Artificial Intelligence
Most airplane landings are less than graceful. The aircraft slowly maneuvers into an approach pattern, begins a long descent, and then slams on the brakes as soon as it touches down, which barely seems to barely bring it to a rest a mile later. Birds, however, can switch from barreling forward at full speed to lightly touching down on a target as narrow as a telephone wire. MIT researchers have now given a foam glider this same ability using a new control system that could have important implications for robotic planes, greatly improving their maneuverability and potentially allowing them to recharge their batteries simply by alighting on power lines. Read More
If there’s one thing that sports fans love to debate, it’s coaching strategies. “Why didn’t he keep more players back to play defense?” “How come he had him pass instead of run with it?” “He should never have let that guy bat when the bases were loaded!” Such discussions could seemingly go on forever, as it’s impossible to definitively say what the right course of action would have been... or maybe not. Artificial intelligence researchers at Spain’s Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) are developing technology that could analyze a team’s performance, then objectively determine the best plays for specific situations. Read More
If members of the armed forces are going to be regularly interacting with robots, and it seems likely that such will be the case, then they had better be comfortable around those robots. The last thing a soldier, pilot or sailor needs is to be staring at some creepy-looking humanoid machine, and saying, “Um, listen, I want you to... ah, screw it, I’ll do it myself.” That’s the thinking behind an initiative from the US Navy Center for Applied Research in Artificial Intelligence (NCARAI), which has been working on natural human-robot interaction. If sailors can communicate with a robot through human-to-human style speech and gestures, it is thought, then they will be able to concentrate more on the task at hand, and less on the interface. NCARAI’s latest attempt at an easy-to-relate-to robot, named Octavia, was presented to the public for the first time recently in New York City. Read More
With the latest attempt to stem the oil flow from the Deepwater Horizon oil well by pumping heavy drilling liquids into the well having failed, there is still no end in sight to the disaster that began more than a month ago. To help shed some light on where oil is spilling beneath the ocean surface and to aid biologists and others understand the effects of this catastrophic event, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute’s (MBARI’s) Division of Marine Operations has sent a high-tech robotic submersible to the oily waters of the Gulf. Read More
NASA’s Opportunity is a Mars Rover that just won’t die. In fact, Opportunity is just getting better – and smarter – with age. Originally slated for a 90-sol (that’s 90 Mars days) mission when it landed at Meridiani Planum on Mars on January 25, 2004, Opportunity is still turning up for work and functioning effectively in its seventh year on the red planet. And unlike some of us who are losing our faculties as we age, Opportunity has been given a new capability to make its own choices about whether to conduct additional observations of rocks that it spots on arrival at a new location. Read More
Gizmag recently took part in a virtual round table with futurist Dr James Canton and prosthetics expert Randall Alley to look at the role robots - particularly surrogate robots - will play in mankind’s future. The fascinating discussion ranged from the technology itself through to security issues and ethics surrounding the implementation of surrogate robots in our future societies. So when will you be able to send your robotic surrogate-self to the shop for a loaf of bread while you relax in front of the TV? Read More
The ease with which human beings make sense of their environment through a range of sensory signals belies the complex processing involved. Approaches to give robots the same purposeful perception we take for granted have typically involved studying visual and auditory processes independently. By combining data from both sound and vision European researchers have developed technology that could facilitate robotic understanding and responses to human behavior and even conversations, bringing us closer to a future where humanoid robots can act as guides, mix with people, or use perception to infer appropriate actions. Read More
The negative impact surrounding terrorism, crime and anti-social behavior has resulted in an escalation in the amount of remote surveillance undertaken around the world, but especially in the UK, which, according to the Centre for Secure Information Technologies (CSIT), has deployed more than 4 million CCTV cameras. Putting aside privacy issues for another article, the increase in CCTV usage has had very little success in preventing crime. The main problem seems to lie in the amount of video captured versus the amount that can be viewed and interpreted by trained staff. To overcome these shortcomings, UK researchers are investigating the use of computer technology that recognizes suspicious behavior in live Internet-enabled CCTV feeds from buses and trains, allowing control room staff to intervene and protect drivers and passengers from assaults, thefts and other incidents. Read More
Pilots routinely fly over remote stretches of ocean with almost no weather information, apart from a pre-flight briefing and updates every four hours. Yet this is where some of the worst turbulence and, as Air France Flight 447 tragically encountered on June 1, most intense weather occurs. The National Centre for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) is developing a new system that combines satellite data, weather models and A.I. to identify and predict rapidly evolving storms, enabling pilots to avoid areas of potentially severe turbulence. Read More
Bioengineers at Duke Univesity in North Carolina have developed a laboratory prototype of a robot that can locate and surgically extract shrapnel pieces from flesh without any kind of human supervision. Using 3-D ultrasound imaging as “eyes”, the tabletop robot was able to precisely locate tiny shards of metal and then successfully guide a needle to their exact location. Read More
