In most formulations, robots have the ability to manipulate and affect the real world. I would like to posit, however, that the notion of robot could usefully be expanded to include programs that perform functions, ingest input and produce output that has a perceptible effect.
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
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The leading open source system for processing big data continues to evolve, but new approaches with added features are on the rise.
Human Mobility Characterization from Cellular Network Data
Anonymous location data from cellular phone networks sheds light on how people move around on a large scale.
Real-Time Human Pose Recognition in Parts from Single Depth Images
We propose a new method to quickly and accurately predict human pose — the 3-D positions of body joints — from a single depth image, without depending on information from preceding frames.
Illustrating How Mechanical Assemblies Work
How-things-work visualizations use a variety of visual techniques to depict the operation of complex mechanical assemblies. We present an automated approach for generating such visualizations.
Technical Perspective: Visualization, Understanding, and Design
Photographs capture the moment; paintings convey perception, impression, and feeling; illustrations tell stories. Computer graphics aims to enrich all these artistic practices through technology. The following paper is a watershed in depiction, creating imagery that gets ideas across.
Technical Perspective: Finding People in Depth
The following article by Shotton et al. describes a landmark computer vision system that takes a single depth image containing a person and automatically estimates the pose of the person's body in 3D.
Computers interacting with, not imitating, humans is the way forward.
Three breakthrough experiments involving photons have extended coherence times and indicated scalable production.
Natural Algorithms and Influence Systems
Algorithms lay the grounds for numerical simulations and, crucially, provide a powerful framework for their analysis. The new area of natural algorithms may reprise in the life sciences the role differential equations have long played in the physical sciences.
Technical Perspective: Natural Algorithms in a Networked World
How do birds flock and fish school? How do individuals in a social network reach agreement, even though they are often only influenced by other like-minded individuals? How can one engineer a swarm of robots to behave like bird flocks?
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Academia . . .
Aria Haghighi, an award-winning natural language processing researcher, describes his trek from a tenure-track faculty job at UMass-Amherst to his decision to leave academia and found a startup.
The Frankencamera: An Experimental Platform For Computational Photography
Progress in computational photography has been hampered by the lack of a portable, programmable camera with sufficient image quality and computing power. To address this problem, we have designed and implemented the Frankencamera.
The Challenges Ahead For Bio-Inspired ‘Soft’ Robotics
Soft materials may enable the automation of tasks beyond the capacities of current robotic technology.
Major Update to ACM’s Computing Classification System
ACM has completed a major update of its Computing Classification System (CCS), which has served as the de facto standard for classifying the computing literature since 1964.
Forensics experts increasingly use data from digital devices to solve crimes, fight lawsuits, and unravel accidents.
Technical Perspective: Open Platforms For Computational Photography
A fundamental impediment to the widespread development and deployment of in-camera algorithms is the lack of a clean open architecture for controlling camera features and writing the corresponding real-time processing and viewing algorithms.
A Few Useful Things to Know About Machine Learning
Tapping into the "folk knowledge" needed to advance machine learning applications.
Future Tense: Fermi’s Paradox and the End of the Universe
From the intersection of computational science and technological speculation, with boundaries limited only by our ability to imagine what could be. How to colonize the galaxy, one electron spin state at a time.
Faced with rising electricity costs, leading companies have begun revolutionizing the way data centers work, from the hardware to the buildings themselves.
Ethical Robots: Let Their Artificial Consciences Be Their Guides
When lethal autonomous robots take their place on the field of battle and function independent of human control, what will govern the decisions of these next-gen weapons to either shoot or hold their fire?
After decades in Flatland, the end of Moore's Law is pushing semiconductors into the third dimension.
Success Factors For Deploying Cloud Computing
Trust between client organization and cloud provider is a strong predictor of successful cloud deployment.
Questioning Naturalism in 3D User Interfaces
Three-dimensional user interfaces are uniquely able to achieve superior interaction fidelity, and this naturalism can be a huge advantage.
Shape the Future of Computing
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