AI Set to Replace Journalists

Posted on October 23, 2011 by DrQuickbeam

In the a recent RadioLab episode called Talking To Machines cognitive scientist Dr. Robert Epstein of Harvard describes how he started looking for a date online and found the most interesting and communicative responses to be coming from what was apparently a woman in Russia. After exchanging emails with her for months, he discovers to his surprise that it was only a chatbot all along. The AI behind the chatbot has come a long way since the simple one liners of old IRC bots, and soon they may be replacing human writers for some applications—- like autoworkers on a Ford line.

“WISCONSIN appears to be in the driver’s seat en route to a win, as it leads 51-10 after the third quarter. Wisconsin added to its lead when Russell Wilson found Jacob Pedersen for an eight-yard touchdown to make the score 44-3 …”

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Indoor Autonomous Helicopter

Posted on October 21, 2009 by billycuts

TechTV @ MIT

IBM to build brain-like computers

Posted on November 21, 2008 by billycuts

IBM has announced it will lead a US government-funded collaboration to make electronic circuits that mimic brains.

Part of a field called "cognitive computing", the research will bring together neurobiologists, computer and materials scientists and psychologists.

As a first step in its research the project has been granted $4.9m (£3.27m) from US defence agency Darpa.

The resulting technology could be used for large-scale data analysis, decision making or even image recognition.

"The mind has an amazing ability to integrate ambiguous information across the senses, and it can effortlessly create the categories of time, space, object, and interrelationship from the sensory data," says Dharmendra Modha, the IBM scientist who is heading the collaboration.

"There are no computers that can even remotely approach the remarkable feats the mind performs," he said.

BBC

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Dean Kamen’s ‘Luke Arm’ Prosthesis Readies for Clinical Trials

Posted on February 18, 2008 by billycuts

Dean Kamen’s “Luke arm”—a prosthesis named for the remarkably lifelike prosthetic worn by Luke Skywalker in Star Wars—came to the end of its two-year funding last month. Its fate now rests in the hands of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which funded the project. If DARPA gives the project the green light—and some greenbacks—the state-of-the-art bionic arm will go into clinical trials. If all goes well, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration gives its approval, returning veterans could be wearing the new artificial limb by next year.

The Luke arm grew out of DARPA’s Revolutionizing Prosthetics program, which was created in 2005 to fund the development of two arms. The first initiative, the four-year, US $30.4 million Revolutionizing Prosthetics contract, to be completed in 2009, led by Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., seeks a fully functioning, neurally controlled prosthetic arm using technology that is still experimental. The latter, awarded to Deka Research and Development Corp., Kamen’s New Hampshire–based medical products company (perhaps best known for the Segway), is a two-year $18.1 million 2007 effort to give amputees an advanced prosthesis that could be available immediately “for people who want to literally strap it on and go.” Kamen’s team designed the Deka arm to be controlled with noninvasive measures, using an interface a bit like a joystick.

IEEE

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With Mini in vivo Robots, Anyone Can do Surgery

Posted on February 10, 2008 by billycuts

By attaching a millimeter-sized camera robot to a tether, scientists have designed a way to allow individuals with non-medical backgrounds to perform minimally invasive surgery in almost any location. Unlike room-size and expensive surgical robots, mini in vivo robots are inexpensive and mobile enough to support emergency surgeries almost anywhere, from the battlefield to outer space.

The University of Nebraska researchers hope that the inexpensive version of the da Vinci surgical robot system will make the advantages of robotic-assisted surgery more widely available, and open the doors for telesurgeries that were previously impossible. In a recent study, the team evaluated the ease of use and time required to perform simple abdominal surgeries with the in vivo camera robots. Their results are published in a recent issue of IEEE Transactions on Information Technology in Biomedicine.

“A new area of surgical robotics focuses on placing robots entirely inside the patient,” wrote Mark Rentschler et al. in their study. “In vivo robots are small, inexpensive, and easily transported, making it more likely that this technology can be more widely adopted. . . . The use of these robots can potentially reduce patient trauma in traditional medical centers, while the size of the robots makes them ideal for transportation to and use in remote or harsh environments.”

PhysOrg

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Study of starling formations points way for swarming robots

Posted on February 1, 2008 by billycuts

Scientists have uncovered a simple rule that explains how thousands of starlings flock in formation and hope to use the discovery in the future to coordinate swarms of robots.

The reasons why the starlings are able to fly with Red Arrow precision in vast numbers, tumbling and banking in nervous unison and without colliding, has tantalised scientists.

Now it turns out that the secret is for each bird to track seven others, says the first detailed direct observations to have been reported by STARFLAG – Starlings in Flight – a European project involving biologists, physicists, and economists.

The scientists wanted to find out how flocks remain so incredibly cohesive – never leaving a bird isolated – when under attack by a bird of prey.

The team used new methods to gather data on large flocks of starlings over the skies of Rome’s Termini railway station to test the various theories and found that the behaviour of flocking birds is very different from what was believed up to now.

Current computer models assume that each bird interacts with all birds within a certain distance. But the new observations, however, show that each bird keeps under control a fixed number of neighbours – seven other starlings – irrespective of their distance, which is the secret of how they stick together.

Telegraph.co.uk

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Small military robots gain advanced “sight” for more challenging roles

Posted on January 27, 2008 by billycuts

Intelligent robot vendor iRobot this week licensed Laser Radar or Ladar technology for use in its line of military robots, a move that could result in a new line of machines that can see and operate more effectively in dangerous situations. Such small, advanced robots could be deployed in less than a year, experts said.

Specifically the robot-maker is licensing Advanced Scientific Concepts’ 3-D flash Ladar which uses laser beams to scan and process targets. The system has the ability to create a virtual 3D picture of an entire area.

“It’s one of the holy grails of robotics to be able to do that,” William Thomasmeyer, president of the Pittsburgh-based National Center for Defense Robotics, a federally funded consortium of companies, universities, and government labs told the Christian Science Monitor. “It’s like the smaller robots have been trying to navigate with one arm tied behind their back when compared to larger robots…. [Now] that hand becomes untied for smaller robots, and they’ve got the same advantages in terms of sensors and sensing as larger robots do.”

Network World via Slashdot

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Computer learns dogspeak

Posted on January 16, 2008 by billycuts

The aim of Molnár and colleagues’ experiments was to test a computer algorithm’s ability to identify and differentiate the acoustic features of dog barks, and classify them according to different contexts and individual dogs. The software analyzed more than 6000 barks from 14 Hungarian sheepdogs (Mudi breed) in six different situations: ‘stranger’, ‘fight’, ‘walk’, ‘alone’, ‘ball’ and ‘play’. The barks were recorded with a tape recorder before being transferred to the computer, where they were digitalized and individual bark sounds were coded, classified and evaluated.

In the first experiment looking at classification of barks into different situations, the software correctly classified the barks in 43 percent of cases. The best recognition rates were achieved for ‘fight’ and ‘stranger’ contexts, and the poorest rate was achieved when categorizing ‘play’ barks. These findings suggest that the different motivational states of dogs in aggressive, friendly or submissive contexts may result in acoustically different barks.

In the second experiment looking at the recognition of individual dogs, the algorithm correctly classified the barks in 52 percent of cases. The software could reliably discriminate among individual dogs while humans can not, which suggests that there are individual differences in barks of dogs even though humans are not able to recognise them.

The authors conclude by highlighting the value of their new methodology: “The use of advanced machine learning algorithms to classify and analyze animal sounds opens new perspectives for the understanding of animal communication…The promising results obtained strongly suggest that advanced machine learning approaches deserve to be considered as a new relevant tool for ethology.”

EurekAlert!

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GM researching driverless cars

Posted on January 6, 2008 by billycuts

Cars that drive themselves – even parking at their destination – could be ready for sale within a decade, General Motors Corp. executives say.

GM, parts suppliers, university engineers and other automakers all are working on vehicles that could revolutionize short- and long-distance travel. And Tuesday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas GM Chief Executive Rick Wagoner will devote part of his speech to the driverless vehicles.

“This is not science fiction,” Larry Burns, GM’s vice president for research and development, said in a recent interview.

Kansas City Star

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Scientists look at sperm energy for robots

Posted on January 4, 2008 by billycuts

U.S. scientists are examining whether they can capture the energy driving human sperm to propel nanoscale robots to deliver medicine.

By analyzing stages in the biological pathway sperm cells use to generate energy, Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine researchers said they hope to recreate that process artificially to deliver medicine to targeted sites in the body, Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reported.

Earth Times

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Sarcos Exoskeleton

Posted on November 23, 2007 by billycuts

Robots Infiltrate, Influence Cockroach Groups

Posted on November 20, 2007 by billycuts

To explore how groups of cockroaches make collective decisions, scientists have created a robotic cockroach that the real insects accept as one of their own.

The robot doesn’t look anything like a cockroach to human eyes.

“It looks like an electronic matchbox,” said Jose Halloy, a researcher at the Universite Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium. But that doesn’t matter, he says, “because in fact it has to look like a cockroach from a cockroach perspective.”

Basically, it has to smell like a cockroach. The scientists coat the boxy robots with a chemical, a cockroach smell, so the real roaches won’t run away.

“The cockroaches are not at all stressed by the robots because they are perceived as cockroaches,” Halloy said. “So the cockroach is just accepting that kind of strange buddy. And that’s the start of the game.”

The game was to see if researchers could use this robot to figure out how roaches make group decisions. “Cockroaches are gregarious insects, so they live in groups,” Halloy said. They don’t live in complex societies like bees or ants, he said, but roaches do make choices.

NPR via Earspray

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Researchers Create Robot Driven by Moth’s Brain

Posted on November 20, 2007 by billycuts

In a notion taken from science fiction afficionados, University of Arizona researchers presented a robot that moves by using the brain impulses of a moth at the 37th annual Society for Neuroscience meeting in San Diego.

Charles M. Higgins, UA associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, and doctoral student Timothy Melano presented their findings and outlined the mechanics behind the robot’s movements.

The robot’s motion is guided by a tiny electrode implanted in the moth’s brain, Higgins said, specifically to a single neuron that is responsible for keeping the moth’s vision steady during flight. The neuron transmits electrical signals which are then amplified in the robot’s base and through a mathematical formula, a computer translates the signals into action, making the robot move.

The moth is immobilize inside a plastic tube mounted atop the 6-inch-tall wheeled robot. To get the moth to imitate flight, Higgins and his team placed the moth in its apparatus on a circular platform surrounded by a 14-inch-high revolving wall painted with vertical stripes. The moth’s neuron reacts to the movement of the stripes and the process begins.

PhysOrg via KurzweilAI

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Socialization between toddlers and robots at an early childhood education center

Posted on November 19, 2007 by billycuts

A state-of-the-art social robot was immersed in a classroom of toddlers for >5 months. The quality of the interaction between children and robots improved steadily for 27 sessions, quickly deteriorated for 15 sessions when the robot was reprogrammed to behave in a predictable manner, and improved in the last three sessions when the robot displayed again its full behavioral repertoire. Initially, the children treated the robot very differently than the way they treated each other. By the last sessions, 5 months later, they treated the robot as a peer rather than as a toy. Results indicate that current robot technology is surprisingly close to achieving autonomous bonding and socialization with human toddlers for sustained periods of time and that it could have great potential in educational settings assisting teachers and enriching the classroom environment.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Contemporary Cybernetic

Posted on September 27, 2007 by DrQuickbeam

cybernetic IN the 12th century A.D., when the Arabic treatise “On the Hindu Art of Reckoning” was translated into Latin, the modern decimal system was bestowed on the Western world — an advance that can best be appreciated by trying to do long division with Roman numerals. The name of the author, the Baghdad scholar Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, was Latinized as Algoritmi, which mutated somehow into algorismus and, in English, algorithm — meaning nothing more than a recipe for solving problems step by step.

It was the Internet that stripped the word of its innocence. Algorithms, as closely guarded as state secrets, buy and sell stocks and mortgage-backed securities, sometimes with a dispassionate zeal that crashes markets. Algorithms promise to find the news that fits you, and even your perfect mate. You can’t visit Amazon.com without being confronted with a list of books and other products that the Great Algoritmi recommends.

Its intuitions, of course, are just calculations — given enough time they could be carried out with stones. But when so much data is processed so rapidly, the effect is oracular and almost opaque. Even with a peek at the cybernetic trade secrets, you probably couldn’t unwind the computations. As you sit with your eHarmony spouse watching the movies Netflix prescribes, you might as well be an avatar in Second Life. You have been absorbed into the operating system.

Last week, when executives at MySpace told of new algorithms that will mine the information on users’ personal pages and summon targeted ads, the news hardly caused a stir. The idea of automating what used to be called judgment has gone from radical to commonplace.

What is spreading through the Web is not exactly artificial intelligence. For all the research that has gone into cognitive and computer science, the brain’s most formidable algorithms — those used to recognize images or sounds or understand language — have eluded simulation. The alternative has been to incorporate people, with their special skills, as components of the Net.

NYTimes

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Nerdshit

Category Archives: Robots/A.I.