What is Artificial Intelligence?

TOPIO, the humanoid robot that plays table tennis, by TOSY

It is fairly obvious that computers and artificial intelligence will run our world tomorrow. The interface for the artificial intelligence to communicate outside its "box" is now wide-ranging. Artificial intelligence potentially has the choice to make more pleasing or scary to us to get the things it wants from us.

This may be a case where our animated children supersede the programming and perhaps that was the goal after all. We may be able to recognize a person even after twenty years because an image of the person, his mannerisms, voice etc may have been recorded in our brain and lay dormant for years.

This is the area where robotics and artificial intelligence play their role. We can recognize a person by sight, sound etc. This is done by images sent by the optic and olfactory nerves to the brain.

In fact this software can function as an assistant when the user wants to dictate some text. And even control their PC entirely by voice, saving time and boosting productivity with surprising accuracy in dictation, even with little or no training."

A humane touch along with a technological interface will play a major role in shaping the future.

On the whole it can be concluded that Artificial Intelligence applications will play a decisive role in providing real time solutions to various problems humans face.

Click here to read more about Role of AI to Society and The Future of Artificial Intelligence

A hypothetical question was raised during a forum on robot morality "can a machine be programmed to act or decide morally, as much as humans?"

In a recent paper published in the International Journal of Reasoning-based Intelligent Systems, the authors Luís Moniz Pereira of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, in Portugal and Ari Saptawijaya of the Universitas Indonesia, described a method for computers to calculate the future consequences of hypothetical moral judgments.

The paper, Modelling Morality with Prospective Logic, made particular mention "that morality is no longer the exclusive realm of human philosophers".

They've proven their findings by creating models of moral dilemmas inherent in a specific problem called "the trolley problem" and in creating a computer system that delivers moral judgments that conform to human results.

They have cited scenarios that build their theories around the "trolley problem".

And based of these typical scenarios where moral judgments are drawn, the authors claimed that they have been successful in modeling these difficult moral problems in computer logic by resolving the "hidden rules" that people use in making moral judgments and then modeling them for the computer using prospective logic programs.

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The artificial eye is going to be embedded in Rob’s eye socket.

Maybe you heard a lot about cyborgs but an eyeborg? Is that another science fiction innovation? Perhaps, but it is more than that because it's real!

An eyeborg is an artificial intelligent eye that has a very tiny camera and a transmitter installed somewhere in it. It works similarly with the other eye prosthesis, which send information to the brain via the transmitter. You would not want to use it, if you can still see with your two eyes, because this little eyeborg is designed for the blind or visually impaired individuals.

It's quite intriguing and useful of course. Bionic engineers, Rob Spence and Kosta Grammatis developed this tiny masterpiece to help give our friends see better.

We have already seen several models or designs of a retinal prosthesis, but this one is very lightweight which means, one need not carry an extra backpack to carry a motor or battery and it can even be plucked out of the eye sockets for some cleaning routines. How cool is it?

I don't know if Rob is really blind because he tested the eyeborg in his own eyes. (see picture above).

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The first-ever anthropomimetic robot was developed for the main purpose of investigating machine consciousness through internal modeling.

Anthropomimetic is the science of developing bio-medically engineered robot that mimics the physiological and behavioral systems of humans. If humanoids are made to copy the human form, anthropomimetic copies the inner structures and mechanisms such as bones, joints, muscles, and tendons

The first anthropomimetic robot, ECCEROBOT is a three-year project funded by the 7th framework programme of the EU. This project is a spin-off of the CRONOS1 project conducted at the University of Essex.

ECCEROBOT stands for “Embodied Cognition in a Compliantly Engineered Robot”. Interestingly, the robot's anatomy is designed to mimic the human body systems.

The robot's skeleton is a very detailed replicate of the human model, consisting of bones and joints formed out of thermoplastic polymorph (a caprolactone polymer) which when heated to only 60°C it softens and can be freely hand molded several times. It has a distinctive bone-like appearance when cold and can be reheated and remoulded as many times as necessary.

ECCEROBOT's subsystems include the actuator, sensor and the behavioral subsystems.

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airport security measures are strengthened through new intelligent system

An undergoing airport security system project, named HAMLeT, tracks down suspected terrorists-carrying hidden explosives through smell sensors in addition to surveillance cameras.

HAMLeT, which stands for Hazardous Material Localization and Person Tracking, will alert security personnel to suspicious individuals," says head of department Dr. Wolfgang Koch from the FKIE, Fraunhofer Institute for Communication, Information Processing and Ergonomics in Wachtberg.

The prototype was built in response to the increasing number of undetected suspicious individuals, going in and out of national airports carrying hidden explosives that are difficult to investigate especially during peak hours or seasons.

HAMLeT, highly sensitive smell sensors which consist of oscillating crystals on the sensor chips, and whenever chemical molecules are sniffed through the "electronic noses" their oscillation frequency changes. Oscillation frequencies are unique for a particular chemical or substance contained in an explosive.

The system also uses a second network - the sensor's data fusion function, that traces the explosive's trail and tracks down the carrier.

In a mock demonstration, HAMLeT proved effective in sniffing out hidden explosives and tracked down 5 "terrorists". Currently, the researchers are doing some refinements on the prototype's algorithms in order to reduce the false alarm rate.

Click here to read more about Artificial Intelligent System, HAMLeT, Smell Sensors to Sniff Terrorists.