New Roles For Robots

"Once viewed largely as a way to save on labor costs, robots today have taken on more significant roles in manufacturing. They're part of global competitiveness plans and are seeing, moving and servicing better than ever.

Get ready for new robot relevance. When General Motors Corp. deployed the first industrial robots in 1961, their roles at a Ternstedt, N.J., plant were justified in terms of handling the 3-D tasks -- dangerous, dirty and difficult. In contrast, today's smarter, more capable robots have also become significant tools affecting global competition. For tomorrow's manufacturing winners, the competitive determinant will be how robots fit into a total manufacturing/automation strategy -- not just labor cost.

Start with a new definition. 'Think of industrial robots as a business strategy tool, one that helps build manufacturing competitiveness in a global economy,' "

Read more in this IndustryWeek article.

Introduction to Nanotechnology

From nanoword.net:

"Nanotechnology is defined as fabrication of devices with atomic or molecular scale precision. Devices with minimum feature sizes less than 100 nanometers (nm) are considered to be products of nanotechnology. A nanometer is one billionth of a meter (10-9 m) and is the unit of length that is generally most appropriate for describing the size of single molecules. The nanoscale marks the nebulous boundary between the classical and quantum mechanical worlds; thus, realization of nanotechnology promises to bring revolutionary capabilities. Fabrication of nanomachines, nanoelectronics and other nanodevices will undoubtedly solve an enormous amount of the problems faced by mankind today.

Nanotechnology is currently in a very infantile stage. However, we now have the ability to organize matter on the atomic scale and there are already numerous products available as a direct result of our rapidly increasing ability to fabricate and characterize feature sizes less than 100 nm. Mirrors that don't fog, biomimetic paint with a contact angle near 180�, gene chips and fat soluble vitamins in aqueous beverages are some of the first manifestations of nanotechnology. However, immenant breakthroughs in computer science and medicine will be where the real potential of nanotechnology will first be achieved.

Nanoscience is an interdisciplinary field that seeks to bring about mature nanotechnology. Focusing on the nanoscale intersection of fields such as physics, biology, engineering, chemistry, computer science and more, nanoscience is rapidly expanding. Nanotechnology centers are popping up around the world as more funding is provided and nanotechnology market share increases. The rapid progress is apparent by the increasing appearance of the prefix 'nano' in scientific journals and the news. Thus, as we increase our ability to fabricate com"

Creating Friendly Artificial Intelligence

"The goal of the field of Artificial Intelligence is to understand intelligence and create a human-equivalent or transhuman mind. Beyond this lies another question - whether the creation of this mind will benefit the world; whether the AI will take actions that are benevolent or malevolent, safe or uncaring, helpful or hostile.

Creating Friendly AI describes the design features and cognitive architecture required to produce a benevolent - 'Friendly' - Artificial Intelligence. Creating Friendly AI also analyzes the ways in which AI and human psychology are likely to differ, and the ways in which those differences are subject to our design decisions. "

Robots Dance and Play at World Robot Expo

"They could hit fastballs, draw portraits and be seen breathing. Not bad for robots. Even so, these droids of all shapes and sizes -- more than 60 on display at the World Expo on Thursday -- still need some work.

Their developers say it will be several years before robots that are designed to be part of everyday lives -- rather than serve as simple novelties -- take their place helping the sick, rescuing disaster victims and entertaining families. "

Read more in this livescience.com article.

Electronic assistant would adapt to its boss

From the Star-Telegram:

"With a strong push from the Pentagon, computer scientists are trying to create an artificial 'personal office assistant' that's smart enough to handle routine tasks for a human boss, military or civilian.

The researchers aim to build an electronic system that understands human language, takes and remembers instructions, learns from its experiences and copes with unexpected situations.
It won't make coffee, but it also won't grumble or demand a raise.

The automated aide-de-camp is supposed to be able to sort e-mail, schedule meetings, make plane reservations, collect information for reports and perform other humdrum, time-consuming chores for busy human managers."