Ocean-Crossing Robots Reach Hawaii

The Wave Glider from Below Liquid Robotics

Ocean-Crossing Robots Reach Hawaii, Setting a New Distance Record -- Popular Science

The four Wave Glider robots that set out from San Francisco in November on an unprecedented robotic crossing of the Pacific have arrived at the big island of Hawaii for a quick systems check-up. Their arrival marks the shattering of the world distance record for unmanned wave powered vehicles, as the PacX Wave Gliders, built by California-based Liquid Robotics, have now traveled 3,200 nautical miles (that’s more like 3,700 normal, in-your-car miles)--and that’s just a third of the total 9,000 nautical miles they will cover in their journeys.

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The Secret To Smarter Computers

Scientists think adding a baby's imaginative powers and all-around braininess to computers would make these machines smarter and more human. CREDIT: Aphichart | Shutterstock

Baby Brains May Be The Secret To Smarter Computers -- Live Science

Cognitive scientists hope to bottle up a baby's brain — and the imagination and air of possibility that comes with it — and use the result to make computers smarter.

"Children are the greatest learning machines in the universe," Alison Gopnik, a developmental psychologist at the University of California at Berkeley, said in a statement. "Imagine if computers could learn as much and as quickly as they do," said Gopnik, author of the books "The Scientist in the Crib" (William Morrow, 2000) and "The Philosophical Baby" (Picador, 2010).

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My Comment: A unique and different way to look at making computers "smarter".

A Robot In Every Home Within The Decade?

Simon the Robot, created in the lab of Andrea Thomaz (School of Interactive Computing), learns a new task from a participant in a study seeking to determine the best questions a robot learner can ask to facilitate smooth human-robot interaction. (Credit: Image courtesy of Georgia Institute of Technology)

Teach Your Robot Well -- Science Daily

ScienceDaily (Mar. 8, 2012) — Within a decade, personal robots could become as common in U.S. homes as any other major appliance, and many if not most of these machines will be able to perform innumerable tasks not explicitly imagined by their manufacturers. This opens up a wider world of personal robotics, in which machines are doing anything their owners can program them to do -- without actually being programmers.

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My Comment: I think we are still far away from having 'crude personal robots' in our homes .... but we will one day get there.

The One-Trillion-Bits-Per-Second Chip is Here

IBM's Holey Optochip IBM

Holey Optochip! The One-Trillion-Bits-Per-Second Chip Is Here -- Popular Science

The high data loads of the future--and even the present--require that optical communications platforms continue to get faster, leaner, and cheaper. At the Optical Fiber Communication Conference in Los Angeles today, IBM will report on a prototype optical chip it has developed that has hit a significant milestone in optical data transfer: one terabit--that’s one trillion bits--per second.

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A Robot Cosmonaut For The International Space Station

The S-400 robot will be sent to the International Space Station (ISS) within two years' time. RIA Novosti

Russia Unveils Android for Space Missions -- RIA Novosti

Russia has built a space android to work in orbit, its first space robot in more than two decades, Izvestia daily said on Tuesday.

The robot, S-400, can perform simple tasks such as screwing bolts and searching the spacecraft for damage.

It will be sent to the International Space Station (ISS) within two years' time, and will also be joining future missions to the Moon and Mars, the paper said.

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Control Dangerous AI Before It Controls Us

A killer robot from the 2009 film "Terminator Salvation" — exactly the type of future we don't want to see. Warner Bros.

Control Dangerous AI Before It Controls Us, One Expert Says -- MSNBC/Innovation

He believes super-intelligent computers could one day threaten humanity's existence

Super-intelligent computers or robots have threatened humanity's existence more than once in science fiction. Such doomsday scenarios could be prevented if humans can create a virtual prison to contain artificial intelligence before it grows dangerously self-aware.

Keeping the artificial intelligence genie trapped in the proverbial bottle could turn an apocalyptic threat into a powerful oracle that solves humanity's problems, said Roman Yampolskiy, a computer scientist at the University of Louisville in Kentucky. But successful containment requires careful planning so that a clever breed of artificial intelligence cannot simply threaten, bribe, seduce or hack its way to freedom.

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Update: Humanity Must 'Jail' Dangerous AI to Avoid Doom, Expert Says -- Live Science

Darpa's Robot Sets Racing Record

Video: Darpa’s Robotic Cheetah Sets Racing Record -- Danger Room

Trust me, gym rat. Your outrageously badass treadmill workout has nothing on this.

The Pentagon’s far-out research agency, Darpa, has just released a new video of its Cheetah ‘bot — designed to mimic the rapid movements of cheetahs, the speediest animals in nature — absolutely killing it on a laboratory treadmill.

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My Comment: That's fast .... and I am sure with time they will develop new robots that will be even faster.