Seen on Alterslash

Hugh Pickens writes: “Scientific American reports that a new device called ‘BrainPort’ aims to restore the experience of vision for the blind and visually impaired by relying on the nerves on the tongue’s surface to send light signals to the brain. BrainPort collects visual data through a small digital video camera and converts the signal into electrical pulses sent to the tongue via a ‘lollipop’ that sits directly on the tongue, where densely packed nerves receive the incoming electrical signals. White pixels yield a strong electrical pulse and the electrodes spatially correlate with the pixels, so that if the camera detects light fixtures in the middle of a dark hallway, electrical stimulations will occur along the center of the tongue. Within 15 minutes of using the device, blind people can begin interpreting spatial information. ‘At first, I was amazed at what the device could do,’ says research director William Seiple. ‘One guy started to cry when he saw his first letter.’” There is some indication that the signals from the tongue are processed by the visual cortex. The company developing the BrainPort will submit it to the FDA for approval later this month, and it could be on sale (for around $10,000) by the end of the year.

Read the Scientific American article.

My friend Tony [stockholm] has a video on the information and technology explosion. I would link you to his site, but you have to be a melo member, so this is the youtube link.

The figures in it are pretty astounding. Take a look. :)



>>DID YOU KNOW?

And the song with it is good too: 'Right here, Right now' by Fatboy Slim

By Leo Lewis in California
Independent.ie
Monday February 16, 2009

Autonomous military robots that will fight future wars must be programmed to live by a strict "warrior code" or the world risks untold atrocities at their steely hands.

The stark warning -- which includes discussion of a Terminator-style scenario in which robots turn on their human masters -- is issued in a hefty report funded by and prepared for the US Navy's hi-tech and secretive Office of Naval Research.

The report, the first serious work of its kind on military robot ethics, envisages a fast-approaching era where robots are smart enough to make battlefield decisions that are at present the preserve of humans. Eventually, it notes, robots could come to display significant cognitive advantages over human soldiers.

"There is a common misconception that robots will do only what we have programmed them to do," Patrick Lin, the chief compiler of the report, said.

Testing

The reality, Dr Lin said, was that modern programmes included millions of lines of code and were written by teams of programmers, none of whom knew the entire programme. Accordingly, no individual could accurately predict how the various portions of large programmes would interact without extensive testing in the field -- an option that may either be unavailable or deliberately sidestepped by the designers of fighting robots.

The solution, he suggests, is to mix rules-based programming with a period of "learning" the rights and wrongs of warfare.

The report, compiled by the Ethics and Emerging Technology department of California State Polytechnic University, strongly warns the US military against complacency or shortcuts as military robot designers engage in the "rush to market" and the pace of advances in artificial intelligence is increased.

A simple ethical code along the lines of the "Three Laws of Robotics" postulated in 1950 by Isaac Asimov, the science fiction writer, will not be sufficient to ensure the ethical behaviour of autonomous military machines.

Dr Lin said: "We are going to need a warrior code." (The Times, London)

By Joel Warner
Denver Westword News
December 17, 2008

When people ask Jim and Louise Gunderson if they have kids, they reply, "No, we have robots." But right now, Louise feels like any other harried mother carrying a kilo of toys and bottles and diapers wherever she goes. Today is the first big day out for her little one, and she's brought along everything Basil the robot may need. That includes a laptop in case they have to mess with his code, an impressively large wrench and a couple of screwdrivers if they have to tinker with his hardware, an extension cord for when he gets hungry, and super glue — lots and lots of super glue.

The adhesive's already proven vital: A little while ago, one of Basil's wheels fell off and they had to glue the sucker back on. "I sympathize with people with kids," says Louise. "We're going to have to make custom carriers for all this gear."

They can't bother with that now, though. They're in the back meeting room of the Wynkoop Brewing Company downtown, and in just over an hour they'll be surrounded by the legion of science and technology buffs that get together here ten times a year for Cafe Scientifique, a wildly popular beer- and curiosity-fueled colloquium on far-ranging science topics. The Gundersons will have the spotlight, detailing their work at Gamma Two Inc., the tiny Denver-based robotics research and design company they started in 2003.

Basil with his makers

They're looking spiffy for the occasion, their long hair — Jim's is orange, and Louise's is brown with a streak of gray — tidily done up in ponytails. But they both know the real star today is Basil, their latest creation, here to strut his stuff.

In truth, Basil (his name rhymes with "dazzle") isn't all that exciting to look at. Standing just about waist-high, he resembles a shiny upside-down salt shaker on wheels. He has no arms, no legs — not even eyes, unless you count the twelve sonar banks flickering up and down his aluminum chest that capture a rough outline of his surroundings. But looks can be deceiving. Under the hood, Basil is hot stuff — maybe even revolutionary. The Gundersons claim to have possibly solved one of the most challenging problems in robotics, and just a few weeks ago, they published an entire book, Robots, Reasoning and Reification, about it. ( >>Continue reading )

They can entertain children, feed the elderly, care for the sick. But warnings are being sounded about the march of robots

Irish Independent
Friday December 19, 2008

The robots are not so much coming; they have arrived. But instead of dominating humanity with superior logic and strength, they threaten to create an underclass of people who are left without human contact.

The rise of robots in the home, in the workplace and in warfare needs to be supervised and controlled by ethical guidelines which limit how they can be used in sensitive scenarios such as baby-sitting, caring for the elderly, and combat, a leading scientist warns today.

Sales of professional and personal service robots worldwide were estimated to have reached about 5.5 million this year – and are expected to more than double to 11.5 million by 2011 – yet there is little or no control over how these machines are used. Some help busy professionals entertain children; other machines feed and bathe the elderly and incapacitated.

Professor Noel Sharkey, an expert on artificial intelligence based at the University of Sheffield, warns that robots are being introduced to potentially sensitive situations that could lead to isolation and lack of human contact, because of the tendency to leave robots alone with their charges for long periods.

"We need to look at guidelines for a cut-off so we have a limit to the contact with robots," Professor Sharkey said. "Some robots designed to look after children now are so safe that parents can leave their children with them for hours, or even days."

More than a dozen companies based in Japan and South Korea manufacture robot "companions" and carers for children. For example, NEC has tested its cute-looking personal robot PaPeRo on children: the device lives at home with a family, recognises their faces, can mimic their behaviour and be programmed to tell jokes, all the while exploring the house. Many robots are designed as toys, but they can also take on childcare roles by monitoring the movements of a child and communicating with a parent in another room, or even another building, through wireless computer connection or mobile phone.

"Research into service robots has demonstrated a close bonding and attachment by children, who, in most cases, prefer a robot to a teddy bear," Professor Sharkey said. "Short-term exposure can provide an enjoyable and entertaining experience that creates interest and curiosity. But because of the physical safety that robot minders provide, children could be left without human contact for many hours a day or perhaps several days, and the possible psychological impact of the varying degrees of social isolation on development is unknown." Less playful robots are being developed to look after elderly people. Secom makes a computer called My Spoon which helps disabled people to eat food from a table. Sanyo has built an electric bathtub robot that automatically washes and rinses someone suffering from movement disability.

"At the other end of the age spectrum [to child care], the relative increase in many countries in the population of the elderly relative to available younger care-givers has spurred the development of elder-care robots," Professor Sharkey said.

"These robots can help the elderly to maintain independence in their own homes, but their presence could lead to the risk of leaving the elderly in the exclusive care of machines without sufficient human contact. The elderly need the human contact that is often provided only by caregivers and people performing day-to-day tasks for them."

In the journal Science, Professor Sharkey calls for ethical guidelines to cover all aspects of robotic technology, not just in the home and workplace, but also on the battlefield, where lethal robots such as the missile-armed Predator drones used in Iraq and Afghanistan are already deployed with lethal effect. The US Future Combat Systems project aims to use robots as "force multipliers", with a single soldier initiating large-scale ground and aerial attacks by a robot droid army. "Robots for care and for war represent just two of many ethically problematic areas that will soon arise from the rapid increase and spreading diversity of robotics applications," Professor Sharkey said. "Scientists and engineers working in robotics must be mindful of the potential dangers of their work, and public and international discussion is vital in order to set policy guidelines for ethical and safe application before the guidelines set themselves."

The call for controls over robots goes back to the 1940s when the science-fiction author Isaac Asimov drew up his famous three laws of robotics. The first rule stated that robots must not harm people; the second that they must obey the commands of people provided they does not conflict with the first law; and the third law was that robots must attempt to avoid harming themselves provided this was not in conflict with the two other laws.

Asimov wrote a collection of science fiction stories called I, Robot which exploited the issue of machines and morality. He wanted to counter the long history of fictional accounts of dangerous automatons – from the Jewish Golem to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein – and used his three laws as a literary device to exploit the ethical issues arising from the human interaction with non-human, intelligent beings. But late 20th-century predictions about the rise of machines endowed with superior artificial intelligence have not been realised, although robot scientists have given their mechanical protégés quasi-intelligent traits such as simple speech recognition, emotional expression and face recognition.

Professor Starkey believes that even dumb robots need to be controlled. "I'm not suggesting like Asimov to put ethical rules into robots, but to just to have guidelines on how robots are used," he said. "Current robots are not bright enough even to be called stupid. If I even thought they would be superior in intelligence, I would not have these concerns. They are dumb machines not much brighter than the average washing machine, and that's the problem."

Isaac Asimov: The three laws of robotics

The science fiction author Isaac Asimov, who died in 1992, coined the phrase "robotics" to describe the study of robots. In 1940, Asimov drew up his three laws of robotics, partly as a literary device to exploit the ethical issues arising from the interaction with intelligent machines.

• First Law: a robot must not harm a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to be harmed.

• Second Law: a robot must obey the commands of human beings, except where the orders conflict with the first law.

• Third Law: a robot must protect its own existence so long as this does not conflict with the first two laws.

Later on, Asimov amended the laws by adding two more. The "zeroth" law stated that a robot must not harm humanity, which deals with the ethical problem arising from following the first law but in the process putting other human beings at risk.

Asimov also added a final "law of procreation" stating that robots must not make other robots that do not follow the laws of robotics.

Daily Mail
26th August 2008

A man who has been paralysed for the past 20 years is able to walk again thanks to a revolutionary electronic exoskeleton.

Radi Kaiof, 41, now walks down the street with a dim mechanical hum as the system moves his legs and propels him forwards.

Radi Kaiof walks using an electronic exoskeleton. It is due to go on sale in 2010

'I never dreamed I would walk again. After I was wounded, I forgot what it's like,' said Kaiof, who was injured while serving in the Israeli military in 1988.

'Only when standing up can I feel how tall I really am and speak to people eye to eye, not from below.'

The device will allow many wheel-chair bound people to stand

The device, called ReWalk, is the brainchild of engineer Amit Goffer, founder of Argo Medical Technologies, a small Israeli high-tech company.

Something of a mix between the exoskeleton of a crustacean and the suit worn by Robocop, ReWalk helps paraplegics - people paralysed below the waist - to stand, walk and climb stairs.

Goffer himself was paralysed in an accident in 1997 but he cannot use his own invention because he does not have full function of his arms.

The system, which requires crutches to help with balance, consists of motorized leg supports, body sensors and a back pack containing a computerized control box and rechargeable batteries.

The user picks a setting with a remote control wrist band - stand, sit, walk, descend or climb - and then leans forward, activating the body sensors and setting the robotic legs in motion.

'It raises people out of their wheelchair and lets them stand up straight,' Goffer said.

'It's not just about health, it's also about dignity.'

Kate Parkin, director of physical and occupational therapy at NYU Medical Centre, said it has the potential to improve a user's health in two ways.

'Physically, the body works differently when upright. You can challenge different muscles and allow full expansion of the lungs,' Parkin said.

'Psychologically, it lets people live at the upright level and make eye contact.'

The ReWalk is now in clinical trials in Tel Aviv's Sheba Medical Centre. It is due to go on sale to the public in 2010 and will cost around £10,000.

Scientists will meet today to debate the latest techniques for creating artificial life - and in the process, hope to solve one of the key riddles of evolution. Roger Highfield investigates

Telegraph.co.uk
5 August 2008

Web pages have 'come alive and started breeding'

Artificial life being created

Robot that can build itself to be unveiled

Is evolution about to enter a new phase? Today, 300 biologists, computer scientists, physicists, mathematicians, philosophers and social scientists from around the world are gathering in Winchester. Their aim is to address one of the greatest challenges in modern science: how to create a genuine artificial life form.

The idea that life owes its existence to some "vital essence" or "animating spark" has long been discredited in scientific circles. Instead, it is believed that the first living thing emerged after a chemical reaction crossed the watershed that divides inanimate objects from the kind of self-replicating "organic" reactions that run our cells.

Photo: Intelligent design: self-aware computers such as Pixar’s Wall-E are surprisingly tricky to put together

Researchers into artificial life, or "ALife", take two basic approaches. In "wet" ALife, scientists either tinker with microbes and other forms of simple life, or try to cook up cocktails of chemicals on water (hence "wet") that have the capacity to extract energy and raw materials from the environment, to grow and reproduce, and ultimately to evolve. Meanwhile, "in silico" ALifers use silicon chips to try to kindle the spark of life in the heart of a computer.
( >>Continued )

'I do, Robot.' Technical advances lead to very close relationships with robots.

Sharon Gaudin (Computerworld)
PC World

An artificial intelligence researcher predicts that robotics will make such dramatic advances in the coming years that humans will be marrying robots by the year 2050.

Robots will become so human-like -- having intelligent conversations, displaying emotions and responding to human emotions -- that they'll be very much like a new race of people, said David Levy, a British artificial intelligence researcher whose book, "Love and Sex with Robots," will be released on November 6 [last year].

Gone, he says, will be the jerky movements and artificial-sounding voices generally associated with robots. These will be highly human-like machines that people fall in love with, becoming aides, friends and even spouses.

It may sound like science fiction, but Levy, who turned his book into an academic Ph.D. dissertation at Maastricht University in The Netherlands this fall, said it's something we've been moving toward for decades now.

"Robots started out in factories making cars. There was no personal interaction," said Levy, who also is an International Chess Master who has been developing computer chess games for years. "Then people built mail cart robots, and then robotic dogs. Now robots are being made to care for the elderly. In the last 20 years, we've been moving toward robots that have more relationships with humans, and it will keep growing toward a more emotional relationship, a more loving one and a sexual one."

Yes, Levy was quick to say that humans will have sexual relationships with robots, perhaps within five years -- sooner than most might think. ( >>Read on )

Machine's computer will help surgeons get a perfect fit for new joint

Denis Campbell, Health Correspondent
The Observer
Sunday June 15, 2008

British doctors have helped to create a surgical robot that will revolutionise treatment for the 160,000 people a year who are given a new knee or hip.

The Sculptor robot enables surgeons to install replacement joints in exactly the right place and removes the risk of them not fitting properly. Ill-fitting joints can cause patients pain and force them to undergo corrective operations. Sensors in the positioning arm of the Sculptor tell the computer where the surgeon is cutting away bone.

The machine stops surgeons from making a mistake while they are removing the old, worn bone in an arthritic knee by disabling their mechanised cutting tool if they stray outside the area shown in a model of the knee in its computer. It is the first orthopaedic surgical tool to use this 'actively constraining' technology, which has been developed after 15 years of research by a team of engineers, computer scientists and doctors at Imperial College London. The team was led by Professor Justin Cobb and Professor Brian Davies.

( >>Read on )