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March 31, 2005
ANTS
"This prototype is the first step toward developing a revolutionary type of robot spacecraft with major advantages over current designs," said Dr. Steven Curtis, Principal Investigator for the ANTS project, a collaboration between Goddard and NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. Using advanced animation tools, Using advanced animation tools, Langley is developing rover operational scenarios for the ANTS project.
The robot is called "TETwalker" for tetrahedral walker, because it resembles a tetrahedron (a pyramid with 3 sides and a base). In the prototype, electric motors are located at the corners of the pyramid called nodes. The nodes are connected to struts which form the sides of the pyramid. The struts telescope like the legs of a camera tripod, and the motors expand and retract the struts. This allows the pyramid to move: changing the length of its sides alters the pyramid's center of gravity, causing it to topple over. The nodes also pivot, giving the robot great flexibility.
Read more at Physics.org & ANTS
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March 30, 2005
Adidas_1
Adidas announced Wednesday it would launch 'Adidas_1', artificial intelligence-based running shoes throughout the world simultaneously on April 1.
Adidas_1 is equipped with a microprocessor on the sole which works with the sensor and magnetic so that the shoes themselves can control the level of cushioning according to the runner’s weight and the state of the road.
Posted by Vishwakarma C. K. @ 05:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 29, 2005
Nanofactories
When the notion of nanotechnology first hit public consciousness a decade ago, exciting concepts of molecular-scale nanobots performing miraculous feats of engineering-or, in the nightmare scenario, self-replicating until they dominated the earth-seemed to be within reach. But the vision has since been scaled back considerably, with funded projects looking at the next generation of semiconductor manufacturing and with companies marketing nanocluster solutions for building new materials.
A genuine nanoscale fabrication capability might arrive soon that would transform industrial society, though not in the fashion initially envisioned, according to a study by Chris Phoenix, director of research at the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology (New York). Phoenix proposes a desktop nanofabrication system that could build industrial components from the molecular level up under programmable control. The concept blends traditional mass-production techniques with an assembler that would use a combination of chemistry and physical mechanics to assemble objects from individual atoms.
Posted by Vishwakarma C. K. @ 06:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 28, 2005
Black holes in production in New York
Researchers at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York have created a very short-lived, very tiny black hole, or at least, a fireball that behaved quite a lot like one for a millionth of a billionth of a billionth of a second.
The scientists at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) fired beams of gold nuclei into each other at relativistic speeds, creating a ball of plasma around 300m times hotter than the surface of the sun. According to Metro, a Daily Mail sister publication, some particles were then absorbed by the plasma in the same way that particles are absorbed by black holes.
Posted by Vishwakarma C. K. @ 10:20 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 27, 2005
Robo-pessimism: Hubble's last frontier
We are entering an age of introspection that requires all scientists to ponder, "Am I tomorrow's scrap metal? Will I be replaced by my creations? Is my university degree in quantum theory pointless?"
The technological philosophy of Karl Marx deserves some reconsideration, as it relates directly to the conflict America is currently facing regarding robo-pessimism. Marx warned that Capitalists would increasingly invest more in new technologies and less in labor. The human race is on the verge of toppling into the chasm of human-humanoid separation, and the ridge on which we stand today may provide the last vista of human dominance.
Posted by Vishwakarma C. K. @ 12:24 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 26, 2005
Homo Sapiens: deep-sea probes
Developing a robot that can independently quarry the secrets of the deep sea is Taro Aoki's dream.
For now, the closest he has come is the ``Urashima,'' an autonomous underwater vehicle developed by the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC) in Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture.
The real Urashima is loaded with state-of-the-art technology. Cable-less and unmanned, it travels underwater by drawing power from a fuel cell and following instructions from a built-in computer.
Posted by Vishwakarma C. K. @ 04:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 25, 2005
Softwares will read your Mind in Future!
The W.M. Keck Foundation has awarded Carnegie Mellon University a $750,000 grant to support research into how the human brain deciphers language, which could one day yield advances in the treatment of neurological disorders such as autism and dyslexia.
This multidisciplinary research is being conducted by Marcel Just, the D.O. Hebb Professor of Psychology, and Tom Mitchell, the Edward Fredkin Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Learning in the School of Computer Science. Using computer models to interpret the results of functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) brain scans, the researchers plan to develop a computational theory that describes the changes in brain activity over time during language comprehension and makes predictions about the subprocesses involved in word and sentence comprehension. They also will demonstrate how reading different words and sentences will produce variations in brain activity and how dysfunctions in specific brain regions influence the function of the entire brain system.
Posted by Vishwakarma C. K. @ 02:46 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 24, 2005
Bird: How far is the journey of faith?
As we are in the middle of the Lenten season, it is appropriate to reflect on matters of spiritual magnitude. What does it mean to us to have faith in God and have we begun that journey of faith? What is required to have a personal relationship with the creator of the universe? How far or what is the size of the distance from where we are to where God is?
Scientists have long been seeking to understand the size of the created world, from its smallest extent to its largest extent, from some portion of the atom to the full scope of the universe. How far is the journey inward to the smallest speck and how far is the journey outward to the remotest place in the universe?
In studying the universe, it is found that the observable universe (using the Hubble space telescope) is estimated at about 58,700,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles. This is arrived at by multiplying how old we think the universe is by the speed of light, since we can only see out to that distance from which light can have reached us since the universe began.
Posted by Vishwakarma C. K. @ 11:33 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 23, 2005
Martian Solar Eclipse
That dynamic duo on Mars, the Spirit and Opportunity rovers, are satellite watchers too.
Turning their respective camera systems up into the martian sky, the robots have caught sight of the moons of Mars - Phobos and Deimos - scooting across the face of the Sun.
Posted by Vishwakarma C. K. @ 07:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 21, 2005
Scientists Discover What You Are Thinking
By decoding signals coming from neurons, scientists at the California Institute of Technology have confirmed that an area of the brain known as the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (vPF) is involved in the planning stages of movement, that instantaneous flicker of time when we contemplate moving a hand or other limb. The work has implications for the development of a neural prosthesis, a brain-machine interface that will give paralyzed people the ability to move and communicate simply by thinking.
Posted by Vishwakarma C. K. @ 07:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Nanoworld
Taking a new approach to the painstaking assembly of nanometer-sized machines, a team of scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has successfully used single bacterial cells to make tiny bio-electronic circuits.
The work is important because it has the potential to make building the atomic-scale machines of the nanotechnologist far easier. It also may be the basis for a new class of biological sensors capable of near-instantaneous detection of dangerous biological agents such as anthrax.
Posted by Vishwakarma C. K. @ 07:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 20, 2005
A Dialectical-Materialist View of the Big Bang
The big bang, widely accepted in a variety of forms by most physical scientists today, was first put forward in rudimentary form by a Belgian priest-astronomer, Georges LeMaître, in 1927. LeMaître’s concept of an expanding universe (not yet as a consequence of a "big bang") was stimulated by the earlier discoveries of American astronomer Edwin Hubble and others that galaxies were in motion at high speeds and the work of the Soviet mathematician Alexander Friedmann, who showed that an expanding universe was a possible mathematical consequence of Einstein’s 1915 general theory of relativity. Astronomical observations established that the properties of the universe were essentially the same everywhere, independent of the position in the universe. Further work by Hubble showed that galaxies were moving away from each other at speeds related to the distance.
Posted by Vishwakarma C. K. @ 06:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 19, 2005
Can you outsmart an online brain?
It's not easy to outwit a computer.
Think you can do it? Play 20Q, an online version of 20 questions, to try.
The free game is the brainchild of Canadian Robin Burgener, who operates href="http://www.20q.net/">www.20q.net out of his basement. The online game tells players to think of an object -- anything imaginable, so long as it's not rude or a pronoun -- and then it starts asking questions.
Posted by Vishwakarma C. K. @ 04:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 18, 2005
NASA cuts threaten future of US aeronautics
The future of aeronautics research in the US is in serious jeopardy due to budget cuts, experts told a congressional committee on Wednesday.
At NASA, aeronautics research includes work on new aircraft designs, air traffic control and aviation safety. Over the next five years, NASA has proposed shutting down several wind tunnels and reducing its aeronautics workforce by about 2000 employees.
Posted by Vishwakarma C. K. @ 03:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 17, 2005
How to Talk to Aliens
There are currently various efforts going on around the world to receive signals from alien intelligences. These go by the general name of SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence). The basic idea is that sensitive radio telescopes are pointed at likely sources and record any radio signals they receive. These signals are then analysed to see if there is any indication that they might be artificially generated.
Unfortunately, there are many natural sources of radio waves in space, so it may be hard to pick out a message from the background noise. One of the main problems in SETI is the amount of computing power required to analyse the vast amount of data recorded by the radio telescopes. One ingenious solution is the SETI@home project. This involves installing a small program which runs in the background on your computer. When your computer has some idle time, it downloads some data from the Internet and starts analysing it, uploading the results when it has finished. By distributing the work amongst many computers (over five million people have joined the SETI@home project) everything proceeds a lot faster.
Posted by Vishwakarma C. K. @ 07:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 15, 2005
Sentient machines will raise human questions
There is very little left in the canon of science fiction that has not already been made a reality by the continuing advancement of scientific discovery. From cloning complex organisms to building supercomputers that can perform billions of calculations per second, many of the concepts and imaginings of various science-fiction creators have leapt from page and film into our everyday society.
Everything, that is, except machines that can truly think and feel as we can. Surely, though, that could never be done. Surely, humanity could never be duplicated artificially. This notion will always be relegated to the realm of fiction and fantasy.
Posted by Vishwakarma C. K. @ 04:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 14, 2005
'Millipede' small scale MEMS
Given the rapidly increasing data volumes that are downloaded onto mobile devices such as cell phones and PDAs, there is a growing demand for suitable storage media with more and more capacity. At CeBIT, IBM for the first time shows the prototype of the MEMS*- assembly of a nanomechanical storage system known internally as the "millipede" project. Using revolutionary nanotechnology, scientists at the IBM Zurich Research Laboratory, Switzerland, have made it to the millionths of a millimeter range, achieving data storage densities of more than one terabit (1000 gigabit) per square inch, equivalent to storing the content of 25 DVDs on an area the size of a postage stamp.
Posted by Vishwakarma C. K. @ 07:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 13, 2005
Scra-Scra-Scratching Thin Air
Researchers at Hewlett-Packard are developing a DJ track-mixing and scratching device they believe to be as significant to music as was the first electric guitar.
HP's DJammer is a prototype handheld gadget DJs can use to mimic the sound of scratching vinyl simply by moving the device around. So, if the operator makes a scratching motion in the air, arrays of internal motion sensors translate movement into music, and the DJammer "scratches" the music as though the DJ were manipulating a record.
Posted by Vishwakarma C. K. @ 03:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 12, 2005
Robot swarms invade Japan!
Ms. Saya, a perky receptionist in a smart canary-yellow suit, beamed a smile from behind the "May I Help You?" sign on her desk, offering greetings and answering questions posed by visitors at a local university. But when she failed to welcome a workman who had just walked by, a professor stormed up and dished out a harsh reprimand.
Posted by Vishwakarma C. K. @ 07:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 11, 2005
AI and the law
Given the choice, who would you rather trust to safeguard your future: a bloodsucking lawyer or a cold, calculating computer? Granted, it's not much of a choice, since neither lawyers nor computers are renowned for their compassion. But it is a choice that you may well encounter in the not-too-distant future, as software based on artificial intelligence (AI) starts to dispense legal advice.
Posted by Vishwakarma C. K. @ 05:44 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 10, 2005
Nuts-and-bolts world
Creators of animated movies are routinely asked to fashion characters, stories, maybe an occasional new animal or creature. As in, let's meet the inhabitants of Andy's room ("Toy Story"), or explore deep waters with clown fish Marlin ("Finding Nemo"). Come along for the ride and see how we've re-imagined a world that you think you know.
When "Robots" opens nationally tomorrow, it will be the culmination of a dream for Shreveporter William Joyce. This celebrated author and illustrator of children's books will have envisioned an entirely new world for the big screen.
Posted by Vishwakarma C. K. @ 02:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 09, 2005
Thinking robots – not quite yet
Noel Sharkey is in the mood to debunk a few myths.
The 56-year-old professor of computer science at Sheffield University is at the forefront of robotic technology in this country and there's a few things he wants to get off his chest.
"Everybody wants to hear that robots are going to take over the world but it's not going to happen," he says.
"You get a lot of scientists, particularly American scientists, saying that robotics is about at the level of the rat at the moment, I would say it's not anywhere near even a simple bacteria."
With his gentle Irish lilt, long grey hair held back in a ponytail, this softly-spoken 56-year-old grandfather appears every bit the wacky scientist – he looks somewhere between The Fast Show's mad professor, Denzil Dexter, and a Grateful Dead fan.
Posted by Vishwakarma C. K. @ 05:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 08, 2005
TechSpin: AI for your email
Microsoft has not given up on artificial intelligence—adaptive software that attempts to mimic the working of the human mind. In fact the company's 14-person Adaptive Systems and Interaction Group is working on a number of prototypes, including one that will go through your email and decide which messages are important enough to forward to you via mobile phone. The program is part of a larger project developing software that analyzes incoming messages, weighs their relative importance against what the recipient is doing at any given moment, then makes a decision whether to pass them along immediately or wait until a better time. If the user is on vacation, for instance, the program raises the importance bar and will forward only messages it deems of the highest urgency.
Posted by Vishwakarma C. K. @ 06:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 07, 2005
Smarter robots of tomorrow
An eight-legged Scorpion robot prototype is now under evaluation at NASA Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley, where scientists are analyzing how similar robots someday may explore planets.
Scientists say descendants of the dog-sized Scorpion robot, able to climb over boulders and rappel on cables down cliffs, may help explore Mars. Scorpion's inventor, Professor Frank Kirchner, is developing a second prototype at the University of Bremen in Germany.
"The most interesting scientific sites on Mars are not on very easy terrains," said Silvano Colombano, a scientist and the NASA collaborator on the Scorpion robot project at NASA Ames. "Very often, the sites that are interesting are on the sides of a cliff, for instance, or very rocky areas. So we need the kind of robot that can go into these areas, look at the geology and pick up samples that are difficult or impossible for a rover, which is about the size of a small car, to go into," Colombano explained.
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March 06, 2005
Brain reconstruction hints at 'hobbit' intelligence
Analysis of the diminutive cranium of Homo floresiensis - a tiny hobbit-like human that lived in Indonesia just 13,000 years ago - confirms it as a unique species and reveals remarkably advanced features for such a small brain.
The skull and other bones of one female and fragments from up to six other specimens were discovered in caves on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2003 and revealed to the world in October 2004. The remarkably petite human stood just a metre tall and had a brain about one-third the size of modern humans.
Posted by Vishwakarma C. K. @ 12:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 05, 2005
The Bleeding Edge of Computing
Guosong Liu, a neuroscientist at the Picower Center for Learning and Memory at MIT, has unlocked a secret about the computing functions of the human brain.
Whereas computers process information using a binary system of zeros and ones, the neuron, Liu discovered, communicates its electrical signals in trinary code -- using zeros, ones and minus ones. This allows additional interactions to occur during processing; two signals can add together or cancel each other out, or different pieces of information can link up or try to override one another.
Posted by Vishwakarma C. K. @ 03:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 04, 2005
It really is rocket science
When computer science professor Bart Massey came to Portland State, he saw a sign that read, "Do you want to build rockets?"
"I thought to myself that either those guys were real dorks or they were doing something really cool," Massey said.
The group was the Portland State Aerospace Society (PSAS), and apparently what they were doing was cool, because Massey is now the faculty advisor. PSAS has a simple vision statement: they plan to put nano-satellites into orbit using rockets.
Posted by Vishwakarma C. K. @ 07:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 03, 2005
NIST-UCSB Scientists Entice Superconducting Devices
Two superconducting devices have been coaxed into a special, interdependent state that mimics the unusual interactions sometimes seen in pairs of atoms, according to a team of physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). The experiments, performed at the NIST laboratory in Boulder, Colo., are an important step toward the possible use of “artificial atoms” made with superconducting materials for storing and processing data in an ultra-powerful quantum computer of the future.
Posted by Vishwakarma C. K. @ 08:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
DNA Wires
Researchers at Purdue University have attached magnetic "nanoparticles" to DNA and then cut these "DNA wires" into pieces, offering the promise of creating low-cost, self-assembling devices for future computers.
Findings are detailed in a paper published online in February in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. The paper was written by Purdue graduate student Joseph M. Kinsella and Albena Ivanisevic, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering and chemistry at Purdue.
Posted by Vishwakarma C. K. @ 07:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 02, 2005
A Brilliant Mind and an Anguished Life
It is hardly the greatest scientific mystery of the 20th century, but it is a riddle just the same: why did Norbert Wiener - gray eminence of gray matter, inventor of cybernetics, founding theorist of the information age - abandon his closest young colleagues just as they were about to embark on an exciting new collaboration on the workings of the brain?
Posted by Vishwakarma C. K. @ 06:05 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 01, 2005
Electroactive Polymer Artificial Muscles
Because of their ability to act in the manner of biological muscles, electroactive polymers (EAPs) have earned the nickname "artificial muscles." JPL, in collaboration with research institutions throughout the world, is working to improve the understanding of the mechanisms that are responsible for the electroactive effect. We are also searching for ways to improve the performance of EAPs and find applications where their unique capabilities can be used.
Posted by Vishwakarma C. K. @ 11:28 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
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