Robot rights - a poser for the 21st century

Science | The Guardian Robot rights - a poser for the 21st century: "The fight against discrimination based on race, gender, class and sexuality may not yet be won, but experts in artificial intelligence are warning that this century societies will have to tackle a new prejudice - against individuals with brains made of silicon.

Even the most enthusiastic promoters of robot rights admit that it is likely to be mid-century before humanity has to grant legal rights to our creations, but they say we should start considering the problems now."

Shape-shifting magnetic bots take a page out of the Dharma playbook

Engadget Shape-shifting magnetic bots take a page out of the Dharma playbook: "Research is still in the early stages, but the concept renders are straight out of science fiction. Some friendly folks at Carnegie Mellon University are working towards electromagnetic microscopic bots that cling together and can assume virtually any shape."

Week in video: Robots of the future

CNET News.com Week in video: Robots of the future, technology today: "At the RoboDevelopment Conference and Exposition in San Jose, Calif., we get a look at some robotics that could make their way to the market in the next few years. Also, we have a special look at Tokyo, a city well-known for its efficiency and as an epicenter for technology."

Contact lenses with circuits, lights a possible platform for superhuman vision

University of Washington News and Information Contact lenses with circuits, lights a possible platform for superhuman vision: "Engineers at the University of Washington have for the first time used manufacturing techniques at microscopic scales to combine a flexible, biologically safe contact lens with an imprinted electronic circuit and lights.

'Looking through a completed lens, you would see what the display is generating superimposed on the world outside,' said Babak Parviz, a UW assistant professor of electrical engineering. 'This is a very small step toward that goal, but I think it's extremely promising.'"

New Games Merge Fantasy With Real World

FOXNews.com New Games Merge Fantasy With Real World: "'AR Facade' is an 'augmented reality' game, a genre that mixes a virtual world with physical reality. The technology is still emerging, though someday people may play such games with gear as simple as their cell phones."

Ray Kurzweil talks about 'augmented reality' and the Singularity

The Grill: Ray Kurzweil talks about augmented reality and the Singularity The computers will be watching what you watch, listening to what you’re saying, and they’ll be helping. So if you look at someone, little pop-ups will appear in your field of view, reminding you of who that is, giving you information about them, reminding you that it’s their birthday next Tuesday. If you look at buildings, it will give you information, it will help you walk around. If it hears you stumbling over some information that you can’t quite think of, it will just pop up without you having to ask.

About On-A-Slant Virtual Village - NSDU ATL

About On-A-Slant Virtual Village - NSDU ATL: "With support from the Fort Abraham Lincoln Foundation, the North Dakota State University Archeology Technologies Laboratory (ATL) has reconstructed the On-A-Slant Mandan Village using Virtual Reality technology. The remains of On-A-Slant village are located near Mandan, ND on the grounds of the Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park.

The On-A-Slant Virtual Village was modeled based on scholarly research of the site, the Native population, and the era. The Virtual Village is as historically accurate as the documentation allows. The slice of time presented to viewers is ca. 1776, five years before the village's abandonment in 1781."

Using VR to increase intelligence

ISRAEL21c: "Dr. David Passig is someone who could never being accused of living in the past. Living in the future, however, is a charge to which he would plead guilty.

Passig is a 'futurist' whose teaching and research involves concepts - like virtual reality - used to only talked about in science fiction novels. But while his methods may seem exotic, his goals are very real: finding better ways of helping people - particularly children - learn."

Augmented Reality: A New Way of Seeing

Augmented Reality: A New Way of Seeing: Scientific American: "What will computer user interfaces look like 10 years from now? If we extrapolate from current systems, it's easy to imagine a proliferation of high-resolution displays, ranging from tiny handheld or wrist-worn devices to large screens built into desks, walls and floors. Such displays will doubtless become commonplace. But I and many other computer scientists believe that a fundamentally different kind of user interface known as augmented reality will have a more profound effect on the way in which we develop and interact with future computers."

Howstuffworks "How Augmented Reality Will Work"

Howstuffworks "How Augmented Reality Will Work": "Video games have been entertaining us for nearly 30 years, ever since Pong was introduced to arcades in the early 1970s. Computer graphics have become much more sophisticated since then, and soon, game graphics will seem all too real. In the next decade, researchers plan to pull graphics out of your television screen or computer display and integrate them into real-world environments. This new technology, called augmented reality, will further blur the line between what's real and what's computer-generated by enhancing what we see, hear, feel and smell."

Our Lives, Controlled From Some Guy’s Couch

Our Lives, Controlled From Some Guy’s Couch - New York Times: "Until I talked to Nick Bostrom, a philosopher at Oxford University, it never occurred to me that our universe might be somebody else’s hobby. I hadn’t imagined that the omniscient, omnipotent creator of the heavens and earth could be an advanced version of a guy who spends his weekends building model railroads or overseeing video-game worlds like the Sims."

Top 10 Smart Technologies for Schools: Virtual Reality

techLEARNING.com "The next wave of VR promises experiences so real you can almost feel them."

Virtual Eve: first in human computer interaction

Massey News Article Virtual Eve: first in human computer interaction: "The near-human performance of a virtual teacher called Eve created by Massey researchers has drawn the attention of scientists across the computing world.

Eve is what is known in the information sciences as an intelligent or affective tutoring system that can adapt its response to the emotional state of people by interaction through a computer system.

The system “Easy with Eve” is thought to be the first of its type."

Pendulum Links Virtual Reality To Real System

Pendulum Links Virtual Reality To Real System: "What's nerdier than creating an online avatar that fights dragons and raids strongholds? Creating a virtual pendulum that you can sync up to your real-life pendulum. Leave it to physicists to do just that, resulting in a mixed reality state in which the two pendulums swing as one."

Mathematician Work To Make Virtual Surgery A Reality

Mathematician Work To Make Virtual Surgery A Reality: "A surgeon accidentally kills a patient, undoes the error and starts over again. Can mathematics make such science fiction a reality?"

'Virtual Iraq' Simulation To Study Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

'Virtual Iraq' Simulation To Study Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: "Weill Cornell Medical College researchers are using a virtual reality simulation called 'Virtual Iraq' to better understand how symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) develop. In their ongoing research trial, participating Iraq War and Gulf War veterans with and without PTSD are shown a brief, 3-D virtual-reality simulation of an urban combat scenario. They wear a headset, through which they hear, see, and — using a keypad — 'move' through a 'virtual world' in which images change in a natural way along with head and body movement."

Virtual Reality For Virtual Eternity

Virtual Reality For Virtual Eternity: "Imagine having a discussion with Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein on the nature of the universe, where their 3-D, life-sized representations looked you in the eye, examined your body language, considered voice nuances and phraseology of your questions, then answered you in a way that is so real you would swear the images were alive."

Getting There Faster With Virtual Reality

Getting There Faster With Virtual Reality: "Is the navigation system too complex? Does it distract the driver’s attention from the traffic? To test electronic assistants, their developers have to build numerous prototypes – an expensive and time-consuming business. Tests in a virtual world make prototypes unnecessary."

Virtual-Reality Video Game Helps Link Depression To Specific Brain Area

Virtual-Reality Video Game Helps Link Depression To Specific Brain Area: "Scientists are using a virtual-reality, three-dimensional video game that challenges spatial memory as a new tool for assessing the link between depression and the hippocampus, the brain's memory hub. Spatial memory is the memory of how things are oriented in space and how to get to them. Researchers found that depressed people performed poorly on the video game compared with nondepressed people, suggesting that their hippocampi were not working properly."

Coming Soon: The Most Realistic Virtual Reality Room In The World

Coming Soon: The Most Realistic Virtual Reality Room In The World: "You're high above the desert peaks. Your aircraft are approaching their targets. Information from instruments, cameras and radar is before your eyes. And with the help of 100 million pixels of bright and vivid virtual reality you're in control of a swarm of U.S. Air Force unmanned aerial vehicles."