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

by Vladislav Savov posted Oct 30th 2009 at 4:48AM

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)

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

by Vladislav Savov posted Oct 26th 2009 at 2:24PM

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.

ROS: a common OS to streamline robotic engineering

by Vladislav Savov posted Aug 13th 2009 at 1:01AM

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

EATR robots claim to be vegetarian... sure

by Vladislav Savov posted Jul 21st 2009 at 6:09AM

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]

Are memristors the future of Artifical Intelligence? DARPA thinks so

by Joseph L. Flatley posted Jul 14th 2009 at 5:54AM

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"

EATR robots are coming, this isn't funny anymore

by Vladislav Savov posted Jul 10th 2009 at 9:02AM

Oh sure, we joke about rogue AI all the time, and we're aware that we'll probably pollute ourselves to death well before the robots get us, but who really thinks flesh-eating machines are a good idea? The (patently evil) scientists behind the EATR project -- no fair, they're making their own jokes now too -- have reached a new milestone in the development of the reconnaissance bot, successfully coupling a steam generator with a compact biomass furnace. It is now therefore possible for an autonomous machine to forage for and refuel itself with biomatter, otherwise known as soft, pulsating, yummy humans. They call it fuel versatility, as gasoline, diesel, and solar power may also be used if available, yet we'll offer no prizes for predicting which energy source these chainsaw-equipped robots will prefer.

[Via Switched]

Researchers develop a robot that reads your intentions, says you're 'thick'

by Joseph L. Flatley posted Jun 6th 2009 at 7:01AM

Robots won't be able to wrest control of the planet from us silly humans until they learn how to collaborate. Sure, they can mow the lawn or mix a drink, but only when you give 'em explicit instructions. Luckily for our future robot overlords, The EU's JAST project is studying the ways that humans work together, in the hope that it can someday teach robots to anticipate the actions and intentions of a human partner. "In our experiments the robot is not observing to learn a task," explains Wolfram Erlhagen from the University of Minho. "The JAST robots already know the task, but they observe behavior, map it against the task, and quickly learn to anticipate [partner actions] or spot errors when the partner does not follow the correct or expected procedure." This bad boy has a neural architecture that mimics what happens when two people interact, and the video below shows the rather melancholy automaton trying to convince his human partner to pick up the right pieces to complete a simple task. Watch it in action after the break.

Continue reading Researchers develop a robot that reads your intentions, says you're 'thick'

IBM's Watson to rival humans in round of Jeopardy!

by Darren Murph posted Apr 27th 2009 at 9:56AM

IBM's already proven that a computer from its labs can take on the world's best at chess, but what'll happen when the boundaries of a square-filled board are removed? Researchers at the outfit are obviously excited to find out, today revealing that its Watson system will be pitted against brilliant Earthlings on Jeopardy! in an attempt to further artificial intelligence when it comes to semantics and searching for indexed information. Essentially, the machine will have to be remarkably labile in order to understand "analogies, puns, double entendres and relationships like size and location," something that robotic linguists have long struggled with. There's no mention of a solid date when it comes to the competition itself, but you can bet we'll be setting our DVRs whenever it's announced. Check out a video of the progress after the break.

[Via The New York Times]

Continue reading IBM's Watson to rival humans in round of Jeopardy!

Artificial Intelligence solves boring science experiments, makes interns obsolete

by Joseph L. Flatley posted Apr 3rd 2009 at 10:47AM

Researchers at Aberystwyth University in Wales have developed a robot that is being heralded as the first machine to have discovered new scientific knowledge independently of a human operator. Named Adam, the device has already identified the role of several genes in yeast cells, and has the ability to plan further experiments to test its own hypotheses. Ross King, from the university's computer science department, remarked that the robot is meant to take care of the tedious aspects of the scientific method, freeing up human scientists for "more advanced experiments." Across the pond at Cornell, researchers have developed a computer that can find established laws in the natural world -- without any prior scientific knowledge. According to PhysOrg, they've tested the AI on "simple mechanical systems" and plan on applying it to more complex problems in areas such as biology to cosmology where there are mountains of data to be poured through. It sure is nice to hear about robots doing something helpful for a change.

[Thanks, bo3of]

Read: Robo-scientist's first findings
Read: Being Isaac Newton: Computer derives natural laws from raw data

Brown University, DARPA give iRobot's PackBot autonomy

by Joseph L. Flatley posted Mar 12th 2009 at 4:04AM

It's not easy to find research in the field of robotics without military applications (or military funding), and Brown University's latest is certainly no exception. Starting out with iRobot's PackBot (and some pocket change from DARPA and the Office of Naval Intelligence) researchers at the school have achieved several advances that will someday produce robots that follow both verbal and nonverbal commands from a human operator, indoors and out, without the need for a controlled environment or special clothing. The goal, according to Chad Jenkins, is to develop a robot that acts "like a partner. You don't want to puppeteer the robot. You supervise it, 'Here's your job. Now, go do it.'" The work is being presented this week at the Human-Robot Interaction conference in San Diego, but if you can't make it we've provided a video of the thing in action just for you (after the break). We for one salute our autonomous robot overlords.

[Via PhysOrg]

Continue reading Brown University, DARPA give iRobot's PackBot autonomy

Gesture recognizing QB1 computer attends to your every desire

by Darren Murph posted Mar 2nd 2009 at 9:04AM

Scouting a computer that's "attentive to one's desires?" Good news, friends! Frédéric Kaplan's QB1, which was unveiled at the LIFT Conference in Geneva this past week, aims to be just that. Reportedly, the machine was designed in order to "alter the fundamentals of human-machine interaction," and rather than relying on the traditional mouse and keyboard approach, this one works entirely via gestures. QB1 is capable of recognizing inputs from both hands at once, with one example having a human select a record and adjust the volume by simply flicking their fingers through an on-screen album collection. We're told that the related patents behind the sophisticated 3D gesture interaction technology have been filed, but there's no word yet on when we'll be able to actually buy one. 'Til then, it's up to you to handle those "desires" yourself.

[Via The Inquirer]

Navy report warns of robot uprising, suggests a strong moral compass

by Joseph L. Flatley posted Feb 18th 2009 at 5:55PM

You know, when armchair futurists (and jive talkin' bloggists) make note of some of the scary new tech making the rounds in defense circles these days it's one thing, but when the Doomsday Scenarios come from official channels, that's when we start to get nervous. According to a report published by the California State Polytechnic University (with data made available by the U.S. Navy's Office of Naval Research) the sheer scope of the military's various AI projects is so vast that it is impossible for anyone to fully understand exactly what's going on. "With hundreds of programmers working on millions of lines of code for a single war robot," says Patrick Lin, the chief compiler of the report, "no one has a clear understanding of what's going on, at a small scale, across the entire code base." And what we don't understand can eventually hunt us down and kill us. This isn't idle talk, either -- a software malfunction just last year caused US. Army robots to aim at friendly targets (fortunately, no shots were fired). The solution, Dr. Lin continues, is to teach robots "battlefield ethics... a warrior code." Of course, the government has had absolutely no problems with ethics over the years -- so programming its killer robots with some rudimentary values should prove relatively simple.

IBM develops computerized voice that actually sounds human

by Darren Murph posted Feb 2nd 2009 at 8:46AM

If there's one thing that still grates our nerves, it's automated calling systems. Or, more specifically, the robotic beings that simply fail to understand our slang and incomprehensible rants. IBM's working hard and fast to change all that, with a team at the company's Thomas J Watson research division developing and patenting a computerized voice that can utter "um," "er" and "yes, we're dead serious." The sophisticated system adds in the minutiae that makes conversation believable to Earthlings, and it's even programmed to learn new nuances and react to phrases such as "shh." The technology has been difficulty coined "generating paralinguistic phenomena via markup in text-to-speech syntheses," and while exact end uses have yet to be discussed publicly, we can certainly imagine a brave new world of automated CSRs.

Basil the Robot trained for symbolic recognition, beer toting

by Ross Miller posted Dec 22nd 2008 at 7:44PM

Though not much of a looker -- feel free to insert your own beer goggles joke here -- Basil the Robot is an experiment by Jim and Louise Gunderson to train an AI to identify its surroundings symbolically. That way, the couple hopes, he can react dynamically in new environments. Basil was intended to be shown off at a Cafe Scientifique meeting by having him go to the bar and order drinks for his creators, but that proved unsuccessful when Basil's battery died. The couple did videotape a successful trial run from the night before, which you can see after the break. Basil will next receive a microphone for voice commands and be upgraded from his current sonar navigation to a video sight system. The eventual goal is to teach Basil to go to the local brewery and pick up beer. Sure, we're still terrified of the robot revolution, but let's get serious here -- who are we to deny our mechanical overlords if they keep proffering us six-packs? Hit up the read link for the full story.

[Via Metafilter]

Continue reading Basil the Robot trained for symbolic recognition, beer toting

DARPA enlists IBM to build computer brain as smart as a cat

by Donald Melanson posted Nov 21st 2008 at 3:44PM

Researchers have long been trying to model actual brains in order to build a better computer "brain," and it looks like IBM is now getting a helping hand from none other than DARPA in its attempt to create one that it hopes will one day have the intelligence level of a cat. To that that somewhat unnerving end, DARPA is pouring $4.9 million into a project that'll include five universities and scientists of all stripes, who will work together to create an artificial brain that behaves like a real one right down to the neuron level. As the BBC reports, the researchers are describing this latest initiative as a "180 degree shift in perspective" from previous efforts, as they're now seeking an algorithm first and problems second, as opposed to starting with an objective and devising an algorithm to achieve it. As for DARPA's ultimate goal, well, that's still a bit of a mystery, though let's just say we won't be surprised if future robots start to become very easily distracted.

[Via Daily Tech, image courtesy Mack J, Truth and Beauty Bombs]