Starting a part-time job at 65 wasn't easy for Yasuo Fukamachi. It got harder when a yellow cylinder on wheels trundled past on his first day in a Tokyo apartment building and began vacuuming the floor. Fukamachi, who wipes windows and railings for 800 yen ($6.90) an hour in the high rise, had stumbled across the winner of Japan's first Robot of the Year award. Developed by Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd., the machine is at the forefront of a government drive to offset a dwindling workforce with technology. 'I got scared after seeing the robot,' Fukamachi said. 'I got this cleaning job because my family-owned company couldn't pay much, even to me. Now I think robots might overtake me.' Japan, the first developed country to register more annual deaths than births, is promoting robots to help increase productivity by 50 percent in the next five years. ... Set up by Japan's Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry in 2006, the robot competition attracted 152 entries. Other contestants honored by the judges included a machine to catch squid and My Spoon, a feeding device for the elderly and disabled."
>>> Robots, Ethical & Social Implications, Household Appliances, Assisitive Technologies, Agriculture, Applications
-> back to headlines

October 28, 2007: Bridging document search language barriers. The Sunday Times, Malta. "The Department of Artificial Intelligence within the University of Malta's new ICT Faculty is a one of 10 European partners involved in an EU-funded Framework Programme 6 (FP6) project that is using concept-based, as opposed to word-based profiles, to facilitate cross-lingual document searches, where the language used for the query is not necessarily the same as the language of retrieved documents. The Language Technologies for eLearning (LT4eL) project that uses language technology to automatically analyse linguistic data to improve access to learning materials within an eLearning context by automatically creating concept-based semantic profiles."
>>> Natural Language Processing, Representation, Applications
-> back to headlines

October 28, 2007: The buzz. The Erie Times (GoErie.com). "Zabaware, an Erie-based company that specializes in artificial intelligence technology, recently won first place for the 'most human' computer at the 17th annual Loebner Prize Competition for Artificial Intelligence in New York City."

  • Also see this press release from Zabaware, Inc.: Zabaware Wins Loebner Prize for Artificial Intelligence. PR.com (October 24, 2007). "Today Zabaware’s Ultra Hal software won the “most human” computer of the year in the 17th annual Loebner Prize Competition for Artificial Intelligence (AI). The contest was held in New York City hosted by philanthropist Hugh Loebner. The Loebner Prize is an annual competition where software programs attempt to convince human judges that they are actually people. The format of the competition is called a Turing Test."

>>> Turing Test, Chatbots (@ Natural Language Processing), Applications
-> back to headlines

October 28, 2007: Making Fast Food Even Faster. By Michael Fitzgerald. The New York Times. "Fast food is a slow sell for new technologies. It took four years, for instance, for HyperActive Technologies, which makes a system that uses artificial intelligence to predict customer order flow, to have a restaurant chain buy the product. And it took three years for Exit 41, a developer of call-center software, to make its first significant corporate sale. ... But not until January this year did it land a corporate customer, when Zaxby’s Franchising, a chain of 400 restaurants based in Athens, Ga., approved the system for use in all its franchises. ... R. Coulter, co-founder and chief scientist at HyperActive, based in Pittsburgh, says he decided to use his Ph.D. in robotics from Carnegie Mellon University on fast food rather than, say, space exploration because 'it’s the last $100 billion industry that still makes all its products by hand.'"
>>> Business, Applications; also see these related articles
-> back to headlines

October 27, 2007: What puts the creepy into robot crawlies? By Jim Giles. New Scientist (Issue 2627; subscription req'd). "[T]he brain mechanisms responsible for our horror at such human-like creatures, and why this response evolved, are being revealed. Understanding this effect could help robot designers predict how people will react to their creations. The Gollum effect is an example of a phenomenon known as the 'uncanny valley'. If a robot is clearly a robot - with metal limbs, say - people are rarely troubled by it. But pass a certain threshold in realism, such as giving it skin or a human-like voice, and it starts to seem eerie."
>>> Robots, Cognitive Science, Science Fiction
-> back to headlines

October 26, 2007: N.H. firm delivers robots with attitude - Security, domestic service are the main markets for MobileRobots' new tech. By Efrain Viscarolasaga. Mass High Tech. "Unlike certain well-known, relatively low-priced robotic vacuum cleaners, an Amherst, N.H., robotic systems maker has gone upscale -- releasing a line of three high-priced home robots that executives say represent the next step in domestic human-robot interaction. MobileRobots Inc.'s three robots -- named 'Jeeves,' 'BrewskiBot' and 'Agent 007' -- perform household tasks with a personal touch: Jeeves and BrewskiBot are electronic entertainers, able to greet guests at the door or deliver drinks and hors de oeuvres all around the house. Agent 007, on the other hand, patrols the grounds with a security camera and can notify a command center when something is not right, such as an open door. But beyond the menial tasks, the robots were designed to be, well, less robotic, said CEO Jeanne Dietsch."
>>> Robots, Household Appliances, Applications
-> back to headlines

October 26, 2007: Artificial intelligence - Transforming the world we live in. By Kate Hilpern. Independent Online Edition of Careers Adviser Magazine. "The study of artificial intelligence (AI) - even at undergraduate level - has never been so advanced, particularly in the UK, Japan and USA. 'We have a current student on our BSc in AI who is looking at putting emotions on a robot so that if it could show if it was curious or angry,' says Will Browne, lecturer in cybernetics at the University of Reading. ... Most people don't realise the extent to which AI is already used in our everyday lives, believes Brown - making a degree in it an increasingly relevant qualification. ... Little wonder that a growing number of universities across the UK are running degrees in AI. The kinds of people best suited to them, says Dr Browne, are people with a basic interest in engineering and computer science, combined with a curiosity of how animals, including humans, function and how intelligent behaviours are created - and, of course, more than a passing interest in robots. 'We are not looking for geeks,' insists Judith Masthofs, lecturer in computing science at the University of Aberdeen, which also offers an AI degree. 'We need good communicators and problem solvers. But there's no need for students to know where they want to work when they graduate because the opportunities are expanding all the time. We have a lot of students who go onto work in banks, predicting what the money market will do next, while others go on to work for intelligence organisations right through to oil companies.' ... The existence of such degrees are a good reason for people interested in AI to do some homework into the course best suited to them and not look exclusively for 'AI' to appear in the title. As Dr Klaus-Peter Zauner, lecturer in computer science at the University of Southampton, points out, 'All students who study computer science here do some work around AI.' ... Sethu Vijayakumar, reader at Edinburgh University - which offers separate degrees in computer science, AI and informatics - believes there has never been a more exciting time to study AI. 'It's used in everything from automatic speech recognition and speech translation systems right through to rehabilitation systems for stroke patients and disaster recovery systems. What could be more stimulating than the opportunity to contribute to such inventions?'"
>>> AI Courses & Academic Departments -and- Careers in AI (@ Resources for Students), Computer Science, Robots, Applications
-> back to headlines

October 26, 2007: Mecha-morals - The ethics of artificial intelligence. By Trevor Melanson. The Ubyssey Online. "The thought that robots could be so humanlike raises important moral questions, the least of which is not how to treat them. 'It used to be that animal rights, for example, according to Immanuel Kant, were really indirect in the sense that we owed an animal a duty more because it reflected on how we as humans were,' David Calverley, a former attorney now researching bioethics, told Phoenix radio station KJZZ. 'In the last thirty years, the argument has been made that animals should be given certain rights because of their status,' Calverley explained. 'They are living beings however you want to define that it’s a very complex task. And then the question becomes if you can create a machine that emulates some of those same characteristics that we’re willing to ascribe rights to animals for, why is there a principle distinction, or should their be a distinction.' ... It seems to me that there are two ways to look at the issue of ethics and robots. On the one hand, there is the ethical, which asks us if we have a moral obligation to intelligent machines. And on the other hand, there is the practical, where we must consider if our treatment of robots will be reflected in how they treat us."
>>> Ethical & Social Implications, Robots, Science Fiction
-> back to headlines

October 26, 2007: Intel, scholars explore tech's future. By Daniel Lovering. The Associated Press / available from USATODAY.com. "On university campuses in three states, teams funded by Intel are exploring the future of computing -- and of the market for Intel's industry-driving microprocessors. Research teams at universities in Pennsylvania [Carnegie Mellon University], California [University of California at Berkeley] and Washington state [University of Washington in Seattle] have for six years been seeking ways to further integrate computers into daily life. ... Among the projects: a 'robotic bartender,' a small, wheeled table that carries cups to another device that grasps them and places them in a dishwasher using cameras and lasers as guides. 'The goal of this project is to free robots from the factory floor and bring them to your homes,' said Siddhartha Srinivasa, a [Carnegie Mellon University] scientist working on the project. ... Rahul Sukthankar, a researcher with Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel and an adjunct professor at Carnegie Mellon, said computers could sort through thousands of mammogram images to help doctors identify similar cases and decide whether to recommend biopsies. 'So really what you've done is enriched the doctor's decision-making potential at that moment by giving them access to all this data which otherwise would have taken a lot of effort to search through,' Sukthankar said."
>>> Applications, Robots, AI Academic Departments (@ Resources for Students)
-> back to headlines

October 26, 2007: Video search makes phone a 'second pair of eyes'. By Will Knight. NewScientist.com news. "Soon, however, it may be easier to simply record a video clip of an item of interest and have your phone tell you about it instead. Researchers at Accenture Technology Labs in France have developed technology that makes this possible using any ordinary 3G cellphone equipped with a video camera. ... If a user records a video clip of, say, a foreign food item, the system can automatically identify ingredients that might cause an allergic reaction. Similarly, when shown a book, it can quickly perform an online price comparison, or find a review (see video...). Live video footage is fed from the handset to a central server, which rapidly matches on-screen objects to images previously entered into a database. The server then sends find relevant information and sends it back to user. The central server uses an algorithm called the Scale-Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT) to match objects. ... Microsoft has a system called Lincoln, that lets users to take snapshots and send them off for identification. Another system developed by Evolution Robotics of Pasadena, California, called ViPR, also uses video footage to identify objects, and is already available in Japan."

  • Be sure to watch the embedded video demo (or access the video demo directly from YouTube): "The system enables a 3G video cellphone to record an object and find out about it in an online database."

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

October 26, 2007: Photo Gallery - Robots for all occasions. By Corinne Schulze. CNET News.com. "Looking for a hiking partner, someone to entertain your kids, or a gambling buddy guaranteed not to cheat? Look no further than the RoboDevelopment Conference and Expo in San Jose, Calif., organized by Robotic Trends. The two-day event, which kicked off on Thursday, is meant to give people developing robots for sale a place to gather and showcase their work."

  • Also see:
    • The Future Of Robotics Comes To Silicon Valley - Could Change Our Lives. By David Louie. abc7news.com (October 25, 2007). "The cartoon 'The Jetsons' gave us a make believe look at how well robots could work to simplify our lives. Now that futuristic vision may be close to reality. The challenge for these computer scientists and engineers is to take robotics to the next level. They're taking the pulse of what's being developed at a robot development conference. ... So the new frontier is artificial intelligence -- getting a robot to think and respond on its own. Robots will need to know how to interact with people and even animals to operate safely around our homes."
    • A one-eyed robot can do pushups on command. By Tom Abate. San Francisco Chronicle (October 24, 2007). "'We're coming into a time when robotics is being incorporated into school curriculums throughout the United States,' said Dan Kara, president of Massachusetts' Robotics Trends, which on Thursday opens a two-day conference, Robo Development Conference and Expo 2007, in San Jose."

>>> Robots, Applications, Events (@ Resources for Students), Resources for Educators
-> back to headlines

October 25, 2007: Peacebots Picket Robotic Violence. By Claudia Ginanni., Bryn Mawr Now. "What do robots do in the real world? They vacuum floors, work on assembly lines, assist with laparoscopic surgery and, as of last Saturday, march for peace. ... Robot Conflict, organized by the Northeast Robotics Club (NERC), was part of Robot Day, an exhibition designed to foster local kids' interest in robotics technology. Robot Day was hosted by the Institute's Partnerships for Achieving Careers in Technology and Science (PACTS) program, which works with local middle- and high-school students. [Associate Professor of Computer Science Doug] Blank and his students organized the robotic picket line, which carried signs bearing mottos like 'Make code not war,' 'Thou shalt not press others' kill switch,' and 'Extendable arms are for hugging,' partly to give those attending the event a chuckle. But their tongue-in-cheek protest was also designed to call attention to some serious issues. As a computer scientist at Bryn Mawr and the director of the Institute for Personal Robotics in Education, Blank is deeply committed to making the academic culture of computer science more welcoming to women and other groups who are underrepresented in the field. He questions the ability of a combat model to do that."
>>> Robots, Diversity -and- Events (@ Resources for Students), Resources for Educators
-> back to headlines

October 25, 2007: Can a Robot Find a Rock? Interview with David Wettergreen (Part IV). Astrobiology Magazine. "In the final segment of our four-part interview with David Wettergreen, an associate research professor at the Carnegie Mellon University Field Robotics Center, he explains why it’s not so easy for a robot to find a rock.  ... David Wettergreen: Yeah, distinguishing a rock from a soil is a surprisingly hard problem for a robot. AM: What’s hard about it? It seems pretty obvious to me. ... AM: Over time, the trend has clearly been toward robots that can operate more and more autonomously, that can 'reason' more and more like humans. As plans to return to the moon and possibly to send humans to Mars have developed, there’s been a renewed debate about what can be done with robots and what has to be done by people. What’s your view on this? ..."

>>> Space Exploration, Robots, Applications, Vision, AI Academic Departments (@ Resources for Students), Interviews
-> back to headlines

October 25, 2007: Darpa's Robot Car Race - Gentlemen, Start Your Processors. By Michael Belfiore. Wired. "Next week, three-dozen robot cars bristling with lasers, radars and antennas will rev their engines as dawn breaks over a former Air Force base in the California desert. If all the robots behave as their programmers hope, the Pentagon's Urban Challenge race will hold about as much excitement as a round of miniature golf. But it could turn into a smash-up derby. Following a week of trials by an initial field of 36 autonomous vehicles, 20 finalists will compete for $3.5 million in the Urban Challenge on November 3, the third in a series of robot car races sponsored by the Pentagon's wild-haired research department, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa."

  • And see:
    • Driverless vehicles get to show how they 'think.' By Bob Keefe. ajc.com | Cox News Service (October 26, 2007). "Beginning today, 35 vehicles will hit the streets of a former Air Force base north of here for a very unusual race. None of them will have a driver. Not even a remote control. ... Competitors with colorful names like Sting Racing, Mojavaton, Gator Nation and CajunBot began rolling into the former George Air Force Base in Victorville, Calif. this week from across the nation, including Atlanta; Austin, Texas; Gainesville, Fla., and Grand Junction, Colo. ... 'What we're doing is much more difficult than an autopilot on an airplane,' said [Georgia Tech] Sting Racing team leader Tucker Balch, a former Air Force F-15 fighter pilot who should know. 'With an autopilot, you're basically addressing how to plan a route from A to B. We're driving on a road system where you have to obey traffic laws and so forth.'"
    • Robot cars at the starting line of futuristic race - Cars must "think" their way through situations. By Bob Keefe. statesman.com | Cox News Service (October 26, 2007). "'This is a challenge ... not only to save lives, but also to create technology that will sooner or later trickle down to mainstream consumers,' racer Dave Tuttle of Austin said. In a former life as a semiconductor engineer, Tuttle oversaw the design of microprocessors used in IBM's chess-champion Deep Blue computer. Now he's the leader of Austin Robot Technology, a team of high-tech hobbyists and University of Texas engineers behind 'Marvin,' a self-driving Isuzu sport-utility vehicle that will compete in the semifinals today. ... Car makers and other businesses see potential. Helping sponsor some of the teams are Volkswagen and General Motors, Caterpillar and Lotus. High-tech companies like Google Inc. and Intel Corp. also are helping fund teams, as are defense contractors like SAIC Inc."
    • Have car, no driver ... will travel? Austin team to test unmanned auto in competition that may pave future for military vehicles. By Karen Brooks. Dallas Morning News (October 26, 2007). "Marvin the Land Robot may have a long road to travel before he pulls into the average American driveway – but this tricked-out SUV being developed at the University of Texas won't need a driver to get there. ... 'This is the sort of thing that can really change society,' said team member Peter Stone, professor of computer science at UT whose class last spring featured Marvin as its lab project. 'Looking back on the history of the automobile over 100 years, people will mark the Ford and the invention of the assembly line ... but then they'll also mark this as the time when cars started driving themselves.' ... The team named him Marvin after the 'Paranoid Android' in Douglas Adams' cult-favorite series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. In the books, Marvin is depressed because he's infinitely more intelligent than the universe around him, and therefore bored to tears. ... The team knew that Marvin was the right name for its creation when it received its random team number for the 2005 Grand Challenge: 42."
    • “Junior” on track for Urban race Racing team’s robotic car enters qualifying round today. By Mima Mohammed. The Stanford Daily (October 26, 2007). "The Stanford Racing Team and its robotic car 'Junior' begin competition today at the National Qualifying Event for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Urban Challenge."
    • Driverless cars set to take on urban challenges - A snazzy Lotus is Triangle's entry. By Bruce Siceloff. newsobserver.com (October 26, 2007). "A Cary-based Lotus sports car dubbed Lone Wolf is one of 35 robot vehicles that will meet today in California for the semifinals of the $3.5 million DARPA Urban Challenge, a Defense Department contest in driverless driving. ... Lone Wolf is the creation of Insight Racing, a team of 50 volunteer engineers and N.C. State University students."
    • Pentagon robot challenge goes corporate. By Alicia Chang. The Associated Press / available from denverpost.com (October 26, 2007). "'They've become like NASCAR teams with multiple sponsors and stickers on everything,' said Peter Singer, a Brookings Institution senior fellow who has followed the DARPA competitions. 'It shows that it's becoming big business.' For the first time, there even will be a sponsors-only section for companies to display their swag next to the pit stop on the grounds of the old George Air Force Base east of Los Angeles on race day, Nov. 3. ... Sponsors in the first two challenges mostly were bit players. Today, they are more likely to back several teams and in some cases, help lead one. Part of the reason has to do with new rules that made the contest more lucrative. Unlike in past years when competitors raised their own money, DARPA gave up to $1 million each to 10 teams in return for the right to use some of the technology that's developed. ... DARPA does not endorse any team or corporate sponsor, but it encourages academia and business to work together. 'It's wonderful to have associates to complement each other. Together you're much greater than the sum of the parts,' said William 'Red' Whittaker, Carnegie Mellon robotics professor who is competing for the third time."

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

October 25, 2007: The E-Learning Adventure. By Nicole Girard. TechNewsWorld. "Improvements in the processing power of personal computers combined with Internet delivery applications provide a tremendous opportunity for novel approaches to preparedness training. The power of virtual learning environments lies in creating 3-D spaces that give users a sense of learning by doing. ... A simulation-based training game designed to equip players with the ability to deal with crises in a military situation was developed by research and development firm Stottler Henke. The system -- developed by the Navy to train tactical action officers (TAO) -- allows players to train within a battlefield simulation. As officers second in command to the captain, they are the individuals who run the ship in a crisis situation. 'In real life, the captain commands a cadre of about 15 people,' Jim Ong, group manager for Stottler Henke, told TechNewsWorld. Ong leads the development of artificial intelligence-based systems for training, performance support and decision support. ... Instead of pressing buttons on a dashboard, the player is talking to a person through the use of automated speech recognition and speech synthesis provided by a tool called 'Symbionic.' It's an intelligence agent toolkit used to monitor the students actions. It consists primarily of voice commands and questions and assesses whether or not the student is doing the right thing or not.... Stottler Henke specializes in turnkey applications and developing tools. Their main area of expertise is developing advanced training systems. Their core competition is artificial intelligence. 'We use [artificial] intelligence to make training more effective,' Ong said. 'A lot of simulations used by corporations tend to be pretty simple. Artificial entertainment games tend to have the intelligence of the characters that are in the game, the non-live characters.' The way to make the characters smarter is to enable the sim to automatically assess the students' performance, Ong said."
>>> Education, Military, Video Games, Speech, Applications
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October 25, 2007: Rating Facial Expressions - New software could help mental-health professionals assess patients and ensure that salespeople project a positive attitude. By Anna Davison. Technology Review. "Software that recognizes and rates smiles was demonstrated recently at an exhibition in Tokyo, where attendees competed to outsmile one another. The smile-checking technology is the latest addition to Omron Corporation's OKAO Vision software suite, which detects faces in images and can determine the person's gender and approximate age, or verify his or her identity from a database of faces. The smile ­software is Omron's first foray into facial-expression detection and analysis, a field that could revolutionize how humans interact with machines, and with each other. ... 'Clearly, it's an interesting thing,' says Joseph Atick of L-1 Identity Solutions, based in Stamford, CT, which supplies identification technology, primarily for security applications. 'If you can read people better, you can serve them better.'  ... Sophisticated facial-expression analysis could help mental-health professionals evaluate their patients and monitor their progress."
>>> Image Understanding, Interfaces, Machine Learning, Vision, Applications
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October 25, 2007: Parents blamed for low IT enrolment levels. By Charles Mandel, CanWest News | Edmonton Journal. "Enrolment in information technology (IT) programs is declining at universities across Canada and parents are to blame, says one of Canada's leading computer scientists. 'I fundamentally blame the parents, because the parents are the ones who survived the dot-com bust with the perception that there are no jobs in IT,' said Jonathan Schaeffer, a Canada Research Chair in Artificial Intelligence at the University of Alberta. ... He is one of about 100 computer scientists, academics, industry leaders and government officials gathered at a Toronto conference aimed at understanding why interest in computer science and computer engineering programs is dropping across Canada. Research shows 89,000 new IT jobs will be required in Canada in the next three to five years...."
>>> Computer Science, Careers in AI (@ Resources for Students), Industry Statistics
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October 24, 2007: Simplest 'universal computer' wins student $25,000. By Jim Giles. NewScientist.com news. "A 20-year-old computer science undergraduate has claimed a prestigious $25,000 mathematics prize by proving that a simple mathematical calculator can be used as a 'universal computing machine'. The proof involves a kind of mathematical calculator known as a Turing machine, a concept originally studied by mathematician Alan Turing in the 1930s. Some kinds of Turing machine are 'universal computers' - given enough time and memory, they can solve almost any mathematical problem. Mathematician Stephen Wolfram discussed the simplest possible Turing machine, a cellular automaton that uses just three different symbols in its calculations, in his 2002 book A New Kind of Science. In May 2007, Wolfram announced a $25,000 award to anyone who could prove that this Turing machine is also universal."

  • Also see:
    • The Prize Is Won; The Simplest Universal Turing Machine Is Proved. Stephen Wolfram - Wolfram Blog (October 24, 2007). "I had no idea how long it would take before the prize was won. A month? A year? A decade? A century? Perhaps the question was even formally undecidable (say from the usual axioms of mathematics). But today I am thrilled to be able to announce that after only five months the prize is won--and we have answer: the Turing machine is in fact universal! ... Here it is. Just two states and three colors. And able to do any computation that can be done. ..."
    • A New Kind of Science - Author Pays Brainy Undergrad $25,000 for Identifying Simplest Computer - But will it jumpstart Stephen Wolfram's scientific revolution? By JR Minkel. ScientificAmerican.com Science News (October 25, 2007). "Wolfram's book explored the theme that extreme complexity can blossom from very simple rules, especially those of so-called cellular automata, which resemble ever expanding games of tic-tac-toe and can produce complex, nonrepeating patterns reminiscent of everything from snowflakes to quantum mechanics to natural selection. The former child prodigy argued that such models might offer a better way of understanding physics and even biology than can the traditional tools of calculus. One of Wolfram's main conjectures was that nearly any simple set of abstract rules should be equivalent to a universal Turing machine in the complexity it can produce. The existence of the new proof, he tells ScientificAmerican.com, adds weight to the idea. It also marks a 'monument in the computational universe,' Wolfram says. 'This is the end of the road. This is the simplest conceivable universal Turning machine.'"


>>> Turing (@ Namesakes), Competitions (@ Resources for Students)
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October 24, 2007: Intelligent approach to meeting technology needs of Gulf region. AME Info. "The British University in Dubai (BUiD) has announced the opening of a unique outreach programme, based on innovative thinking in artificial intelligence and information technology, which is open to all IT professionals working in the region. ... This ambitious programme begins with a public lecture from Henry S. Thompson, a leading expert on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cognitive science from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. The talk is entitled 'Artificial Minds, Natural Computation: How computers have changed the way we think about ourselves'. ... The public lecture, informed by the particular use of computer models of human language, will be followed by a major event open to IT professionals from across the region. The Dubai Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (DAMAS) School will be held at The British University in Dubai from 27-30 January 2008, organized by BUiD's Autonomous and Adaptive Systems research group."
>>> Cognitive Science, Multi-Agent Systems, Applications, AI Academic Departments -and- Events (@ Resources for Students)
-> back to headlines

October 24, 2007: Japan traces robots' past, future. By Tim Hornyak. The Japan Times Online. "A major robot exhibition that opened Tuesday at the National Museum of Nature and Science in Tokyo's Ueno Park presents that dream as a sweeping historical progression going back centuries. "The Great Robot Exhibition: Karakuri, Anime and the Latest Robots" brings together dozens of robots, toys, artifacts and demonstrations in what is Japan's biggest 'bot extravaganza since a hit droid-fest that was held at the 2005 Aichi Expo. The show is a compelling illustration of how robots are both science and fiction and how Japan's approach to robotics is heavily influenced by fantasy. ... The exhibition is based on three themes: real robots, imaginary robots, and karakuri. The latter were ingeniously devised clockwork dolls created when Japan was closed to the rest of the world during the Edo Period (1603-1867), and they are considered proto-robots. ... It's easy to understand how this cultural predilection for anthropomorphizing things, part of an animistic religious tradition, made it natural for Japanese to want to welcome robots, especially humanoid ones, into the workplace and home."

  • Also see the related article: Asimo steps closer to Honda's Astro Boy goal. By Tim Hornyak. The Japan Times Online. "Honda's humanoid robot Asimo is so amazingly graceful for a machine that it's hard to believe there isn't a man inside that walking spacesuit. ... [O]ne of the biggest obstacles to having a handy robot like Asimo around the home is smarts. "Artificial intelligence is a huge field," says lead inventor Masato Hirose. 'We're working on an important part  -- getting the robot to understand its surroundings through environmental sensing technology. It's a preliminary step before real AI. Our hope is to commercialize Asimo over the next five to 10 years.'"
  • And see this slide show: Great Robot Exhibition Showcases Centuries of Japanese Bots. By Tim Hornyak. Wired (October 25, 2007).

>>> Robots, Science Fiction, Events (@ Resources for Students)
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October 24, 2007: Gray to compete in DARPA Urban Challenge. By Tiffany Williams. The Courier of Mongomery County. "It's taken Jennifer Gray 34 years to find how she fits into a world filled with patterns, and she now has a chance to show her unbounded math skills at a national competition. ... It wasn't until she was committed to a mental health institution and scored 129 on a mandatory IQ test that Gray was diagnosed as a high-functioning autistic. ... Gray has the opportunity to use her skills and learn more about her passions, artificial intelligence and autonomous vehicles, at the DARPA Urban Challenge, taking place in Victorville, Calif. ... Gray has been invited to join Team Berlin from Rice University on the trip. The event begins Friday. 'For me it is the same excitement of meeting a Hollywood actor,' she said. Gray is raising money for her trip by hosting garage sales at her mother's home and seeking sponsorships."
>>> see articles about the DARPA Grand Challenge elsewhere on this page
-> back to headlines

October 23, 2007: Start-up warms up personal robots - Silicon Valley company started by a Google veteran plans to make its robotics software open-source. By Stefanie Olsen. CNET News.com. "Willow Garage, based in Menlo Park, Calif., is developing a hardware and software development platform for personal-assistant robots, autonomous boats and unmanned cars. The privately funded company, quietly started almost a year ago by eGroups founder and veteran Google architect Scott Hassan, plans to make its robotics software open-source. That way, it hopes to draw a community of developers to build applications in these respective fields. ... The emergence of Willow Garage comes as commercial interest in robotics and cognitive computing is on the rise. ... 'We want to allow software people to be able to share ideas and a common robot platform. We think the field will advance much more quickly that way,' according to the personal robot team."
>>> Robots, Autonomous Vehicles, Assistive Technologies, Household Appliances, Robots (@ Software, Open Source Projects & Hardware), Applications
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October 23, 2007: Robots 'boost' science interest. BBC News. "Robots are being used by teachers in a bid get more female pupils interested in engineering and science. Belvidere school in Shrewsbury has been chosen as a regional training centre to show teachers how to make the subject more relevant to girls. A group of German experts have been using robots that can be used in classrooms to appeal to girls."
>>> Resources for Educators
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October 23, 2007: Future of science - 'We will have the power of the gods' - A leading theoretical physicist has tapped the best scientific brains of the age to provide a startling vision of the future. By Roger Highfield. Telegraph. "According to the theoretical physicist Professor Michio Kaku of the City College of New York, we are entering an empowered new era: 'We have unlocked the secrets of matter. We have unravelled the molecule of life, DNA. And we have created a form of artificial intelligence, the computer. We are making the historic transition from the age of scientific discovery to the age of scientific mastery in which we will be able to manipulate and mould nature almost to our wishes.' ... In a new BBC4 series called Visions of the Future, Prof Kaku talks to today's pioneers about how we are moving from being passive observers of nature to its choreographers. Here are their remarkable speculations about how the scientific and technological revolution will transform life and society in the 21st century. ... Nanobot armies: Dr John Alexander, US Joint Special Operations University. ... The virtual family: Jaron Lanier, virtual-reality pioneer. ... Biological robots: Prof Rodney Brooks, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. ... Superhuman machinery: Paul Saffo, technology forecaster, Stanford University. ... Artificial intelligence: Eliezer Yudkowsky, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, California. ..."
>>> The Future, Applications
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October 22, 2007: Super search. The Engineer Online. "Unique software devised by Ulster University (UU) researchers has won the top prize at this year’s 25k Award organised by the Northern Ireland Science Park. Invented by a team of three UU researchers in collaboration with St Petersburg State University, Russia, the so-called SOPHIA software automatically trawls through documents to build structure by discovering key themes that naturally exist within them. Documents are then associated with the theme they are most closely aligned to with respect to their semantic content. When a user requests information, SOPHIA returns the themes that most closely match their needs."
>>> Natural Language Processing, Information Retrieval, Applications
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October 22, 2007: How Do You Say...Translation software is at last good enough to help companies do business in other languages. By Peter Loftus. The Wall Street Journal. "Thanks to the Internet, companies can leap over most geographical barriers to conduct business globally. But language barriers remain a tough hurdle. Increasingly, though, translation software is making it easier to do business in other languages. While computer translation isn't perfect -- human input is still needed to ensure complete accuracy -- the latest programs are faster and more accurate than earlier generations of translation tools. ... Ford Motor Co. uses translation software from Systran SA of France, along with some human input, to convert vehicle-assembly instructions written in English into four languages: Spanish, German, Portuguese and Dutch. It also uses software from Applications Technology Inc., of McLean, Va., for translations from English to Turkish. Nestor Rychtyckyj, a Ford technical specialist in artificial intelligence, says that while machine translation still isn't 100% accurate, it has improved over the years and is good enough to convey the substance of instructions to foreign workers. 'Machine translation just makes the process more efficient' than it would be using human translators alone, Mr. Rychtyckyj says. 'We're saving a lot of time and effort.'"
>>> Machine Translation, Business, Marketing, Information Retrieval, Natural Language Processing, Applications
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October 22, 2007: 'Smart' video offers an alert to threats - Taking boredom factor out of security systems. By Hiawatha Bray. The Boston Globe. "In video surveillance systems, the weakest link is the often bored, distracted human who has to spend hours staring at a bank of video monitors, waiting for something suspicious to happen. Several Boston area companies say they have found a solution: surveillance systems smart enough to recognize threats, even when their human operators do not. 'It essentially replaces the need for people to watch video,' said Scott Schnell, chief executive of VideoIQ Inc., a Bedford firm that was spun off earlier this year from General Electric Co. ... Systems from VideoIQ and Intuvision Inc. of Woburn can automatically spot an intruder climbing a fence or a subway passenger leaving a suspicious parcel on the platform. ... [Simon] Harris said that worldwide sales of smart video surveillance systems will be less than $100 million this year, but rise to about $3 billion by 2010. ... One test video shows ducks and boats on the Hudson River. The system draws yellow boxes around the harmless ducks, but when a boat appears, the box turns bright red. ... Intuvision, a startup funded by grants from the US intelligence community, has attacked the problem using a technique called 'task-based attention.'"

>>> Law Enforcement, Image Understanding, Vision, Machine Learning, Applications, Industry Statistics

October 22, 2007:  Japan stages robot Olympics  [video] - Japan has held a special 'robot athletic meet' in which competing robots played football and danced. BBC.

>>> Robots, Sports
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October 22, 2007: CMU robotic SUV nearly ready to compete for $2 million prize. By David Templeton. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "Beginning Friday, Tartan Racing's driverless car will try qualifying for the finals of the Urban Challenge on a former Air Force base in Victorville, Calif. Twenty qualifiers then will compete Nov. 3 in a 60-mile 'mission' through cityscape on the base with two-way traffic, stop signs, four-way intersections and other roadway obstacles. ... The event allows the public to see the technology. In time, the technology will allow cars to park themselves, then return to pick up the owner. Cars also will drive themselves on interstate highways with 'efficiency, safety and reliability that's far beyond what we have today,' Dr. [William 'Red'] Whittaker said."
>>> Autonomous Vehicles, Robots, Transportation, Military, Grand Challenges, Applications
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October 22, 2007: The future is here right now, if you can read the signs. By Leon Gettler. The Age. "Mr [Ray] Hammond, a European author and futurologist, says Maria is very much a sign of things to come. The signs are already there. "My particular approach is to study trends in the present and work out the number of ways that they may extrapolate into the future," Mr Hammond says. ... I use Google a metaphor for an emerging intelligence. Every single day that I use Google, and I use it constantly, I notice that it's getting a little bit more capable at understanding what I mean when I don't say precisely what I mean. 'Now, if brainpower in the computer is doubling every 12 months and Google is gathering every single minute of every day the intentions of all the humans in the planet, imagine where that might lead in 10 years. And if we accept that Moore's law (that the number of transistors on a chip should double every 18 months to two years) will continue, somewhere between the years 2020 to 2035, artificial intelligence will equal human intelligence and by definition, it will then double it.' The result, he says, will be a rupture in human evolution. 'We are effectively inventing a new species. So where does that leave us then? In control.'"
>>> The Future, Applications
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October 21, 2007: Robot Warriors In Iraq - The Pentagon Is Looking Towards High-Tech Solutions In Effort To Reduce U.S. Casualties. CBS Evening News. "The sniper nests and IED-laced roads of Iraq have posed deadly challenges for the U.S. military. The result has been speedy development of soldiers that know nothing about fear or danger: the combat robot. "It's a tremendous capability to put a robot where you do not want to put a man," said Jim Braden, of the Army's Joint Robotics Program. Never before have robots played such a wide role in a ground war, reports CBS News correspondent Russ Mitchell. Five thousand robots are working alongside U.S. forces, finding booby traps or searching for the enemy. ... The Pentagon plans to spend nearly $2 billion over the next five years on robots.... The Warrior could be in Iraq by 2009, transporting ammunition or wounded soldiers. But another robot recently sent to Iraq is lethal. It's called Swords and CBS News has learned three of these armed robots could see their first combat very soon. But the military insists it is not unleashing a mindless killing machine. A soldier must press the fire button. 'You need a man in the loop,' said Braden. ... But the ability for robots to think for themselves - what designers call 'autonomy' - may not be far away."

  • Watch the CBS News video report: Robots Help U.S. Fight In Iraq. (October 21, 2007). "Robots are being used by the military in Iraq are able to disarm IED's and to search for and even kill the enemy. Russ Mitchell reports."

>>> Robots, Military, Autonomous Vehicles, Ethical & Social Implications, Applications, Industry Statistics
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October 21, 2007: Stanford team getting ready to take Junior out for a drive. By Matt Nauman. The Mercury News (SiliconValley.com). "Junior, a Volkswagen Passat station wagon, will compete this week as the Stanford Racing Team's entrant into the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge. Driving it will be, uh, itself - it's a robotic vehicle. Sebastian Thrun, a Stanford computer professor, again heads the effort that resulted in a $2 million victory in a similar event in 2005. This time, however, instead of a run across the Southern California and Nevada desert, the autonomous vehicles from 36 teams must deal with other traffic, obey traffic laws, merge and park. Although the purpose of the event is to foster development of unmanned vehicles for the military, Thrun thinks robotic vehicles eventually can make highways safer and less congested, and even improve the environment. He talked to Mercury News Staff Writer Matt Nauman last week. Here is a transcript of their conversation. Q: What was the significance of winning the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge, and how has all the fanfare affected you and the team?  ... Q: Aren't robots better drivers than humans? ... Q: How significant are autonomous vehicles in the field of robotics and artificial intelligence? And how close are they to commercialization?A: Cars are a great opportunity for artificial-intelligence research to make advances. Many of the issues addressed by artificial intelligence are found in traffic, like scene research, understanding what's out there. Clearly that's something that happens in traffic. How close to commercialization? My guess is that in about six to eight years' time, we'll have technology that actually improves the performance and reliability of driving. I think the way the commercialization will go is that we'll have driver assistance systems that help people, but people are still in charge. They won't be completely autonomous for the near future. Q: How successful have robots been? ... Q: Will robot cars improve our lives and the world?"

  • Also see these 3 stories from Palo Alto Online:
    • 'Look Ma, no hands!' - Stanford bids for second win in robotic-car DARPA Challenge. By Sue Dremann (October 23, 2007).
    • A future for driverless cars? By Sue Dremann (October 23, 2007). "Autonomous vehicles for military applications are probably five to 10 years away, performing tasks such as removing mines and explosive devices. It will be 20 years before a fully autonomous car hits the mainstream market, according to Sebastian Thrun, project leader of the Stanford Racing Team. ... And there are greater obstacles beyond technology. 'There are all the [transportation-safety] regulation hurdles. Who will be responsible if it crashes? If you don't have a driver anymore, the liability shifts to the manufacturer,' he said."
    • The mission to accomplish. By Sue Dremann (October 23, 2007). "Below are some of the challenges the vehicles will face: • Stay in the lanes • Travel to all designated 'military' checkpoints • Get out of dead-end streets ..."

>>> Autonomous Vehicles, Robots, Transportation, Military, Grand Challenges, Ethical & Social Implications, Applications, Interviews
-> back to headlines

October 21, 2007: When the Military Needs It Yesterday. By G. Pascal Zachary. The New York Times. "The Pentagon has long indulged in highly polished technological systems that are the product of many years of bureaucratic wheel-spinning, grinding meetings and wish-list overkill. But those soul-deadening procedures have come under intense criticism for turning creative people away from innovation for national security. ... BBN built a two-way translator, a hand-held device that allows an American soldier to understand an Arabic speaker, sort of. It is not perfect, Mr. [Mark] Sherman acknowledges, but at 50 percent accuracy, the digital translator may indeed improve security and save lives because human translators in Iraq often spy for the other side or are targets for assassination by insurgents. In late 2006, Mr. Sherman had a chance meeting with some Army officers at Harvard. Because BBN had been researching language translation for decades, a team was able to produce a single hand-held translator in just 42 days. It is now being tested in Iraq. The idea of bringing inventions quickly to the battlefield has roots stretching to World War II and the Korean War."
>>> Military, Machine Translation, Natural Language Processing, Speech, Applications
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October 19, 2007: What I Meant to Say Was Semantic Web. John Markoff's post to Bits, The New York Times' Technology Blog. "One great way to start a fight in a crowded Silicon Valley cocktail party (and there are a lot of them these days) is to mention Web 3.0. There is no easy consensus about how to define what is meant by Web 3.0, but it is generally seen as a reference to the semantic Web. While it is not that much more precise a phrase, the semantic Web refers to technology to make using the Internet better by understanding the meaning of what people are doing, not just the way pages link to each other. ... So companies are bubbling up all over the place that claim to be building part of the semantic Web. Some are building voice recognition systems to use while browsing the Internet on a cell phone. Some want to challenge Google head on with a better search engine. ... In a demonstration I saw earlier this week Twine appeared to do a good job of what artificial intelligence researchers refer to as 'entity extraction,' that is categorizing things like people and places automatically."

  • Also see Dan Farber's post to his ZDNet Between the Lines Blog: Radar Networks weaves semantic Twine (October 18, 2007). "'Twine uses natural language processing and statistical, link and graph analysis, as well as Web crawling, data mining and machine learning to figure out what information users put into the system is about, what it means and what is should be related to. Then Twine connects it and organizes it for you automatically,' he said. Underling all the computation to extract meaning, classify and relate data are emerging semantic Web standards, such as RDF, OWL and SPARQL (the query language for RDF). 'Web 2.0, as Tim O’Reilly says, is all about collective intelligence. Twine does it in a smarter way -- it’s Web 2.0 with a brain, which is sort of what web 3.0 is,' [Nova] Spivack said."

>>> Interfaces, Representation, Web-Searching Agents, Natural Language Processing, Machine Learning, Knowledge Management, Applications
-> back to headlines

October 19, 2007: 'Robotic rampage' unlikely reason for deaths. By Tom Simonite. NewScientist.com news. "Nine South African soldiers died and eleven were injured last Friday during a live-fire exercise when an anti-aircraft gun went out of control. But, contrary to some reports, the tragic accident was not the result of an automated or robotic weapon going out of control, a defence expert says. ... Blogs and other online news sources have suggested the incident may be due to software problems, highlighting the danger of automated weapon systems. But Jim O'Halloran of defence publication Jane's Land-Based Air Defence says the incident is more likely the result of a simple mechanical failure."

  • Also see: Robot Cannon Kills 9, Wounds 14. Noah Shachtman's Danger Room Blog at Wired (October 18, 2007). "The South African National Defence Force 'is probing whether a software glitch led to an antiaircraft cannon malfunction that killed nine soldiers and seriously injured 14 others during a shooting exercise on Friday.'"

>>> Robots, Military, Ethical & Social Implications, Applications
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October 19, 2007: Newsmaker - Gates still finding his voice. By Ina Fried. CNET News.com. "Bill Gates has been saying for years that one day soon we will use handwriting, voice and touch to control our computers. He's still saying that. In an interview with CNET News.com, Gates talks about some of the ways that speech recognition has already made inroads and discusses some of the places it will eventually go. ... Q: When did you really first see the possibilities of voice? Was there a real early demo you saw years ago that sort of--you saw it and could really see the possibilities? Gates: Well, certainly the idea that computers should deal with voice has been around a long time. It's kind of a natural way to communicate. In the 1970s, DARPA was funding people, including people at Harvard, to do speech recognition. And so people kind of thought, hey, this should be easy to do. The dream of computers understanding voice goes way back. And the dream that the data network and the voice network would be one in the same goes way back as well. ... [Q:] What are some of the areas where you see voice going that people aren't necessarily thinking about today? Gates: To me, voice is in the broad realm of natural interface. ..."

>>> Speech, Natural Language Processing, Interfaces, Applications, Interviews
-> back to headlines

October 18, 2007: Newsmaker - DARPA sees inspiration as trophy of robot race. By Stefanie Olsen. CNET News.com. "For Tony Tether, an upcoming race of robot cars isn't just about saving lives in the military. It's also designed to inspire a generation of technologists. As director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the U.S. government's military research and development arm, Tether pioneered a series of driverless challenges that have wowed the public and four-star generals alike. ... He was appointed director of DARPA in 2001. CNET News.com talked to Tether ahead of the Urban Challenge, the third in DARPA's series of robot races, which will award $2 million to the winner. The finals will take place November 3 in Victorville, Calif. Q: We're getting close to the Urban Challenge, and you've witnessed all of the others. So how do you suspect this one will vary from the others? ... What will be the hardest thing about the course, without giving anything away? ... So what do you think has been accomplished between the second and now? Tether: I think the thing that's really been accomplished is that these vehicles have learned to recognize not only fixed obstacles, but obstacles that are moving. ... Can you tell us how this challenge came about? [Tether:] The autonomous vehicle really came about for two reasons. One was that it's a serious mission for the military and that if we can reduce the number of people who are driving convoys in a place like Iraq or Afghanistan, we would definitely reduce the infrastructure to take care of those people. The second reason is that we are worried here at DARPA about the food stock: that the kids today in the United States don't seem to be going into engineering and science like they used to. ... What are the top three advances to come out of DARPA in the last five years would you say? ..."
>>> Autonomous Vehicles, Robots, Military, Transportation, Grand Challenges, Applications, Interviews
-> back to headlines

October 18, 2007: Do you, Mr. Insensitive, take this robot to be your lawfully welded wife? Editorial- The Vancouver Sun (canada.com). "[Isaac] Asimov did foresee the advent of intelligent robots, and he promulgated three famous laws of robotics. But those laws seem rather mundane today, dealing as they do with robots' responsibility to protect and serve humans and themselves. Nowhere, for example, does Asimov broach the much more intriguing topics of humans having sex with, or indeed, marrying robots. That oversight has now been corrected though, thanks to artificial intelligence researcher David Levy, who recently received his PhD from the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands for his thesis on human-robot relationships. Titled Intimate Relationships with Artificial Partners, the thesis explores what Levy believes is an inevitability: That some humans will eventually take robots to be their lawfully wedded -- or welded, as the website Digital Daily put it -- partners. ... This does, however, seem to be jumping the gun a bit, since most people would only fall in love with -- and society would only sanction relationships with -- robots that are fully sentient, and there's no telling how long it will be before we develop artificial sentience."
>>> also see these related articles
-> back to headlines

October 17, 2007: Robots Will Become Part of Daily Life. By Fred O'Connor, IDG News Service via PC World. "Caring for an aging population, giving manual-labor jobs to illegal immigrants and keeping production costs down as worker wages rise sound like issues reserved for a political campaign. But panelists at a recent discussion at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge believe robotics will help solve these problems and others faced by society and businesses. Once relegated to science-fiction movies and automobile assembly lines, robots will handle more complex tasks in various industries, including health care and agriculture, according to those who spoke about the future of robotics. ... Technology's interdisciplinary nature will help foster robotics advancements, the panelists said. ... Meanwhile, developments in multicore computing and storage advancements have already affected robot development."
>>> Robots, Applications
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October 17, 2007: Next-Gen Robots Will Be Big For Holidays - High-Tech Robotics Come In Toy Packages. By Gregg Geller. WCBSTV.com. "Next generation robots will be a big hit this upcoming holiday season. Robots at this year's Digital Life Expo came in many shapes, sizes and prices, and with varying capabilities. What became clear was that no matter what you budget or desires for a new robotic toy, something is available for everyone." Videos of the robots can be accesed via links in the article.
>>> Toys & Robotic Pets, Robots, Applications, Events (@ Resources for Students)
-> back to headlines

October 17, 2007: Finding a parking space is a call away - High-tech system helps motorists find where the empty spaces are. By Erik N. Nelson. Contra Costa Times. "Parking meters are so 1920s. That is what U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters told a crowd of journalists Tuesday.... 'Meter technology has remained unchanged since -- can you believe this -- the 1920s, when vehicle travel was a relatively new activity in American life,' she said. 'Back then, the early parking meter concept wasn't too much different from parking during the last turn of the century, when travelers would tie up at a hitching post and throw a coin to the stablehand to watch their horse.' But now the stablehand is artificial intelligence, the hitching post is wireless Internet parking and the days of trolling for a parking space are, in theory, numbered. All the well-equipped motorist will need to do is call up the parking system on a cell phone or hand-held computer, and the system will show where the empty spaces are. A few clicks later and the space is reserved and waiting for the driver to arrive. ..."
>>> Transportation, Applications
-> back to headlines

October 17, 2007: NASA extends Mars probes' mission for 5th time. AFP via Yahoo! News. "NASA Tuesday announced it was extending for the fifth time the mission of Mars space probes Spirit and Opportunity, in their indefatigable exploration of the Red planet. The two robots touched down three weeks apart on Mars in January 2004 for an expected 90-day mission that instead could stretch out to 2009...."

  • NASA scientists plan to continue Mars rover mission to 2009. By David Perlman. San Francisco Chronicle (SFGate.com; October 16, 2007). "'After more than 31/2 years, Spirit and Opportunity are showing some signs of aging,' said John Callas, the rover project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, 'but they're in good health and capable of conducting great science.' ... From its landing spot in January 2004, Opportunity drove along a winding route for exactly 7.19 miles to reach Victoria Crater. Meanwhile, Spirit, Opportunity's twin, has driven 4.51 miles on the opposite side of the planet and is examining an area of basalt rock where lava once flowed from an ancient volcano."

>>> Space Exploration, Robots, Autonomous Vehicles, Applications
-> back to headlines

October 17, 2007: UA aim - predict enemies' moves, save our troops. By Renée Schafer Horton. Tucson Citizen. "[Jerzy] Rozenblit leads a team of UA computer engineers and students in developing the Asymmetric Threat Response and Analysis Project for the Army's Battle Command Battle Laboratory - Huachuca at Fort Huachuca in Sierra Vista. The military lab awarded UA the $2.2 million contract this week to help design computer software that will analyze volatile situations and, Rozenblit said, 'predict the unpredictable.' ... In simplest terms, Rozenblit said, the computer program will allow examination of reams of data about a particular group's behavior, then overlay that with cultural, social and political influences, and spit out a picture that 'visualizes data symbolically so decisions can be made accurately and quickly.' This is impossible for human analysts because the amount of data coming in is simply overwhelming, he said. In addition, computers are 'dispassionate,' sidestepping human biases that might 'prematurely rule out unorthodox or seemingly bizarre courses of action,' he said. ... Rozenblit, who did his doctoral work in computer modeling and simulation and has extensive training in artificial intelligence, said the initial benefit of the project will be 'hundreds of soldiers' lives saved.' [Jason] Denno said some of those lives will be saved by commanders who will know which routes are most likely to be clear of roadside bombs. Others will be saved by showing U.S. troops where the enemy is hiding based on predicted behavior."
>>> Military, Machine Learning, Applications
-> back to headlines

October 16, 2007: Mayor wants Ottawa to be 'sophisticated, web-savvy.' By Vito Pilieci. Ottawa Citizen. "Mayor Larry O'Brien is going back to his technological roots and he plans to take the City of Ottawa with him. ... He also said he would like to introduce artificial intelligence software to city phone systems to help cut wait times experienced by many. When callers dial the 311 information line, they must wait for an available representative to answer their questions. A computer with voice recognition technology could automatically answer many questions. Only the more complex ones would be forwarded to a call-centre agent. 'Artificial intelligence is the next part of this equation,' he said. 'That will truly start the breathtaking age of e-government for all of us.'"
>>> Customer Service, Telecommunications, Speech, Natural Language Processing, Applications
-> back to headlines

October 16, 2007: Software saves day. By Cameron England. The Advertiser (via AdelaideNow). "Adelaide firm SolveIT launched its new currency hedging program in time for the recent volatility in the Australian dollar, helping local wool company Michell ride out the turbulence. ... SolveIT chief executive Matthew Michalewicz said the company used 'fuzzy logic' in its software, which could adapt to changing conditions. 'It's based on artificial intelligence so you're looking for really smart algorithms to come up with recommendations, but the easiest way to describe it is that the system creates hedging rules,' Mr Michalewicz said."
>>> Banking, Finance & Investing, Fuzzy Logic, Reasoning, Expert Systems, Applications
-> back to headlines

October 16, 2006: BT Futurist - AI entities will win Nobel prizes by 2020 - In this interview, [Ian] Pearson talks about his profession, explains why he doesn't think we will understand intelligent machines when they finally arise, and warns to the big ethical dilemmas our technological civilization will have to face sooner or later. By Peter Moon. Computerworld. "[Q] Ten years ago, in May 1997, Deep Blue won the chess tournament against Gary Kasparov. Do you consider, like Kasparov did, that was the first glimpse of a new kind of intelligence? [A] Yes, it's a very good example of what you can do with computer-based intelligence. What it pointed out was that it doesn't have to do things the same way that people do in order to achieve goals that people use their intelligence to do. Deep Blue didn't work the same way as people. ... Nonetheless, I think the task of producing machines with consciousness or self awareness is still important. We will probably make conscious machines sometime between 2015 and 2020, I think. But it probably won't be like you and I. It will be conscious and aware of itself and it will be conscious in pretty much the same way as you and I, but it will work in a very different way. It will be an alien. It will be a different way of thinking from us, but nonetheless still thinking. It doesn't have to look like us in order to be able to think the same way. ... [Q] In this context, can we consider today's Second Life as some kind of "The Matrix" 1.0, being the real Matrix a combination with Second Life and artificial intelligence? ... [Q] understand you're interested in NBIC (nanoscience, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science) convergence. A lot of people have real concerns about it.... [Q] Right now the Pentagon is using some 5,000 robots in Iraq and Afghanistan, patrolling cities, disarming explosives or making reconnaissance flights. The next step is allowing them to carry weapons. Does this way lead to a Terminator scenario? ..."
>>> The Future, , Ethical & Social Implications, Science Fiction, Interviews
-> back to headlines

October 15, 2007: Girls told to go for engineering - From robotics to environment, it's 'everywhere.' By Don Lajoie. The Windsor Star. "That was the message the University of Windsor sent this weekend as it hosted its third annual Go Engineering Girl event to encourage young girls that the wide and varied field of engineering -- using science to solve real-world problems -- is a profession they should seriously consider when looking into post-secondary education. Chris Alsop, development officer for the university's faculty of engineering, noted that women are still a distinct minority in the profession, comprising between 17 and 20 per cent of the total. But thanks in part to programs like Go Engineering Girl, the numbers are growing and attitudes are changing. ... Lauren Schmenk, a Grade 10 student at Leamington District high school, said she participated, along with two classmates, because they had been taking a course in robotics at school."
>>> Careers in AI (@ Resources for Students)
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October 15, 2007: World depends on artificial intelligence. By Kyolee Park. The Heights. "For the past several decades, scientists around the world have been vigorously investigating creating machines that are capable of human reasoning. Although the world of artificial robots depicted in Spielberg's [A.I.] movie seems far-off, it is definitely a realistic scenario that may happen in a nearer future than might be imagined. In fact, algorithms have already been a big part of modern everyday life. ... Boston College has joined this ambitious project of merging human intelligence and computer technology."
>>>Applications, Robots, Ethical & Social Implications, AI: the movie, AI Academic Departments (@ Resources for Students)
-> back to headlines

October 15, 2007: Love at first byte with our robots? By Sandra Dick. Edinburgh Evening News. "Artificial intelligence researcher David Levy believes changing attitudes and advances in robot technology mean it's only a matter of time before humans head down the aisle with humanoid robots. In a PhD thesis for a Dutch university, the Londoner argues that we're already getting there - showing soppy affection for virtual pet toys. And by the time your children are bouncing their grandchildren on their knees, he claims robots will be capable of writing moving poetry and complex symphonies to presiding over court cases. They will also be so similar to humans in personality and emotions, he predicts, that many of us will fall in love with them. It all sounds like a far-fetched episode of Star Trek, yet advances in robot technology being worked on here in Edinburgh is already creating the robots of the future. And while research leader Sethu Vijayakumar [director of the Institute of Perception, Action & Behaviour in the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh] doesn't believe we'll ever want to marry one, he is confident that by 2050, robots will be so advanced that they will be able to take on a World Cup football team, and beat them. ... The idea of robot waiters, humanoid nurses and romantic liaisons with Metal Mickey are, [Nils Roeder of Edinburgh Robotics] reckons, science fiction. 'Personally I don't think we'll really see any robots at all because they will be hidden away so well in every day consumer electronic goods,' he says. ... The future may be in the hands of robots, but they have their origins firmly in the past."

  • Also see: TCD academic scoffs at notion of robot love. By Marie Boran. SiliconRepublic.com (October 16, 2007). "Trinity College Dublin researcher Dave Delany labeled the idea of human-robot marriage as 'a trivial and sensationalist footnote' in the magnitude of the technological, religious and social rights problems likely to be associated with the development of true artificial consciousness. ... Dave Delany, postdoctoral research fellow with the Mathematical Neuroscience Group in the School of Mathematics in Trinity College Dublin, told Silicon Republic that people have been forming unusual attachments to inanimate objects since time immemorial. However he rebuffs the idea of love with robots. ..."

>>> Robots, Applications, Ethical & Social Implications, Science Fiction, History, The Future, Competitions (@ Resources for Students); also see these related articles
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October 14, 2007: Studying how a broker's brain works. swissinfo. "To help maintain its competitive edge, the Swiss banking industry is investing heavily in financial engineering. Its latest recruit is economist Peter Bossaerts. swissinfo talked to Bossaerts, a leading expert in neuroeconomics – the study of how we make financial choices - about his recent appointment as professor at the Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. ... swissinfo: So what exactly is neuroeconomics? Peter Bossaerts: It's a mixture of decisional theory - mathematical theories applied in risk-based decision-making - and neuroscience. ... Neurofinance, therefore, tries to understand how choices are made in a risky world. It looks closely at the workings of the brain while taking into account human emotions. ... swissinfo: What is the aim of your work? P.B.: Firstly, to make progress on how people make choices when dealing with risk. ... Neuroeconomics should also help improve decisional theory, which doesn't work in the real world where rules are vague and probabilities are unknown. The aim is to build up artificial intelligence based on a theory where decision-making is repeated."
>>> Neuroscience, Cognitive Science, Finance & Investing, Applications
-> back to headlines

October 14, 2007: Game software could boost airport security. NewScientist.com news. "Playing games with airport security guards sounds like a bad idea, but Praveen Paruchuri of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles is trying to thwart criminals by doing just that. ... Paruchuri and colleagues created software based on game theory that simulates various random paths that a guard could take around Los Angeles International airport (LAX), and also how criminals might react."
>>> Law Enforcement, Agents, Game Theory (@ Multi-Agent Systems), Applications; also see these related articles
-> back to headlines

October 13, 2007: The plan for eternal life [with related video interviews]. By Danielle Egan. New Scientist (Issue 2625). "This is the opening session of the ninth annual meeting of the World Transhumanist Association (WTA) in Chicago. Sandberg and his fellow transhumanists plan to bypass death by using technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), genetic engineering and nanotechnology to radically accelerate human evolution, eventually merging people with machines to make us immortal. This may not be possible yet, the transhumanists reason, but as long as they live long enough - a few decades perhaps - the technology will surely catch up. To many, these ideas sound seriously scary, and transhumanists have been attacked for jeopardising the future of humanity. ... Now this small-scale movement aims to go mainstream. WTA membership has risen from 2000 to almost 5000 in the past seven years, and transhumanist student groups have sprung up at university campuses from California to Nairobi. ... I meet Marvin Minsky, the 80-year-old originator of artificial neural networks and co-founder of the AI lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 'Ordinary citizens wouldn't know what to do with eternal life,' says Minsky. 'The masses don't have any clear-cut goals or purpose.' Only scientists, who work on problems that might take decades to solve appreciate the need for extended lifespans, he argues. He is also staunchly against regulating the development of new technologies. 'Scientists shouldn't have ethical responsibility for their inventions, they should be able to do what they want,' he says. 'You shouldn't ask them to have the same values as other people.' ... The transhumanist movement has been struggling in recent years with bitter arguments between democrats like [James] Hughes and libertarians like Minsky. Can [Ray] Kurzweil's keynote speech unite the opposing factions? ..."

  • New Scientist Video (via YouTube): Quest for immortality - New Scientist talks to Aubrey de Grey, Nick Bostrom and Anders Sandberg about how we could become immortal.

>>> AI Overview, Ethical & Social Implications, The Future, Interviews
-> back to headlines

October 13, 2007: Reykjavík University Holds Artificial Intelligence Festival. Iceland Review Online. "Reykjavík University (RU) opens the 2007 Artificial Intelligence (AI) Festival in Reykjavík Theater today at 1 pm. Icelandic experts in AI will present their projects and research in this field, including AI world champion Dr. Yngvi Björnsson. Dr. Ari K. Jónsson, who used to work as a scientist at NASA, will also give a presentation at tomorrow’s festival, as well as Grímur Jónsson from Össur, who will talk about AI in artificial limbs, and a representative from Marel, who discusses AI in food processing."

  • Also see: Icelanders world champions in artificial intelligence. Iceland Review Online (July 28, 2007). "Dr. Yngvi Björnsson (right) and student Hilmar Finnsson (left) from Reykjavík University (RU) won the international General Game-Playing (GGP) Competition at the AAAI Conference in Vancouver, Canada, this week. The conference is one of the largest and most prestigious artificial intelligence (AI) conferences in the world and the GGP Competition, held for the third time this year, is one of several side events at the conference. ... The AAAI GGP Competition was founded by Stanford University with the purpose of encouraging research in the field of artificial intelligence. Software entered in the competition is designed to play nearly all games, unlike conventional gaming software."

>>> Applications, Assisitive Technologies, Games & Puzzles, Competitions & Events (@ Resources for Students)
-> back to headlines

October 12, 2007: Driving Like It's 2057. AutoServiceWorld.com. "Today's vehicles feature artificial intelligence that allow hands-free parking and electronic stability control, but in 50 years vehicles might be able to move in any direction, drive and navigate robotically and have structures that morph and adapt to passengers' needs. This is according to auto designers as part of the fourth annual Los Angeles Auto Show's Design Challenge."

  • And see this photo gallery from CNETNews.com: Auto design contest draws on whimsy (October 12, 2007; caption text by Candace Lombardi). "The LA Auto Show, which kicks off in mid-November, is holding its fourth annual Design Challenge. This year, it asked leading manufacturers to create a concept for a 'RoboCar of 2057.' ... Audi came up with the Virtuea Quattro, a hydrogen-powered vehicle with artificial intelligence and a holographic exterior.... Honda's 'One to the Power of Four' is a solar-hybrid vehicle that uses a combination of artificial intelligence and molecular engineering.... Nissan's OneOne, whose name sounds like the Japanese word for a cute barking dog, is meant to be a pet as well as a mode of transportation. ..."

>>> Transportation, Autonomous Vehicles, Applications
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October 12, 2007: Surveillance system tracks faces on CCTV - Engineers at UK defence company say hi-tech system will help track suspected terrorists. By Bobbie Johnson. Guardian Unlimited. "Engineers at British defence company BAE Systems, which is working on the technology, claim it is even able to automatically follow a target even if they change their appearance by changing their clothes or hiding beneath a hat. 'Today the effectiveness of CCTV surveillance relies on a small, highly-trained team to identify and track suspicious individuals,' said Andrew Cooke, project manager at BAE Systems. 'Automating elements of the system -- and employing techniques to prevent suspects from throwing a team off their scent -- enables a single operative to track multiple targets with as much, or even greater, precision than before.' The Integrated Surveillance of Crowded Areas for Public Security (Iscaps) project is part of a joint initiative with around Europe to develop security systems for potential deployment around the continent."
>>> Law Enforcement, Image Understanding, Vision, Applications
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October 12, 2007: Japan's robot industry forecasts strong growth. AFP / available from The Sydney Morning Herald. "Japan's robotics industry is expected to show robust growth and remain the world leader thanks to growing exports to emerging economies, an industry group said Thursday. While Japan has become famous for its cutting-edge humanoid robots, the industry's sales are almost all for industrial robots, particularly those that help manufacture cars, electronics and other products. Japan in the calendar year 2007 is set to produce a record 760 billion yen (6.5 billion US dollars) worth of robotics, a rise of 4.1 percent from the previous year, the Japan Robot Association said."
>>> Robots, Manufacturing, Applications, Industry Statistics
-> back to headlines

October 11, 2007: Researchers fine-tune F-35 pilot-aircraft speech system. By John Schutte. Air Force Materiel Command News. "When the first F-35 Lightning II rolls out in 2008, communications between pilot and aircraft will enter a new era thanks in part to testing and analysis conducted at the Air Force Research Laboratory's Human Effectiveness Directorate. The F-35 will be the first U. S. fighter aircraft with a speech recognition system able to 'hear' a pilot's spoken commands to manage various aircraft subsystems, such as communications and navigation. ... Currently pilots must press buttons, flip switches or glance at instruments for status information. The new system not only simplifies a pilot's workload but increases safety and efficiency, since pilots can remain focused on flying the aircraft and scrutinizing the combat environment. ... SRI International developed the DynaSpeak® speech recognition software as a highly accurate system for noisy environments, specifically for embedded devices like personal digital assistants, in-car navigation systems and avionics systems, Mr. Williamson said. It is speaker-independent, meaning a pilot can use it without first 'training' the system to his or her voice, which took up to an hour on previous experimental systems. SRI International is working with integrating contractor Adacel Systems, Inc., to tailor the system for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter's airborne environment."
>>> Speech, Military, Applications
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October 11, 2007: Schooling Carleton gamers. By Lois Wilson. The Charlatan. "With the introduction of a new game development program at Carleton University, it seems many people are choosing to jump on that train of prosperity. Andrew Thompson, a computer science student in the new video game stream, aspires to be a game producer in the future. ... During the video game courses a wide range of topics is covered to fully prepare students for the volatile nature of the gaming industry. 'In [the first year video game class] we are surveying the intersection of computer science and gaming,' said [Anil] Somayaji. 'We are also discussing games in computer science how games present fundamental challenges in areas such as human-computer interaction, artificial intelligence and computer security.' Somayaji added that video game building and critiquing is a core area of the course, and help keep students interested."
>>> Video Games, Careers in AI -and- AI Courses & Academic Departments (@ Resources for Students), Applications
-> back to headlines

October 11, 2007: Students Create Wireless Self-Driving Car That Navigates City Streets. WKMG Orlando (Local6.com). "A group of engineering students at the University of Central Florida have created a vehicle that is being called the car of the future because it can drive itself around town without remote assistance from humans. ... The students have entered their Knight Rider VIP in a California competition in the hopes of winning a top prize worth $2 million."

  • Watch the embedded WKMG news video: UCF Students Design Car That Drives Itself.

>>> Autonomous Vehicles, Robots, Military, Transportation, Grand Challenges, Competitions  -and- Academic Departments (@ Resources for Students)
-> back to headlines

October 11, 2007: Anatomy of an entrepreneur - How inventor Scott Jones got his start. By Julie Sloane. Fortune Small Business Magazine via CNNMoney.com. "Jones built his first fortune in the early 1990s. A graduate of Indiana University, he was working as a research scientist at MIT's artificial intelligence lab when he met Greg Carr, a Harvard grad student. ... At a telecom conference in Atlanta, Jones saw the current state-of-the-art voicemail hardware: million-dollar refrigerator-sized machines invented in the early '80s. 'I was coming out of MIT's AI lab, where everything was progressive, young, vibrant, energetic,' says Jones with characteristic chutzpah. 'These guys were toast' The new company that Jones and Carr launched, Boston Technologies, pitched the Baby Bells a product.... At 31, Jones happily retired, knowing he never had to work again. ... Undeterred by the failure of Escient, in 2005 Jones sponsored a team to compete in the second DARPA Grand Challenge.... Because of a small technical glitch, the $400,000 robot peeled out at the starting line, veered right, and crashed into a wall. Jones, however, encourages his employees to take ideas and turn them inside out until they make sense as a business. He ended up building a company out of his robot technology, but not quite the one he imagined. ... Precise Path, which is developing robotic lawn mowers that will neatly mow golf course greens."
>>> Careers in AI (@ Resources for Students), Autonomous Vehicles, Applications
-> back to headlines

October 11, 2007: Researcher - Humans will wed robots. United Press International. "The University of Maastricht in the Netherlands is awarding a doctorate to a researcher who wrote a paper on marriages between humans and robots. David Levy, a British artificial intelligence researcher at the college, wrote in his thesis, 'Intimate Relationships with Artificial Partners,' that trends in robotics and shifting attitudes on marriage are likely to result in sophisticated robots that will eventually be seen as suitable marriage partners."

  • Also see: Forecast - Sex and Marriage with Robots by 2050. By Charles Q. Choi. LiveScience. October 12, 2007. "'My forecast is that around 2050, the state of Massachusetts will be the first jurisdiction to legalize marriages with robots,' artificial intelligence researcher David Levy at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands told LiveScience. Levy recently completed his Ph.D. work on the subject of human-robot relationships, covering many of the privileges and practices that generally come with marriage as well as outside of it. ... The idea of romance between humanity and our artistic and/or mechanical creations dates back to ancient times, with the Greek myth of the sculptor Pygmalion falling in love with the ivory statue he made named Galatea, to which the goddess Venus eventually granted life. This notion persists in modern times. Not only has science fiction explored this idea, but 40 years ago, scientists noticed that students at times became unusually attracted to ELIZA, a computer program designed to ask questions and mimic a psychotherapist. ... Levy is currently writing a paper on the ethical treatment of robots. When it comes to sex and love with robots, 'the ethical issues on how to treat them are something we'll have to consider very seriously, and they're very complicated issues,' Levy said."

>>> Robots, Ethical & Social Implications, The Future
-> back to headlines

October 11, 2007: 'Dark Web' Project Takes On Cyber-Terrorism. By Steven Kotler. FOXNews.com. "'Since the events of 9/11, terrorist presence online has multiplied tenfold,' says Hsinchun Chen, director of the University of Arizona's Artificial Intelligence Lab. 'Around the year 2000, there were 70 to 80 core terrorist sites online; now there are at least 7000 to 8000.' Those sites are doing everything from spreading militant propaganda to offering insurgency advice to plotting the next wave of attacks, making the net, as Chen also points out: 'arguably the most powerful tool for spreading extremist violence around the world.' But thanks to Chen, that tide may be turning. He's the architect behind the newest weapon in the war on terror -- a giant, searchable database on extremists known as Dark Web. Using a bevy of advanced technologies, Dark Web is an attempt to uncover, cross-reference, catalogue and analyze all online terrorist-generated content. ... Dark Web is Chen's second foray into online crime-fighting. The first began in 1997, when he -- already an expert at tracking social change online (crime and terrorisms being extreme examples of social change) -- teamed up with the Tucson Police Department and the National Science Foundation (NSF) to help develop Coplink, a way for law enforcement forces around the country to link files and consolidate data. ... [Dark Web] utilizes existing technologies... as well as brand new technologies like sentiment analysis, which is capable of scanning documents for emotionally charged keywords such as 'that sucks.'... Civil-liberties concerns may continue to dog the technological front of the war on terror, but Dark Web is already producing results."
>>> Law Enforcement, Web-Searching Agents, Natural Language Processing, Data Mining, Machine Learning, Agents, Applications, Ethical & Social Implications
-> back to headlines

October 10, 2007: Rise of the robots. Reuters news video report by Joanna Partridge. "The robot 'ASIMO' has been developed by Honda and is being used in research at Bielefeld University in Germany. And while the two-legged robot can already walk, dance and carry objects, the robot developers say they are still researching how robots can interact with humans and help us with daily chores."
>>> Robots
-> back to headlines

October 10, 2007: Virtual human has a roving eye. By Belle Dumé. NewScientist.com news. "Virtual characters that meet your gaze just like a human have been developed by speech and cognition scientists in France. New software lets them to look at scenes and people the way humans do. The goal is to make virtual humans and perhaps humanoid robots easier to relate to. A video [in the sidebar] shows one of their characters playing a game that involves looking at cards and a researcher. ... Gérard Bailly and colleagues in the GIPSA Lab at the Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble, France, have developed software that mimics human gaze patterns.  ... 'This research is important because it focuses on adding a social aspect [to characters],' comments Christopher Peters of the University of Paris VIII, who has researched similar problems. ... Giving virtual characters more subtle behaviours like eye movements is important if they are to be realistic, says Peters. 'Along the way we are also making discoveries about how the behaviour of real humans is perceived,' he adds."
>>> Cognitive Science, Interfaces
-> back to headlines

October 10, 2007: Second Life, IBM open virtual world borders. Reuters / available from MSNBC.com. "IBM and Linden Labs, the operator of the Second Life virtual world, said on Tuesday they will work on ways to eventually let people use a single online persona in different online services. Interoperability is emerging as a key goal of the nascent virtual world industry.... An open system would let people create one avatar that would keep the same basic appearance and customer data no matter where it was in cyberspace."

>>> Agents, and see these related articles: Online worlds to be AI incubators -and- Virtual worlds making artificial intelligence apps 'smarter'
-> back to headlines

October 9, 2007: Tracing computer history from “ancient” times to the latest technology. By Kathy Quirk. University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee News. "Thomas Haigh, assistant professor of information studies at UWM, is among a very small number of computer experts in the world who are also historians, studying the role of technology in broader social change. These new experts are tracing how computers have changed business and society. ... While most computer histories focus on the hardware -- Univac and inventors tinkering in garages – Haigh also looks at the software -- from word processing to spreadsheets to databases -- that has changed the modern world. ... The first computer books quickly followed the development of the programmable computers in the late 1940s and early 1950s. 'The authors of these pieces wasted few superlatives in celebrating the unprecedented speed and power of these machines,' Haigh wrote in an article for the Business History Review published by the Harvard Business School. 'Indeed, the earliest and most influential of the books was entitled "Giant Brains, or Machines That Think," a title that more sober computer experts spend decades trying to dispel from the public imagination.'"
>>> History, Ethical & Social Implications, Applications; also see these two articles: 1 & 2
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October 9, 2007: Thomson's challenge - Make data smarter. By Grant Robertson. The Globe and Mail (globeinvestor.com). "When investors gather in the heart of London today to hear executives from Thomson Corp. detail the company's outlook, including its proposed takeover of Reuters Group PLC, Michael Wilens will have one of the toughest jobs in the room. Thomson's chief technology officer, an MIT-educated engineer who spends most of his time manning servers that handle almost as much data as Google Inc. or Yahoo Inc. on a daily basis, will be there to predict the future. ... The coming decade will see extensive amounts of time and money invested by companies like Thomson and Bloomberg to develop artificial intelligence capable of crunching the vast amounts of information circulating throughout the world each day. It will be used to develop what Mr. Wilens calls 'meta-data,' or the ability for computers to create 'smarter' information from existing data. Proprietary data feeds will then be sold at a premium to paying customers like lawyers, hospitals and stockbrokers. 'The war of the future, in all information services and on the Internet, is going to be fought around data, about data,' Mr. Wilens said last week. ... The ideas sound far-fetched today but will be standard a few years from now, he says. If a broker wants to track the market sentiment on a particular stock throughout the day, algorithms analyzing news coverage and trading patterns will be employed to figure out trends. All of it will be read by computers then distilled for paying customers."
>>> Finance & Investing, Law, Medicine, Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Applications
-> back to headlines

October 9, 2007: 50 years from now... By Pete Bryant. Wessex Scene Online. "Professor of Artificial Intelligence, Nigel Shadbolt, has preditcted that our lives are due to change in a big way. In a glimpse into the future, Professor Shadbolt has described a world where driving licenses are unnecessary as cars drive themselves, where satellite navigation devices have replaced guide dogs, all while robots are left to do the housework and also look after elderly relatives. To celebrate 50 years since the British Computer Society (BCS) was founded, Professor Shadbolt recently joined other leading academics to discuss what is instore for us in our future. Looking ahead a further five decades, it is predicted that the world will revolve around technology, even more so than it does already. ... Professor Shadbolt continued: 'As future technology becomes commonly accepted… it becomes "invisible", or at least taken for granted.' This lack of understanding is something the BCS are aware they must combat. ... Professor Shadbolt is aware of his responsibility in keeping people informed of the issues with using IT in the years to come."

  • Also see this related article from the same publication: Modern fantasy to future reality? By Sarah Varley. Wessex Scene Online (October 9, 2007). "In the realms of sci-fi and Hollywood, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is portrayed as robots hell bent on revolution. As much as we hope for this film like extravaganza to emerge in reality, Professor Nigel Shadbolt of ECS has put our overactive imaginations at ease for now by suggesting that 'this is not the way the science of AI is head[ing].'"

>>> The Future, Applications, Ethical & Social Implications, Science Fiction, Associations (@ Resources for Students)
-> back to headlines

October 8, 2007: Aston algorithm. The Engineer Online. "A new study on the way humans perceive and organise speech could lead to better algorithms that will improve the accuracy of speech recognition systems. Researchers from Aston University hope the results of their EPSRC-funded project will indirectly lead to speech recognition systems that better target a person's voice in the midst of loud background noise, such as that found on the factory floor. The research could also offer significant improvements to hearing aids."
>>> Speech, Applications
-> back to headlines

October 8, 2007: Tiro, the robot, debuts as a teacher in South Korean classroom. dpa / available from The China Post. "Children could hardly take their eyes off a new teacher when the instructor entered their classroom. ... Although the voice sounded human, the teacher was not. It was a robot named Tiro, which was recently invited for one day to assist a human instructor with a 30-minute English class at Euon Primary School in the central South Korean city of Daejon, 250 kilometers south of Seoul. ... South Korea, like Japan, has set a goal to become the leader in the emerging robotics industry and put robotics in every home by 2020."
>>> Robots, Education, Applications
-> back to headlines

October 8, 2007: Local 4-H member's career goals fit in with Sciene, Engineer. By Joyce Vanaman. The Press of Atlantic City. "With his strong interest in television production, Andrew Williams, 18, of Millville, is an example of how well 4-H fits the interests of today's youths. The organization's roots, which go back more than 100 years, were in girls' canning clubs and boys' corn clubs. The theme of this year's 4-H Week, Oct. 7-13, is Science, Engineering and Technology. 'In Cumberland County, 4-H members are participating in programs that range from robotics and computers to plant science and gardening, and from animal science to environmental science, as well as citizenship and healthy living programs,' said Jeannette Rea-Keywood, Cumberland County 4-H Agent. ... Following graduation from Millville Senior High School, Williams was a counselor for three weeks at the 4-H summer enrichment camps that focused on robotics and gardening."
>>> Robots, Summer Camps, Courses, After-School Programs & more (@ Resources for Students), Agriculture
-> back to headlines

October 7, 2007: Robo-servant [video]. Reported by Liz Kennedy for Reuters. "An Indian inventor has found a novel way of helping the poor - by turning old junk into a reliable piece of machinery that can walk and talk. Feroz Siddiki has spent two years developing the IRobo and hopes it will eventually rival more expensive robots like Asimo made by the Japanese company Honda."
>>> Robots
-> back to headlines

October 6, 2007: Parking-friendly car unveiled. BBC News video report by Tom Beal. "Nissan has unveiled a new car with wheels that can turn 90 degrees and a robot that talks to the driver."
>>> Transportation, Robots, Applications
-> back to headlines

October 5, 2007:The 'Numb3rs' Don't Lie [radio broadcast]. NPR's Talk of the Nation: Science Friday, with Ira Flatow. "Mathematics may seem like an unusual tool to catch criminals, but real math and actual events inspire the CBS crime drama Numb3rs. Guests [Gary Lorden & Keith Devlin] discuss the intersection of math-based crime solving and prime-time television. ... [17:15] Flatow: Mm-hmm. Let’s talk a bit about something that you write about in the book. You write that - it has to do with the war on terror. And we know that the government has all kinds of data mining that it’s doing. And you write that machine learning is, quote, 'perhaps the single most important tool within the law enforcement community’s data mining arsenal when it comes to profiling, enhanced catching or preventing criminals and terrorists.' Can you tell us what machine learning is? Dr. Devlin: Okay. That’s - actually, the center that I direct at Stanford is actually the world’s leader in doing that thing. It’s where you - it’s a branch of what was known as artificial - still is known as artificial intelligence. It means you have a computer program which you present lots of data, it could be data about - an obvious one is can you determine the profile of someone entering the country who’s likely to be a terrorist? ..."
>>> Law Enforcement, Data Mining, Machine Learning, Applications
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October 5, 2007: Technology Would Help Detect Terrorists Before They Strike. Press release from the University at Buffalo. " Computer and behavioral scientists at the University at Buffalo are developing automated systems that track faces, voices, bodies and other biometrics against scientifically tested behavioral indicators to provide a numerical score of the likelihood that an individual may be about to commit a terrorist act. 'The goal is to identify the perpetrator in a security setting before he or she has the chance to carry out the attack,' said Venu Govindaraju, Ph.D., professor of computer science and engineering in the UB School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. ... 'We are developing a prototype that examines a video in a number of different security settings, automatically producing a single, integrated score of malfeasance likelihood,' he said. A key advantage of the UB system is that it will incorporate machine learning capabilities, which will allow it to 'learn' from its subjects during the course of a 20-minute interview. That's critical, Govindaraju said, because behavioral science research has repeatedly demonstrated that many behavioral clues to deceit are person-specific."
>>> Law Enforcement, Biometrics (@ Image Understanding), Pattern Recognition, Machine Learning, Vision, Applications
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October 5, 2007: From stick figures to artificial intelligence. PhysOrg.com [ source: University of Alberta]. "Today, [Brian] Tanner, 27, is a computer scientist working toward his PhD at the University of Alberta in the area of artificial intelligence and, more specifically, in the area of reinforcement learning. ... He is working at a highly abstract, theoretical level to come up with a mathematical model that will enable a computer to learn how to make its own decisions. His goal is to make such a model a template for all AI applications. ... In addition to being recognized as a 2007 Honorary Izaak Walton Killam Memorial Scholar for his work, Tanner has also been awarded the Dorothy J. Killam Memorial Graduate Prize as the most outstanding Killam recipient in the areas of Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Sciences. ... Prizes such as the U of A Killam awards program both attract and reward such scholars who are doing important work for the betterment of all."
>>> Reinforcement Learning, Machine Learning, Applications
-> back to headlines

October 5, 2007: British patients counseled by a computer program. By Maria Cheng. The Associated Press / available from HeraldTribune.com. "Last year, 'Fearfighter' was one of two programs endorsed by Britain's health advisory watchdog for people with panic attacks, mild depression or phobias. People uncomfortable with getting advice from a computer can still choose to see therapists, but the option of logging on for help is now available -- and will be paid for by the government-run National Health Service. In Britain, patients registered with the NHS routinely wait up to six months to see a psychiatrist; nearly 90 percent of people with mild depression never actually see a therapist. The computer programs now mean that for some patients, getting psychiatric counseling is as easy as getting a password from their general practitioner to access the program online. ... 'The idea is that the repetitive parts of the therapy are done by a computer, which can then make decisions based on these answers,' said Dr. Isaac Marks, a professor emeritus at King's College Institute of Psychiatry in London, and co-developer of 'Fearfighter.' ... Many experiments in Britain, the United States and elsewhere showed that patients counseled by computers made just as much progress as those counseled by real live therapists. Using computers to treat patients was also much cheaper and could help cash-strapped health systems expand care. One study estimated that therapists using computer programs could double the number of their patients."

>>> Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Education, Cognitive Science, Medicine, Applications
-> back to headlines

October 5, 2007: The next 50 years of exploration. Viewpoint by David Southwood, director of science at the European Space Agency (Esa). BBC News. "We have been in space for 50 years. It is a long time and we have certainly come a long way so far. Where exactly will we be in space 50 years from now? It is hard to say. ... Humans vs robots ... Robotic explorers, sent out on our behalf, will help us find out not just what is out there but also to address many of these questions about our Solar System. Nonetheless, there always remains the question of whether we send men and women out there with the machines. Should we send people out to the unpleasant environments we want to investigate? Isn't it better to let robots take the strain? ... However beyond our Solar System, manned exploration isn't an option. This is where robotic exploration really comes into its own."
>>> Space Exploration, Robots, The Future, Applications; Also see this related NewsToon
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October 4, 2007: Scavenger Champion - Curious George Showcases UBC Advances in Robotic Vision. By Lorraine Chan. UBC Reports. "Jim Little looks forward to the day when robots can make more decisions on their own. Little specializes in the integration of robotics and vision systems. As the Director of UBC’s Laboratory of Computational Intelligence (LCI), Little seeks to penetrate the mysteries of machine vision, comprehension and action. ... Showing prowess in all these areas is Curious George, LCI’s robot which walked away -- or in this case rolled away -- with first prize at an international competition this July. The “Semantic Robot Vision Challenge” tested the mettle of each robot through a three-hour scavenger hunt. The competition was held in Vancouver at the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence conference and was sponsored by the U.S. National Foundation for Science. ... Little says UBC’s past advances in robotic vision helped Curious George ace this challenge. During the early 1990s, Little invented stereo-vision mapping to enhance computer vision. ... The LCI team wrote software for Curious George to Google the Internet, generating hundreds of relevant images for each scavenger hunt item. Using this database of images, the robot was then well poised to locate the three-dimensional object as it scooted around the room. Little says he hopes to apply LCI advances to creating assistive technologies. Such devices would include wheelchairs that can navigate obstacles, or a smart house that reminds you to turn off the stove. 'These robot-human interactions will enable older people to stay in their homes and live independently as long as possible.' ... To accelerate Canada’s advances in these types of projects, Little says researchers have established a national network called ICAST (Intelligent Computational Assistive Technologies)."

>>> Vision, Robots, Assistive Technologies, Smart Houses, Competitions -and- AI Academic Departments (@ Resources for Students), Applications
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October 4, 2007: Robots may aid aging Japanese population. By Hiroko Tabuchi. The Associated Press / available from MiamiHerald.com. "If you grow old in Japan, expect to be served food by a robot, ride a voice-recognition wheelchair or even possibly hire a nurse in a robotic suit - all examples of cutting-edge technology to care for the country's rapidly graying population. ... At a home care and rehabilitation convention in Tokyo this week, buyers crowded round a demonstration of Secom Co.'s My Spoon feeding robot, which helps elderly or disabled people eat with a spoon- and fork-fitted swiveling arm. ... 'It's all about empowering people to help themselves,' [Shigehisa] Kobayashi said. The Tokyo-based company has already sold 300 of the robots, which come with a price tag of $3,500. 'We want to give the elderly control over their own lives,' he said. ... The intelligent wheelchair TAO Aicle from Fujitsu Ltd. and Aisin Seiki Co. uses a positioning system to automatically travel to a preset destination, and uses sensors to detect and stop at red lights, and to avoid obstacles. Another wheelchair designed by the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology responds to oral commands like 'forward' and 'back,' 'right' and 'left.'"
>>> Assisitive Technologies, Robots, Applications, Ethical & Social Implications
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October 3, 2007: Don’t invent, evolve - The inventor’s trial-and-error approach can be automated by software that mimics natural selection. Economist.com. "Evolutionary design, as it is known, allows a computer to run through tens of millions of variations on an invention until it hits on the best solution to a problem. As its name suggests, evolutionary design borrows its ideas from biology. It takes a basic blueprint and mutates it in a bid to improve it without human input. As in biology, most mutations are worse than the original. But a few are better, and these are used to create the next generation. ... What has changed, in this as in so much else, is the availability and cheapness of computing power. According to John Koza of Stanford University, who is one of the pioneers of the field, evolutionary designs that would have taken many months to run on PCs are now feasible in days. The result is that the range of applications to which the principles of evolutionary design are being applied is growing fast. ... Perhaps the most cunning use of an evolutionary algorithm, though, is by Dr Koza himself. His team at Stanford developed a Wi-Fi antenna for a client...."
>>> Genetic Algorithm, Machine Learning, Applications
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October 3, 2007: 3-D avatar to help doctors visualize patient records and improve care. KurzweilAI.net. "IBM's Zurich Research Lab has developed an avatar to allow doctors to visualize patient medical records."

  • According to the referenced IBM press release: "The ASME 3-D avatar will allow doctors to click on the 3-D avatar of the human body -- here the spine -- and instantly see all the available medical history and information related to that patient's spine, including text entries, lab results and medical images such as radiographs or MRIs. Or the doctor might be interested only in information related to a particular part of the heart; in this case, the practitioner can zoom in, narrowing the search parameters by time or other factors. Using advanced machine learning and state-of-the-art 3-D modeling techniques, the IBM researchers are working to overcome key technical challenges including integrating heterogeneous data sources and complex text-based information -- so-called unstructured data -- and linking that data to the anatomical model in a meaningful and easy-to-navigate way. ASME also uses SNOMED, the systemized nomenclature of medicine that encompasses approximately 300,000 medical terms, to create a bridge between graphical concepts and text documents."

>>> Medicine, Machine Learning, Applications
-> back to headlines

October 3, 2007: Scans reveal lost gravestone text. By Cristina Jimenez. BBC News. "Scientists at Carnegie Mellon university are making high resolution 3D scans of tombstones to reveal the carved patterns in the stone. A computer matches the patterns to a database of signature carvings which reveals the words. The technique could one day also be used by doctors to examine a patient's tongue for signs of illness. ... 'This technology is expected to reduce guessing work in field inspection,' said Dr Yang Cai, director of the Ambient Intelligence Lab at Carnegie Mellon Cylab. ... The new technique allows them to define patterns of 'typical' lines and curves and store them in a database. 'If the computer finds the data matches the patterns in the database, then it will highlight the area,' Dr Cai said."
>>> Pattern Recognition, Machine Learning, Applications
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October 3, 2007: Robot brain makes the same mistakes as humans. By Michael Reilly & David Robson. New Scientist (Issue 2624: pages 30-31; subscription req'd). "When your software crashes, you probably restart your PC and hope it doesn't happen again, or you get the bug fixed. But not Rachel Wood. When a program she was testing screwed up a task that a 2-year-old would find easy, she was elated. The reason for this seemingly perverse reaction is that Wood's program didn't contain a bug, but had committed a famous cognitive goof identified by the psychology pioneer Jean Piaget. ... Wood's robot has a brain far simpler than a baby's. But unravelling the events that led to this human-like behaviour - something that is easier to do in a computer program than a real brain - could help improve our understanding of artificial intelligence. ... It's not the only machine that has exhibited an exclusively human flaw. Last week researchers at University College London announced that they had created a computer program that falls for the same optical illusions as a humans (see 'Shared illusions' [sidebar]). It also highlights an idea we may need to get used to: as robots develop human-like strengths, the trade-off could be that they also inherit our weaknesses. ... Wood used a form of neural program called a homeostatic network, which gives the programmer control over how the neural network evolves."
>>> Cognitive Science, Robots, Neural Networks, Machine Learning; also see this related article
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October 3, 2007: Driverless Truck Lurches Out of Lab. By Dinesh Ramde. The Associated Press / available from baltimoresun.com. "If the Defense Department gets its way, vehicles like TerraMax -- about as long as a typical sport utility vehicle and almost twice as high -- could represent the future of transportation for the military's ground forces. ... Oshkosh Truck, a public company that in August projected its 2008 sales would be about $7 billion, is fielding one of 35 teams whose vehicles passed qualifying tests this year. Some teams see the competition as a way to improve automotive technology. 'It's my view that we're not just trying to win but we're also trying to advance the topic of safer cars,' said Sebastian Thrun, a computer-science professor who leads Stanford University's team. 'There are so many other great uses of this technology.' ... This year's competition is expected to be stiff. Squads from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Cornell University are among those invited to participate in an Oct. 26-31 qualifying event in Victorville, Calif., along with industry teams that include employees of Delphi Corp. and Ford Motor Co. The entrants include modified cars, pickups and SUVs."

>>> Autonomous Vehicles, Robots, Military, Transportation, Grand Challenges, Competitions (@ Resources for Students)
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October 3, 2007: A Land Rover That Drives Itself - MIT's robotic car is headed to California to compete in DARPA's upcoming Urban Challenge. By Kate Greene. Technology Review. "In an airplane hanger on MIT's campus in Cambridge last week, a team of engineering students and researchers put the finishing touches on Talos, a Land Rover that drives itself. Talos is MIT's entry in the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency's (DARPA) robotic car race, which will take place on November 3, in Victorville, CA. Known as the Urban Challenge, the race will test the ability of robotic cars from 35 different teams to obey traffic laws and drive safely in a city-like environment without human assistance. The vehicles will need to find their way to a preprogrammed destination while paying attention to lane markers, other cars, and unexpected obstacles, such as potholes in the road."

  • Related multimedia:
    • Video [1:46]: "MIT’s autonomous vehicle navigates a sample course at South Weymouth Naval Air Station, in Massachusetts. The car uses sensors to identify the road and avoid obstacles in its path."
    • Photo gallery about the technology packed inside and mounted on the Land Rover.

>>> Autonomous Vehicles, Robots, Military, Transportation, Grand Challenges, Competitions (@ Resources for Students)
-> back to headlines

October 3, 2007: Neiman Marcus unwraps its Christmas catalog. By Maria Halkias. The Dallas Morning News. "The 2007 Neiman Marcus Christmas Book has something for you and 499 of your closest friends. Leading the fantasy gifts this year is a private holiday concert for 500 people.... For that special someone who has everything, there's a robot that can learn to recognize family members and carry on conversations, thanks to the latest in artificial intelligence. It costs $75,000."

  • Also see: Santa, bring me a $75,000 robotic swami this year. CBC News (October 3, 2007).
  • Here's an excerpt from the description of the robot in this Neiman Marcus press release (PRNewswire; October 2, 2007): "Swami Conversational Robot [photo] - A cutting-edge AI robot that recognizes family members, can carry on conversations, develops relationships and answers questions with fact-based advice, now that's going to impress the kids. You'll swear he's human, right down to his facial expressions thanks to revolutionary character engine artificial intelligence software, micro-camera eyes and more than 30 robotic micro motors."

>>> Robots, Applications
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October 2, 2007: Technology in the service of the human condition - Software entrepreneur kicks off CIEE lecture series with call to create a better future. By Claire Abramowitz. Princeton Business Journal. "The aspiring entrepreneur’s three keys to success are the abilities to paint a picture, to create trust, and to give a brief speech at the holiday party, MIT Media Lab Director Frank Moss, Princeton University Class of ‘71, said in a speech at Princeton’s Friend Center on Sept. 26. ... Mr. Moss described the point in his life when he felt the need to make a change. 'After a while, it was time to rethink things, to do what I’d always told my kids, which is to make a difference in the world,' he said. ... He stressed the importance of using innovative technology to make a broader contribution to the world and impact the human quality of life, noting that after completing his undergraduate study at Princeton, the shift to MIT was something of a shock. 'I got the feeling that MIT students don’t really give a damn about the world,' Mr. Moss said of his graduate school experience. 'But they’ve managed to change their stripes and really care about social issues.' ... 'I really believe that focusing on innovations for people who are disabled, disenfranchised, or disadvantaged will impact all of society,' Moss said."
>>> Careers in AI -and- AI Academic Departments (@ Resources for Students), Applications
-> back to headlines

October 2, 2007: Spot the robot - CS prof trains robotic dogs. By Linh Nguyen. The Brown Daily Herald. "Using Nintendo Wii remotes and a ball, members of the Brown Robotics Group are 'teaching' robotic dogs to play soccer. The robots learn behavioral patterns that they will eventually be able to perform on their own, and data from the study could lead to the design of more intuitive and autonomous robots. Since 2005, Assistant Professor of Computer Science Chad Jenkins has been working on the project, which tests the premise that robots can learn human behavior through direct interaction with humans better than by being explicitly programmed."

  • Videos are available from the Brown Robotics Group's "Learning Robot Soccer from Demonstration" project page.

>>> Robots, Robotic Pets
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October 2, 2007: An Interview with Newsweek's Steven Levy. Ubiquity (Volume 8, Issue 39). "Here at Newsweek, my official title is Senior Editor. You could also call me, I guess, the chief technology correspondent. I do a column every couple weeks called 'The Technologist,' and write stories. I also contribute to a lot of other magazines: I've been contributing to Wired since it came out. And I write books about technology. ... My own approach, by and large, is to try to tell my story through people, try to get the technology through them. Sometimes the computer or the program or whatever might be a character in my narrative, but I see things sort of through a narrative scope."
>>> Interviews, AI in the news! - see articles such as 1 & 2.
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October 2, 2007: Natural Language Understanding and Conversational Dialogue - A Different Kind of Self-Service Speech Recognition. By Stefania Viscusi. TMCnet. "For more insight into natural language understanding in speech technologies, I took some time to ask Luis Valles, Chief Scientist at GyrusLogic, some questions on the topic. [Q] What is Natural Language Understanding? [A] Natural Language Understanding (NLU) or Conversational Dialogue is the capability for a user to say and/or ask anything, and the system understanding what the user meant, together with the system finding an appropriate response -- as with any other conversation between humans. [Q] How is this deployed with Speech Recognition? ... [Q] Can you tell me a little about the solution you have developed to provide Natural Language Understanding capabilities? [A] GyrusLogic’s Platica product is patented artificial intelligence (AI) technology built with computational linguistic models for customers, employees or any other stakeholder to enter into a fully-automated conversational dialog. ..."
>>> Natural Language Understanding, Speech, Natural Language Processing, Customer Service, Business, Applications
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October 2, 2007: Aren't We All Just Replicants on the Inside? By Nicolas Rapold. The New York Sun. "The 1982 science fiction film 'BladeRunner' may be among the youngest revivals at this year's New York Film Festival, screening in a remastered edition dubbed 'the final cut'.... 'Aren't we all replicants now?' Giuliana Bruno, a professor of film and visual culture at Harvard University, asked at the panel, titled 'The Future Is Now: Blade Runner at 25.' ... '"Blade Runner" reminds us of these questions that are no longer asked: the condition of being human, fitting in a society,' Mr. [Scott] Bukatman said. In today's science fiction, 'those questions are not being raised. And we have become far more comfortable with the technologies we were so suspicious of 25 years ago -- more comfortable but not more knowledgeable.' Much of this suspicion, about the nature of reality as much about technology, is traceable to the work of [Philip K.] Dick. Sadly, the novelist managed to view only about 20 minutes of rushes from the film before his death."
>>> Science Fiction
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October 2, 2007: Ramadan chat with computer. Turkish Daily News. "Home appliance manufacturer, Tefal, has developed a smart computer software that will give out information and advice on its products, pushing aside the print out manual once and for all. Interestingly, it can also 'chat' with its owner about daily topics. 'BoTefal' is the brainchild of Tefal and Project House the latter having developed the software. ... BoTefal is used for Ramadan, answering questions about fasting times, and also giving out recipes."
>>> Chatbots (@ Natural Language Processing), Customer Service, Applications
-> back to headlines

October 2, 2007: Robotic Therapy Tiles: Playing Your Way to Health. By Lakshmi Sandhana. Wired News. "Patients recovering from surgery or injuries may soon be able to physically play their way to a full recovery with intelligent robotic systems that generate specialized games to challenge the human body's abilities. Henrik Hautop Lund, a robotics and artificial-intelligence professor at the University of Southern Denmark is developing therapy tiles that guide patients through physical routines and help them heal. Each tile is a miniature robotic system employing neural networks. ... 'The modular robotic tiles are part of what we term "playware" -- intelligent hardware and software that produces play and playful experiences,' Lund said. 'The equipment creates a playful experience that motivates them to perform the actions needed for the recovery of their abilities.'"
>>> Assistive Technologies, Neural Networks, Robots, Applications
-> back to headlines

October 1, 2007: Study Finds Human-Robot Attachment. By Greg Bluestein. The Associated Press / available from Examiner.com. "People give them nicknames, worry when they signal for help and sometimes even treat them like trusted pets. A newly released Georgia Tech study shows that some Roomba owners become deeply attached to the robotic vacuums and suggests there's a measure of public readiness to accept additional robots in the house - even flawed ones. 'They're more willing to work with a robot that does have issues because they really, really like it,' said Beki Grinter, an associate professor at the school's College of Computing. 'It sort of begins to address more concerns: If we can design things that are somewhat emotionally engaging, it doesn't have to be as reliable.'"
>>> Robots, Ethical & Social Implications, Household Appliances, Applications
-> back to headlines

October 1, 2007: The Grill - ARPA Pioneer Charles M. Herzfeld on the Hot Seat - The 'godfather' of ARPA talks about the days of funding crazy ideas like computer networks, today's lack of effective leadership in government research and the price we may pay. By Gary Anthes. Computerworld. "Charles M. Herzfeld is currently a senior fellow at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies in Arlington, Va. He was hired by the Advanced Research Projects Agency, better known as ARPA, in 1961 to head up research in ballistic missile defense, and he became ARPA’s fifth director in 1965. (ARPA was later known as DARPA, after the word 'defense' was added to the agency’s name.) He also served as director of Defense Research & Engineering, to which ARPA reports, from 1990 to 1991. [Q] What was your introduction to computing? [A] When I was a graduate student at the University of Chicago, in 1948 or so, John von Neumann came and gave three seminars on electronic computing. He was instrumental in getting the ENIAC built, and he came to tell us about it. It was hugely important stuff, and it changed my life absolutely. ... [Q] What else did IPTO [Information Processing Techniques Office] do in those early times? [A] We created the whole artificial intelligence community and funded it. And we created the computer science world. When we started [IPTO], there were no computer science departments or computer science professionals in the world. None."
>>> History, Computer Science, Applications, Interviews; also see these related articles
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October 1, 2007: Ryszard Michalski; Shaped How Machines Learn. By Matt Schudel. The Washington Post (page B06). "Ryszard S. Michalski, a George Mason University professor whose research helped shape the field of machine learning, bringing computers closer to the realm of human thought, died Sept. 20 of cancer at his home in Fairfax County. He was 70. While working in his native Poland in the 1960s, Dr. Michalski devised an early computer system that could recognize handwriting. After coming to the United States in 1970, he expanded the field of machine learning, creating applications in which computers could execute a form of reasoning, drawing conclusions from information supplied to them. ... Dr. Michalski's specialty of machine learning is similar to but distinct from artificial intelligence. The underlying purpose of much of his work was to use computers to recognize patterns that could ease the decision-making process in seemingly unrelated systems. His research has been applied to agriculture, medicine, the stock market, fraud protection and voice recognition systems, among other things. ... For many years, Dr. Michalski directed GMU's Machine Learning and Inference Laboratory. He was a co-author of a multivolume textbook, "Machine Learning: An Artificial Intelligence Approach," and was a co-author or editor of more than 15 other books. He wrote more than 500 technical papers. He was a co-founder of Machine Learning journal and lectured around the world."
>>> Tributes, AAAI Fellows (elected 1992)
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October 1, 2007: USC student's computer program enlisted in security efforts at LAX - Program developed by a USC student is intended to thwart terrorists by making the frequency of searches unpredictable. By Larry Gordon. Los Angeles Times. "The doctoral dissertation of a 26-year-old USC computer science student is having an unusual effect on security and transportation at Los Angeles International Airport. That's because the LAX police are giving a trial run to a new computer program that, they say, seeks to keep potential terrorists and criminals constantly uncertain about where, when and how often vehicles will be searched at airport entrances. The software is based on the thesis of Praveen Paruchuri, who earned his doctorate in May. ... Citing security concerns, Butts declined to discuss specifics of the program and its complicated algorithms other than to say it affects police deployment and the frequency of car searches in a way that 'makes it virtually impossible to predict where resources might be deployed.' It not only takes away the routine behavior that terrorists might study and take advantage of, it also designs schedules more likely to catch criminal behavior, [James] Butts said. ... LAX's adoption of Paruchuri's work is 'something that we, as researchers, dream of: creating research that is not only academically wonderful but something that is also very useful,' [Milind] Tambe said. Although engineers in artificial intelligence often are inspired by thinking about what robots will do on Mars in 50 years, Tambe said, 'This is not planet Mars. This is planet Earth, and we are being useful right here and right now.'"
>>> Law Enforcement, Agents, Game Theory (@ Multi-Agent Systems), Applications; also see these related articles
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October 1, 2007: It's All in Your Head. By Lisa A. Ennis. Library Journal. "The dynamic and rapidly expanding field of neuroscience traditionally has involved the study of the nervous system from a biological/medical standpoint. But in recent years the science has become multidisciplinary, attracting researchers from computer science, psychology, sociology, philosophy, and even the humanities. ... For public and college libraries, developing a well-rounded, balanced, and broadly accessible collection of books, periodicals, DVDs, and web sites on this highly technical and academic subject can be challenging. The following bibliography provides a general listing of recent titles, mostly nonmedical, that demonstrate neuroscience's breadth. ... Bennett, Maxwell & others. Neuroscience and Philosophy: Brain, Mind, and Language. Columbia Univ. 2007. 232p. ISBN 978-0-231-14044-7. $25.50. To illustrate the philosophical issues surrounding cognitive neuroscience, this volume presents the conflicting views of three established philosophers and a prominent neuroscientist. While not light reading, it is a good introduction to this dynamic subfield. ... Bloom, Floyd E., M.D. Best of the Brain from Scientific American: Mind, Matter, and Tomorrow's Brain. Dana, dist. by Univ. of Chicago. 2007. 243p. illus. index. ISBN 978-1-932594-22-5. $25. This collection of essays drawn from Scientific American and Scientific American Mind offers an excellent, readable overview of the latest brain research since 1999.  ... Minsky, Marvin. The Emotion Machine: Commonsense Thinking, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future of the Human Mind. S. & S. 2006. 400p. illus. ISBN 978-0-7432-7663-4. $26; pap. Nov. 2007. ISBN 978-0-7432-7664-1. $16. Artificial intelligence pioneer Minsky examines the human imagination and common sense in this provocative book that challenges current thinking about the way humans think." [Please see the article for the complete bibliography.]
>>> Neuroscience, Cognitive Science, Philosophy, Computer Science
-> back to headlines

October 1, 2007: Education Plus Hyderabad. By T. Muralidharan. The Hindu. "What are the computer courses a biotechnology student must be familiarised with? ... I finished M.Sc Mathematics. I would like to settle in software field. What courses should I take up for the purpose? ..."
>>> Bioinformatics, AI Courses -and- Careers in AI (@ Resources for Students), Applications
-> back to headlines

October 2007: DARPA's Robot Car Race Hits the City - 2007 Preview (with Video). By By Erik Sofge. Popular Mechanics. "It's a mercilessly hot day in Robot City, Carnegie Mellon University's 40-acre test site on the banks of Pittsburgh's Monongahela River. Dozens of spectators line the bleachers overlooking a looping, two-lane test track. One of them raises his hand and asks the question on everyone's mind: 'What are the chances that it could turn into a HAL?' The 'it' refers to Boss, the robotic Chevy Tahoe being inspected by officials from DARPA, the Pentagon's research and development wing. ... This is a qualifying round for the upcoming Urban Challenge, a robotic car race set in a mock city. ... This year's race, scheduled for November 3, promises to be DARPA's most complex yet. A cross between a DMV driving test and a rally race, the event will require vehicles to merge, pass, park and generally stay out of trouble, all while trying to complete the course within 6 hours. ... I'm loaded into the back seat for what I assume will be a leisurely ride. Boss has other plans. ..."
>>> Autonomous Vehicles, Robots, Transportation, Grand Challenges, Applications
-> back to headlines

October 2007: Meet the Innovators - The Player: Luis von Ahn's secret for making computers smarter? Get thousands of people to take part in his cunning online games. By Polly Shulman. Smithsonian Magazine [part of the special report: Meet the Innovators . "What excites researchers about [Luis] von Ahn's 'human computation' work, as he calls it, is less the prospect of getting people to accomplish boring, repetitive chores than the promise of training computers to do the chores themselves. Many tasks that are easy for people are surprisingly difficult for computers, especially those that children learn easily, such as classifying objects, recognizing faces, learning verbal languages and reading handwriting. 'We're biologically programmed to teach our kids,' says Manuel Blum, a Carnegie Mellon computer scientist and von Ahn's former adviser. 'We don't have the patience to teach computers the same way, by answering question after question.' Michael Kearns, a computer scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, says, 'There are lots of people studying the hard problem of teaching computers to learn, and lots of other people seeing the entertainment value of the Web. But it's rare to find somebody like von Ahn, who has thought deeply about how to combine the two.' ... His 'big goal,' von Ahn says, is to make computers able to do anything that people can do. 'I think it'll happen, definitely. If not in 50 years, then 100.'"

  • Also see: Hanging with a genius - Honored CMU professor loves 'CSI,' misses Guatemalan food. By Sally Kalson. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (October 23, 2007). "Computer scientist Luis von Ahn, an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University, just keeps raking in the honors. Last year's included a $500,000 MacArthur 'genius' grant and a spot on Popular Science magazine's 'Brilliant 10' list. Now the Guatemala-born researcher has been named one of the nation's top young innovators by Smithsonian magazine. The editors were impressed by his 'games with a purpose,' in which online players have fun while helping solve larger problems, such as how to make computers 'think' more like people. Not bad for a 29-year-old."

>>> Machine Learning, Applications
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October 2007 [issue date]: Searching for God in the Brain - Researchers are unearthing the roots of religious feeling in the neural commotion that accompanies the spiritual epiphanies of nuns, Buddhists and other people of faith. By David Biello. Scientific American Mind. "The spiritual quest may be as old as humankind itself, but now there is a new place to look: inside our heads. Using fMRI and other tools of modern neuroscience, researchers are attempting to pin down what happens in the brain when people experience mystical awakenings during prayer and meditation or during spontaneous utterances inspired by religious fervor. Such efforts to reveal the neural correlates of the divine -- a new discipline with the warring titles 'neurotheology' and 'spiritual neuroscience' -- not only might reconcile religion and science but also might help point to ways of eliciting pleasurable otherworldly feelings in people who do not have them or who cannot summon them at will. ... The brain mediates every human experience from breathing to contemplating the existence of God. And whereas activity in neural networks is what gives rise to these experiences, neuroimaging cannot yet pinpoint such activity at the level of individual neurons. Instead it provides far cruder anatomical information, highlighting the broad swaths of brain tissue that appear to be unusually dynamic or dormant. But using such vague structural clues to explain human feelings and behaviors may be a fool’s errand."
>>> Neuroscience, Cognitive Science
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October 2007 [issue date]: Cracking GO - Brute-force computation has eclipsed humans in chess, and it could soon do the same in this ancient Asian game. By Feng - Hsiung Hsu. IEEE Spectrum Online. "In 1957, Herbert A. Simon, a pioneer in artificial intelligence and later a Nobel Laureate in economics, predicted that in 10 years a computer would surpass humans in what was then regarded as the premier battleground of wits: the game of chess. Though the project took four times as long as he expected, in 1997 my colleagues and I at IBM fielded a computer called Deep Blue that defeated Garry Kasparov, the highest-rated chess player ever. You might have thought that we had finally put the question to rest -- but no. Many people argued that we had tailored our methods to solve just this one, narrowly defined problem, and that it could never handle the manifold tasks that serve as better touchstones for human intelligence. These critics pointed to weiqi, an ancient Chinese board game, better known in the West by the Japanese name of Go, whose combinatorial complexity was many orders of magnitude greater than that of chess. Noting that the best Go programs could not even handle the typical novice, they predicted that none would ever trouble the very best players. Ten years later, the best Go programs still can't beat good human players. Nevertheless, I believe that a world-champion-level Go machine can be built within 10 years, based on the same method of intensive analysis -- brute force, basically -- that Deep Blue employed for chess. I've got more than a small personal stake in this quest. At my lab at Microsoft Research Asia, in Beijing, I am organizing a graduate student project to design the hardware and software elements that will test the ideas outlined here. ..."
>>> Go, Chess, Search, Decision Trees, Reasoning, Games & Puzzles, Machine Learning
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October 2007 [issue date]: A Robot Buying Spree - New orders received by North American-based robot companies rose 39% in the first half of 2007. By John Teresko. Industry Week. "Industry is buying. The evidence: New orders received by North American-based robot companies rose 39% in the first half of 2007, says the Robotic Industry Association (RIA). North American-based robot suppliers sold nearly 10,000 robots through June, valued at $563.2 million.

  • Also from the EYE ON ROBOTS issue of Industry Week (October 2007):
    • Meet The New Robots - The latest generation of robots offers performance advances, growing integration of vision and an enlarging capability to transform manufacturing. By John Teresko. "RIA estimates that more than 171,000 robots are now at work in U.S. factories, placing the U.S. second only to Japan in overall robot use. Worldwide, there are more than a million industrial robots in operation, Burnstein notes. To properly appreciate the value contribution of that installed base, consider that those mechanical workers are for the most part succeeding despite being blind, deaf and without a sense of touch. But that's changing. For example, robotic vision and other intelligence features were strong trends at the recent RIA 2007 International Robots & Vision Show. ... Motoman Inc. demonstrated a new vision-guided robot solution at the robotics show that could pick randomly located automotive components out of a bin and place them on a table. The robot then individually placed the parts into another bin. ... 'Vision has never been more affordable [than now],' says Fanuc Robotics' Dick Johnson, general manager, material handling. ... Vision hardware is becoming much more reliable, notes Johnson. ... Vision capability and accompanying accuracy improvements are helping to spur more diverse robotic applications. ..."
    • Greater Accuracy in Robots Leads to More Applications - Tools to increase the accuracy of robots By John Teresko. [Web exclusive.] "Greater performance accuracy is implicit in the evolution of robot intelligence, says Fanuc Robotics' Dick Johnson, general manager, material handling. 'For example, there is a trend to offer tools that will increase the accuracy of robots by compensating for variations in the manufacturing process. That promises to both decrease robot programming time and also make possible new robot applications.'"

>>> Robots, Manufacturing, Industry Statistics, Applications
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October 2007: New Autonomous Vehicle Climbs Cars on the Attack (with Video). By Erik Sofge. Popular Mechanics. "It's a chilling milestone, even for a military robot: Lockheed Martin's MULE (Multifunction Utility/Logistics and Equipment) has autonomously clambered over a 5-ft.-high obstacle."
>>> Autonomous Vehicles, Military, Robots, Applications
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