The Japanese government has developed a virtual human to act as one of its ambassadors to ASEAN countries. The author address the implications of this move and the characteristics of Japanese culture that make them more receptive to virtual humans and robots.
Glenn Reynolds reports on the growing efforts to define rights for robots and artificially intelligent programs.
Robots may never be able to "feel," but machines that sense and respond to human emotion could one day help care for the elderly and others with serious medical conditions, research suggests.
Researchers at MIT have developed a remote-controlled reporting machine, a "robot journalist", that is currently having its hardware polished in anticipation of its first assignment: covering the war in Afghanistan.
Eighty years after they were first introduced to the world, robots and humans now exist side-by-side. The symbiotic relationship between the two has inspired a new generation of art -- and scientific research -- that examines where people end and machines begin.
A fleet of pint-size bulldozers may one day do the dirty work on Mars, engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory report. Lightweight, solar-powered and intelligent, these robotic vehicles could aid in the search for life on the Red Planet or help support a human presence there.
Instead of using the ones and zeros of digital electronics to simulate the way the brain functions, “neuromorphic” engineering relies on nature's biological short-cuts to make robots that are smaller, smarter and vastly more energy-efficient.
Researchers who use artificial neural networks - circuits that mimic brain cells - to control robots usually ignore the biochemistry of the brain. But scientists from the University of Sussex, UK, have found that by simulating the presence of one key chemical they can enhance the performance of the neural network.
Walking, talking humanoid robots with social intelligence will be commonplace in the future, raising new challenges for humankind.
Charles Platt takes a broad look at the prospects for artificial intelligence in the form of chatbots, the semantic web, and humanoid robots.