The Machine cometh

Social robots are already a lot closer than you think. Kismet and Leo are two such examples. Robots are only now getting into the stage where they are learning to think for themselves.

But what the M.I.T. robots may lack in looks or finesse, they make up for in originality: they are programmed to learn the way humans learn, through their bodies, their senses and the feedback generated by their own behavior. It is a more organic style of learning

This is the way most humans learn to interact with each other as well. Babies grow up emulating their parents in how to act with other humans, using voice inflection, emotions and body language to get the point across. Robots are now taking their baby steps into the world of self thought.

Kismet is the thing that looks like Gizmo the gremlin. Leo is the skinny ewok looking thing. So far Kismet can only babble in R2-D2 like speech and has the emotional range of a 3 year old. She looks strange because of all the sensors on her head, leading to her Gizmo like appearance. Being an early generation emotional robot, Kismet does not have the movement range of Leo. Kismet reacts to how you act with it- act happy or give her praise and she perks up; scold her or act violently and she turns away

Kismet can says things when she is told to so so and in this clip is saying the same thing “Do you really think so?” but with a wide range of feelings

Leo on the other hand may not say anything, but he learns by going through the problem and is able to apply what he’s learned to a new problem with similar parameters. Developed in conjunction with Stan Winston Studios. Leo in this video is only missing his furry outer covering that he was shown wearing in the first video.

We are still very far off from developing this kind of robot that can think for itself with no outside intervention, and is wholely capable of self propulsion.

Ancient Honeymen

These two sites, cnn.com and anthropology.net both cover the recent story of a 3000 year old beehive that was unearthed at Tel Rehov in Israel’s Beth Shean Valley. While both sites skim over the possibilities of what the hives mean and their construction, they take a slightly different view on how ancient beehives might have been worshiped. Cnn.com casually glimpses over how small religious figures were found near the hives. Anthropology.net does mention the possibility of religion, but abhors even discussing it and giving credence to Biblical evidence by giving you the link to it, and nothing else.

Putting aside the bombardment of biblical references this press release has, the findings of one of the first apiaries known dating from the 10th to early 9th centuries B.C.E…..

Anthropology.net does quote a large section of article that does contain bits about an altar and religious practices, but they decided to let you form your own opinions on the Bible as historical evidence of ancient Israel. Anthropology.net just quotes the men leading the research team Amihai Mazar and Eleazar L. Sukenik, and their hypothesis as to what the figurines represent

Cultic objects were also found in the apiary, including a four-horned altar adorned with figures of naked fertility goddesses, as well as an elaborately painted chalice. This could be evidence of deviant cultic practices by the ancient Israelites related to the production of honey and beeswax.

Here, Amihai Mazar and Eleazar L. Sukenik mention nothing of the Bible. They only hypothesize that there might have been cult worship to bring about a greater honey bounty. The article that Anthropology.net wont touch, but links to is filled with how every small thing is linked to passages in the Bible, even the mysterious jar “to nmsh” Without any other historical evidence, the religious site attributes the jars to Nimshi, a possibly fictional character in the Bible. This is probably why Anthropology.net and Cnn.com wont touch the possible religious nature of the artifacts. Without direct historical evidence, a third source is attributing the time frame and location to figures in the Bible, which has not been proven to be a historically accurate book of evidence and data.

Extinction of the book?

This might not be a book burning, but it shows on way that books might be on the path of the dodo especially with the influx of a number of technologies that tend to make us lazy:

Here’s the direct link if the picture above is too tiny to see: http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j312/senior_draco/Untitled-2.jpg
Note.. this was not the originally intended comic for this past Sunday. The Dallas Morning News re ran this old one in place of the one they did not like probably because of its view of the middle-east’s not conforming to what America wants:

Psyched out of the virtual world..

Remediated worlds will work, that is if you can fool the brain. With the technologies coming out, it is indeed possible in the near future to create worlds that do not exist outside of a pair of glasses. Whats needed is technology that can sync up perfectly with the functions of the brain:

The research reveals that “the sense of having a body, of being in a bodily self,” is actually constructed from multiple sensory streams, said one expert on body and mind, Dr. Matthew M. Botvinick, an assistant professor of neuroscience at Princeton University. Usually these sensory streams, which include vision, touch, balance and the sense of where one’s body is positioned in space, work together seamlessly, Dr. Botvinick said. But when the information coming from the sensory sources does not match up, the sense of being embodied as a whole comes apart. The brain, which abhors ambiguity, then forces a decision that can, as the new experiments show, involve the sense of being in a different body.

If the brain is fooled in such a fashion, then the source disappears visually. It is possible that an entire suit would be needed to fool the body with the brain and so that would not disappear, but if the brain and senses are in another world then its possible that what is outside might not even be seen. If  you are immersed deeply enough into a game, it is possible for some gamers to completely ignore anything going on around them. How many people have you tried several times to get their attention while they were playing a game, only to have to end up doing something to them? Sometimes the graphics don’t have to be super real to loose someone’s senses to the computer. If you concentrate on a game hard and long enough, outside distractions dissolve and you become one with your avatar. All you have to do is loose your senses and the virtual world becomes as real as day and the source disappears.

Shut up or I’m turning this car around….

Not much can keep todays kids entertained anywhere, least of all in the car, unless they are multitasking 20 activities to keep them occupied. Not so with this new form of GPS usage being researched in Sweden where they are taking a laptop and GPS system combination to track where the car is and to integrate the cars surroundings into a murder mystery.

The basic idea is to start the game off in a primarily audio-based murder mystery scenario where “actual forests, skyscrapers, and rivers” become part of the story, giving children (or adults, too) a way to virtually interact with their surroundings while traveling. The laptop uses the GPS data to maintain a 3D model which keeps the vehicle correctly positioned in the virtual world, and much “like a novel,” the story unfolds as different turns (ahem) take place based on the decisions players make

If this technology ever gets to the states one of two things would happen. 1. Families who still travel by car would get to their destination with far more sanity intact than in previous years(It definitely beats what I used to do while traveling in the back seat…watch t.v. or play my gameboy) or 2. Create more traffic atrocities  as this would easily fall under the distract everyone in the car idea, where the driver is not excluded from participating. Probably one of the only ways to keep the driver from participating would be to give them headphones(which is illegal by the way) or require that the backseat passengers have headphones to keep the driver from hearing it

All this and more time wasting technology at engadget.com’s, blog

Curiosity killed the tech student…

Movie Mania : if your wanting to know if a movie is worth your 9 dollars to see, then this is a site for you. It talks about the actors, the plots and anything else you might want to know about things coming out on the silver screen. This site has many posters that cover a range of topics from movie plots and actors to justice being served. Here you can also get links to blogs from some of the people who make the movies as well.

If you’re interested in todays technology then check this site out. Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, written by Awesom-o, it covers a variety of artificial intelligence  and robotic updates that have the possibility of becoming common  technology and everyday household items from small huggable creatures to better faster processors. It even has stories that concern fictional technology being put to use in the home.

Here are a few links that might be of interest to you as well, even if they may or may not be true blogs: behind the scenes at Disney, the inner workings of everyday items, another movie list, and photoshop nerds. I found some of these sites while poking around on Google searching for blogs that might interest me involving animatronics and special effects. And in case you are wondering, the image I have at the top is a picture that I found of some baby penguins that I took into photoshop. I gave the baby penguins the beer bottle and the Starbucks cup. The posture of the baby penguin on the left is what led me to do the picture. He already looked a little drunk, and the one on the right looked a little buzzed on caffeine too.

Portal to a strange mind…

Hello there. This is my blog created for my use during my class. Here I hope to share devious insights to my own little world, whether they be mundane or down right weird to most folks, but first a little information about myself. I like animatronics! You know- the Terminator endoskeleton, the Jurassic Park dinosaurs, Johnny5(# 5 from Short Circuit), etc. I could go on for hours naming characters and movies that have had some small special effect to bring about their story. The behind-the-scenes effects have always fascinated me since I was about 5 years old when I saw a mini movie on the Jim Henson hour called the Monster Maker. As of recent I have been starting to make some of my own costumes, even though they are slow going in the process, what with having to fit them all into a jumbled up schedule. I know one costume I have made has made an appearance around campus- at the request of some of the teachers! I am working on more costumes that I hope to have finished before Halloween…