NASA, GM Take Giant Leap in Robotic Technology

Robonaut2 -- or R2 for short -- is the next generation dexterous robot, developed through a Space Act Agreement by NASA and General Motors. It is faster, more dexterous and more technologically advanced than its predecessors and able to use its hands to do work beyond the scope of previously introduced humanoid robots. (Credit: NASA)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Feb. 7, 2010) — Robonaut is evolving.

NASA and General Motors are working together to accelerate development of the next generation of robots and related technologies for use in the automotive and aerospace industries.

Engineers and scientists from NASA and GM worked together through a Space Act Agreement at the agency's Johnson Space Center in Houston to build a new humanoid robot capable of working side by side with people. Using leading edge control, sensor and vision technologies, future robots could assist astronauts during hazardous space missions and help GM build safer cars and plants.

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Computers That Use Light Instead of Electricity? First Germanium Laser Created

Image: MIT researchers have demonstrated the first laser built from germanium that can produce wavelengths of light useful for optical communication. (Credit: Graphic by Christine Daniloff)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Feb. 5, 2010) — MIT researchers have demonstrated the first laser built from germanium that can produce wavelengths of light useful for optical communication. It's also the first germanium laser to operate at room temperature. Unlike the materials typically used in lasers, germanium is easy to incorporate into existing processes for manufacturing silicon chips. So the result could prove an important step toward computers that move data -- and maybe even perform calculations -- using light instead of electricity. But more fundamentally, the researchers have shown that, contrary to prior belief, a class of materials called indirect-band-gap semiconductors can yield practical lasers.

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Quantum Computing Leap Forward: Altering a Lone Electron Without Disturbing Its Neighbors

Jason Petta, an assistant professor of physics, has found a way to alter the property of a lone electron without disturbing the trillions of electrons in its immediate surroundings. Such a feat is an important step toward developing future types of quantum computers. (Credit: Princeton University, Office of Communications, Brian Wilson)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Feb. 6, 2010) — A major hurdle in the ambitious quest to design and construct a radically new kind of quantum computer has been finding a way to manipulate the single electrons that very likely will constitute the new machines' processing components or "qubits."

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Say Hello To Robonaut2, NASA's Android Space Explorer Of The Future

From Popular Science:

With the news that the White House has canceled the Constellation Program, NASA seems to be moving out of the human space flight business. However, the unveiling of a next-generation robot astronaut shows the android space program to be alive and well.

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DARPA's Robotic Ghost Ships Will Stalk Submarines

Robot Frigates Now imagine this ship without the people U.S. Navy/Scott Taylor

From Popular Science:

Ships that appear in perfect working order except for a missing human crew would normally raise suspicions that something has gone terribly wrong, possibly in the vicinity of the Bermuda Triangle. Yet an unmanned frigate is exactly what DARPA's mad scientists at the Pentagon have ordered, according to The Register. The automated ships' mission would have it spending months cruising the seas unmanned, on the hunt for ghostly enemy submarines.

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The Pursuit Of Intelligence In Computer Science

What actually constitutes an objective pattern of cognition in machines that we will recognize as intelligent is extremely vague and constantly being rewritten. Steve Dunning/Getty Images

From Discovery News:

We can’t give machines intelligence until we can figure out what roles creativity, inspiration and curiosity should play.

Since the dawn of high tech electronics and robotics, we’ve heard an awful lot about artificial intelligence and countless tales about how it may just decide to enslave us all one of these days, or fuse with humanity into an unrecognizable homunculus of men, women, children and machines as in the end of Isaac Asimov’s classic short story The Last Question, which is probably my favorite science fiction tale for it’s amazing scope and it’s bizarre climax. But when we actually drill down to the actual requirements for making machines endowed with the kind of computing abilities we’d call intelligence, we’ll find that the definition of what actually constitutes an objective pattern of cognition we will recognize as intelligent is extremely vague and constantly being rewritten.

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Two More Steps Toward Quantum Computing

The first solid state quantum processor, developed at Yale University, can perform simple algorithms. Blake Johnson/Yale University

From Discover Magazine:

Quantum computing—using individual atoms as information carriers—could transform the way we study the world, solving problems that would take many human lifetimes for today’s supercomputers in a matter of days. Unlike conventional computers, which store each piece of data as a single value (either zero or one), quantum processors can take on multiple values simultaneously, which is why they are so efficient. Or rather why they would be, if we could figure out how to build them. So engineers in the field are abuzz about two major advances toward the creation of a practical quantum computer.

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