And for the kids, who we are clearly raising to become wizards:

one giant leap for robotkind: robot successfully opens doors, plugs own power cord No matter how fast they can think or how many things they can process at once, robots will be infinitely more useful if they’re independent. That includes being able to overcome obstacles – such as the nigh-immovable hindrance we call “The Door” – and more importantly, be able to feed itself, which obviously translates into recharging. thx Lally

http://fractionalactorssub.madeofrobots.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/robot-emotions.jpg thx kb

And I should have added this to the blog long ago:

Hulu has some SciAm vids with Alan Alda that are worth bookmarking here. See below the jump. The first is on robots at MIT’s media labs. I’ve posted most of the bots here already, but its a good overview of the work they are doing with social robotics. However, at the start of the program Alda unbelievably says “The problem with most robots is that they tend to be robotic. They know nothing, they aren’t programmed to know. And they do nothing, they aren’t programmed to do. But for many applications where robots could be useful, they need to be more like humans.” My diss is now titled “Rethinking Machines: why Alan Alda is wrong about everything” The second vid is Alda again working with some cybernetically enhanced humans, regaining either the rudimentary power to hear or to see. The bit where Alda describes what it is like to hear a human voice with the cochlear implants is terrifying. This is much more of a human interest piece, and I can’t help but feel sorry for early adopters.

Robots Evolve And Learn How to Lie (Discover) Robots can evolve to communicate with each other, to help, and even to deceive each other, according to Dario Floreano of the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. Floreano and his colleagues outfitted robots with light sensors, rings of blue light, and wheels and placed them in habitats furnished with glowing “food sources” and patches of “poison” that recharged or drained their batteries. Their neural circuitry was programmed with just 30 “genes,” elements of software code that determined how much they sensed light and how they responded when they did. The robots were initially programmed both to light up randomly and to move randomly when they sensed light. To create the next generation of robots, Floreano recombined the genes of those that proved fittest—those that had managed to get the biggest charge out of the food source. The resulting code (with a little mutation added in the form of a random change) was downloaded into the robots to make what were, in essence, offspring. Then they were released into their artificial habitat. “We set up a situation common in nature—foraging with uncertainty,” Floreano says. “You have to find food, but you don’t know what food is; if you eat poison, you die.” Four different types of colonies of robots were allowed to eat, reproduce, and expire. By the 50th generation, the robots had learned to communicate—lighting up, in three out of four colonies, to alert the others when they’d found food or poison. The fourth colony sometimes evolved “cheater” robots instead, which would light up to tell the others that the poison was food, while they themselves rolled over to the food source and chowed down without emitting so much as a blink. Some robots, though, were […]

Lally, always on top of the newest and best on the net, linked me to a great feature on oobject about the top current cyborg technologies. 16 Genuine Cyborg Technologies Just how much of the human body can you replace or augment: seemingly everything apart from the tadpole like remnants of the brain and spinal chord. Bionic eyes, ears, hearts, lungs, kidneys, livers, hands, feets, legs, arms and skin are now real science rather than concept designs. For this list, we have gathered together as many real devices including commercially available products rather than concept designs or imagery that appeal based on gimmick value. The one exception is the tooth and ear cellphone implant which is feasible today. An interesting idea is how the notion of a cyborg might change (often imagined as fusion of mechanical and electronic technology with human biology), since many of these devices use technology that is itself principally biological, such as stem cell lines in the bioreactor liver or artificial skin. At the top of list when I last checked was the Bionic Contact Lense bionic-lense Researchers have developed new contact lenses that contain circuits, LEDs, and a “powder” of electrical components that can enable an average human being to possess superhuman vision. The contact lenses would allow images to be displayed in a person’s vision, superimposed on the real world. … The researchers explained that one of the most difficult parts of designing the lenses is making them biologically safe. So far, they have only tested the lenses on rabbits, with no negative effects. Electrical circuits consist of toxic chemicals, but the scientists built them from layers of metal only a few nanometers thick. Now is a great time to be a rabbit. In any case, the rest of the list is pretty sweet […]

thx Bdizzle

Robot warriors will get a guide to ethics New ‘Terminator’ Robots Go in Harm’s Way 090518-robotwarrior-hmed-11ahmedium maars-robot-540×380 terminator-400×540 Lethal military robots are currently deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Ground-based robots like QinetiQ’s MAARS robot (shown here), are armed with weapons to shoot insurgents, appendages to disarm bombs, and surveillance equipment to search buildings. Robots with a set of ethical guidelines, or perhaps how we ought to treat robots ethically? Or maybe — “This is trying to give a team of soldiers a ‘tenth man’ that is expendable to enemy fire,” said Quinn. “[The robots] can take a beating,” said Robert Quinn, an engineer at Foster-Miller. “Some of our robots have been blown up 10, even 15 times, and they still work.” “Robots don’t have an inherent right to self-defense and don’t get scared,” said Arkin. “The robots can take greater risk and respond more appropriately.” Oh yes, I see. (Thanks Max and Paul!)

at least it’s an ethos This viddie is a rather boring demonstration of Wolfram Alpha. It does basically what it has claimed to be able to do: it can process data in a variety of domains, answer queries in natural language that pertain to the data, and present answers and other relevant or useful information in a human readable form. The internet has been hyping and/or cynically doubting Alpha for the last few weeks, and although looks like it works pretty well I don’t think it deserves either. The fervor Alpha has generated is really due to a misunderstanding of what Alpha is. Alpha is a systematic attempt to formalize the ontologies of certain scientific domains in order to query that data for specific kinds of information. It is an attempt, Wolfram suggests, of making science computable. This is a big project, and certainly worthwhile (if just a little wide-eyed). But it is also something that Wolfram has been working on for decades, and it appears to be a legitimate attempt. Alpha is not a foundation for a semantic web. Look: the semantic web is going to happen one way or another. It is the looming peak in the distance, and someone will scale it, and I imagine it will happen fairly soon. But this is not it. I have lots of complaints about the vision here, but my biggest complaint is certainly this: Alpha requires expert humans to explicitly build ontologies and pour in the data. This works well in certain scientific domains, but its not the sort of thing you can lay on top of the internet to create SmartGoogle, which is what everyone expects from the semantic web. Ontologies cannot be planned in advanced. Ontologies are not pure formal properties that bind together a domain through pure […]

thx Jason

Computer Program to Take On ‘Jeopardy!’ I.B.M. plans to announce Monday that it is in the final stages of completing a computer program to compete against human “Jeopardy!” contestants. If the program beats the humans, the field of artificial intelligence will have made a leap forward. … The I.B.M. researchers and “Jeopardy!” producers said they were considering what form their cybercontestant would take and what gender it would assume. One possibility would be to use an animated avatar that would appear on a computer display. “We’ve only begun to talk about it,” said Harry Friedman, the executive producer of “Jeopardy!” “We all agree that it shouldn’t look like Robby the Robot.” … The real difficulty, Dr. Nyberg said, is not searching a database but getting the computer to understand what it should be searching for. The system must be able to deal with analogies, puns, double entendres and relationships like size and location, all at lightning speed. Thanks Schaaf!