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8/10/2009
  Are quantum computers and memristors about to give us brilliant cognobots?  NIST's quantum artithmetic-logic unit demonstrated sustained operations that proved the feasibility of large-scale quantum computers. Memristors can be combined into devices called crossbar latches, which could replace transistors in future computers, taking up a much smaller area. They can also be fashioned into non-volatile solid-state memory, which would allow greater data density than hard drives with access times potentially similar to DRAM, replacing both components. Quantum computers and memristors could blow past the performance of conventional transistors. And to harness all that increased computational power to create the smartest possible cognobots, researchers say a new operating system, designed specifically for bots is essential. Labels: Bots
8/10/2009
The future of telepresence, cognobots, avatars and virtual reality  The upcoming new Bruce Willis movie called Surrogates postulates a 2054 world where no one ever leaves home and all human interact takes place through android telepresence remotes. The movie's trailer can be found here. Jim Cameron also has a telepresence movie in the works call Avatar (a misuse of this term, which normally only refers to virtual representations of ourselves, not telepresence real world remotes). Already, it is possible to extend the capabilities of your mind by using cognobots to do research and communication across the Mesh. By 2054, a typical human will probably be in command of a small army of remote and virtual cognobots, each with sufficient intelligence to operate semi-autonomously. We will do most of what we do through the use of cognobots, but virtual avatars are a much more likely tool for direct interaction than android remotes. Since why would we confine ourselves to telepresence in a physical reality, when we can interact more easily and cheaply in intricate and fascinating world's of our own design?
8/07/2009
Synapse Project to Make a Artificial Human Brain Gets $16 million more from DARPA Things must be going well, since IBM just got an additional $16.1 million from DARPA for its Synapse project to make a computer hardware version of a human brain. SyNAPSE stands for Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics. The stated purpose is to "investigate innovative approaches that enable revolutionary advances in neuromorphic electronic devices that are scalable to biological levels."
8/03/2009
Watching iCub learning about objects  Watch as iCub, a bot designed to learn like a human child learns, notices new objects presented to it and adds the concept of that new object to its existent low-level attention system. See also: iCub bot is designed to think like a 2-year-old Labels: Bots
7/31/2009
Covering your body with wearware fashion bots  Watch SparkLab founder and designer Syuzi Pakhchyan at work. She is a pioneer in the creation wearware fashion bots. Labels: Bots
7/31/2009
Prototype of vertical take-off urban survellance bot  The Aesir prototype vertical take-off and landing unmanned urban aerial surveillance vehicle uses the Coanda effect to generate lift by blowing air from a central fan over its curved surface. Labels: Bots
7/31/2009
Civilian spin-offs of military's personal assistant bot project coming by year end US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has spent an estimated $150 million developing a personal assistant bot and although intended to ease the US military's bureaucratic load, expect an artificially intelligent helper based on DARPA's project to be coming your way later this year. Begun in 2003 the CALO, for Cognitive Assistant that Learns and Organizes, project involved over 60 universities and research organizations and is the largest ever non-classified AI project. It ends this Friday and has produced a virtual assistant that can sort, prioritize, and summarize email; automatically schedule meetings; and prepare briefing notes before them. Labels: Bots
7/31/2009
New bot can tell you who's posts you can trust and who's you can't A team of European researchers has developed an algorithm that ranks the expertise of users and can spot those who are using a site only to spam. The technique works in a way similar to Amazon's reputation engine or the ratings of Wikipedia pages, but it evaluates users based on a new set of criteria that makes intuitive assumptions about experts. The algorithm draws on a method applied in ranking Web pages, but takes it an interesting step further, says Jon Kleinberg, a professor of computer science at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, who was not involved with the work. "It distinguishes between 'discoverers' and 'followers,'" Kleinberg says, "focusing on users who are the first to tag something that subsequently becomes popular."
7/30/2009
Five breakthrough Reality Enhancement Systems (RES) for socializing  Check out clips of five next generation RES bots designed to use social-media's connection capabilities to augment your reality. Shown in the image is the TwittARound RES bot.
7/29/2009
Teaching a bot how to learn the same way a child does  Iowa State's Developmental Robotics Lab has created a bot that is able to use the same procedural learning methods a child uses to figure out the nature of objects and classify them. Calling their approach Developmental Robotics, research say that it blends robotics, Artificial Intelligence, developmental psychology, developmental neuroscience, and pilosophy. Labels: Bots
7/29/2009
New bot is more efficient spam zapper A new bot developed by researchers at the Georgia Institute for Technology can identify spam before it hits the mail server. Known as SNARE (Spatio-temporal Network-level Automatic Reputation Engine), the bot scores each incoming e-mail based on a variety of new criteria that can be gleaned from a single packet of data. Labels: Bots
7/29/2009
Air Force developing 'Suburb Warrior' smart bombs for delivery by aerial bots  The US Air Force has released more about its work on using bots to control urban populations. It involves smart aerial bots that are autonomous enough that only one human pilot would be required to direct the actions of a dozen aerial bots. The smart aerial bots would also carry the new smart bombs, called Suburb Warriors, shown in the image. Labels: Bots
7/28/2009
A road map for the future of robotics The Computing Research Association (CRA), a group of academic computer researchers, has put together an estimation of what can be accomplished in bot research over the next 15 years. A quick summary of the report is available from the Foresight Institute or the full report in pdf format is available on the CRA's site. Labels: Bots
7/24/2009
A faster, vertical takeoff replacement for Predator aerial attack bot  Recently we told you about the Air Force's new WOMO (Weapons of Mass Oppression) system that can rain pain from sky using a microwave pain infliction system. Now Aurora Flight Sciences Excalibur experimental vertical takeoff and landing unmanned aircraft may offer the perfect bot to carry that system to keep restive urban populations under control. The 13ft-long UAV is powered by a tilting jet engine and three battery-powered lift fans. The aircraft made its first hover flight at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in June.
7/24/2009
Researchers work to create programmable matter  Work at MIT and Carnegie Mellon is pointing towards the next revolution in computers and manufacturing: programmable matter. The research is focused on creating the basic modular building block of claytronics known as the claytronic atom or catom, and designing and writing robust and reliable software programs that will manage the shaping of ensembles of millions of catoms into dynamic, 3-Dimensional forms.
7/23/2009
Toyota's new running bot able to make Honda's ASIMO eat its dust  Sorry ASIMO, as happens with every human racer, eventually a younger upstart will come along and make you eat dust. Labels: Bots
7/23/2009
Is Google's new open source Wave bot destine to put the final nail in Microsoft's coffin?  Wave, demonstrated by Google at its I/O developer conference in May of this year, allows customers to create a customizable communications and collaboration tool without any software other than an Internet browser. As such, Google's Wave poses a significant threat to the business models of Microsoft and other applications vendors.
7/23/2009
An artificial human brain within 10 years -- we don't need no stinking singularity For the last 30 years, researchers have been coming out of their labs and claiming that they will be able to build a human-equivalent artificial intelligence within ten years. Typically, whenever this claim is made, that project falls apart a short while later. The latest 10-year claimant is Henry Markram, director of the Blue Brain Project, who says that he will be able to model the human brain artificially within ten years. Professor Markram and his team have picked apart the structure of the neocortical column and they are now using IBM's Blue Gene Machine supercomputer with 10,000 processors to model a human brain. While all those reaching for the brass ring have fallen off their horses in the past, other more practical researchers have been busy learning how to effectively use and extend the capabilities of limited function smart bots. The results of these efforts have been powerful and profitable cognition-extending engines like Google. While some await the emergence of an AI God from a mythical singularity. Other are building and utilizing limited-function smart bots to do the research necessary to greatly extend our own minds and lifespans and develop the technologies necessary to spread our kind across the Cosmos. The handful of practical, functional smart bots running on my netbook are worth far more to me than all the mythological AIs out in some nebulous singularity. We don't need an AI singularity. Just continuing to incrementally improve the capabilities of the smart bots we are all using now, will eventually take us to the stars.
7/22/2009
Brain develops motor memory for prosthetics or bot remotes as easily as it learns to ride a bicycle  "Practice makes perfect" is the maxim drummed into students struggling to learn to ride a bike or develop a killer backhand in tennis. Research now reveals that the brain can just as easily achieve motor memory over a prosthetic or robotic device. Mastering control of artificial limbs or remote devices with the same ease as a kid on a bicycle. "When your own body performs motor tasks repeatedly, the movements become almost automatic," said study principal investigator Jose Carmena, a UC Berkeley assistant professor. "We have demonstrated that the brain is able to form a motor memory to control a disembodied device in a way that mirrors how it controls its own body."
7/22/2009
More evidence both humans and animals easily map neurally-controlled bots as body extensions A new study of neural prostheses in monkeys suggests that learning to control a robotic arm with the power of thought may happen more naturally than scientists had expected. Jose Carmena and Karunesh Ganguly at the University of California, Berkeley (UCB), found that the animals create a mental map of the device, much as we do when learning to swim or swing a tennis racket.
7/20/2009
Faster, better control of bot grippers and human prostheses A team at Columbia University has achieved a breakthrough in bot gripper control that will also improve human prostheses. Prof. Peter Allen director of Columbia's Robotics Group, and colleague Matei Ciocarlie realized that while human hands have about 20 degrees of freedom (20 joints that can each bend), each joint is not capable of moving completely independently; instead, its movements are linked to those of other joints by muscles or nerves. Traditionally, the software used to control a complex robot hand has tried to account for all the degrees of freedom in the robotic hand's joints, but this is computationally cumbersome and slows the robot down. So, Allen and Ciocarlie decided to limit the movement of a robot hand in the same way a human hand is limited and achieved much faster, more efficient algorithms without no loss of functionality.
7/20/2009
Bug-machine hybrids Ryohei Kanzaki, a professor at Tokyo University's Research Centre for Advanced Science and Technology, has studied insect brains for three decades and become a pioneer in the field of bug-brain controlled machines. "We want to design a machine which is far more powerful than the living body, says Professor Kanzaki." Labels: Bots
7/17/2009
Evolving sentient bot companions for kids  Watch Zeno, the first platform for evolving sentient bot companions for kids from Hanson Robotics. Labels: Bots
7/15/2009
BulletFlight sniper assistant bot for the iPhone figures perfect kill shot settings  An iPhone mounted inside of a protective case on an M110 semiautomatic sniper rifle running the BulletFlight bot can make detailed ballistic calculations that include the effects of windage, distance, air pressure, humidity and temperature, for perfect kill shot settings every time. Obviously a temporary technology, who needs a human to fire a rifle? The Terminator movies are looking more prescient with each new military gear press release.
7/14/2009
How that cloud of tiny armed spy bots overhead, watching your protest, will be powered  That cloud of small but highly lethal attack/spy bots, designed to fly over any city and keep restive urban populations in check, will be powered by flexible dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) says the US Air Force. The choice of DSSCs is due to their better power to weight performance than other types of solar cells, a very critical spec for an aerial bot that needs to orbit overhead for hours on end. So when that food price protest you are leading in 2014 gets out of hand and the crowd trashes a fast food chain outlet. Thanks to DSSCs, those clever mesh-net aerial bots overhead will be able to track you back home and terminate you quietly by releasing a small guided probe that deposits a lethal heart attack inducing toxin onto your skin. See also: Iraq offers the perfect excuse for developing WOMO (Weapons Of Mass Oppression)
7/13/2009
World's economy so bad even bots are getting the boot "A robot will work every day and night without complaining," said Fuji spokesman, Kenta Matsumoto. "You can even save on lights and heating, because robots don't need any of that." Yet the global downturn has become so severe that in Japan even robots, the world's most efficient workers, are being idled as consumers worldwide cut spending on cars and gadgets plunging the country into its deep recession in generations.
7/09/2009
Wiki set up to share code to give chat bots particular skill-sets and personalities  A new open source Wiki has been set up by the ALICE A.I. Foundation for sharing AIML files that allow chat bots to develop specific skill sets and personalities. The idea is to give people working on a specific type of bot, like a corporate sales-bot personality for example, a place share files that make their bots smarter in a common community location. Labels: Bots
7/09/2009
Bot is able to teach itself sign language simply by watching it on TV  Scientists Patrick Buehler and Andrew Zisserman at the University of Oxford and Mark Everingham at the University of Leeds have coded a bot capable of teaching itself the basics of sign language by absorbing TV shows that are both subtitled and signed. The bot was able to use subtitled and signed TV shows like a Rosetta Stone, to learn a new way of communicating. Labels: Bots
7/08/2009
Einstein bot can learn how to make realistic facial expressions  A hyper-realistic Einstein bot has learned to smile and make facial expressions through a process of self-guided learning. Researchers used machine learning to "empower" their robot to learn to make realistic facial expressions. "As far as we know, no other research group has used machine learning to teach a robot to make realistic facial expressions," said Tingfan Wu, from University of California, San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering. The Einstein robot head has about 30 facial muscles, each moved by a tiny servo motor connected to the muscle by a string. The UCSD researchers are using both developmental psychology and machine learning to allow their Einstein bot to grow in sophistication. Labels: Bots
7/08/2009
Can memristors evolve brilliant bots?  Within the past couple of years, memristors have morphed from an obscure idea into one of the hottest properties in physics. They've not only been constructed for the first time, but their unique capabilities promise to revolutionize electronics. In addition to adding a fourth basic circuit element to the standard resistor, capacitor and inductor trio of electronics, memristors could be able to allow researchers to solve the puzzle of how nature makes that most delicate and powerful of computers - the human brain. Memristors behave like a resistor that can "remember" what current has flowed through it before. The image shows Nano/CMOS architecture for laminar, cortical circuits (left panel). Neurons are implemented in CMOS (gray), axons and dendrites in nanowires (blue). Synapses are implemented at the junctions of crossing wires separated by memristive material (yellow). Labels: Bots
7/08/2009
A cyborg bot that runs on the iPhone can fix your hearing difficulties  A new cyborg bot for the Apple iPhone can fix hearing impaired by one too many concerts in your misspent youth. The bot has features not even high end hearing aids can match. It not only amplifies everything that is being heard by the microphone. It also lets the user set which frequencies to boost and which to filter. This feature can greatly helps with distinguishing voices from crowds, something that often become harder with age. The bot also buffers the sound, allowing you to do an instant replay of up to 30 seconds. Labels: Bots
7/07/2009
Learn all you can about bots - they are the ultimate mind extension devices Occasionally, some asks me why my feed about hacking our own minds, bodies and lifespans, covers bots. I cover bots because bots are already the ultimate mind extension technology and their power is increasing daily. These bits of code, individually, aren't as smart as a cockroach, but if you know how to use their ability to do things like mining data, they can already give your brain an awesome power boost. I could not do this blog without half a dozen bots that help me sift through the mountain of research results coming out of labs around the world to find the stuff you need to know about. The author of the seminal techno thriller Daemon, Daniel Suarez (aka author Leinad Zeraus), gave a talk to the Long Now Foundation on the power of bots. If you haven't already listened to this talk, do so, and read his book, which outlines what an army of malicious bots might be able to accomplish. Hacking together smart bots and modding DNA and RNA are the shape of things to come. Labels: Bots
7/07/2009
Bot bats with metal muscles could be spying on you soon  Tiny flying machines can be used for everything from indoor surveillance to exploring collapsed buildings, but simply making smaller versions of planes and helicopters doesn't work very well. Instead, researchers at North Carolina State University are mimicking nature's small flyers – and developing bot bats that offer increased maneuverability and performance. "The key concept here is the use of smart materials," says Dr. Stefan Seelecke. "We are using a shape-memory metal alloy that is super-elastic for the joints. The material provides a full range of motion, but will always return to its original position – a function performed by many tiny bones, cartilage and tendons in real bats." The image shows the bot's metal skeleton. Labels: Bots
7/06/2009
Teaching bots how to figure out your emotions  Bot can recognize 44 action units from facial movements. Using these new techniques, bots can correctly recognize six basic emotions - disgust, happiness, sadness, anger, fear and surprise - more than 9 times out of 10, but only if the target face uses an exaggerated expression. Bots can accurately judge more subtle, spontaneous facial expressions as "negative" or "positive" three-quarters of the time, but they cannot reliably spot spontaneous displays of the six specific emotions - yet. Labels: Bots
7/06/2009
Tiny microbot can pick up chip, turn on a dime  At 1/20th of a cubic inch, this may be the world's smallest wheeled robot with a gripper. The bot, shown clip picking up and moving an 8 pin integrated circuit, is literally capable of turning on top of a dime. Labels: Bots
7/02/2009
Hummingbird-like spy bot takes wing  Engineers at AeroVironment are developing the Nano Air Vehicle (NAV) (or flying spy-bot) under a DARPA sponsored research contract to develop a new class of air vehicle systems capable of indoor and outdoor operation. Employing biological mimicry at an extremely small scale, this unconventional aircraft could someday provide new reconnaissance and surveillance capabilities in urban environments. Watching these clips of various prototypes designed to fly just like a hummingbird is fascinating. Labels: Bots
7/02/2009
Rat-bot uses whiskers to navigate any environment  Engineers at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory are at it again. Their latest fascinating bot designed, called Scratchbot, is really more of a rat-bot, since like rats, it uses whiskers to navigate through a complex environment. To watch this bot in action click here, or to see a gallery of all of BRL's amazing bot creation, click here. Labels: Bots
7/01/2009
World's smallest LCD screen for Reality Enhancement System (RES) devices  The Kopin Corporation has created a Cyberdisplay only 0.27 inches along its diagonal with a resolution of 600 x 480. The device is said to be the smallest full-color VGA screen in the world,and hopefully, will give a boost to the Reality Enhancement System (RES) market.  Experiencing life with a smart bot constantly overlaying the reality around us with useful information will radically boost the capabilities of humans. RES is likely to be the net cloud's most powerful killer app.
6/30/2009
Toyota develops mind-controlled wheelchair Toyota researchers in Japan have built a brain/machine interface (BMI) that has been demonstrated to control a wheelchair using a person's thoughts. The system enables a person to make a wheelchair turn left or right to move forward simply by thinking the commands. The response time is in 125 milliseconds. One millisecond is equal to 1/1000 of a second.
6/30/2009
Breakthrough vision system allows bots to zip through crowded rooms  A European research consortium called Decisions in Motion has demonstrated a robot that can zip across a crowded room guided only by what it sees through its twin video cameras. The consortium is now hard at work on a head-mounted system to help visually impaired people get around based on their technology. "Until now, the algorithms that have been used [to allow bots to move through unstructured environments] are quite slow and their decisions are not reliable enough to be useful," says project coordinator Mark Greenlee. "Our approach allowed us to build algorithms that can do this on the fly, that can make all these decisions within a few milliseconds using conventional hardware." If this works as described, it is an enormous advance over existing bot vision systems.
6/24/2009
Your brain can adapt well to cyborg enhancements When you brush your teeth, the toothbrush may actually become part of your arm - at least as far as your brain is concerned. That's the conclusion of a study showing perceptions of arm length change after people handle a mechanical tool. The brain maintains a physical map of the body, with different areas in charge of different body parts. Researchers have suggested that when we use tools, our brains incorporate them into this map.
6/23/2009
Arimaz's MyDeskFriend new penguin bot can deliver your messages from Facebook  MyDeskFriend from Arimaz features: Autonomous life cycles with changing behaviors. Five different moods. Reacts to voice, poking, cherishing, shaking, and more. Can receive and read you notes from your friends through Facebook. Labels: Bots
6/23/2009
What is the current state of Artificial Intelligence research? Can machines think? In 1950, Alan Turing, considered by some to be the father of modern computing, published a paper in which he proposed that, "If, during text-based conversation, a machine is indistinguishable from a human, then it could be said to be 'thinking' and, therefore, could be attributed with intelligence." He predicted that a computer would pass this "Turing Test" by the end of the century. That hasn't happened--yet. But the question continues to provoke and inspire. Artificial Intelligence might be just around the corner, or it might be centuries away. Forbes Magazine brings together many experts to see where the effort to design smart bots currently stands.
6/22/2009
Your cell is transforming into a smart bot RES - Reality Enhancement System Researchers are increasingly using cell phones to better understand users' behavior and social interactions. The data collected from a phone's GPS chip or accelerometer, for example, can reveal trends that are relevant to modeling the spread of disease, determining personal health-care needs, improving time management, and even updating social-networks. The approach, known as reality mining, has also been suggested as a way to improve targeted advertising or make cell phones smarter: a device that knows its owner is in a meeting could automatically switch its ringer off, for example. Two slick new just launched cell phones continue the trend towards your cell phone morphing into a smart bot RES (Reality Enhancement System).
6/18/2009
Patients test DARPA's nerve signal driven cyborg-arm  A new surgical technique, developed by scientists at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, allows patients who have lost arms to use residual nerve signals to control a prosthetic limb. This video shows three patients testing a prototype limb being developed by DARPA. The patients can perform complex tasks, including picking up a cup, grasping a cracker without breaking it, and putting a spoon in a cup.
6/17/2009
Wearware - transforming clothing into smart bots Textiles and the fibers that compose them are experiencing a sort of high-tech renaissance lately. Researchers are finding ways to turn silk into sensors by adding biological molecules to it, and turn cotton sheets into electronic fabric by bathing them in a solution of nanotubes. The idea is to use the electronic textiles, which are flexible and can be worn comfortably, to sense such things as the blood of a soldier or pathogens circulating in the air. Now researchers at MIT have integrated a collection of light sensors into polymer fibers, creating a new type of camera. Labels: Bots
6/15/2009
FABulous breakthrough in precisely gluing micro/nano particles together  In a major step towards the powerful desktop fabricators we are all so eager to own, researchers at New York University have created a method to precisely bind nano/micrometer-sized particles together into larger-scale structures with useful materials properties.
6/15/2009
Want to solve the energy problem - go fly a bot-controlled kite In the future, wind power tapped by high-flying kites could light up New York. A new study by scientists at the Carnegie Institution and California State University identifies New York as a prime location for using kites to exploit high-altitude winds, which globally contain enough energy to meet the world's entire demand 100 times over.
6/12/2009
Bot can intelligently extract data from millions of pages in the cloud A software bot that pulls together facts by combing through more than 500 million web pages has been developed by researchers at the University of Washington. The tool extracts information from billions of lines of text by analyzing basic relationships between words. Some experts say that this kind of "automated information extraction" will likely form the basis for far more intelligent next-generation Web search, in which nuggets of information are first gleaned and then combined intelligently.
6/09/2009
Smart bot outlets and 10 cent plug chips could save thousands of lives annually  Billions in losses and tens of thousands of annual deaths and injuries from home electrical fires and kids sticking things into power outlets could all be eliminated by putting a ten cent chip in power plugs and modding our power outlets with smart bots.
6/08/2009
Forget about the singularity, here is true geek rapture  Finally, the ultimate Reality Enhancement System (RES) arrives, a RES girlfriend can soon be yours. By the end of this year, you will be able to dress, undress, ignore and torment or please with gifts and attention, Cyber Alice from Geisha Tokyo Entertainment Inc. Forget about the singularity being the rapture of the geeks. True geek rapture will arrive later this year when you un-boxing, your Cyber Alice RES girlfriend bot.
6/08/2009
iCub bot is designed to think like a 2-year-old One method to truly understand how something works is to build a replica. Apply that to bots and you get the iCub, a bot designed to be able to learn like a two-year-old child. The iCub prototype has been developed over the last three years at the Italian Institute of Technology in Genova. The research bot has been designed to be able to interact with its environment. Its hands can manipulate objects and its eyes can move without having to turn its head. Part of its software, known as the attention system, processes the images it sees and filters for things in its environment that could be of interest like faces, moving hands or something that is very bright or colorful. Labels: Bots
6/08/2009
Today's bots think like bugs, tomorrow's may think like rats  Most bots today have the artificial brains of an insect, the Psikharpax Project wants to give them the artificial brains of a rat. European researchers are using biomimickry to give a bot called Psikharpax sophistication of sensors and controls and software based on rat neurology. Their artificial rodent has two cameras for eyes, two microphones for ears and tiny wheels, driven by a battery-powered motor, to provide movement. A couple of dozen whiskers measuring around a dozen centimeters (four inches) stretch out impressively either side of its long, pointed snout. The Psikharpax's brain is a chip whose software hierarchy mimicks the structures in a rat's brain that process and analyzes what is seen, heard and sensed. Labels: Bots
6/05/2009
Bot that can predict the intentions of human partners  European researchers in robotics, psychology and cognitive sciences have joined forces to develop bots that can predict the intentions of human partners. It is hoped that this ability to anticipate and question actions will make interacting with bots more natural for humans. Labels: Bots
6/05/2009
TASER and PackBot join forces to zap disobedient humans into submission  The new TASER-equipped PackBot allow the remote zapping of rebellious humans. Instead of using fear of a muscular black man to sells bots that do violence to the over lords, sure wish iRobot would stick to making useful little bots like the Roomba for the rest of us. If you are helping to develop technologies like this, please read this. Labels: Bots
6/05/2009
Bot mission through unstructured office environment  WillowGarage Milestone 2 test: travel through unstructured office environment, locate and plug into all power outlets. The actual run was 58 minutes long, video runs at 20x with some segments played back in real time. Labels: Bots
6/05/2009
One bot brain to control them all  Coding a bot that can function in an unstructured environment like your home is a hard enough problem to solve, without trying to give one bot body all the tools necessary to do all your household chores. So researchers have begun experimenting with giving your house one bot brain that is able to migrate into a variety of bodies, each one appropriate to a different job, or appear as a more human looking avatar on a screen for verbal interaction. Labels: Bots
6/04/2009
Small flying fully autonomous military surveillance bot  Wasp is a hand-launched, recoverable flying-wing UAV, which uses synthetic materials that act both as a battery and as main wing structure. It is waterproof, weighs only one pound and is recovered automatically by a horizontal landing on land or water. The UAV can fly for up to an hour, and is equipped with a GPS-based navigation system for fully autonomous missions. However, it can also be manually flown via the same remote control equipment, which is also used by other AeroVironment mini-UAVs, e.g. the FQM-151 Pointer, RQ-11 Raven, Puma and RQ-14 Swift. The Wasp's payload consists of forward and side-looking miniature EO (Electro-Optical) video cameras. Its typical mission altitude is 15-300 m (50-1000 ft) above ground, where it is very hard to detect because of its small size and very low noise level. Labels: Bots
6/02/2009
The Coming Urban Terror - systems disruption, networked gangs, and bio-weapons 2009 is the year, researchers estimate, that humanity crossed over, with more of us now living in cities than in rural areas. Unfortunately, living in cities may prove to be incompatible with the super-empowerment of individuals and small groups offered by new technologies like smart machines, networks and genetic manipulation. Some comments worth thinking about: Thanks to global interdependence, state-against-state warfare is far less likely than it used to be, and viable only against disconnected or powerless states. But the underlying processes of globalization have made us exceedingly vulnerable to nonstate enemies. The mechanisms of power and control that states once exerted will continue to weaken as global interconnectivity increases. Small groups of terrorists can already attack deep within any state, riding on the highways of interconnectivity, unconcerned about our porous borders and our nation-state militaries. These terrorists likeliest point of origin, and their likeliest destination, is the city.Most bio-terror experts seem to believe that a single clever microbiologist could probably already mod a virus to wipe out much of the population of a city and the technology for doing mods of this kind improves with each passing day. As we have seen recently in a number of cities, such concentrations of people, make attractive terror targets. Until we learn more about the shape of the threat matrix created by the amazing wave of smart bot, nano, bio, and cloud technologies sweeping in on us today, choosing to live outside the large cities might prove to be a wise decision.
6/02/2009
Farmers can sleep-in as autonomous tractor-bots harvest their crops  Technologies developed for DARPA's autonomous vehicle grand challenge are now allowing bots to plant and harvest farmer's crops. Labels: Bots
6/02/2009
A music-bot that generates original music on-the-fly to match your changing moods UGR researchers Miguel Delgado, Waldo Fajardo and Miguel Molina decided to design a software program that would enable a person who knew nothing about composition to create music. The system they devised, using AI, is called Inmamusys, an acronym for Intelligent Multiagent Music System, that can create and play emotive music in real-time in response to emotions that arise in the listener. Now instead of being driven nuts by the intrusive and repetitive canned music played in public places, your music-bot can generate a pleasant, non-repetitive musical environment with endless original tunes that always match your moods. Labels: Bots
6/01/2009
A brilliant idea for today from an old sci-fi story  Way back in the August 1942 issue of Astounding Magazine, Robert A. Heinlein published under the pseudonym Anson MacDonald, a brilliant short story called simply Waldo. The story was about a disabled boy named Waldo, who's limbs and body were so weak that he was unable even to lift his head up to drink or to hold a spoon. But like today's real life physicist Stephen Hawking, Waldo didn't let this stop his intellect. He developed and patented a device that allowed you to stick your handing into a control glove and control another mechanical hand that could be much larger and more powerful than your own or much smaller and able to do extremely delicate work. By using the small hand to build one still smaller or the large hand to build one still larger, all things became possible to Waldo, and he became a wealthy man. A few years after Heinlein's story, engineers actually began building Waldos, but only in recent years have the computer control technologies existed to fully realize Heinlein's brilliant idea of scaling the hands upwards and downwards with just the right amount of feedback to make working with them intuitive. It will be interesting to see where this idea goes in the years ahead, now that the technology exists to fully realize Heinlein's vision. Here is a clip of a giant Waldo hand in action from the 2009 Maker Faire.
6/01/2009
Google demoes breakthrough communication, collaboration & social networking bot Google has demoed the WAVE bot, an extremely impressive advance in cloud communication, collaboration and social networking designed by the guys that gave you the exceptional Google MAPS bot.
6/01/2009
Laser data development could make smart bots smarter 2007 Nobel physics prize winning physicists Albert Fert and Peter Gruenberg report using new ultra-fast lasers to accelerate storage and retrieval of data on hard discs by up to 100,000 times. A development that could let tomorrow's smart bots behave a lot smarter in real time.
5/29/2009
Humanoid bot learning to show emotions for better human interface  Japan has a serious labor shortage that raises the question of how all the elderly in their rapidly aging population can be taken care of. A lot of research is being done into using bots for this purpose, and it has found that bots able to display emotions are more readily accepted by the elderly. Here is a clip of the latest effort at designing a humanoid bot that can show emotions recognizable to humans. Labels: Bots
5/29/2009
First 'intelligent personal assistant' bot to run on iPhone platform  Siri, a San Jose company, announced Wednesday that it would offer an "intelligent agent" for Apple's iPhone that would, the company said, be able to find movie theaters, book restaurant reservations and airline flights, buy from online retail sites and even answer trivia questions like "How many calories are in a banana," all by understanding spoken commands. Dag Kittlaus, CEO of Siri, which emerged from stealth mode to announce the product, said, "The future of search isn't search. It is a conversation with someone you trust."
5/29/2009
CNET calls Microsoft's new Bing search bot 'better than Google'  Microsoft has taken the wraps off Bing, a new search bot formerly code-named Kumo, designed to replace Microsoft's current search bot, Live Search. It's a solid improvement and says CNET's review: Bing beats Google in important areas. It's surprisingly competitive with Google. Starting on June 3, we're told, Bing will be Microsoft's new default search. Labels: Bots
5/29/2009
Connect your computer to a cloud of others to create an artificial brain  Can a cloud of computers create an artificial brain? That's the basic reasoning behind Intelligence Realm's Artificial Intelligence project. By reverse engineering the brain through a simulation spread out over many different personal computers, Intelligence Realm hopes to create an AI from the ground-up, one neuron at a time. The first waves of simulation are already proving successful, with over 14,000 computers used and 740 billion neurons modeled. Singularity Hub has an interview with the project's leader, Ovidiu Anghelidi.
5/28/2009
Move over rover - bots will soon take over as man's best friend  The evolution of chatbots, artificial entities designed to have interesting or entertaining conversations with us -- also named 'conversational agents' -- now has the support of a worldwide community for chatbot developers and users. Business interest in chatbots has been growing rapidly in recent months, as the economic downturn has businesses seeking to cut payroll costs in their customer service centers.
5/26/2009
The engines of extinction - massive bot armies really are on the way  The US military's use of bots to turn the tide in Iraq's urban warfare theater has opened eyes all around the world to the possibilities of military bots. Now with Japan about to drop its restrictions on arms exports, an army of some of the best bot engineers on the planet is gearing up to cover the world with low-cost bot warriors. Companies in China and Korea are also moving to take advantage of the massive opportunity for profit that converting the world's militaries over from human to bot warriors represents. As American military research makes bot warriors ever more autonomous and formidable, Asian manufacturers will flood the world with low-cost warrior bots that improve on those cutting-edge but overly expensive designs. The burning question is can we organize a sufficiently resilient cloud-based Civilization 2.0, before the nation states and other engines of extinction of the old order bring about the demise of our species?
5/23/2009
New York Times article: The Coming Superbrain Today, artificial intelligence, once the preserve of science fiction writers and eccentric computer prodigies, is back in fashion and getting serious attention from NASA and from Silicon Valley companies like Google as well as a new round of start-ups that are designing everything from next-generation search engines to machines that listen or that are capable of walking around in the world. A.I.'s new respectability is turning the spotlight back on the question of where the technology might be heading and, more ominously, perhaps, whether computer intelligence will surpass our own, and how quickly. (Warning: link is to clueless old media site requiring registration.)
5/21/2009
Bot sub to glide on ocean currents across the Atlantic  Piloted aerial gliders have used ridge effect to glide along mountain ranges for hundreds of miles. Now Rutgers University researchers have launched a small bot-controlled underwater glider off the coast of New Jersey that they hope can use ocean currents to glide across the Atlantic ocean. The glider was christened The Scarlet Knight and its unpowered, underwater gliding voyage across the Atlantic ocean is expected to take about eight-months. Labels: Bots
5/21/2009
New bot code allows bots to stalk humans Imagine a guard bot trying to apprehend an intruder, catch an escaped prisoner or hunt down and eliminate all humans from the planet. Instead of simply tracking the target, ideally the bot would know how to creep up stealthily, by crouching behind objects and hiding the shadows. This way, it could surprise and neutralize its target, minimizing the chance that the target might escape. Creepy as this might sound, a team at Seoul National University in Korea has created a new bot algorithm that models just this sort of stealthy track and attack behavior. Labels: Bots
5/21/2009
A new vision bot can identify objects mixed with clutter  Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have developed an object-recognition bot that can sort through a pile of recyclables by hand and pick out items from a cluttered, disordered environment. The CMU researchers and collaborators from Intel, developed the system, which merges information from several images in order to create a 3D model. Then, by focusing on features like corners or textured areas, an object-recognition algorithm can spot a particular object within a pile of clutter. Labels: Bots
5/20/2009
I.B.M. unveils bot able to find trends in vast amounts of real-time streaming data  A new bot from I.B.M. called System S can hoover up vast amounts of data from many streaming sources and quickly identify all correlations within it. The company says that the bot provides: an execution platform and services for user-developed applications that ingest, filter, analyze, and correlate potentially massive volumes of continuous data streams. It supports the composition of new applications in the form of stream processing graphs that can be created on the fly, mapped to a variety hardware configurations, and adapted as requests come and go, and relative priorities shift.
5/20/2009
Google's PowerMeter bot can save you up to $3,000 annually on your power bill  Watch a webmovie about Google's PowerMeter bot that give you total control of your home energy use through you computer. Testers report achieving up to 64% reductions in energy use -- saving $3,000 annually -- with no significant changes in lifestyle. Google just announced the first deployments of this home energy and money saving bot in coordination with eight electric utility companies. If they are not yet offering the PowerMeter bot, use the Cloud to form a group to pressure your local utility into upgrading to the smart meters needed to emplement this money and resource saving Civilization 2.0 technology.
5/20/2009
Watch iRobot's Ember swarming local mesh network bot in action  Now there is a webmovie of iRobot's newest military bot, the Ember, in the field. Ember is a cheap little disposable bot that can deploy by the hundreds throughout a city. Embers can link into a wireless mesh network to bring the Cloud to an urban area where communications have been knocked out. What the world needs is a civilian city mesh net bot that could end the tyrannical cable/phone duopoly that has been fleecing Americans for years. Congress will never free the Cloud, not with all their sons, daughters and wives in cushy cable/phone industry jobs, but dirt cheap pirate wireless local mesh net bots could make it happen. Free the Cloud!
5/19/2009
Game-bots likely to achieve human-level intelligence first  We have had a half dozen posts over the last year about game-bots beating humans at yet another game. Clearly, game-bot technology is improving rapidly. Bots that control enemy characters in computer games are also getting ever smarter. And researchers say the next generation of game-bots will be general game players (GGPs), which can learn the rules of any game and then figure out how to beat any opponents. It seems increasingly likely that game researchers will be the first to spawn smart bots with human-levels of intelligence. I wonder how a human-level smart bot created to guide enemy characters in a war game is likely to behave once it is out in the wild? Image shown is from Crysis by Electronic Arts. Labels: Bots
5/18/2009
Project Lifelike : simulacrum avatar bots that can substitute for you  Have you ever wished you had a simulacrum avatar bot that looked and acted just like you to interact with the world. Freeing you up to get some real work done. Project LifeLike is a collaboration between the Intelligent Systems Laboratory at the University of Central Florida and the Electronic Visualization Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago. LifeLike aims to create visualizations of people, or avatars, that are as realistic as possible. While current results are far from perfect replications of a specific person, the work opens up a host of possible applications. See it in action.
5/18/2009
Swarm of $100 mobile bots can roll in and bring WiFi mesh to a city  Ember is a prototype developed by iRobot, makers of the Roomba, under Phase 1 of DARPA's ongoing LANdroids program. The goal of which is to provide warfighters operating in dense urban environments with tools to deploy and maintain an ad-hoc communication infrastructure.  Ember is about the size of a paperback book and weighs about one pound. It features a flipper mechanism for self righting and obstacle climbing and accepts USB and SDIO based payload modules, including radios and sensors. One soldier can carry and deploy multiple robots that will be inexpensive to the point of being disposable but robust enough to allow them to be throw onto a rooftop. The Ember bot is smart enough to detect and avoid obstacles while navigating its environment.
5/16/2009
2009 Chatterbox Challenge winner is Jeeney AI chatbot  The 2009 Chatterbox Challenge winners: Best Overall Bot (1st place) - Jeeney AI Best Overall Bot (2nd place) - Artemis Best Overall Bot (3rd place) - A.L.I.C.E. Most Popular Bot - Artemis Best New Bot - Suzette Labels: Bots
5/15/2009
Tiny solar-powered bot controls an army of bacteria  Researchers in Canada have created a solar-powered micro-machine that is no bigger than the period at the end of this sentence. The tiny machine can carry out basic sensing tasks and can indirectly control the movement of a swarm of bacteria in the same Petri dish. Labels: Bots
5/15/2009
Bot that can go anywhere, even climb a tree  We have previously covered the amazing ability of the RiSE Project's bot to climb walls, but watching how well it also moves across the ground and how smoothly it transitions from ground walk to vertical climb is even more impressive. Labels: Bots
5/14/2009
After 5 hours asking 38 humans for directions bot finally arrives at destination Watch bot navigating through the city by asking humans for directions and then going the way they point. Labels: Bots
5/14/2009
After 1,800 days exploring Mars, Spirit bot gets stuck in soft soil  With one of its wheels no longer working the Spirit Mars roving bot has gotten stuck in the soft Martian soil up to its axles and may not be able to escape. Even if it is stuck for good, it has been an amazing mission, exploring Mars for over 1,800 days. Labels: Bots
5/13/2009
Hopping bots to bolster military capabilities  Combat duty is ahead for Sandia Lab's hopping bots. Boston Dynamics, developer of advanced dynamic robots such as BigDog and PETMAN, has been awarded a contract by Sandia to develop the next generation of the Precision Urban Hopper. When fully operational, the four-wheeled robots with one mighty leg will navigate autonomously using their wheels and will jump onto or over obstacles when they meet them. The hopper will be able to jump more than 25 feet into the air, says Jon Salton , program manager. Labels: Bots
5/12/2009
Boeing to lease three aerial bot models to military  Shown is the Boeing A160 Hummingbird autonomous bot-copter, one of three bots the military will be leasing from the company. The A160 program has ambitious goals of a 2500-mile range, 24-hour endurance, and 30,000 ft altitude. Flights are largely autonomous, with the aircraft making its own decisions about how to fly itself so as to meet certain objectives, rather than relying on real-time human control. Maximum speeds are over 140 knots. The aircraft is 35 feet from nose to tail and has a rotor diameter of 36 feet. Labels: Bots
5/11/2009
Using swarms of copter-bots to quickly access a disaster scene  In the aftermath of an earthquake or chemical incident, every minute counts. Mini copter-bots could let rescue teams obtain a quickly overview of the situation. Copter-bots, individually or as a swarm, could quickly investigate collapsed buildings from the inside or outside. Labels: Bots
5/10/2009
BotJunkie's wetware dream comes true - a cyborg girlfriend  Yep, he now has a cyborg girlfriend, and he's even got the x-rays on his blog to prove it.
5/09/2009
Hawk autonomous tour guide bot for showrooms, tradeshows & museums  The Hawk wireless networked autonomous humanoid mobile bot featurers two large arms, dual-camera animated head, indoor GPS navigation system, and auto-docking/recharging station.... WATCH .... READ Labels: Bots
5/08/2009
IBM's "Watson" to answer questions just like an expert would IBM hopes to add the highly successful "Jeopardy" television quiz show to the long list of game where smart bots can routinely beat humans and create a huge new market at the same time. Code-named "Watson," the IBM computing system is being designed to rival the human mind's ability to determine precise answers to natural language questions and to compute accurate confidences in the answers. According to Dr. David Ferrucci, leader of the project team, "The confidence processing ability is key to winning at Jeopardy! and is critical to implementing useful business applications of Question Answering."... READ (warning: clueless old media site requiring registration) .... WATCH Labels: Bots
5/04/2009
Bot babies teach girls why teen-parenthood sucks Bot babies that require constant care, just like the real thing, are teaching teens why they really don't want to get pregnant.... READ Labels: Bots
5/04/2009
Breakthrough simple interface for fetch bot assistant  Simply illuminate any object on a table, shelf or the floor with a laser pointer and your fetch bot assistant will retrieve it for you. Illuminate a switch on the wall and your fetch bot will flip the switch for you.... WATCH Labels: Bots
4/30/2009
Turn any web cam into a remote spy cam  A new cloud bot called Ugolog allows you to turn any web came into a remote spy camera that automatically detect motion and begins recording. The clips are stored on their cloud site for you to screen at your leisure.... READ
4/30/2009
One supervisor controls cleaning bots in dozens of homes  The Readybot Cloud Robotics Collaborative Control (CRCC) system monitors a semi-autonomous home cleaning robot via a cloud connection. When faced with a particularly tricky task, such as opening a cabinet door, the bot requests a human supervisor to take over. The CRCC system is designed to let a single supervisor control a large team of house cleaning bots. Readybot can clear a kitchen table, load a dishwasher, transport objects, paint walls, vacuum and clean and dry surfaces using a combination code and remote supervisor control.... READ
4/27/2009
Beggar bots able to far outperform actual homeless humans  The beggar bot made from junkyard components was allowed access to places the rich frequent that are always off-limits to human beggars, like shopping malls, city centers and community events. In head-to-monitor human vs bot challenges, cops inevitably chased off the human beggar, while always showing tolerance to the bot by allowing it to continue begging. One cop even took out his personal camera and photographing the beggar bot before leaving. An upgrade that gave the bot the ability to detect a donation and say 'thank you', added during the Tokyo test, was found to greatly increasing contributions.... WATCH Labels: Bots
4/27/2009
Self-aware smart bots may always be potentially dangerous Steve Omohundro of Self-Aware Systems talks about his paper on "The Basic AI Drives." His premise is that self-aware smart bots coded to evolve by changing their own source code will inevitably converge on certain human-like drives that will tend to make them potentially dangerous.... WATCH Labels: Bots
4/25/2009
Honda demos simpler, lower cost exoskeletons  Honda has developed two prototype walking assist bots that are intended to support walking for the elderly or people with weakened leg muscles. The devices are currently being tested in real-world conditions to evaluate their effectiveness. The company has applied for more than 130 patents for the devices.... WATCH .... READ Labels: Bots
4/25/2009
Create your own smart bot with its own unique personality The AIML Superbot is a convenient way to create your own unique bot personality. The Superbot contains the top 10K most activated AIML patterns in the ALICE brain, with blank templates. Organized in a spreadsheet, the Superbot allows you to sort the AIML data by pattern, template or activation count. The Superbot has now been upgraded to included the Safe AIML Reductions. These reductions can be used with any bot, and avoid the dreaded "infinite recursion in AIML" error message. The AIML Superbot is now available with the Safe AIML Reductions together as one package, for one price.... READ Labels: Bots Send comments to: humods [at] gmail [dot] com |