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IBM celebrates the 15th anniversary of Deep Blue beating Garry Kasparov (video)

Daniel Cooper — Fri, 11 May 2012 13:24:00 EST

It's been 15 years since IBM's Deep Blue recorded its famous May 11th 1997 victory over world champion chess player Garry Kasparov -- a landmark in artificial intelligence. Designed by Big Blue as a way of understanding high-power parallel processing, the "brute force" system could examine 200 million chess positions every second, beating the grandmaster 3.5-2.5 after losing 4-2 the previous year. It went on to help develop drug treatments, analyze risk and aid data miners before being replaced with Blue Gene and, more recently, Watson -- which recorded a famous series of victories on Jeopardy! in 2011. If you'd like to know more, we've got a video with one of the computer's fathers: Dr. Murray Campbell and a comparison on how the three supercomputers stack up after the break.

As for Garry Kasparov? The loss didn't ruin his career, he went on to win every single Chess trophy conceived, retired, wrote some books and went into politics. As you do.

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Angelina: the experimental AI that's coming for our game dev jobs

Terrence O'Brien — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 17:29:00 EST

Ok so, maybe Angelina couldn't have created Skyrim all on her own, but the experimental AI from Michael Cook (a computer scientist at Imperial College London) is still quite impressive. The artificial dev is able program enemy behavior, layout levels, and distribute power ups with random attributes. While many elements of a game like Space Station Invaders (which you can play at the more coverage link) are designed by human hands, it's Angelina's ability to act as a composer building something fun from the various ingredients that's so interesting. Before setting a level in stone she plays through the possible combinations, determining which will be most enjoyable for a human player. Hit up the source link for loads more info.

Angelina: the experimental AI that's coming for our game dev jobs originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 08 Mar 2012 17:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Quadrocopters don creepy eyes, build synthetic Christmas tree of envy (video)

Sean Buckley — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 03:50:00 EST

First we let them play music, then they started juggling. Now quadrocopters are feeling emotions as well; namely, jealousy. One of Flying Machine Arena's dainty quadrocopters, nicknamed Juliet, was compelled to build its own synthetic Christmas tree after spying an authentic fir through a glass window. Sure, stacked bricks of festive foam seem innocent enough, but look into those ping-pong ball eyes and tell us you aren't a little worried that next year's "war on Christmas" will be the machine's war on humans. Fly past the break to see Juliet's envious construction project for yourself.

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Quadrocopters don creepy eyes, build synthetic Christmas tree of envy (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 30 Dec 2011 03:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Artificial tongue distinguishes 18 different types of canned tomato

Sharif Sakr — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 07:58:00 EST

Taste tests are fun -- unless you're in Italy, in which case they're drawn-out and rancorous. That's why scientists in Milan are trying to remove humans from the equation, by using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy to reveal objective "metabolomic fingerprints" for different foodstuffs instead. In their latest experiment, NMR succeeded in predicting how human testers would judge 18 different canned tomato products, including sensory descriptors such as bitterness, saltiness, "redness" and density. Like Caesar always said, technology that knows a good ragu is technology we can trust.

Artificial tongue distinguishes 18 different types of canned tomato originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 31 Oct 2011 07:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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John McCarthy, AI pioneer, dies at 84

Brian Heater — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 19:07:00 EST

It might be a stretch to suggest that there'd be no AI without John McCarthy, but at the very least, we'd likely be discussing the concept much differently. The computer scientist, who died on Sunday at 84, is credited with coining the term "Artificial Intelligence" as part of a proposal for a Dartmouth conference on the subject. The event, held in 1956, is regarded as a watershed moment for the subject. Early the following decade, McCarthy pioneered LISP, a highly popular programming language amongst the AI development community. In 1971, he won a Turing Award from the Association for Computing Machinery and 20 years later was awarded National Medal of Science. A more complete obituary for McCarthy can be found in the source link below.

[Thanks, Jason]

John McCarthy, AI pioneer, dies at 84 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 25 Oct 2011 19:07:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Switched On: As Siri gets serious

Ross Rubin — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 21:12:00 EST

Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.

Nearly 15 years passed between Apple's first foray into handheld electronics -- the Newton MessagePad -- and the far more successful iPhone. But while phones have replaced PDAs for all intents and purposes, few if any have tried to be what Newton really aspired to -- an intelligent assistant that would seamlessly blend into your life. That has changed with Siri, the standout feature of iOS 5 on the iPhone 4S, which could aptly be described as a "personal digital assistant" if there weren't so much baggage tied to that term.

Siri is far more than parlor entertainment or a simple leapfrogging the voice control support in Android and Windows Phone. At the other end of the potential spectrum, Siri may not be a new platform in itself (although at this point Apple has somewhat sandboxed the experience). In any case, though, Siri certainly paves the way for voice as an important component for a rich multi-input digital experience. It steps toward the life-management set of functionality that the bow-tied agent immortalized in Apple's 1987 Knowledge Navigator video could achieve.

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Switched On: As Siri gets serious originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 16 Oct 2011 21:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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IBM's Watson set to tackle health insurance, takes 'Diagnosis for $1,000'

Billy Steele — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 17:24:00 EST

After tackling your tech support woes, the famed Watson is moving on to mop up the health insurance industry. That's right, the IBM showstopper we all know and love for trouncing trivia kings on Jeopardy has been hired by one of the largest health insurance company's in the US. WellPoint Inc. will make use of the system's breakneck speed and healthcare database alongside patient records -- allowing the supercomputer to guide treatment options and prescribe medicines. Once implemented, data will be combined from three sources in a matter of seconds: a patient's chart / records from a doctor, the insurance company's patient history and the medical knowledge that Watson already possesses. A pilot program will roll out next year to a number of cancer facilities, academic medical centers and oncology practices. No word yet on when The Watson School of Medicine will start accepting applications.

IBM's Watson set to tackle health insurance, takes 'Diagnosis for $1,000' originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 12 Sep 2011 17:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Stanford schooling unwashed masses with free online Intro to Artificial Intelligence (video)

Christopher Trout — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 21:47:00 EST

If you fancy yourself a Stanford (wo)man, but lack the requisite dollars to actually attend, now's your chance to collect those collegiate bragging rights. Starting October 10th, you can join Professor Sebastian Thrun and Google's Director of Research, Peter Norvig, in a free, online version of the school's Introduction to Artificial Intelligence course. The class covers, "knowledge representation, inference, machine learning, planning and game playing, information retrieval, and computer vision and robotics," and ambitiously aims to be the largest online AI course ever taught. If you're feeling the ole red and white, you can register at the source link below, but if you're looking for the official Stanford stamp of approval, we're afraid you're barking up the wrong tree -- non-students will receive a certificate of completion from the instructors only. Still interested? Check out the video introduction after the break and hit the source for more details.

Continue reading Stanford schooling unwashed masses with free online Intro to Artificial Intelligence (video)

Stanford schooling unwashed masses with free online Intro to Artificial Intelligence (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 05 Aug 2011 21:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Tokyo Institute of Technology's SOINN robot teaches itself to serve humans (video)

Donald Melanson — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 16:45:00 EST

Robots have been replacing more and more human workers for quite some time now, but in most instances they're still just being programmed to perform specific tasks. As evidenced by this bot developed by the Hasegawa Group at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, however, there's also a growing number capable of teaching themselves some new tricks, and they're getting smarter every day. This particular one employs what's called a self-organizing incremental neural network (or SOINN), which lets it build up a base of knowledge that it can apply to new tasks and make educated guesses about how to proceed with them -- in this case, pouring a glass of water and then dropping an ice cube in it (or what's supposed to be water and an ice cube, at least). Head on past the break for a video.

Continue reading Tokyo Institute of Technology's SOINN robot teaches itself to serve humans (video)

Tokyo Institute of Technology's SOINN robot teaches itself to serve humans (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 01 Aug 2011 16:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Khepera swarm robots learn to build a mobile quadrocopter landing platform (video)

Donald Melanson — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 00:56:00 EST

Last we saw the Khepera swarm robots from the Georgia Robotics and Intelligent Systems lab, they were just beginning to learn how move in formation and spell out "GRITS" on the floor. Well, these bots are growing up fast. The lab's latest video shows a group of four of the robots following a leader, and arranging themselves to form a mobile landing platform for a hovering quadrocopter -- a feat they manage to make seem easy. What will they think of next? We're a little scared to ask.

Khepera swarm robots learn to build a mobile quadrocopter landing platform (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 28 Jul 2011 00:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Calling for tech support? IBM's Watson might be on the other end

Darren Murph — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 07:13:00 EST

Watson may have Jeopardy! and the medical realm under lock, but retail / service industries? Not yet, but soon. Very soon. According to a new piece in Hemispheres Magazine, IBM's now looking to shop the supercomputer's world-class vocal recognition technologies to outfits in retail and customer service, with those enterprises in particular drooling at the thought of having a sophisticated machine recognizing human speech. In theory, at least, basic questions could potentially be answered entirely by Watson, but that's honestly not a future we're too fond of. There's also the possibility of using analytical data that Watson collects in order to better position deals, service and other tech support centers based on what kinds of requests come in the most. So, eager to speak with a kindhearted, potentially confused robot? Or will that flustered, potentially sympathetic Earthling still suffice?

Calling for tech support? IBM's Watson might be on the other end originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 11 Jul 2011 07:13:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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AI competition pits Ms. Pac-Man against ghosts in the Manichean struggle of our time (video)

Jesse Hicks — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 19:20:00 EST

While the world breathlessly awaits the Pac-Man reality TV show, the University of Essex held a programming competition starring that other yellow chomper. The Ms. Pac-Man vs. Ghost Team contest pitted 13 competitors from nine different countries against one another, to see who could create the most elusive Ms. Pac-Man or the wiliest ghost gang. The participants coded routines for the titular hero or Blinky, Pinky, Inky, and Sue, with organizers then running the programs against one another on the Java-based playing field. The highest single-game score went to Atif, who racked up 69240 points versus DarkRodry's ghosts, while ghost team Legacy2TheReckoning held RandomMsPacMan to a mere 410 points. Another competition will take place in August, so limber up your coding fingers, Pac-Maniacs. In the meantime, strap on your headgear and cheer on your round yellow hero in the video below.

Continue reading AI competition pits Ms. Pac-Man against ghosts in the Manichean struggle of our time (video)

AI competition pits Ms. Pac-Man against ghosts in the Manichean struggle of our time (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 14 Jun 2011 19:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Smarter elevators sort riders, stand ready to enforce social hierarchies

Jesse Hicks — Mon, 23 May 2011 11:01:00 EST

While we're still awaiting pneumatic tubes that can whisk us to our destinations, elevators have been gaining a few IQ points. For example, they can be voice-activated or recognize an ID badge and route riders to their floors, meaning fewer seconds staring uncomfortably until the doors open. But they can also track workers' comings and goings, and bosses at Philadelphia's Curtis Center can program elevators to deliver specific employees directly to them. Not coincidentally, intelligent lifts can also ensure executives rarely have to ride alongside the hoi polloi -- a feature Bank of America, for one, paid for but says it doesn't use. The Wall Street Journal seems to worry this is the end of elevator democracy, but we support anything that reduces our time trapped in small metal boxes.

Smarter elevators sort riders, stand ready to enforce social hierarchies originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 23 May 2011 11:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Schizophrenic computer may help us understand similarly afflicted humans

Sean Buckley — Wed, 11 May 2011 09:31:00 EST

Although we usually prefer our computers to be perfect, logical, and psychologically fit, sometimes there's more to be learned from a schizophrenic one. A University of Texas experiment has doomed a computer with dementia praecox, saddling the silicon soul with symptoms that normally only afflict humans. By telling the machine's neural network to treat everything it learned as extremely important, the team hopes to aid clinical research in understanding the schizophrenic brain -- following a popular theory that suggests afflicted patients lose the ability to forget or ignore frivolous information, causing them to make illogical connections and paranoid jumps in reason. Sure enough, the machine lost it, and started spinning wild, delusional stories, eventually claiming responsibility for a terrorist attack. Yikes. We aren't hastening the robot apocalypse if we're programming machines to go mad intentionally, right?

Schizophrenic computer may help us understand similarly afflicted humans originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 11 May 2011 09:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Robots learn to share, try to repair bad rep (video)

Terrence O'Brien — Fri, 06 May 2011 05:29:00 EST

We've been told time and time again to fear our mechanical friends, so imagine our relief when we heard that some Swiss scientists had a batch of bots that displayed altruism. What's more, these little two-wheeled foragers weren't programmed to share, they evolved the trait. Researchers at EPFL infused Alice microbots with digital "genes" that mutated over time as well as color sensors that allow them to navigate their environment. The robots were tasked with collecting "food" and given the option to keep it for themselves or split it amongst their silicon-brained relatives. The more they decided to give to others with similar genetic makeup the more those virtual genes were passed on to future generations -- including the one for altruism. The experiment is an example of Hamilton's Rule, an evolutionary model for how the seemingly counter-intuitive trait of selflessness could arise through natural selection. Don't let your guard down just yet, though -- the robots are only sharing with each other for now.

Continue reading Robots learn to share, try to repair bad rep (video)

Robots learn to share, try to repair bad rep (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 06 May 2011 05:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Researchers build synthetic synapse circuit, prosthetic brains still decades away

Dana Wollman — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 19:24:00 EST

Building a franken-brain has long been a holy grail of sorts for scientists, but now a team of engineering researchers have made what they claim to be a significant breakthrough towards that goal. Alice Parker and Chongwu Zhou of USC used carbon nanotubes to create synthetic synapse circuits that mimic neurons, the basic building blocks of the brain. This could be invaluable to AI research, though the team still hasn't tackled the problem of scope -- our brains are home to 100 billion neurons, each of which has 10,000 synapses. Moreover, these nanotubes are critically lacking in plasticity -- they can't form new connections, produce new neurons, or adapt with age. All told, the scientists say, we're decades away from having fake brains -- or even sections of it -- but if the technology advances as they hope it will, people might one day be able to recover from devastating brain injuries and drive cars smart enough to avert deadly accidents.

Continue reading Researchers build synthetic synapse circuit, prosthetic brains still decades away

Researchers build synthetic synapse circuit, prosthetic brains still decades away originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 25 Apr 2011 19:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Zdenek Kalal's object tracking algorithm learns on the fly, likely to make next 007 flick (video)

Darren Murph — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 23:40:00 EST

Microsoft's own OneVision Video Recognizer may be novel, but if the folks in Redmond are seriously looking to take things next-level, they should probably cast their gaze across the pond. Zdenek Kalal, a researcher at the University of Surrey, has just created what may be the most sophisticated vision system known to the civilian world. In essence, it takes the mundane task of tracking objects to an entirely new platform, enabling users to select an object on the fly and have the algorithm immediately start tracking something new. Within seconds, it's able to maintain a lock even if your object twists, turns, or leaves / returns. Furthermore, these "objects" could be used as air mice if you force it to track your digits, and if you teach it what your staff looks like, you'll have a fully automated security scanner that can recognize faces and grant / deny access based on its database of white-listed individuals. Frankly, we'd rather you see it for yourself than listen to us extolling its virtues -- vid's after the break, per usual.

Continue reading Zdenek Kalal's object tracking algorithm learns on the fly, likely to make next 007 flick (video)

Zdenek Kalal's object tracking algorithm learns on the fly, likely to make next 007 flick (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 31 Mar 2011 23:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Quadrocopters juggle balls cooperatively, mesmerize with their lethal accuracy (video)

Vlad Savov — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 19:57:00 EST

You've seen one quadrocopter juggle a ball autonomously while gliding through the air, but how's about a pair of them working cooperatively? Yeah, we've got your attention now. The Zurich-based lab that brought us the piano-playing and ball-bouncing quadrocopter is back with a simply breathtaking display of robotic dexterity and teamwork. Like all mad scientists, they call their Flying Machine Arena research "an experiment," though we see it a lot more as a Pong-inspired dance of our future overlords. We all know how far video games have come since two paddles batted a ball between one another, right?

Continue reading Quadrocopters juggle balls cooperatively, mesmerize with their lethal accuracy (video)

Quadrocopters juggle balls cooperatively, mesmerize with their lethal accuracy (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 28 Mar 2011 19:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Japan's space agency considers using rockets with artificial intelligence

Donald Melanson — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 00:13:00 EST

The keyword here is obviously "considers," but it looks like Japan's space agency, JAXA, is indeed seriously thinking about using artificial intelligence to improve their rocket launches. As JAXA scientist Yasuhiro Morita explains, as opposed to simply being "automatic" as rockets are today, an "artificially intelligent" rocket would be able to keep watch on its condition, determine the cause of any malfunction, and potentially even fix it itself. According to JAXA, that would not only make rocket launches more efficient, but more cost-effective as well given the reduced manpower needs. That's not the only new measure being explored to cut costs, though -- as Space.com reports, JAXA's new Epsilon launch vehicle is also being built using fewer, but more advanced components, which promises to let it be moved to the launch pad nearly fully assembled. It's currently set to launch sometime in 2013, although it's not yet clear how much it will actually be relying on AI if such a system is put in place.

Japan's space agency considers using rockets with artificial intelligence originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 23 Mar 2011 00:13:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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IBM demonstrates Watson supercomputer in Jeopardy practice match

Paul Miller — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 11:04:00 EST

We're at IBM's HQ in upstate NY, where IBM will pit its monstrous Watson project (in the middle buzzer spot) against two Jeopardy greats, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. Watson has been in development for four years, and this is its first big public practice match before it goes on national TV in February for three matches against these giants of trivia. Unlike IBM's Deep Blue chess project in the 90s, which was pretty much pure math, Watson has to deal with the natural language and punny nature of real Jeopardy questions. IBM, ever the salesman, has thrown gobs of its fancy server hardware at the project, with 10 racks full of IBM Power 750 servers, stuffed with 15 terabytes of RAM and 2,880 processor operating at a collective 80 teraflops. IBM says it would take one CPU over two hours to answer a typical question, so this massive parallel processing is naturally key -- hopefully fast enough to buzz in before Ken and Brad catch on to the human-oriented questioning. We'll update this post as the match begins, and we'll have some video for you later in the day.

Continue reading IBM demonstrates Watson supercomputer in Jeopardy practice match

IBM demonstrates Watson supercomputer in Jeopardy practice match originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 13 Jan 2011 11:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Quadrocopter plays the piano, wishes us a happy and complacent holiday (video)

Vlad Savov — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 11:14:00 EST

Our worst frienemies, the quadrocopters, have decided to act cute for the holidays and play us a merry little jingle. Yes, the guys and gals behind the Flying Machine Arena have put together an airborne robot sophisticated enough to lay down a few seasonal notes on a Yamaha electronic keyboard. And we're still sitting around debating inconsequential topics like net neutrality -- all of human civilization is at stake here, people! Be a good citizen and watch the video after the break to scout out any weak points to this most imminent threat to humanity's survival.

Continue reading Quadrocopter plays the piano, wishes us a happy and complacent holiday (video)

Quadrocopter plays the piano, wishes us a happy and complacent holiday (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 22 Dec 2010 11:14:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Robo-nurse gives gentle bed baths, keeps its laser eye on you (video)

Vlad Savov — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 10:29:00 EST

When they're not too busy building creepy little humanoids or lizard-like sand swimmers, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology like to concern themselves with helping make healthcare easier. To that end, they've constructed the Cody robot you see above, which has recently been demonstrated successfully wiping away "debris" from a human subject. The goal is simple enough to understand -- aiding the elderly and infirm in keeping up their personal hygiene -- but we'd still struggle to hand over responsibility for granny's care to an autonomous machine equipped with a camera and laser in the place where a head might, or ought to, be. See Cody cleaning up its designer's extremities after the break.

Continue reading Robo-nurse gives gentle bed baths, keeps its laser eye on you (video)

Robo-nurse gives gentle bed baths, keeps its laser eye on you (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Nov 2010 10:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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NELL machine learning system could easily beat you at Trivial Pursuit

Joseph L. Flatley — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 19:32:00 EST

If fifteen years ago you would have told us that some day, deep in the bowels of Carnegie Mellon University, a supercomputer cluster would scan hundreds of millions of Web pages, examine text patterns, and teach itself about the Ramones, we might have believed you -- we were into some far-out stuff back then. But this project is about more than the make of Johnny's guitar (Mosrite) or the name of the original drummer (Tommy). NELL, or Never-Ending Language Learning system, constantly surfs the Web and classifies everything it scans into specific categories (such as cities, universities, and musicians) and relations. One example The New York Times cites:

Peyton Manning is a football player (category). The Indianapolis Colts is a football team (category). By scanning text patterns, NELL can infer with a high probability that Peyton Manning plays for the Indianapolis Colts - even if it has never read that Mr. Manning plays for the Colts.

But sports and music factoids aside, the system is not without its flaws. For instance, when Internet cookies were categorized as baked goods, "[i]t started this whole avalanche of mistakes," according to researcher Tom M. Mitchell. Apparently, NELL soon "learned" that one could delete pastries (the mere thought of which is sure to give us night terrors for quite some time). Luckily, human operators stepped in and corrected the thing, and now it's back on course, accumulating data and giving researchers insights that might someday lead to a true semantic web.

NELL machine learning system could easily beat you at Trivial Pursuit originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 12 Oct 2010 19:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google and TU Braunschweig independently develop self-driving cars (video)

Sean Hollister — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 19:16:00 EST

There's a Toyota Prius in California, and a VW Passat halfway around the globe -- each equipped with bucket-shaped contraptions that let the cars drive themselves. Following their research on autonomous autos in the DARPA Urban Challenge, a team at Germany's TU Braunschweig let the above GPS, laser and sensor-guided Volkswagen wander down the streets of Brunswick unassisted late last week, and today Google revealed that it's secretly tested seven similar vehicles by the folks who won that same competition. CMU and Stanford engineers have designed a programmable package that can drive at the speed limit on regular streets and merge into highway traffic, stop at red lights and stop signs and automatically react to hazards -- much like the German vehicle -- except Google says its seven autos have already gone 1,000 unassisted miles. That's still a drop in the bucket, of course, compared to the efforts it will take to bring the technology home -- Google estimates self-driving vehicles are at least eight years down the road. Watch the TU Braunschweig vehicle in action after the break.

Update: Though Google's cars have driven 1,000 miles fully autonomously, that's a small fraction of the time they've spent steering for themselves. We've learned the vehicles have gone 140,000 miles with occasional human interventions, which were often a matter of procedure rather than a compelling need for their human drivers to take control.

[Thanks, el3ktro]

Continue reading Google and TU Braunschweig independently develop self-driving cars (video)

Google and TU Braunschweig independently develop self-driving cars (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 09 Oct 2010 19:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Fujitsu's social robot bear is the supertoy of Kubrick's dreams, almost (video)

Ross Miller — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 02:40:00 EST

Ah, the Fujitsu bear cub social robot. What child or elderly person should go without a "people-friendly terminal" with snuggly-soft fur and a camera in lieu of the ever-popular button nose? The little guy made the rounds briefly earlier this year, but this is our first time making acquaintances. The duo waved at us, waved with us, laughed with (at?) us, and then at some point, decided to arbitrarily fall asleep and ignore us -- just like our actual friends! The representative told us this prototype -- with a reported 300 actions from 12 actuators (three face, three neck, and six in the body), 13 skin touch sensors, hand grip sensors, a tilt sensor, and a microphone -- is a ways off from hitting the childcare / nursing home market. For now, enjoy the pictures below and footage after the break... and if all this seems eerily familiar, hey, we're with you. A wink and a nod in that direction can be found via the second video.

Gallery: Fujitsu bear cub social robot hands-on

Continue reading Fujitsu's social robot bear is the supertoy of Kubrick's dreams, almost (video)

Fujitsu's social robot bear is the supertoy of Kubrick's dreams, almost (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 05 Oct 2010 02:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Swiss researchers show off brain-controlled, AI-augmented wheelchair

Donald Melanson — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 19:11:00 EST

They're far from the first to try their hand at a brain-controlled wheelchair, but some researchers at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (or EPFL) in Switzerland seem to have pulled off a few new tricks with their latest project. Like some similar systems, this one relies on EEG readings to detect specific brain patterns, but it backs that up with some artificial intelligence that the researchers say allows for "shared control" of the wheelchair. That latter component is aided by a pair of cameras and some image processing software that allows the wheelchair to avoid obstacles, but it doesn't stop there -- the software is also able to distinguish between different types of objects. According to the researchers, that could let it go around a cabinet but pull up underneath a desk, for instance, or potentially even recognize the person's own desk and avoid others. Head on past the break to check it out in action.

Continue reading Swiss researchers show off brain-controlled, AI-augmented wheelchair

Swiss researchers show off brain-controlled, AI-augmented wheelchair originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 07 Sep 2010 19:11:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Prototype of robot that develops emotions on interacting with humans officially complete

Laura June — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 12:44:00 EST

The first prototype of a Nao robot that can develop emotions as it interacts with a human caregiver has been completed. A team across Europe was led by Dr. Lola Cañamero of the University of Herefordshire in the UK to develop the bot, which differs in several significant ways from those that came before it. These robots develop over time in much the way that a child does, learning to interact with and respond to the human beings around them. Modeled after human and chimpanzee childhood development paths, they are programmed to be highly adaptable to the people around them, and to become attached to whatever person is most suited to its needs and 'personality' profile. Over time, the more they interact, the more they learn and bond to the human being. These little ones, moreover, are capable of expressing a wide range of emotions, including anger, frustration, fear and happiness. The next steps are to research the bots' emotional and non-linguistic behavior, and to move toward combining linguistic and non-linguistic communication to become further attached and adapted to them. Yes, we want one.

Prototype of robot that develops emotions on interacting with humans officially complete originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 14 Aug 2010 12:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Driverless vans set off on intercontinental trek from Italy to China (video)

Vlad Savov — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 09:07:00 EST

You might not have expected the future to look like your granddad's groovy camper van, but take a closer look here and you'll find that this is indeed nothing like your forefather's people carrier. The VisLab team from the University of Parma have taken a fleet of Piaggio Porter Electric vehicles, strapped them with an array of cameras, lasers and other sensors, and topped them off with solar panels to keep the electronics powered. Oh, and lest we forgot to mention: the vans are (mostly) autonomous. VIAC (or VisLab Intercontinental Autonomous Challenge) is the grand name given to their big demonstration: an 8,000-mile, 3-month tour that will ultimately find them arriving in Shanghai, China, having set off from Milan this Tuesday. You can follow the day-by-day development on the blog below, though we're still being told that practical driverless road cars are a measure of decades, not years, away.

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Driverless vans set off on intercontinental trek from Italy to China (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 23 Jul 2010 09:07:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Intel Connected Cars will record your bad driving for posterity, take over if you're really screwing up

Vlad Savov — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 07:10:00 EST

Intel's latest Research Day has sprung up a new vision for "smart" vehicles; a vision that frankly chills us to our very geeky core. Cameras and sensors attached to an Intel Connected Car will record data about your speed, steering and braking, and upon the event of an accident, forward those bits and bytes along to the police and your insurance company. Just makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, doesn't it? Don't get us wrong, the tech foundation here is good -- having cars permanently hooked up to the ether can generally be considered a good thing -- but what's being envisioned is as obtrusive as it is irritating. Oh, didn't we mention that the cars can become self-aware and overrule you if you try to bend the rules of the road? Because they can.

Intel Connected Cars will record your bad driving for posterity, take over if you're really screwing up originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 05 Jul 2010 07:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Muon the humanoid robot is our ideal best friend

Laura June — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 16:59:00 EST

We don't speak German, and machine translation continues to be an intermittent and annoying bundle of failure, so bear with us on this one as we try to cobble together what exactly is going on here. This is Muon, the humanoid robot who is apparently being developed in Berlin by Frackenpohl Poulheim at the ALEAR Laboratory of Neuro Robotics at the Humboldt University in Berlin. Like other humanoid bots, Muon is about the size of an eight year old child so as not to creep out his human companions by being too threatening, and his design, while reminiscent of previous robots we've seen, is pretty original. It's actually hard to tell what stage of development Muon is in -- certainly many of the photos we have spied were concepts -- but we're going to keep our eyes peeled for him moving into the future. If you hit up the source link, you can check out a video of Muon's development. There's one more amazing shot after the break.

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Muon the humanoid robot is our ideal best friend originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 19 Jun 2010 16:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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IBM's Watson is really smart, will try to prove it on Jeopardy! this fall (video)

Vlad Savov — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 05:55:00 EST

As much as we love our Google homepage, computer search remains a pretty rudimentary affair. You punch in keywords and you get only indirect answers in the form of relevant web results. IBM doesn't seem to be too happy with this situation and has been working for the past three years on perfecting its Watson supercomputer: an array of server racks that's been endowed with linguistic algorithms allowing it to not only recognize oddly phrased or implicative questions, but to answer them in kind, with direct and accurate responses. Stuffed with encyclopedic knowledge of the world around it, it answers on the basis of information stored within its data banks, though obviously you won't be able to tap into it any time soon for help with your homework. The latest word is that Watson's lab tests have impressed the producers of Jeopardy! enough to have the bot participate in a televised episode of the show. That could happen as early as this fall, which fits right in line with our scheduled doom at robots' hands by the end of 2012. Ah well, might as well get our popcorn and enjoy the show.

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iPad takes to the skies with Bluebox Ai this July

Vlad Savov — Mon, 17 May 2010 06:32:00 EST

In-flight entertainment might not be high on everyone's list of priorities, but from this July, it might become a new point of differentiation between airlines. Bluebox Avionics has announced its new Ai IFE system, which seems to mostly involve just giving travelers an iPad to play around with while gliding through the atmosphere. It "leverages the power, flexibility and quality of the most advanced consumer device ever produced" (they have an Evo 4G? Zing!) and offers Bluebox's proprietary security solution and tailor-made apps for each airline. One international carrier has already signed up and more are expected to follow.

iPad takes to the skies with Bluebox Ai this July originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 17 May 2010 06:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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AILA bot can recognize objects' weight and fragility, render shelf stackers obsolete (video)

Vlad Savov — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 10:24:00 EST

Now, this isn't quite the height of innovation, but it's a pretty cool compilation of existing technologies nonetheless. The femme-themed AILA robot has an RFID reader in its left palm, which allows it to obtain non-visual information about the objects put in front of it. Based on that input, as well as data collected from its 3D camera and two laser scanners, AILA can intelligently deal with and transport all sorts of items, without the pesky need for a fleshy human to come along and give it further instructions. The good news is that it's a really slow mover for now, so if you do your cardio you should be able to run away from one in case of any instruction set malfunctions. See it on video after the break.

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Aikon 2 robot sketches the human face, uses its talent to meet girls

Joseph L. Flatley — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 15:56:00 EST

Yes, that's exactly what it looks like -- a robot that can look at a human face and make a pretty reasonable sketch of it. Featured at London's Kinetica art fair last week, the Aikon 2 project boasts an "inexpensive" robot arm and software developed by a research team at Goldsmiths University of London. As you might have guessed, building a device with rudimentary artistic ability is no mean feat -- leading the developers to try and understand and simulate the processes by which artists sketch the human face, including: visual perception of the subject and the sketch, drawing gestures, cognitive activity, reasoning, and the influence of training. The project's website emphasizes that "due to knowledge and technological limitations the implementation of each process will remain coarse and approximate." In other words, the robot "is expected to draw in its own style." Which is, quite frankly, better than we can do. We look forward to seeing these things in the cafes of the future, where robots not only fetch us drinks but chat up girls with offers to draw their portraits. Video after the break.

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Aikon 2 robot sketches the human face, uses its talent to meet girls originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 15 Feb 2010 15:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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IBM simulates cat's brain, humans are next

Vlad Savov — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:11:00 EST

Almost exactly a year ago we noted DARPA pouring nearly $5 million into an IBM project to develop a computer capable of emulating the brain of a living creature. Having already modeled half of a mouse's brain, the researchers were at that time heading toward the more ambitious territory of feline intelligence, and today we can report on how far that cash injection and extra twelve months have gotten us. The first big announcement is that they have indeed succeeded in producing a computer simulation on par, in terms of complexity and scale, with a cat's brain. The second, perhaps more important, is that "jaw-dropping" progress has been made in the sophistication and detail level of human brain mapping. The reverse engineering of the brain is hoped to bring about new ways for building computers that mimic natural brain structures, an endeavor collectively termed as "cognitive computing." Read link will reveal more, and you can make your own cyborg jokes in the comments below.

Filed under: Science

IBM simulates cat's brain, humans are next originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:11:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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MIT's Affective Intelligent Driving Agent is KITT and Clippy's lovechild (video)

Vlad Savov — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 04:48:00 EST

If we've said it once, we've said it a thousand times, stop trying to make robots into "friendly companions!" MIT must have some hubris stuck in its ears, as its labs are back at it with what looks like Clippy gone 3D, with an extra dash of Knight Rider-inspired personality. What we're talking about here is a dashboard-mounted AI system that collects environmental data, such as local events, traffic and gas stations, and combines it with a careful analysis of your driving habits and style to make helpful suggestions and note points of interest. By careful analysis we mean it snoops on your every move, and by helpful suggestions we mean it probably nags you to death (its own death). Then again, the thing's been designed to communicate with those big Audi eyes, making even our hardened hearts warm just a little. Video after the break.

Gallery: MIT's Affective Intelligent Driving Assistant

Continue reading MIT's Affective Intelligent Driving Agent is KITT and Clippy's lovechild (video)

Filed under: Robots

MIT's Affective Intelligent Driving Agent is KITT and Clippy's lovechild (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 30 Oct 2009 04:48:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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eviGroup's Pad is a 10-inch 3G tablet with personality

Vlad Savov — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:24:00 EST

Time to freshen up the old netbook market with a dash of Windows 7, a pinch of touchscreen functionality, and a generous helping of... Seline10? eviGroup, the crew responsible for the attractive 5-inch Wallet MID, has announced the 10.2-inch Pad, whose pièce de résistance is the Seline10 artificial intelligence software that's been in development for a decade, if you can believe it. Its purpose is to act as your secretary / assistant, and while the novelty's good, we all know how well Clippy worked out. Fret not though, it's just an optional extra and shouldn't detract from the appeal of a device that offers 3G and a/b/g WiFi connectivity, one VGA and three USB ports, multicard reader, webcam, microphone, and the old faithful 1.6GHz of Atom power. A price of under €500 is being touted, with further details set to emerge over the coming days.

Filed under: Handhelds

eviGroup's Pad is a 10-inch 3G tablet with personality originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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ROS: a common OS to streamline robotic engineering

Vlad Savov — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 01:01:00 EST

The biannual International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence has this year shed light on a new effort to standardize robot instructions around a common platform, so that designers won't have to "reinvent the wheel over and over" with every project. Presently, robot design is undertaken in an ad hoc fashion, with both hardware and software being built from scratch, but teams at Stanford, MIT and the Technical University of Munich are hoping to change that with the Robot Operating System, or ROS. This new OS would have to compete with Microsoft's robotics offering, but the general enthusiasm for it at the conference suggests a bright future, with some brave souls even envisioning a robot app store somewhere down the line. Video after the break.

Continue reading ROS: a common OS to streamline robotic engineering

Filed under: Robots

ROS: a common OS to streamline robotic engineering originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 13 Aug 2009 01:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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EATR robots claim to be vegetarian... sure

Vlad Savov — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 06:09:00 EST

Usually when we freak out about the coming of killer robots, nobody bothers to disagree with our histrionics, which is in itself a comforting sign that we're overreacting. On the other hand, if the makers of a chainsaw-wielding robot take the time to point out that it is not a flesh-eating harbinger of the apocalypse, well... Cyclone Power and Robotic Technologies, the companies behind the weaponized EATR drone, have put together a joint press release to comfort us all that the biomass-harvesting machine will be exclusively vegetarian, meaning it would only feed on "renewable plant matter" and not the bodies littering the battlefield. There's no reason not to believe them, though you should remember that in the eyes of a robot, humans are renewable too.

[Via Wired]

Filed under: Robots

EATR robots claim to be vegetarian... sure originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 21 Jul 2009 06:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Are memristors the future of Artifical Intelligence? DARPA thinks so

Joseph L. Flatley — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 05:54:00 EST

New Scientist has recently published an article that discusses the memristor, the long theorized basic circuit element that can generate voltage from a current (like a resistor), but in a more complex, dynamic manner -- with the ability to "remember" previous currents. As we've seen, HP has already made progress developing hybrid memristor-transistor chips, but now the hubbub is the technology's applications for artificial intelligence. Apparently, synapses have complex electrical responses "maddeningly similar" to those of memristors, a realization that led Leon Chua (who first discovered the memristor in 1971) to say that synapses are memristors, "the missing circuit element I was looking for" was with us all along, it seems. And of course, it didn't take long for DARPA to jump into the fray, with our fave DoD outfit recently announcing its Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics Program (SyNAPSE -- cute, huh?) with the goal of developing "biological neural systems" that can "autonomously process information in complex environments by automatically learning relevant and probabilistically stable features and associations." In other words, they see this as a way to make their killer robots a helluva lot smarter -- and you know what that means, don't you?

Read - New Scientist: "Memristor minds: The future of artificial intelligence"
Read - DARPA: "Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics"

Filed under: Science

Are memristors the future of Artifical Intelligence? DARPA thinks so originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 14 Jul 2009 05:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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