Wednesday, September 27, 2006

New Blog

This post is just to inform everyone reading that I've set up the new Robots and AI blog !

I think it will provide a lot more customization and control.

New posts are already available, and more on the way.
No new posts will be here.

See you on the new site!

David


Sunday, September 10, 2006

Volunteer Cyborg

For at least a decade, if not two, I've been threatening to replace one of my eyes with a camera attached to a hard drive, and it looks like it might be coming along any day now!

Unfortunately it's Micro$oft (maybe I'll wait for the competition), but they are working on something called "SenseCam" which will do exactly that! It's a camera that continuously takes pictures.. storing them on a hard drive or sending them to the internet. The main goal is to help people retain better memories.

Beyond therapeutic uses, both Wood and Bell predicted that people would chose to record more and more of their lives as the technology became available

.. and yes... they are reading my mind particularly well... just as other sites like MySpace, YouTube, various blogs, etc are showing that people ARE already falling in to that predictable pattern.

As for capabilities... sure.. your human eye is pretty good... even GREAT! But just imagine if you also had the ability for infra-vision, night-vision, or totally INCREDIBLE ZOOM. The Gigapxl Project has already created a camera that is taking massively large (detailed) images:

the camera captures images at 4 gigapixels -- a resolution high enough to photograph four football fields and capture every single blade of grass.

Here we can see an image they took, and zoomed in, and in again, and again... where we can perfectly see people sitting on a cliff from such a distance that they don't even show up in the full, overview image. Just think if your eye could take pictures at THAT detail, and then a computer could scan at the lowest, most detailed level for things of "interest" (perhaps using face recognition), and then displaying those things back to you at your convenience? WOW!
Sure, the camera is large right now, but as technology advances, these cameras will shrink.


I suppose another really handy feature will be when they fix up the software (image tagging) features so I (or allowed guests) can sort/search for specific images based on recognized/tagged items and people or time/date stamps.

Also, I might start looking in to some Exoskeletons for Human Performance Augmentation, which the US Defense Advanced Research Project (DARPA) is funding so that I can run extra long distances, jump super high, or anything needing extra strength, speed and endurance.

I'm READY!!
Sign me up!


Monday, September 04, 2006

Pleo: the artificial lifeform

I think I may have post before on my FIRM intent to buy a Pleo as SOON as humanly possible. The idea of a robotic pet with a self-learning AI for under $250 is just too good to pass up!

I've been waiting for about a year now. It was suppose to come out this fall, in time for the Christmas shopping, but now looks like it's been pushed back to March, but maybe that's not all a bad thing!

When I was first looking over the specs, I could not believe what I saw.. all these cool touch sensors, sound sensors, edge detection... but.. wait.. what's this... NO CAMERA (eyes) ?? How easy would it have been to put a little webcam in there? Wireless would be nice, and one I could view from my laptop, or set up on a webpage where I (or anyone) could look through my Pleo's eyes! So, I wrote to them about this.

Guess what?! Looks like they are now adding a camera and again!
Using a camera installed in its nose, it sees and tracks faces and locations.
Of course, I'm not suggesting it was ALL due to my email..... and, in fact, I have read that the camera might only going to be for light/range finding/face tracking, but perhaps there is more to it, or maybe it can be software upgraded later? Whatever the reason, I'm happy to wait a few more months if it's going to mean having a few more features. :)


In the mean time, all this extra research DID cause me to stumble on PleoBot.com, which is a blog dedicated solely to Pleo, and looks like it will be helping to keep us well up to date!


Stay tuned for more robot / AI news....


Saturday, September 02, 2006

More on you're fired !

Ran across a few more news articles which show a progression toward robots "taking over". Very much like Marshall Brain describes in his Robotic Nation, article. I wrote about it a bit more in the last post, but if you have not read it yet, then this is a reminder that you should.
However, his view seems much more pessimistic than mine.

In any case. Some people might say "it will never happen. People won't LET machines take over!". Riiight.... In fact, the way I see it.... it is exactly that people WILL WANT machines to take over! The next news article of this already happening is the plane crash a week or two ago, where 49 people died because the pilot tried to take off down the wrong (short) runway. The article points to new technology that some planes already have, and would have saved everyone on board.... for $18,000. SO, now that the airline (Comair) is being sued for the pilot error, do you think more airlines might install robotic systems to make these checks so THEY don't get sued? Or the fact there was only one person in the tower when the FAA requires two may force the FAA to insist on robotic checks in addition to (and then perhaps replacing) human checks! Or something else? Even if the FAA does not FORCE airlines to have this new technology..... would you feel safer in a place with more safety checks? Don't you think most people would? Then would most people vote for that to be required by all airlines? Either on some federal ballot to force a law, or even by voting with their wallets, and only buying tickets on the "safest" airlines.

There will always be some chance of error, malfunction, problems... but I am pretty sure that human error pops up a bit more often than system/mechanical error... and certainly if we start thinking about either having 1 or 2 people checking something or having 15 robotic system checks in the same time frame, with deeper levels of analysis and cross referencing.

No, it won't be that machines rise up and TAKE control. Humans are already slowly putting (begging) them in control. First the pilots.. and soon the air traffic controllers, as their job is listed as one of THE most stressful jobs in the world.... and high stress can lead to more frequent errors. A job that automated robotic systems could easily handle 24 hours a day without fatigue.

As robotic systems become smarter and more integrated with our other systems, they are sure to be submitting more of their own job application forms, and it's very likely that you will be happy to hand your job over to them.