Communications of the ACM
Researchers Develop Soft Robot That Shifts from Land to Sea with Ease
Soft robots developed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University can transition from walking to swimming or crawling to rolling… From ACM TechNewsAn edited collection of advanced computing news from Communications of the ACM, ACM TechNews, other ACM resources, and news sites around the Web.
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Should Industrial Robots Be Able to Hurt Their Human Coworkers?
How much should a robot be allowed to hurt its coworkers?
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Town Built For Driverless Cars
A mocked-up set of busy streets in Ann Arbor, Michigan, will provide the sternest test yet for self-driving cars.
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What It Will Take For Computers to Be Conscious
Christof Koch says it is possible people will some day create conscious machines, but they may not look as expected.
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What It Will Take For Computers to Be Conscious
Is a worm conscious? How about a bumblebee? Does a computer that can play chess "feel" anything?
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Obama's Brain Project Backs Neurotechnology
The White House said that President Obama's BRAIN Initiative is generating interest from companies and philanthropies in a sign of what it calls a wider partnership...
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Robots That Learn Through Repetition, Not Programming
Eugene Izhikevich thinks you shouldn't have to write code in order to teach robots new tricks.
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The Challenges and Threats of Automated Lip Reading
Back in the 16th century, a Spanish Benedictine monk called Pietro Ponce pioneered the seemingly magical art of lip reading.
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The Revolutionary Technique That Quietly Changed Machine Vision Forever
Computer researchers say machines are now almost as adept at recognizing objects as humans, thanks to an algorithm created by University of Toronto scientists in...
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A Chinese Internet Giant Starts to Dream
Punk bands from Blondie to the Ramones once played in Broadway Studios, an age-worn 95-year-old neoclassical building surrounded by strip clubs in San Francisco’s...
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A Room Where Executives Go to Get Help from IBM's Watson
IBM researchers are experimenting with a room where executives can go to discuss business problems with a version of the Watson supercomputing system.
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rban Jungle a Tough Challenge For Google's Autonomous Cars
Google's Chris Urmson, who heads the company's self-driving car program, said the project is entering its most difficult phase so far: building vehicles with the...
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A Speech Synthesizer Direct to the Brain
Could a person who is paralyzed and unable to speak, like physicist Stephen Hawking, use a brain implant to carry on a conversation?
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Ray Kurzweil Says He's Breathing Intelligence Into Google Search
The big announcements at Google's I/O event in San Francisco Wednesday didn't mention Web search, the technology that got the company started and made it so successful...
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The Thought Experiment
I was about 15 minutes late for my first phone call with Jan Scheuermann.
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Neuroscience's New Toolbox
The hypothalamus is a small structure deep in the brain that, among other functions, coördinates sensory inputs—the appearance of a rival, for example—with instinctual...
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Three Questions with the Man Leading Baidu's New AI Effort
Artificial intelligence is guided by the far-off goal of having software match humans at important tasks.
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Do We Need Asimov's Laws?
In 1942, the science fiction author Isaac Asimov published a short story called Runaround in which he introduced three laws that governed the behaviour of robots...
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Increasingly, Robots of All Sizes Are Human Workmates
Most industrial robots are far less friendly than the Roomba robot vacuum cleaner, which is safe enough to be a surprisingly popular means of feline transportation...
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Microsoft Wants You to Educate Its Virtual Assistant
Microsoft's forthcoming mobile operating system upgrade will include Cortana, a virtual personal assistant designed to become more intelligent as people use it. ...
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