<< Headlines are listed according to date posted <-> Articles are organized by date published >>

DECEMBER   

• Giving robots the gift of sight
• Commerce in Security
• The digital prophet - Vernor Vinge
• Water war likely, say gurus
• Composer harnesses artificial intelligence to create music
• Visions of a Robot Future
• Getting smart about predictive intelligence
• Icarus May Be Key To Saving Lives
• Priest who left Silicon Valley behind finds his new life more fulfilling
• Robot club hums along to solve city problems
• Charles Rosen, 85, Engineer and Winemaker Is Dead
• Now the clucky get clackity
• Computer game industry to start research journal
• Robot technology in hospital upgrade
• Making Robots, With Dreams of Henry Ford
• G.E. Research Returns to Roots
• A.I. research pioneer dies
• Hi-tech ghosts of Christmas future
• The shape of playthings to come
• Saul Amarel, 74, an Innovator in Artificial Intelligence, Is Dead
• Voice holds the key
• Charles Rosen -- expert on robots, co-founder of winery
• When the web starts thinking for itself
• Artificial intelligence pioneer Saul Amarel of Rutgers dies at 74.
• A Massive undertaking
• Art Gallery Features 'Fantasy Underfoot'
• The end of history, tech version?
• This holiday's a bust for tech toys, but next year could be hot
• Research seeks emotion-sensing robot
• Robot Says: I Shrink I Am, I Shrink I Am
• A.I. Cop on the Beat
• The Dream of Mechanical Life
• Exploring space will require new robots
• Building the Sensitive Robot
• Library technology developments
• Will technology ever be as intelligent as us?
• Going for the high hanging fruits of IT
• Ngee Ann lecturers find way to make computers think like a human brain
• The race to computerise biology
• Robotic Warfare
• RoboVac
• At last ... a robot that really can think
• New Blood Test Spots Cancer
• Gift ideas for the serious gamer on your list
• Radical robot squad joins the rescue team
• Are robots after your job?
• Revving up the rovers
• Tech, and the Future of Finance
• Digital Actors in Rings Can Think
• Fire guts Edinburgh's AI library
• Turning ideas into assets (opinion)
• Software gambler takes on the tipsters
• Enterprise technology -- the twenty year leap
• Tech's best- This is the 'wow' stuff
• Pacifist Leonardo may have made mistakes to foil warlords
• Honda Shows Off Upgraded Walking Robot
• Making his mark on the Internet map
• The World According to Google
• In the Future, We'll All Be Harry Potter
• Biotech boom is big business for IT
• Darpa puts thought into cognitive computing
• Human or Computer?
• Berkeley student bound for Oxford as Rhodes scholar
• Buildings in Old Town to be razed
• We'll All Be Under Surveillance
• Fire destroys librarian's work
• Teen Wins $100,000 Science Scholarship
• Park plugged in to Singaporean skills
• Edinburgh fire
• Fire tears through Edinburgh
• Full Analysis (product review)
• More products arising to fight flood of spam
• Sci-Fi Tales Propel Space Tech
• The ghost hunters
• The World Is My Cubicle
• 'The Two Towers' (movie review)
• Real love from fake dogs?
• Research examines robot-assisted therapy
• Fed info 'tool for tyrants'
• Too Much Information (comment)
• Building a Better Cat
• They, Robots (book review)
• Will Smith Set to Get Robotic Costars
• Lego robot challenge aids learning
• A Few Good Toys
• Mars rover inspires toy robot
• Making 'bots pulls students in
• LEGO team performs at preschool
• Bioterror monitoring software offered free to aid health groups
• Futuristic Prostate Screening
• In UT program, 'citizen-scholars' put knowledge to work
• Gentlemen, Start Your Robots
• Networking stops working
• Big disaster, teeny packages
• Immobots Take Control
• Playing to Win
• God Is the Machine
• A Smarter Way to Sell Ketchup
• The Robot Evolution

DECEMBER 2002:

December 31, 2002: Water war likely, say gurus. By Liesl Pretorius. News24 ( South Africa). "A war - with or without guns - about water shortages is inevitable if the World Futurology Society's list of top predictions in the Outlook series can be believed. ... The predictions have been published as Outlook 2003. ... Other technological predictions include: artificial-intelligence preachers to hear confessions in 2004, designer babies by 2005, video tattoos (2010) and insect-like robots to manage crop pollination (2012)."
>>> Applications
-> back to headlines

December 30, 2002: Commerce in Security. By Larry Abramson. NPR - All Things Considered. "Homeland security warriors at the Pentagon and the CIA say the next terrorist attack may be prevented by investing in data-mining -- the science of finding patterns in colossal amounts of information. Companies are lining up to supply the government with the equipment to process the raw data." [Audio file available.]
>>> Data Mining, Machine Learning, Applications, Law Enforcement
-> back to headlines

December 30, 2002: Giving robots the gift of sight. By Ed Frauenheim. CNET. "A Carnegie Mellon University professor known for predicting the evolution of super-capable robots says he's just given robots better eyesight. Hans Moravec has completed work on a three-dimensional robotic vision system he says will allow machines to make their way through offices and homes. The technology is 'more than good enough to reliably navigate robots through a general environment,' he said. Moravec's system consists of stereoscopic digital cameras and a 3D grid set up in the robot's computer brain. The system determines the robot's distance from objects by noticing the different placement of the object in the two camera images and applying a geometric equation. The grid, which is made up of 32 million digital cells, is used to help handle incomplete or potentially misleading visual data. For example, an object visible in one camera lens might be blocked from the view of the other, or a blank wall may lack distinct features that can be used for triangulation."
>>> Vision, Robots, Applications, History
-> back to headlines

December 30, 2002: Composer harnesses artificial intelligence to create music. By R. Colin Johnson. EE Times. "Just as IBM's Deep Blue showed the world a computer can play chess as well as a human master, Eduardo Reck Miranda, a researcher for the Sony Computer Science Laboratories Inc., aims to demonstrate a computer program able to compose original music. So far, neural networks have succeeded in imitating distinct musical styles, but truly original compositions have remained elusive. Miranda is tackling that problem with an orchestra of virtual musicians — called agents — that interact to compose original music. ... In his latest book, Composing Music with Computers (Focal Press), Miranda summarizes his AI research, which began with cellular automata and evolved into an 'adaptive games' strategy based on artificial-life models. ... For a computer to create truly novel compositions, Miranda has turned to artificial life (AL) models — the fodder for what he calls evolutionary musicology."
>>> Music, Artificial Life, Creativity, Machine Learning, Agents, Applications
-> back to headlines

December 30, 2002: Getting smart about predictive intelligence. By Scott Kirsner. The Boston Globe (page C1). "If you want to get ready for the biggest technology debate of 2003, you should spend a few hours this week with Tom Cruise. ... The movie to rent is 'Minority Report,' directed by Steven Spielberg and based on a short story by Philip K. Dick.... The technology world's big debate for 2003 will center on just this kind of predictive intelligence: the ability to use software running on powerful computers to analyze information about your prior behavior, like where you've traveled and what you've bought, to guess about what you might do next. Are you more likely to purchase a plasma screen TV next year, or attempt to blow up a nuclear power plant? In real-world Washington, retired Navy Admiral John Poindexter is constructing a system called Total Information Awareness, with the hopes of being able to identify terrorists before they commit acts of terrorism, based on a series of suspicious transactions. In the private sector, companies are already using predictive intelligence to analyze your data profile and solve more mundane business problems.... You may think that attempts at divining crimes before they're committed need more congressional oversight than they've been receiving - or that we shouldn't try at all. But whatever you do, give it some thought. Because defining the limits of how predictive intelligence can be used, by government and the private sector, is going to be the major technology debate of the coming year."
>>> Data Mining, Ethical & Social Implications, Law Enforcement, Business, Applications, Machine Learning, SciFi; also see the Fall 2002 AI in the news column
-> back to headlines

December 29, 2002: The digital prophet - Vernor Vinge. He predicted the internet, but will his notions about the post-human era be as exact? ByJohn Hind. The Observer Magazine. "Vinge, 58, a retired professor of computer science (from San Diego State University) and perhaps the world's most visionary science-fiction writer, believes - and has done since 1993 - that a singularity will occur when computers become intelligent enough to upgrade themselves, because their learning curve will be straight up, in the most giddy exponential fashion. In the blink of an eye, or rather in as little as 60 hours of becoming 'superhuman' - something he expects no later than the year 2030 or he'll be 'surprised' - computers could have re-modelled society and subverted laws in ways utterly bewildering to us. ... Vinge began writing sci-fi in the late 60s. In 1981 his novella True Names invented the concept of cyberspace, three years before William Gibson's Neuromancer was credited as doing so. Considered eerily prescient, True Names told of hackers, living for the net (addictively) who don alternate online personae to attempt to battle a worldwide artificial intelligence."
>>> SciFi, Robots, Ethical & Social Issues
-> back to headlines

December 29, 2002: Priest who left Silicon Valley behind finds his new life more fulfilling. By Eileen E. Flynn. The Austin American-Statesman. "To an outsider, Ivan Tou's career change six years ago might seem radical. He had all the right credentials. Bachelor's and master's degrees from one of the world's top universities. Several years of cutting-edge research on artificial intelligence in Silicon Valley. A doctorate in computer science. ... Tou, 42, who was ordained as a priest in May, now serves at St. Austin Catholic Church. ... In a high-tech city such as Austin, Tou's background is relevant, Camacho added. It might be too early to dub Tou the patron saint of computer scientists, he said with a laugh, but the new priest can certainly serve as a role model to people in that field."
>>> Careers in AI (@ Resources for Students)
-> back to headlines

December 29, 2002: Robot club hums along to solve city problems. By Rebecca Emmerich. The Oakland Tribune. "While Lego blocks have long been popular in building toy castles and houses, students from across the country, including a newly formed team in Pleasanton, are using them to solve complex city problems. As a spinoff of the Vintage Hills Elementary School enrichment robotics program, a six-student team from Vintage and Pleasanton Middle School is participating in its first robotics competition in January. ... Problem solving is key, notes Naito, 11, who helped write a grant proposal that has allowed the team to purchase the robotics sets. ... The Pleasanton team will also vie in the research category, in which they attempt to use robotics to solve a real-life problem city managers and planners face. The team met with city officials and decided to look into lane striping. ... After the competition, Judy Banks said they will try to expand the program to become a starting ground for those interested in the growing form of science. 'We're really trying to be a feeder into the high school level,' she said."
>>> Robots, Competitions (@Resources for Students), Resources for Educators, Robot Kits
-> back to headlines

December 29, 2002: Charles Rosen, 85, Engineer and Winemaker Is Dead. By Frank J. Prial. The New York Times (no fee reg. req'd). "Charles A. Rosen, an engineer who was an early researcher in robotic and artificial intelligence and a founder of Ridge Vineyards in Cupertino, Calif., died on Dec. 8 at his home in Atherton, Calif. ... Born in Montreal, Mr. Rosen came to the United States as a teenager. ... During World War II, he returned to Canada to work on Royal Canadian Air Force aircraft being sent to Britain. After the war, he worked on transistor theory at General Electric Research Laboratories in Schenectady, N.Y., and was the coauthor of an early book on the subject. In the 1950's he moved to California to join the Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, where his efforts included projects to develop 'neural networks,' learning machines based on the organization of the biological brain rather than on digital computers. With other institute scientists, he developed one of the early mobile, intelligent robots."
>>> Tributes, Robots, Neural Networks, History, also see related articles below
-> back to headlines

December 28, 2002: Icarus May Be Key To Saving Lives. The Evening Telegraph / available from This is Derbyshire. "The lives of thousands of cancer patients could be saved after equipment being developed in Derby is introduced into hospitals. The advanced computer system - known as Icarus (Intelligent Cancer Reporting Universal System) - uses artificial intelligence techniques to improve both the success rate and the reliability of cancer diagnoses. ... A version of the system helping doctors to diagnose inflammatory bowel diseases - which could develop into cancers - is nearing the end of a successful trial at Nottingham's Queen's Medical Centre. A version to help diagnose colo-rectal conditions is now being installed at Lincoln County Hospital. ... [Dr Mitch Grigoriu] said: 'If you can understand how parts of the brain work, you can try to emulate that in a computer system. Unfortunately, the human brain cannot process the large amounts of data stored in a computer.'"
>>> Medicine, Applications

December 27, 2002: Robot technology in hospital upgrade. By Barry Hailstone. The Advertiser. "The world's most technically advanced operating theatre will be installed next year in one of Adelaide's oldest private hospitals. A $1.4 million robotic technology operating suite, part of a $16.4 million redevelopment at Wakefield Hospital, would mean shorter surgery times and greater efficiency, chief executive officer Catherine Miller said yesterday. 'Patients would spend less time under anaesthesia and in surgery,' she said. The operating theatre's robotic technology and voice-activated command system would link equipment within the operating theatre to other departments around the hospital under the changes."
>>> Speech, Natural Language, Robots, Applications, Medicine
-> back to headlines

December 26, 2002: << 2 articles from AP >> Computer game industry to start research journal. By Justin Pope. Associated Press / available from The Beaufort Gazette. "The quarterly Journal of Game Development will debut next year. ... Its founders note that computer game programmers regularly borrow from fields like physics and artificial intelligence, but serious research specifically in game development is lacking outside of companies like Microsoft and Nintendo. That's starting to change as universities begin offering courses and conducting game research, said David Pallai, president of Charles River Media. His new journal is aimed at serving that emerging research community."
Research journal on game programming planned. Associated Press / available from USA Today. "[David] Pallai said while most people think of the game development industry as a strictly commercial enterprise turning out the latest versions of Doom and Grand Theft Auto, in fact it is deeply involved with applications used in the military, economics and biology. 'It's not just the game, it's all of those applications that can be done on a computer that might find their way into games but also into all those fields that really, in terms of human interest, can advance what we're doing,' Pallai said of the journal."
>>> Video Games, Software Development, Applications, Reference Shelf
-> back to headlines

December 26, 2002: Making Robots, With Dreams of Henry Ford. By Scott Kirsner. The New York Times (no fee reg. req'd). "One robot was tossed into an abandoned building in Afghanistan by soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division. Another shimmied through a thin air shaft in the Great Pyramid of Giza. A third hunted dust bunnies under Helen Greiner's bed. Field testing for products made by the iRobot Corporation takes place in settings both exotic and mundane. 'When you put robots into situations where there haven't been robots before,' said Ms. Greiner, the company's president, 'you very quickly find out whether they're up to the job, and what design changes you might need to make.' ... The company took its name from an Isaac Asmiov science fiction book called 'I, Robot,' and its early revenue came from research contracts with government agencies like the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa, at the Pentagon. But more recently, iRobot began developing products with commercial partners, like a doll designed with Hasbro called My Real Baby that was able to convey through sounds and facial expressions whether its owner was providing adequate care. The company has also financed some projects on its own, like the Roomba, a $200 device that got its name from the dancelike circular movements it makes as it cleans. ... 'Robots used to be things that were bolted to the floor in factories, and ordinary people didn't interact with them,' Mr. Brooks said, 'just like computers in the 1960's and 1970's were locked away behind glass walls. In 50 years, I think the world is going to be full of robots, and we want iRobot to be one of the companies that's building them.'"
>>> Robots, Applications, Hazards & Disasters, Military, Smart Houses, Toys, SciFi
-> back to headlines

December 26, 2002: G.E. Research Returns to Roots. By Claudia H. Deutsch. The New York Times (no fee reg. req'd). "Word of G.E.'s new openness is spreading. Rick Snyder, chief executive of Ardesta, a new company specializing in technologies that operate at the size of the human hair and smaller, said he plans to call the G.E. lab soon. 'I could see us joint venturing on research now, and development later,' he said. The G.E. businesses are chipping in for research outside their primary areas, too. GE Capital is paying for research into artificial intelligence, which could help it with such tasks as setting prices for service contracts."
>>> Applications, Business
-> back to headlines

December 25, 2002: A.I. research pioneer dies. San Mateo County Times (December 25, 2002). "[Charles] Rosen created 'Shakey,' the first mobile robot that could reason about its actions. In 1966, Shakey was equipped with a television camera, range finder, collision detectors, and a reasoning program that allowed it to execute simple tasks such as moving a box around a room. 'It was the first robot that had the ability to make plans and perceive its environment,' said Nils Nilsson, emeritus professor of computer science at Stanford University. ... Rosen was also an accomplished winemaker and co-founded Ridge Vineyards with some scientist friends. ...He also started a company that sold a mix for making pickles at home and two years ago invented a device to dispense inhaled drugs."
>>> Tributes, Robots, History, also see related articles above & below
-> back to headlines

December 25, 2002: Hi-tech ghosts of Christmas future. By Jane Wakefield. BBC. "This time in 2050, we will be sitting down to eat a synthetic turkey, with a robot helping out to prepare the trimmings. This is what we can expect for Christmas in the year 2050, according to BT's futurologist Ian Pearson. ... A robotic kitchen assistant could help take the stress out of the preparations. ... Mr Pearson predicts walking, talking Barbie dolls able to respond emotionally to their owners, genetically-engineered Furbies and construction sets that allow children to design and build almost anything they want."
>>> Robots, Smart Homes, Toys, Applications
-> back to headlines

December 24, 2002: The shape of playthings to come - Today's toys are more technologically advanced than ever. What will toys of tomorrow be like? By Chip Walter. The Boston Globe. "'You're going to see what 10 years ago we would have defined as science fiction,' says Randy Pausch, co-director of Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center. 'Toys that know where they are, that can recognize people and respond to them; toys that build up a mental state of the things around them; toys that talk to each other and interact with the television set or the computer. You can envision all kinds of scenarios.' ... What are the downsides as toys grow more intelligent and networked? Privacy is a big issue because of the vulnerability of children. How, exactly, would toys use their intelligence, and with whom would they be connected? What if the smart doll your daughter is playing with suddenly says she's hungry and wants to go to McDonald's, or is bored and suggests talking to mom and dad about a trip to Disneyland? ... The ultimate question may be this: Will the electronic sophistication of tomorrow's toys enhance the way children play or blunt their imaginations?"
>>> Toys, Ethical & Social Implications, Education, Applications, Robots
-> back to headlines

December 23, 2002: Now the clucky get clackity. By Sue Lowe. The Sydney Morning Herald. "Not sure you want kids? By mid-next year, hesitant couples with a spare $80,000 may be able to have a trial run with a child-like robot. ... Like the Aibo dog, Sony's first biped can interact with its "carers", expressing emotions through a combination of words, songs and body language. It can recognise up to 10 human faces and voices and adapt its behaviour according to the way it is treated. ... The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe has predicted 700,000 useful robots - lawn mowers, vacuum cleaners and window cleaners - will have been bought by 2005, as well as up to a million entertainment robots. Sony claims to have sold more than 100,000 Aibo dogs worldwide, mainly in Japan, Hong Kong and America. ... But Sony's move from pet replacement to child replacement could be contentious. Some researchers believe children, in particular, are at risk of developing emotional attachments that the robots cannot live up to. Teams at Washington University and Purdue University are studying the effects of life-mimicking toys on young children and the elderly. In the latter case, they are looking at whether the Aibo dogs could have the same mental health benefits as real pets. 'In the coming years robotic pets will become more technologically sophisticated, more animal-like,' says researcher Batya Friedman. 'As they do, our research suggests that they will evoke more and more psychological responses from humans. Is that a good thing?'"
>>> Robotic Pets & Toys, Ethical & Social Implications, Assistive Technologies, Industry Statistics, Applications, Robots
-> back to headlines

December 23, 2002: The Dream of Mechanical Life - Man and automata. By Hugh Ormsby-Lennon. The Weekly Standard (Volume 008, Issue 15). "A spate of new books [editor's note: 13 to be exact] addresses eighteenth-century automata, ventriloquists' dummies, and puppets--together with more recent avatars of chess computers, artificial intelligence, androids, robots, and cyborgs. Does 'computerization' challenge human identity as ominously as 'mechanization' previously seemed to? ... So, does artificial intelligence transcend Freudian nightmare now that it has come to suggest not itinerant showmen or tinkerers with clockwork but university scientists, computer moguls, and global corporations? Or does a scientist with an uncanny puppet always remain mad or charlatanical?"
>>> Robots, SciFi, History
-> back to headlines

December 22, 2002: Saul Amarel, 74, an Innovator in Artificial Intelligence, Is Dead. By Eric Nagourney. The New York Times (no fee reg. req'd). "Dr. Saul Amarel, who helped develop the field of artificial intelligence and founded the computer science department at Rutgers University, died on Wednesday in Princeton, N.J., where he lived. ... Among his peers, Dr. Amarel was perhaps best known for a paper he wrote in 1968, which put him at the vanguard of the artificial intelligence movement. Decades later, the importance of the paper may be hard to understand. It concerned the way one might program a computer to solve a brain-teaser well known to mathematicians that involves three cannibals, three missionaries and a boat that seats only two. The challenge for the missionaries is to transport the cannibals across a river without ever letting any of their party be outnumbered -- and eaten. Solving the problem was not really the point. That had already been done. What Dr. Amarel set out to do was to create an approach that did not rely on a mechanical crunching of numbers, but instead used an algorithm that allowed the computer to figure out a solution in a manner more akin to human reasoning."
>>> Tributes, Applications, History, Reasoning, also see related article below
-> back to headlines

December 21, 2002: Voice holds the key. BBC. "Speech recognition has always been something of a holy grail for the hi-tech industry. For years the technology has promised much but it has failed to become part of everyday life. But now the software is reflecting a changed climate where security is paramount. Recent advances in speech technology have led to a whole new range of products with different aspirations.
>>> Speech, Natural Language, Applications, Biometrics (@ Image Understanding)
-> back to headlines

December 20, 2002: Charles Rosen -- expert on robots, co-founder of winery. By Wyatt Buchanan. San Francisco Chronicle. "Charles Rosen, who pioneered artificial intelligence in the 1960s and 1970s and helped found one of California's best known wineries, died in Atherton on Dec. 8, one day after his 85th birthday. ... Mr. Rosen did his groundbreaking artificial intelligence work while at Stanford Research Institute, known now as SRI International, a Menlo Park nonprofit research and development organization. His success came from his ability to find the edge of creative thought and innovation in his discipline and to push past the known limits, friends and colleagues say, developing things like neural networks in machines and Shakey, the first robot to see and learn on its own."
>>> Tributes, Robots, History, also see related article above
-> back to headlines

December 20, 2002: When the web starts thinking for itself. By David Green. vnunet's Ebusinessadvisor. "The so-called semantic web is an extension of the current web in which data is given meaning through the use of a series of technologies. ... Ontologies provide a deeper level of meaning by providing equivalence relations between terms (i.e. term A on my web page is expressing the same concept as term B on your web page). An ontology is a file that formally defines relations among terms, for example, a taxonomy and set of inference rules. By providing such 'dictionaries of meaning' (in philosophy ontology means 'nature of existence') ontologies can improve the accuracy of web searches by allowing a search program to seek out pages that refer to a specific concept rather than just a particular term as they do now. While XML, RDF and ontologies provide the basic infrastructure of the semantic web, it is intelligent agents that will realise its power. An intelligent agent can best be described as a piece of adaptive computer coding that is capable of reasoning and that learns from our behaviour and preferences, thus delivering what is called 'proactive personalisation'. There are many thousands of different agents (or bots as they are also known), each performing specific, specialised tasks, for example search bots, chatter bots and shopping bots). An important aspect of agents is that they are sociable and can interact and communicate with humans and other agents. ... When broken down into a series of explicit search statements and appropriate content sources to search, a simple user information request is revealed to be a complex task. Automating such tasks will result in an ever-larger role for artificial intelligence technologies such as agents. One key concern about the brave new world of bots is that, by increasing their autonomy, their accountability will be lost. ... There is a need to construct boundaries, such as user-determined privacy settings, to safely contain such interactions."
>>> Ontologies, Web-Searching Agents, Ethical & Social Implications, Agents, Information Retrieval, Representation
-> back to headlines

December 19, 2002: Artificial intelligence pioneer Saul Amarel of Rutgers dies at 74. Associated Press / available from Newsday / also available from CBS 2. "Saul Amarel, a pioneer in artificial intelligence and founder of the computer science department at Rutgers University, has died of cancer. ... He was known internationally for his work in computer simulation methods, network synthesis and 'hypercomputing,' and for organizing collaborations of scientists to use artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence joins science and engineering to understand how humans and machines process information, then applies that knowledge in designing machines smart enough to do human tasks and ones beyond human intelligence. ... [H]e also ran the National Institutes of Health's first project on use of computers in such diverse fields as biomedicine, engineering design and ecology.... Amarel served as director of the Information Sciences and Technology Office of the Defense Advanced Projects Agency from 1985 to 1988."
>>> Tributes, Applications, History , also see related article above
-> back to headlines

December 19, 2002: Art Gallery Features 'Fantasy Underfoot.' By Carl Hartman. Associated Press / available from The Herald Tribune. "Ken Feingold represents the newest of media. His two silicone heads lie in a cardboard box filled with plastic packing foam, looking as if they came from a robot factory of the future. The mouth of each is placed close to an ear of the other. 'Through a rambling conversation driven by their rudimentary artificial intelligence, they now attempt to understand their predicament in a futile but dogged manner,' Matthew Biro, a University of Michigan contemporary art instructor, wrote in the show's catalog."
>>> Natural Language, Robots, Art
-> back to headlines

December 19, 2002: The end of history, tech version? - Some tech prophets see humans made irrelevant by machines. But there's a choice. By Kenneth James. The Business Times. "Seated across the table, they posed their questions earnestly: Do you think machines will become more intelligent than people in the next 100 years? Won't that present a danger to humankind? What can be done to keep that from happening? Disturbing questions, these. And the two final-year business school undergrads were clearly anticipating disturbing answers. The interview was one of several they were conducting for a project, and the research topic pretty much spelt out where they were coming from: 'Chaos from technology: Where is the future taking us?'. Even more telling were the authorities they cited: Moravec, Kurzweil, Joy, among others. ... But are we really careening towards a future where our destiny is determined by super-intelligent machines? Is it foolish to expect that humans will continue to be in control even when machines are demonstrably more intelligent in every way?"
>>> Ethical & Social Implications, AI Overview, History
-> back to headlines

December 18, 2002: Visions of a Robot Future - The Holiday Robot Games and Expo offers fascinating projects, promising students, and unsettling premonitions. By Silke Tudor. SF Weekly. "Joseph Hering, coordinator of the NASA Robotics Education Project, wears a similar shirt along with a large fuzzy Santa hat. Thankfully, the official NASA patches on his jacket and the determined eyes framed by his ashy brows command undeniable respect. 'One of the primary aims of REP is to see students graduating with Ph.D.s in robotics,' says Hering, standing over a large sticker that reads 'Real robots don't need remote control. There aren't many universities offering degrees in robotics yet, but robot research is one of NASA's top three priorities. Further space exploration depends on it.' To that end, REP maintains a Web-based clearinghouse for information pertaining to robotics education. The project also actively facilitates new robotics curriculums at all educational levels, offering the most promising students a chance to participate in an intensive robotics program at Moffett Field under the guidance of NASA personnel, and supporting local events such as this one and national competitions such as BotBall, a tournament organized by the KISS Institute for Practical Robotics based out of Norman, Okla."
>>> Resources for Educators, Robots, Competitions (@ Resources for Students), SciFi, Philosophy, Resources
-> back to headlines

December 18, 2002: This holiday's a bust for tech toys, but next year could be hot - Let's talk about hot technology gifts for NEXT Christmas. Column by Kevin Maney. USA Today. "But by next holiday season, you might be gift-wrapping amazing new stuff: Trophy Wife Barbie. This comes at the convergence of a couple of ripening technologies: artificial intelligence (AI) and radio frequency identification tags (RFID). Great strides in AI software plus ever more powerful computer chips are making it possible to give small things limited decision-making capabilities. RFID uses radio sensors on tiny tags to allow objects to communicate with each other or with a wireless computer network. Thus we get a doll who can shop -- on her own. ... Personal robots. First, you have to shake the idea that a robot is going to be like Rosie on The Jetsons or that hot water heater on tracks that passed for a robot in Lost in Space. It's probably going to be small and more about smarts than mechanics --something like R2D2. Early signs are here. Sony has sold more than 50,000 Aibo electronic dogs since introducing them in 1999. But this year, Aibo made a giant evolutionary leap, acquiring software that lets it recognize its owner's face well enough to find him in a crowd. One popular curiosity this year is Roomba, a robot vacuum cleaner from iRobot. Another little company, Evolution Robotics, has developed a robot that looks like a laptop on wheels, and can 'see' where it's going by taking three photos a second and analyzing them."
>>> Toys & Robotic Pets, Smart Homes, Robots, Image Understanding, Vision, Applications, SciFi, Industry Statistics
-> back to headlines

December 17, 2002: A Massive undertaking. By Peter McMahon. EXN [Discovery Channel Canada]. " EXN producer Peter McMahon talked to Weta Digital's Stephen Regelous, who created Massive, the artificial-intelligence-powered software that's responsible for the vast swarms of battling orcs, humans and elves in the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy. Massive was originally developed to allow large crowds of computer-generated movie characters to interact as if they each had minds of their own. Now, Regulous says the software could even be reverse-engineered to use simulated A.I. in controlling large groups of real-life robots on missions where it's useful for them to be able to think for themselves."
>>>Multi-Agent Systems, Drama, Agents, Applications, Robots, Interviews
-> back to headlines

December 17, 2002: A.I. Cop on the Beat. By Alexandra Robbins. PC Magazine. "Coplink, an artificial-intelligence–driven search engine for crime characteristics, scans multiple databases for connections among names, vehicles, physical descriptions, and other aspects of a crime or criminal. Developed by Hsinchun Chen, director of the University of Arizona Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Coplink began in 1997. Five years later, Chen has deployed Coplink at six agencies and is developing an information-sharing and analysis program with the CIA."
>>> Law Enforcement, Applications
-> back to headlines

December 17, 2002: Building the Sensitive Robot. Stories of modern science by Ellen Beck. United Press International. "Vanderbilt researchers Nilanjan Sarkar and Craig Smith are working on a robot that can sense human emotion. 'Psychological research shows that a lot of our communications, human to human, are implicit,' Sarkar says. ... The key to the project is determining whether a robot can sense the psychological state of a human."
>>> Robots, Cognitive Science, also see the following articles
-> back to headlines

December 17, 2002: Research seeks emotion-sensing robot. By Scott R. Burnell. UPI /available from The Washington Times. "'We are not trying to give a robot emotions,' Smith said. 'We are trying to make robots that are sensitive to our emotions.'As the project develops, the team hopes to integrate other inputs, such as voice- and face-recognition software, to refine the rules, Sarkar told UPI. ... Research has shown students learn most effectively in an optimal challenge level that avoids both frustration and boredom, Sarkar said. Accurate monitoring of physiological data would help a computer alter a task's difficulty to maintain that optimal state. ... The research is right on target in terms of helping robots and humans interact more effectively, said Robin Murphy, a professor of computer engineering at the University of South Florida in Tampa and director of the Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue.
>>> Robots, Cognitive Science, Speech, Interfaces, Education, Vision, Natural Language, Image Understanding, Hazards & Disasters, also see the previous and following articles
-> back to headlines

December 17, 2002: Robot Says: I Shrink I Am, I Shrink I Am - Scientists trying to create robots that sense human emotions. By Robert Preidt. HealthScout. "Vanderbilt University researchers are trying to create a robot that can sense your emotions and respond appropriately. In an article in the December issue of Robotica, the researchers report they've taken the first steps towards creating a touchy-feely robot that can sense your psychological state. There are two parts to this project. The first is to develop a system that accurately detects a person's psychological state by analyzing information from number of physiological sensors -- for example, one would measure heart rate. The second part is to have a robot process this information as soon as it's collected, and convert it into a form that can be processed by a computer."
>>> Robots, Cognitive Science, also see the previous articles
-> back to headlines

December 17, 2002: Library technology developments. News Analysis by Gryphon. IT-Director.com. "Other technologies on the horizon for library and information services include artificial intelligence within library web sites and web based open source work. All these development herald much greater automation and the ability to derive much more information from library and research services with greater ease and on a more timely basis."
>>> Libraries, Applications
-> back to headlines

December 16, 2002: Exploring space will require new robots. By Carole Rutland. Ledger-Enquirer. "Disguised as futuristic ants, newly designed artificial intelligence will be able to venture into the nooks and crannies of space as never before possible. They're tiny and weigh in at about 2.2 pounds, but they could fan among the hundreds of thousands of asteroids and begin to explore. They're called ANTS -- it's an acronym for Autonomous Nano Technology Swarm, a fleet of tiny insect-like spacecraft which could cruise all by themselves to the asteroid belt."
>>> Autonomous Vehicles, Robots, Space Exploration, Applications
-> back to headlines

December 16, 2002: Going for the high hanging fruits of IT. By Ladi Ogunneye. The Daily Times of Nigeria. "The Nigerian Information Technology professional as well as the companies needs to be challenged. Government action relating to certain Information technology projects seems to suggest lack of confidence in the professionals and/or companies. ... United States of America provides a good example of this. In 1957 the erstwhile USSR launched Sputnik, the first artificial earth satellite. This was during the cold war period. Shortly thereafter, President Sweight D. Eisenhower [sic] set up the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), which later became DARPA, and challenged it to establish the United States lead in Science and Technology (at that time, applicable to the military). That challenge produced what has today become one of the scientific wonders of our time, the Internet. This is not all, a look at the technical literature reveals that there has been immense contributions of this body in such areas as reduced instruction set processors, specialised graphics engines, RAID disks, robotics and artificial intelligence tools. DARPA has lived up to the challenge of maintaining the US superiority in high-performance computing and communication devices, networking and information assurance, embedded software (i.e. software which operates in close coupling with complex and sometimes distributed dynamical systems, seamless user interfaces for the warfighter and ubiquitous computing and communication resources). ... The above list of contributions of DARPA is no doubt laden with research and development (R&D) content. This suggests the need for investment in R&D. The nation’s hope to be globally competitive is meaningless if its offerings add no value."
>>> History, AI Overview
-> back to headlines

December 16, 2002: Ngee Ann lecturers find way to make computers think like a human brain. By Ca-Mie De Souza. Channel NewsAsia. "Two lecturers at Ngee Ann Polytechnic said they had discovered a way to make computers think like a human brain. ... Like a library which arranges its books in categories, the team said the brain's grey matter functioned in much the same way. So they designed the 'Digital Gray Matter' technology, which allows computers to store and classify information. ... Dr Alexei Mikhailov, Lecturer at Ngee Ann Polytechnic, said: 'I believe now we can significantly improve artificial intelligence tools. They will become cheaper, they will become more intelligent and it will not just improve the quality of life, but it could also save our lives.' ... At the moment, artificial intelligence is already used in robots - in a US$1 billion market that's growing at 45 percent a year. Dr Pok Yang Ming, Lecturer at Ngee Ann Polytechnic, said: 'Artificial intelligence has been in place over the last 20 to 30 years. All these are discovered outside Singapore. But neural cortex or the Digital Gray Matter is discovered in Singapore.'"
>>> Cognitive Science, Applications, Machine Learning, Industry Statistics
-> back to headlines

December 16, 2002: The World According to Google. By Steven Levy. Newsweek / available from MSNBC. "By a winning combination of smart algorithms, hyperactive Web crawlers and 10,000 silicon-churning computer servers, Google has become a high-tech version of the Oracle of Delphi, positioning everyone a mouseclick away from the answers to the most arcane questions—and delivering simple answers so efficiently that the process becomes addictive. ... Google’s uses are limited only by the imaginations of those who punch in 150 million searches a day. ... By empowering the masses to make use of the multi-terabit glory of the Web, Google has made supersleuths of us all. Privacy advocates are going crazy at the Pentagon’s plan to track citizens’ purchases, Web-site visits and phone calls. But as my search for the eBay seller indicates, with Google everybody is Big Brother. ... From the office [Sergey] Brin and [Larry] Page share ... the cofounders dream up even wilder plans. 'The ultimate search engine would be smart; it would understand everything in the world,' says Page."
>>> Information Retrieval, Machine Learning, Applications, Ethical & Social Implications, Libraries, Machine Translation
-> back to headlines

December 16, 2002: The ghost hunters - Scientists and novelists share insights into the enduring mystery of human consciousness. By Jay Tolson. U.S. News & World Report. "Consciousness, though long an indirect concern of fiction, has recently become the explicit preoccupation of many literary novelists–at the same time that scientists in many fields have taken a renewed interest in the subject. This is more than a coincidence, [David] Lodge says. ... On the science side, Lodge points to a confluence of new approaches, theories, and technologies. These include advances in computer science that give promise of constructing artificial intelligence and even consciousness itself; a new understanding of the neurochemistry behind different mental states and moods; and a host of brain-scanning and brain-imaging techniques. All have boosted confidence that close scrutiny of the brain (the hardware) will eventually explain mind and consciousness (the software), thus dissolving the mystery of the 'ghost in the machine.'The various expressions of this new confidence have themselves attracted the attention of many first-rate novelists. Jonathan Franzen's bestselling novel, The Corrections, for example...."
>>> Philosophy, SciFi, Neural Networks
-> back to headlines

December 15, 2002: Robotic Warfare - part of The 2nd Annual Year in Ideas. By William Speed Weed. The New York Times Magazine (no fee reg. req'd). "This year at Edwards Air Force Base in California, the biggest advance yet in robotic warfare took its first flight: the UCAV, or Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle. Like the Predator, the UCAV has no human on board. Unlike the Predator, the kite-shaped UCAV is an autonomous plane that flies itself without constant direction from any human being. Its ground-based controller (notably not called a pilot) programs missions with a computer, but he does not direct the aircraft moment by moment. ... The Army is developing the Unmanned Ground Combat Vehicle, a tank that can autonomously negotiate landscapes and fire weapons. And the Navy plans to build a robotic killer submarine. ... Beyond the obvious advantage of keeping Americans out of harm's way, robotic systems have other advantages. Robotic planes and subs don't have to accommodate human safety needs, so they're cheaper to build. Not only can computers think faster than humans, they'll also never suffer from the emotional stress of battle. Moreover, computers can communicate with each other at lightning speed. ... The Air Force's [ Col. Michael] Leahy insists that, though total autonomy is technologically feasible, it is not morally allowable. 'A human must always be in the loop to authorize weapons release,' he says."
>>> Robots, Military, Autonomous Vehicles, Ethical & Social Implications, AI Overview, Applications, also see the next article ->
-> back to headlines

December 15, 2002: RoboVac - part of The 2nd Annual Year in Ideas. By Virginia Heffernan. The New York Times Magazine (no fee reg. req'd). "Of all the works of prophecy of the last century -- '1984,' 'Brave New World,' 'Atlas Shrugged' -- the one that appears to have generated the most hope about the future is 'The Jetsons,' the cartoon series that had its premiere in 1962. On that show, the chipper Jetson family boasted, in addition to a Zippo-size encyclopedia and a telephone with a video screen, a robot named Rosie who took care of household chores. So many other utopian dreams were dashed long ago, but the fantasy of a happy, chore-loving robot has remained vital into the 21st century, and this year a Massachusetts company called iRobot offered Roomba, America's first affordable robot vacuum cleaner."
>>> Robots, Applications, Smart Houses, History, SciFi, also see the previous article
-> back to headlines