Singularity
Revising Asimov’s Three Laws
J. Storrs Hall is a noted scientist and author. He is chief scientist at Nanorex and has published extensively on the subject. His most recent book is titled Beyond AI: Creating the Conscience of the Machine (2007). Hall spoke at The Singularity Summit this morning on the topic of revising Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics. [...]
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[Exclusive] Rodney Brooks Keynote at Singularity Summit
The Singularity Summit is a two day event happening this weekend in San Francisco. The event is being hosted by SIAI, the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence. This event is follow-on to last year’s Singularity Summit 1 conducted at Stanford. Keynoting the event this morning was Rodney Brooks , of CSAIL and iRobot fame. Brooks [...]
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Harvard Makes Progress on “Biohybrid Materials for Soft Robotics”
A team of scientists in the Disease Biophysics Group at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences has been working on interfacing biological material such as heart muscle tissue with man-made polymers. The team has figured out how to grow muscle tissue in a structured way so as to be able to begin applying [...]
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Missing the Point with a Potentially Game-Changing Robot “Toy”
There was this Greek guy from Alexandria named Heron who lived in the first century A.D.. He invented a toy called an aeolipile, which means “wind ball” in Greek. It was a metallic ball with two curved tubes coming out at opposite ends of it. The idea was that you would fill it with water [...]
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New $37 Million Order for TALON EOD Robots, Spares
WALTHAM, MA, August 29, 2007 – Foster-Miller , Inc., a QinetiQ North America company, announced today that the Naval Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technology Division (NAVEODTECHDIV) in Indian Head, MD, has raised the ceiling of its $257 million IDIQ (indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity) contract to $290 million and ordered another $37 million of TALON® EOD robots and [...]
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Fear The Reaper
With 3750 lbs of armaments, a top speed of 300 mph, and the ability to circle the battlefield at 50,000 ft and stay aloft for 16 hours, the new squadron of Reaper unmanned aircraft recently deployed to Afghanistan unleash a new breed of hell on the conflict. As reported in USA Today and elsewhere, this [...]
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MIT, Xitome, UMASS Developing Robots that Learn in Social Contexts
MIT, Xitome Design, and UMASS Amherst are collaborating to develop a robot that combines novel mobility, “moderate dexterity, and human-centric communication and interaction abilities.” They refer to this class of robots as “MDS” for Mobile/Dexterous/Social. The purpose of this platform is to support research and education goals in human-robot interaction, teaming, and social learning. Thus, [...]
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You Might Feel Bad about Turning Off This Robot
Professor Rodney Brooks described a metric that might be used to determine when a robot can be considered alive. He said that a robot might be considered alive if his students felt bad about turning it off. By that criteria, scientists from Japan’s Osaka University are on the brink of making an artificial life form. [...]
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