Edsinger recently demonstrated how Domo can interact with people to help them accomplish useful tasks. Once he captures Domo’s gaze, they exchange greetings. “Hey, Domo,” Edsinger says, to which Domo responds, “Hey, Domo.” “Shelf, Domo,” says Edsinger, prompting the robot to find a shelf. Domo looks around until it spots a nearby table that looks promising. The robot reaches out its left hand to touch the shelf, much like a person groping for a light switch in the dark, to make sure the shelf is really there. Once Domo has located the shelf, it reaches out its right hand towards Edsinger, who places a bag of coffee beans in the open hand. Domo wiggles them a little to get a feel for the object, then transfers the bag from its right hand to its left hand (nearest the shelf). Domo then reaches up and places the bag on the shelf. Though it seems like a minor movement, wiggling the object is key to the robot’s ability to accurately place it on a shelf, Edsinger says. Domo is programmed to learn about the size of an object by focusing on the tip of the object, for example, the cap of a water bottle. When the robot wiggles the tip back and forth, it can figure out how big the bottle is and decide how to transfer it from hand to hand or to place it on a shelf. “You can hand it an object it’s never seen before, and it can find the tip and start to control it,” Edsinger said. The philosophy behind the team’s approach is that humans and robots can work together to accomplish tasks that neither could do all alone. “If you can offload some parts of the process and let the robot handle the manual skills, […]

Thanks, Greg.

“The more we understand about orangutan’s cognitive processes, the more we’ll understand about what they need to survive in the wild,” said Tara Stoinski, manager of conservation partnerships for the zoo. (link via Engadget)

So the past few weeks have seen a lot of talk in the media about robot rights and ethics. I don’t have much to say about all this, since the discussions are largely Asmovian, and I think it is pretty clear that we need to move beyond Asmiov if we are ever going to actually integrate robots into our lives. To be clear, I appreciate Asimov, but his Laws are grounded in the assumption that robots exist instrumentally (see: the Second Law), and I think this view is fundamentally misguided. In any case, we need some way of talking about what robots can and can’t do. The Naval Surface Warfare Center has taken up the challenge with a proposed CONOPS for use of autonomous weapons (Warning: PDF). And here it is: Let the machines target other machines – Specifically, let’s design our armed unmanned systems to automatically ID, target, and neutralize or destroy the weapons used by our enemies – not the people using the weapons. – This gives us the possibility of disarming a threat force without the need for killing them. – We can equip our machines with non-lethal technologies for the purpose of convincing the enemy to abandon their weapons prior to our machines destroying the weapons, and lethal weapons to kill their weapons. Let men target men – In those instances where we find it necessary to target the human (i.e. to disable the command structure), the armed unmanned systems can be remotely controllable by human operators who are “in-the-weaponscontrol-loop” Provide a “Dial-a-Level” of autonomy to switch from one to the other mode. Well, OK. Maybe we still have some work to do. (via Engadget)

I still smoke because of Vonnegut. Well, I mostly still smoke because I am addicted, but Vonnegut helps me justify it- a fairly sure, fairly honorable form of suicide. I tried Pall Malls once (a dilettante, I asked for Pell Mells), but they were disgusting.

From Ars Technica: Blogosphere growth slowing considerably The number of new blogs isn’t the only thing that’s slowing down. The company reports that they’ve noticed a slowing in daily posting volume as well. Technorati was tracking about 1.5 million blog posts per day in March of this year, compared with 1.3 million posts per day from just a year ago.

Human-cyborg relations has never been a messier affair. Acticon Neosphincter The Acticon® Neosphincter is the only implantable sphincter available for the treatment of severe fecal incontinence. Using the same technology that has been used for 30 years to treat urinary incontinence, the Acticon Neosphincter simulates normal sphincter function to give the patient control over defecation through a pressurized system. The Acticon prosthesis can be implanted in both men and women with a pressure regulating balloon placed in the prevesical space, the cuff implanted around a segment of the anal canal, and the pump positioned in either the scrotum or the labium. Thanks, Owlofcreamcheese.

Yeah, its a video about tired Web 2.0 hype. But it is really well done.

Watch this We are developing and evaluating an architecture that will allow these robots to perceive, model, and generate social rhythms such that the robot’s behaviors are synchronized with those of a human interactor. We believe that rhythmic synchrony will be as important for establishing engagement, rapport, and comfort between a robot and a person as it is between people. For example, synchrony between the tempo of a speaker’s voice, the punctuation of the speaker’s gestures, and the frequency of a listener’s nodding is characteristic of smooth and comfortable interactions. Social scientists such as William S. Condon and Adam Kendon have identified interactional synchrony as a phenomenon that plays an important role in the regulation and coordination of movements, vocalizations, and other social cues. Thanks, Greg.

Math research team maps E8 An international team of 18 mathematicians, including two from MIT, has mapped one of the largest and most complicated structures in mathematics. If written out on paper, the calculation describing this structure, known as E8, would cover an area the size of Manhattan. The work is important because it could lead to new discoveries in mathematics, physics and other fields. In addition, the innovative large-scale computing that was key to the work likely spells the future for how longstanding math problems will be solved in the 21st century. … The magnitude and nature of the E8 calculation invite comparison with the Human Genome Project. The human genome, which contains all the genetic information of a cell, is less than a gigabyte in size. The result of the E8 calculation, which contains all the information about E8 and its representations, is 60 gigabytes. This is enough to store 45 days of continuous music in MP3-format. The mapping of E8 is also unusual because it involved a large team of mathematicians, who are typically known for their solitary style. “People will look back on this project as a significant landmark and because of this breakthrough, mathematics will now be viewed as a team sport,” said Brian Conrey, executive director of AIM. Large scale computational mathematics fundamentally relies on the use of computers to solve mathematical equations that humans are incapable of solving on their own. The above proof is totally awesome from the perspective of a math novice, but it is also novel in that it involves a team of mathematicians. So I ask again, who counts as members of this team? (Info on the above pic)

We take off into the cosmos, ready for anything: for solitude, for hardship, for exhaustion, death. Modesty forbids us to say so, but there are times when we think pretty well of ourselves. And yet, if we examine it more closely, our enthusiasm turns out to be all sham. We don’t want to conquer the cosmos, we simply want to extend the boundaries of Earth to the frontiers of the cosmos. For us, such and such a planet is as arid as the Sahara, another as frozen as the North Pole, yet another as lush as the Amazon basin. We are humanitarian and chivalrous; we don’t want to enslave other races, we simply want to bequeath them our values and take over their heritage in exchange. We think ourselves as the Knights of the Holy Contact. This is another lie. We are only seeking Man. We have no need of other worlds. We need mirrors. We don’t know what to do with other worlds. A single world, our own, suffices us; but we can’t accept it for what it is. We are searching for an ideal image of our own world: we go in quest of a planet, of a civilization superior to our own but developed on the basis of a prototype of our primeval past. At the same time, there is something inside us which we don’t like to face up to, from which we try to protect ourselves, but which nevertheless remains, since we don’t leave Earth in a state of primal innocence. We arrive here as we are in reality, and when the page is turned and that reality is revealed to us – that part of our reality which we would prefer to pass over in silence – then we don’t like it anymore. […] […]