Robot with frog egg smell sensor

See original at PhysOrg.com

Microphones and webcams aren't the only ways for robots to get sensory input.

"Researchers from the University of Tokyo have invented a novel means of improving a robot's sense of smell, by using inexpensive olfactory sensors containing frog eggs."

Robots learning from experience

See original at ICT Results

Great example of "bottom-up" approaches to AI, which rely on statistical learning techniques to acquire knowledge, rather than attempting to hand-code it all explicitly.

"Software that enables robots to move objects about a room, building up ever-more knowledge about their environment, is an important step forward in artificial intelligence.

Some objects can be moved, while others cannot. Balls can be placed on top of boxes, but boxes cannot be stably stacked on top of balls. A typical one-year-old child can discover this kind of information about its environment very quickly. But it is a massive challenge for a robot – a machine – to learn concepts such as ‘movability’ and ‘stability’, according to Björn Kahl, a researcher at the Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University and a member of the Xpero robotics research project team.

The aim of the Xpero project was to develop a cognitive system for a robot that would enable it to explore the world around it and learn through physical experimentation."

20:20 Vision - the future for IT workers

See original at Computerworld

Especially interesting to me is the quote "combining a technology degree with business knowledge will lead them to the higher-paying areas of IT." Double major anyone? In any field?

"Computerworld - Information technology has always been a fast-changing field. But nothing compares to the expected sea changes in the next decade that will impact the career plans of every generation of IT worker.

'The rate of change has accelerated dramatically,' says Alain Chesnais, president of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and founder of Visual Transitions, which specializes in computer graphics and social networks. Consider, he says, that graphics chips are doubling in capacity every six months. That translates into a thousandfold increase in capacity over a five-year period -- the average shelf life of most game platforms. 'We've never seen anything like it in any industry,' he says."

“P vs NP” Finally Solved?

See original at Discover Magazine

The repercussions of proving P/=NP are interesting enough; but perhaps even more interesting is the way mathematics is being conducted in a public online forum.

"P is not equal to NP. Seems simple enough. But if it’s true, it could be the answer to a problem computer scientists have wrestled for decades.
Vinay Deolalikar, who is with Hewlett-Packard Labs, has sent to peers copies of a proof he did stating that P is not equal to NP. Mathematicians are reviewing his work now—a task that could go on for a long time. If he’s correct, Deolalikar will have figured out one of the Clay Mathematics Institute’s seven Millennium Prize Problems, for which they give $1 million prizes"

Grand unified theory of AI: Combining top-down with bottom-up

See original at Science Daily

In the 1950s and '60s, artificial-intelligence researchers saw themselves as trying to uncover the rules of thought. But those rules turned out to be way more complicated than anyone had imagined. Since then, artificial-intelligence (AI) research has come to rely, instead, on probabilities -- statistical patterns that computers can learn from large sets of training data.

The most well-known example of the top-down approach to AI is the Cyc project. I wonder how it could be combined with bottom-up approaches?

At The Extreme Edge Of Artificial Intelligence - Forbes.com

See original at Forbes.com

Think sentient computers are the stuff of science fiction? We have news for you.

The last couple of posts were a bit pessimistic; here's someone writing from the other side. Make sure to check out the link to 11 Leaders in Artificial Intelligence.

Dr. Robot?

See original at Duke University news

That's Dr. "Robot," not Dr. "Rohrbot" :-)

As physician-guided robots routinely operate on patients at most major hospitals, the next generation robot could eliminate a surprising element from that scenario -- the doctor.

Feasibility studies conducted by Duke University bioengineers have demonstrated that a robot -- without any human assistance -- can locate a man-made, or phantom, lesion in simulated human organs, guide a device to the lesion and take multiple samples during a single session. The researchers believe that as the technology is further developed, autonomous robots could some day perform many more simple surgical tasks.