News Links for: 2009

Big Blue has built a supercomputer that models the brain--and hopes to someday build a supercomputer that mimics one, too.
The supercomputers being lauded this week at the SC09 high-performance computing conference in Portland, Ore., can perform tasks in...

Brain waves will replace keyboard and mouse, dial phones and change TV channels.
By the year 2020, you won't need a keyboard and mouse to control your computer, say Intel Corp. researchers. Instead, users will open...

Is it important that computers and robots tell us the truth? Or should they learn to lie - like their human makers?

In an experiment performed in a Swiss laboratory, 10 robots with downward-facing sensors competed for "food"...

Now those who have allowed gaming or the Web to take over their lives have their own place of salvation in the United States.
Heavensfield Retreat Center in the kindly named Fall City, near Seattle, claims to have the first Internet addiction detox program in the States. Called ReStart, it essentially offers a 45-day detox from the need to socially network and game until your mind and fingers are more numb than a Jonas Brothers fan after a concert.
For $14,500, you can be saved from yourself and your virtual world.
-- Seriously, I thought human interaction was an inconvenience we were trying to solve with technology!

OHS researchers, Margaret Burnett and others, are pioneering the concept of "rich interaction" – computers that do, in fact, want to communicate with, learn from and get to know you better as a person.

Researchers from Portugal and Indonesia describe an approach to decision making based on computational logic in the current issue of the International Journal of Reasoning-based Intelligent Systems which might one day give machines a sense of morality.

Research at MIT and Carnegie Mellon is pointing towards the next revolution in computers and manufacturing: programmable matter. In the future you won’t use computers to design a car, the car will form from billions of tiny computers that arrange themselves into anything you want. The physical and computational world will merge.

Seag Toys makes a lifelike robot feline that's basically a lap cat (doesn't chase things), which purrs, meows, growls and makes several familiar head and facial movements. japantrendshop.com wants to sell it for $149.00 + $47 internation shipping. http://www.japantrendshop.com/robotic-cat-yume-neko-p-122.html

The challenge requires competitors to submit proposals demonstrating the use of multi-vehicle robotic teams that can execute an intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance mission in a dynamic urban environment.
-- First DARPA, now everybody.

Cornell University researchers have succeeded in implanting electronic circuit probes into tobacco hornworms as early pupae. The hornworms pass through the chrysalis stage to mature into long-lived moths whose muscles can be controlled with the implanted electronics.

High school students from throughout the metro area came to the Sylvania Campus of Portland Community College in early August 2008 to learn the skills necessary for building robots. Oregon Commissioner for the Bureau of Labor and Industries visits with students.

Noted inventor and entrepreneur, Ralph Rodriguez, today announced he has filed for United States patent protection of his method and apparatus for combining artificial intelligence (AI) concepts with event-driven security architectures and ideas. This patent is based on research he conducted during his tenure as a Research Fellow with the M.I.T. Media Lab. The research paper outlining the invention's scope and technology is also published and available today.

Building and testing novel prosthetic limbs and control
algorithms for functional electrical stimulation (FES) is expensive
and risky. This article describes a virtual reality environment
(VRE) to facilitate and accelerate the development of novel systems.
In the VRE, subjects/patients can operate a simulated limb to
interact with virtual objects. Realistic models of all relevant musculoskeletal and mechatronic components allow the development
of entire prosthetic systems in VR before introducing them to the
patient. The system is used both by engineers as a development tool
and by clinicians to fit prosthetic devices to patients.

Experts in artificial intelligence at Oregon State University are working to develop a computer program to analyze game film.

A second, lighter-weight test rover has entered the testing setup at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory where rover team members are assessing strategies for getting Spirit out of soft soil where it is embedded on Mars.

Front-line staff in the nursing and care sector would welcome sensor and robot technology in nursing homes and the homes of elderly people.

'Cause our lives just won't be complete without a Terminator robot bobble head.

Carnivorous robots eager to eat your pests. This is the latest idea involving fly-eating robot technology. Basically, it steals dead flies from spider webs.

A networked robot chalks user-submitted messages onto the course of the premier bike race.

Pleo IP bought by Jetta; manufacturing to resume.