artificial intelligence

Cheap Swarm Robots- enabled by cell phone technology

Patricia Larenas — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 21:52:55 -0700

Description

he concept of swarm robots is not new, but this innovation has the potential to make them cheap and easy to mass produce. The web was abuzz today with this announcement:

"A team of students led by Alexis Johnson at the University of Southampton's electronics and computer science school realized the tiny motors intended for cell phone vibration are already designed and manufactured to be attached to circuit boards making them ideally suited for use in swarm robots."

Furthermore:

"The new, inexpensive platform might also force robotics researchers to focus more on swarm robotics software development. Some students have already been addressing how software might effectively control thousands of robots at once by looking at the way "bacteria exchange code for drug resistance," Zauner said.""

The advantage of swarm robots is that they operate as a group towards a common goal- for example, to enter a building and check for hazardous conditions in a dispersed manner. They would communicate with each other to coordinate their mission, and if a few of them were disabled, the mission can still proceed. This approach has gained in favor since it is much more efficient and less risk than relying on one or two more complex and expensive bots to complete the job. Inspiration for swarm robots comes from insects- the behavior of bees, as an example.

This potentially game-changing innovation is to be able to mass produce them in an affordable manner with existing technology, such as the cell phone vibration motors. Accessibility often leads to unexpected and novel applications of technology. These bots will be demonstrated at the Artificial Life XI conference in the UK Aug. 5-8. http://www.alifexi.org/

Robotics

Source

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17912_3-10008243-72.html
http://www.alifexi.org/
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3204/03-talk.html Inspiration for swarm robots

Japan and Europe: Collaboration for Shaping the Future of Intelligent Bots

Patricia Larenas — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 12:48:00 -0700

Description

Japan, a long recognized leader in the field of robotics, and especially those that may replace the aging workforce, has established a strong collaboration with the European robotics community. A conference took place last March organized by the European Science Foundation (ESF) and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS). The conference was held in Japan, and was "targeted at young researchers actively working in the fields of cognitive science and robotics."

A description of the conference:
"The lecturers are eminent researchers leading the fields in Europe and Japan. The week-long series of lectures, discussions, and communication aim not only at providing young researchers with the state-of-the-art knowledge, but also at injecting them the fuel of intellectual curiosity to go beyond the crossroads."

Collaborations between cognitive scientists who study how humans learn and communicate, and robo-scientists, plus the international aspect, may pave the way for breakthrough advances that could push the field. Both Japan and Europe have expressed concern over the future of the workforce, therefore, have a shared mission.

Additionally, the emphasis on young researchers demonstrates an effort to provide mentoring and incentives for upcoming and future scientists.

What are the implications for US robotics research, as far as competitiveness?

Robotics

Source

http://www.innovations-report.com/html/reports/interdisciplinary_research/report-115117.html
www.esf.org/activities/esf-conferences/details/2008/confdetail231.html?0=
alphagalileo
www.esf.org

Xooglers becoming today's independent scientists

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 15:12:53 -0800

Description

CNet profiles a few early Google employees (or Xooglers, as ex-Google employees are caled) who are now doing other interesting things, including starting their own labs:

[Georges] Harik is investing in small companies like Wi-Fi company Meraki, and he's helping to develop a Web-based video conferencing company called Imo.im with his brother. Harkening back to his college studies of mathematical models of genetic algorithms, he's also opening a yet-to-be-named research lab in Palo Alto to develop artificial-intelligence software for the fields of biotech and medicine. He plans to invest about $100,000 in the lab this year.

[Scott Hassan's] Willow Garage, based in Menlo Park, Calif., stands out in Silicon Valley because it has no immediate ambition to make money. Rather, the mission is to make Willow Garage a hub for robotics development in the areas of personal assistants, autonomous boats, and driverless cars--with the hopes of attracting talent and partnerships across the country. The company is collaborating with Stanford in the robotics field, having donated $850,000 to its computer science lab. With Hassan's fortune, Willow Garage has plenty of time to develop new markets for robots.

This is another data-point in the emergence of the wealthy amateur as a force in science-- or at least in sciences closely allied to industries that are doing well.

Amateur, DIY, and citizen science

Source

http://www.news.com/Life-after-Google%2C-with-millions---page-2/2100-1030_3-6226900-2.html?tag=st.next
http://pimm.wordpress.com/2008/01/23/xoogler-goes-biotech/

Post-semantic web enhances society and the meaning of data

David Gutelius — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 16:57:31 -0800

Description

In 1999, Tim Berners-Lee first described the semantic web in this way: " I have a dream for the Web [in which computers] become capable of analyzing all the data on the Web – the content, links, and transactions between people and computers. A ‘Semantic Web’, which should make this possible, has yet to emerge, but when it does, the day-to-day mechanisms of trade, bureaucracy and our daily lives will be handled by machines talking to machines. The ‘intelligent agents’ people have touted for ages will finally materialize."

Since that time, there has been significant progress towards making such an idea reality (note Radar Networks' Twine, or Metaweb's Freebase). It has also become more tightly constrained and defined (e.g. Wikipedia's current definition: "The Semantic Web is an evolving extension of the World Wide Web in which web content can be expressed not only in natural language, but also in a format that can be read and used by software agents, thus permitting them to find, share and integrate information more easily.").

Going beyond RDF-related technologies OWL and other ontology frameworks, however, we may be approaching a post-semantic web phase of development of the Internet. It's not that the "semantic web" as Tim B-L dreamed it or Wikipedia defines has really fully appeared. In fact, I have a suspicion that in either case, it may never appear and function the way its proponents envision. For one, there is still deep disagreement over standards - for all its Sematicness, the community can't even agree on the semantics!

By post-semantic web, I do not mean that it has become irrelevant - but it is beginning to show signs of turning out far differently than anyone could have imagined.

We are now seeing advanced machine learning combined with natural language processing, social graph analysis, and data mining techniques that half a decade ago few could have imagined. These technologies are being put to use by incredibly powerful compute resources (particularly those in mesh or p2p networks) to pick up and analyze a tremendous array of "signals". By signals, I mean not just those most in vogue in "web 2.0" like tags or networks of friends, although these are new and valuable sources for machines to learn to serve people more effectively. I also mean "digital gestures" - small signals that convey meaning to others but differently than "natural language" typically conveys; examples might include symbology or avatars. We are becoming more expressive digitally, and we are now just beginning to be able to also harvest these expressions and have machines learn from them in order to adapt to us.

The artificial intelligence field has for many years been fascinated with the idea of autonomous agents - semi-stupid digital servants that can act on our behalf under certain circumstances. The recent push into probabilistic reasoning and advances in a particular subfield of AI called machine learning (a characteristically poor name for a field of inquiry, but oh well) has begun to produce something better than semi-stupid in terms of serving us users.

The promise of a post-semantic web goes beyond just a language and representation framework (the techno-wonk vision of the semantic web) or a series of agents that do things for people. It's really a combination of 1) the power of distributed computing, 2) the growing expressivity of digital life and the signals such a life leaves behind, and 3) a way for software to learn and adapt itself to serve users and the human communities that they belong to, better. The implications for such powerful applications are not that they necessarily do things for us (although that would be a useful side effect), but rather give us new cognitive, and perhaps social, capabilities that let us do what we humans already do - just more and better.

AAAI Symposium on Social Information Processing - http://www.aaai.org/Symposia/Spring/sss08symposia.php#ss06

iLink KDD - http://www.ai.sri.com/pub_list/1523

Radar Networks' Twine: http://www.radarnetworks.com/

Metaweb - http://www.metaweb.com/

Signals

Radar Networks: Twine

Machine-to-Machine Intelligence (m2mi) Corporation

Social Information Processing