Zach Pogue brought this incredible clip to my attention. Amazing!
World Builder from Bruce Branit on Vimeo.
Despite all the robot enabled military equipment, there is always a human looped into the decision-making, deciding where where the drone should go and what and how to attack.
Ronald Arkin, a professor of computer science at Georgia Tech, is developing a package of software and hardware that tells robots when and what to fire--an "ethical governor," that could ultimately displace human involvement.
[From Robot warriors will get ethics guide - Discovery.com- msnbc.com]
Are Violent Video Games Adequately Preparing Children For The Apocalypse?
Scientists have developed a "synthetic muscle" for robots that is weight for weight stronger than steel, stiffer than diamond, and weighs little more than its volume in air.
[From Robots could flex muscles that are stronger than steel - tech - 19 March 2009 - New Scientist]
As the megapixel depth of our cameras becomes increasingly high (and meaningless for most consumer photographers), industry experts say future innovation will be in the post-processing of these images.
New products use hundreds or even thousands of images to stitch together a 3-dimensional representation of reality.
[From Innovation: What next after the megapixel wars? - tech - 16 March 2009 - New Scientist]
The fMRI data allowed researchers to "read" subject's spatial memories. The researchers could tell where volunteers were located within a video game virtual environment by studying the fMRI data patterns.
A research team at the US National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke is working to uncover regions of the brain that enable us to have religious beliefs.
Subjects (of monotheist religions) were given a functional MRI while responding to statements reflecting their core beliefs.
Researchers found the most recently evolved parts of the brain (such as those involved with imagination, memory and "theory of the mind") best correlate with religious belief.
[From 'Theory of mind' could help explain belief in God - life - 09 March 2009 - New Scientist]
Richard Kyle (on the Society for Simulation in Healthcare Listserv) passed around a link to this interesting article in the NY Times about a growing concern in healthcare. The concept, dubbed "moral distress" results from healthcare workers feeling trapped between the many conflicting demands of administrators, insurance agents, attorneys, patient's families, and direct patient care.
An interesting read.....
[From Doctor and Patient - When Doctors and Nurses Can’t Do the Right Thing - NYTimes.com]
The first 30 minutes of a battlefield injury are critical. Over 85% of soldier deaths occur in this window of time. Frontline physicians lose valuable time triaging, extracting, and treating injured soldiers on the front lines.
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon have developed a robotic arm to monitor a soldier's condition. The arm, built like a snake, is controlled by a distant physician using a joystick. The treating physician moves the arm over any part of the wounded soldier to monitor their condition.. The project is funded by the Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center (TATRC) of the Army.
The New York Times had an interesting article about "body-swapping". Researches at the Karolinska Institute presented evidence at the Society for Neurosciences Meeting of the ability of subjects to "body swap" (take on another's perspective) using special cameras and behavioral techniques.
The finding has important implications for both psychotherapy and personal avatars in virtual environments.
[From Mind - Standing in Someone Else’s Shoes, Almost for Real - NYTimes.com]
I'm at the University of South Florida / Apple sponsored Leadership Symposium on Digital Media in Healthcare in Tampa. I hope to have some interesting posts over the next few days.New age recognition software, developed at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, analyzes images of your face to verify your age. "Age measurement is very difficult," said Thomas Huang, the lead developer. "If you use the face to estimate age we can really get the apparent age, or how old a person looks." The researches used 1,600 different people to hone their algorithm. The computer searched the faces and used its own software to determine which features best determined the person's apparent age.
[From New Software Guesses a Person's (Apparent) Age: Discovery News]
Time Magazine reports on a multimillion dollar US Army contract to develop 'thought helmets' to harness silent brain waves for secure communication among troops. The Army hopes the research will 'lead to direct mental control of military systems by thought alone.' The proposed method uses a 128-sensor array that pinpoints speech-related brainwaves.
. I'm glad to see Dr. Steinkuelher elaborate on their observations (Dr. Gee was Dr. Steinkuehler's advisor)....[From Games Without Frontiers: How Videogames Blind Us With Science ]How Videogames Blind Us With Science
By Clive ThompsonA few years ago, Constance Steinkuehler -- a game academic at the University of Wisconsin -- was spending 12 hours a day playing Lineage, the online world game. She was, as she puts it, a "siege princess," running 150-person raids on hellishly difficult bosses. Most of her guild members were teenage boys.
But they were pretty good at figuring out how to defeat the bosses. One day she found out why. A group of them were building Excel spreadsheets into which they'd dump all the information they'd gathered about how each boss behaved: What potions affected it, what attacks it would use, with what damage, and when. Then they'd develop a mathematical model to explain how the boss worked -- and to predict how to beat it......
Many of you are familiar with the Madden Football franchise developed by Electronic Arts (EA) Sports. Now the sports channel, ESPN, is starting to merge Madden game graphics with real-life sports anchors.
Using this technology commentators are able to interact with realistic, 3D virtual players while explaining key plays and strategy.
[From At ESPN, Play-by-Play Goes Virtual - NYTimes.com]
2009 Serious Games Summit Announces Call For Submissions
Think Services, organizer of the Game Developers Conference (GDC) (and also owner of Gamasutra), announced a call for submissions for next year's Serious Games Summit event, asking for abstracts on possible demonstrations, posters, 45-minute lectures, 60-minute panels, and 30-minute case studies for the event.The Serious Games Summit focuses on games created for purposes other than pure entertainment, such as game development in the areas of education, advertising, government, health, military, science, and corporate training.
Interested speakers and presenters should note that the deadline for these abstracts to be submitted is September 24, 2008. The advisory board reviewing submitted proposals will look for submissions that follow the Serious Games Summit's focus this year -- success points in the serious games field.
The advisory board is interested in discussions that break through the emerging serious games space to highlight research, products, and ideas that represent the next level of achievement for the field.
This year's Serious Games Summit will take place during the first two days of Game Developers Conference 2009, which will run from March 23 to 27 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, California. For more information on submission requirements, benefits, and the selection process, visit the official Serious Games Summit Call for Submissions Guidelines page.
[From Gamasutra - 2009 Serious Games Summit Announces Call For Submissions]
Vitamin B deficiency may cause significant cognitive impairment according to a new study conducted at Tufts University. The researchers used mouse models to examine the effects of the vitamin deficiency on cognitive ability.
"Mice fed a diet deficient in folate and vitamins B12 and B6 demonstrated significant deficits in spatial learning and memory compared with normal mice," said Aron Troen, an assistant professor and the lead researcher on the study.
The study was conducted to better understand the mechanisms of cognitive decline independent of irreversible neurodegeneration. The sleek
[From B-vitamin Deficiency May Cause Vascular Cognitive Impairment]
NASA confirmed astronauts have carried computer viruses into space. Computers are used by the astronauts to mail friends and family and to relax (apparently by playing MMORPGS!!!!). The latest computer pathogen, Gammima.AG, was delivered into space by an infected software download or USB storage stick. The virus did not effect the mission, but does highlights current NASA computer security shortcomings.
[From Game-playing astronauts infect NASA computers with virus: Scientific American Blog]
Robots may not have emotions, but now they can detect and respond to human ones. A recent study at University of California, Davis, showed that robots could successfully pick up on emotional cues of humans. The robots could pick out both conscious and unconscious cues. The research brings us closer to more natural man-machine interactions.
[From Robots Detect Behavioral Cues to Follow Humans]
Sensor technology is continually evolving. Check out this $120 glove that continually monitors the pressure of your golf swing. The Sensoglove readout on the back of the glove gives you real time information on your "squeeze".
[From SensorGlove Helps Improve Your Stroke | Gadget Lab from Wired.com]
Colorectal cancer is one of the leading causes of death in the U.S. Patients have the best chance of survival when the cancer is caught in an early stage. Some patients are reluctant to have effective (but uncomfortable) diagnostic screening procedures (such as colonoscopy). A recent alternative is virtual colononscopy where the colon is reconstructed 3-dimensionally from a CT scan. Unfortunately, even virtual colonoscopy still requires the patient to have a bowel prep.
Enter Jerome Liang and his team at Stony Brook. They have developed a way to digitally remove fecal matter from the 3D CT reconstruction leaving only the walls of the colon and evidence of polyps.
[From Virtual colonic irrigation gives clear view of cancers - tech - 17 June 2008 - New Scientist Tech]
Here are movies that feature simulation in some way, shape or form. Please send me additions to the list.
[From Technology Review: Computerized Combat Glove]
Predicting Human Errors From Brain Activity
Posted by Soulskill on Thursday April 24, @10:03PM
Hugh Pickens on Slashdot writes
"Researchers report that brain activity can be used to predict the likelihood of someone making an error about six seconds in advance, with gradual changes starting as much as 30 seconds ahead of time. The team used an imaging machine to scan the brains of a group of volunteers who performed a task in the presence of distracting information. When performing correctly the volunteers' brains showed increased levels of activity in those parts associated with cognitive effort, as would be expected. However, these areas gradually became less active before errors were made and at the same time another set of regions in the brain became more active. These regions are part of a so-called "default mode network" and show increased use when people are resting or asleep[PDF]. While imaging machines are far too big and complex to be used in workplaces to monitor the brain activity of people engaged in important tasks, the team hopes to correlate errors to changes in electrical activity in the brain with electroencephalography (EEG), using electrodes placed on the scalp. If EEG features can be found that correspond to the change in brain activity, then a hat that gives warning of an imminent mistake might one day become reality. We've previously discussed similar studies of brain activity."
The simulator’s suturing procedure is to provide practice in ligating loops, simple-interrupted, continuous, and horizontal-mattress techniques. The LapVR surgical simulator is to presents users with a realistic animated bowel of lifelike thickness. Users must correctly drive the needle through exterior and internal surfaces of the bowel, bring the cut edges together, and tie knots securely.
This article in Popular Mechanics talks about today's haptics, consumer devices, and where the field is going.
[From How Haptics Will Change the Way We Interact With Machines - The Technology of Touch - Popular Mechanics]Force-feedback exoskeleton gloves, remote-control surgical robots, touchscreens and video games that touch back—tactile technology is taking off. Popular Mechanics's Resident Roboticist shakes hands with a virtual world.
Researchers at Stanford University have developed a Web service called Make3D that lets users turn a single two-dimensional image of an outdoor scene into an immersive 3-D model.
[read the original story in MIT Technology Review]
Mike Goodrow brought this article in Time to our attention on the Society for Simulation in Healthcare Listserv. The article mentions work differentiating experts from novices in multiple disciplines. The article begins with a simulation scenario run at Florida State University and even manages to weave in a little politics.....
If you're interested in this type of work you may want to check out one of our projects in the Human Simulation and Patient Safety Center at Duke University.
Unviversity of Plymouth is preparing to find out if a baby robot can learn to speak.
iCub, a 3 foot baby robot, will arrive at the university early next year. Over the next 4 years linguists and robotics experts will teach iCub to speak mimicking the way humans teach their offspring. The research could lead to better human-machine communication.
[From BBC NEWS | UK | England | Devon | Plan to teach baby robot to talk]
I'm looking forward to seeing the TED Talk given this year by Jill Bolte Taylor. Dr. Taylor is a neuroanatomist who gave a blow-by-blow account of a stroke she suffered in 1996. Because she understands the brain and its functionality, she was able to offer an insightful view of the entire event. Through sheer force-of-will she was able to survive the stroke by calling a colleague. It took 8 years for her to recover.
Brian Ashcraft wrote a lengthy piece about his love / hate relationship with the new Wii Fit (Nintendo's contender in the Exergaming Arena- trailer / parody ).
Brian's piece talks about the good, the bad, and the ugly of this innovative piece of technology. He concludes that despite WiiFit's "warts", it works!
I'm on the fence about this particular game...the parody actually makes several important points.
