Science Article

With the relentless march of technological progress, robots and other automated systems are getting ever smarter. At the same time they are also being given greater responsibilities, driving cars, helping with childcareMovie Camera, carrying weapons, and maybe soon even pulling the trigger.

But should they be trusted to take on such tasks, and how can we be sure that they never take a decision that could cause unintended harm?

So are there things we can do to minimise the risks? Wallach and Allen take a look at six strategies that could reduce the danger from our own high-tech creations.

Keep them in low-risk situations

Make sure that all computers and robots never have to make a decision where the consequences can not be predicted in advance.

Likelihood of success: Extremely low. Engineers are already building computers and robotic systems whose actions they cannot always predict.

Do not give them weapons

Likelihood of success: Too late. Semi-autonomous robotic weapons systems, including cruise missiles and Predator drones, already exist. A few machine-gun-toting robots were sent to Iraq and photographed on a battlefield, though apparently were not deployed.

However, military planners are very interested in the development of robotic soldiers, and see them as a means of reducing deaths of human soldiers during warfare.

Give them rules like Asimov's 'Three Laws of Robotics'

Likelihood of success: Moderate. Isaac Asimov's famous rules are arranged hierarchically: most importantly robots should not harm humans or through inaction allow harm to them, of secondary importance is that they obey humans, while robotic self-preservation is the lowest priority.

However, Asimov was writing fiction, not building robots. In story after story he illustrates problems that would arise with even these simple rules, such as what the robot should do when orders from two people conflict.

Give them rules like Asimov's 'Three Laws of Robotics'

Likelihood of success: Moderate. Isaac Asimov's famous rules are arranged hierarchically: most importantly robots should not harm humans or through inaction allow harm to them, of secondary importance is that they obey humans, while robotic self-preservation is the lowest priority.

However, Asimov was writing fiction, not building robots. In story after story he illustrates problems that would arise with even these simple rules, such as what the robot should do when orders from two people conflict.

Sometimes identifying the best option under a given rule can be extremely difficult. For example, determining which course of action leads to the greatest good would require a tremendous amount of knowledge, and an understanding of the effects of actions in the world. Making such calculations would require time and a great deal of computing power.

Educate robots like children

Machines that learn as they "grow up" could develop sensitivity to the actions that people consider to be right and wrong.

Likelihood of success: Promising, although this strategy requires a few technological breakthroughs. While researchers have created robots able to learn in similar ways to humansMovie Camera, the tools presently available are very limited.

Make machines master emotion

Human-like faculties such as empathy, emotions, and the capacity to read non-verbal social cues should give robots much greater ability to interact with humans. Work has already started on equipping domestic robots with such faculties.

Likelihood of success: Developing emotionally sensitive robots would certainly help implement the previous three solutions discussed. Most of the information we use to make choices and cooperate with others derives from our emotions, as well as our capacity to read gestures and intentions and imagine things from another person's point of view.

Site reference : http://www.newscientist.com/

AT FIRST it's just noise: a stream of incoherent sounds, burbling away. But, after a few minutes, a fully formed word suddenly emerges: "red". Then another: "box". In this way, a babbling robot learns to speak its first real words, just by chatting with a human.

Ba, ba, ba, brick (Image: Pete Stevens)

Seeing this developmental leap in a machine may lead to robots that speak in a more natural, human-like way, and help uncover how children first start to make sense of language.

Between the ages of 6 and 14 months children move from babbling strings of syllables to uttering actual words. It's a necessary step en route to acquiring full language. Once a few "anchor" words have been established, they provide clues as to where words may start and finish and so it becomes easier for a child to learn to speak.

Inspired by this process, a team led by computer scientist Caroline Lyon at the University of Hertfordshire, UK, programmed their iCub humanoid robot, called DeeChee, with almost all the syllables that exist in English – around 40,000 in total. This allowed it to babble rather like a baby, by arbitrarily stringing syllables together.

The researchers also enlisted 34 people to act as teachers, who were told to treat DeeChee as if it were a child. DeeChee took part in an 8-minute dialogue with each teacher. Between each session, its memory was saved, wiped and reset, so that the experiment started anew with each teacher. At the outset of each dialogue, each of the syllables in DeeChee's lexicon had an identical score.

This learning by imitation was then reinforced by encouraging remarks from the teacher when DeeChee spoke a recognisable word. DeeChee was programmed to detect these comments and give extra points to the syllables that preceded the teacher's approval. Inevitably, some nonsense syllables would get extra points too. But as this process was repeated, only those syllables that made up words would keep showing up in strings that gained approval.

Though the robot was still uttering nonsense syllables, towards the end of the 8 minutes, real words kept popping up more often than if DeeChee were still selecting syllables at random.

Right now, DeeChee's speech is a far cry from full-blown language, but starting from babble could be the best way to create robots that speak naturally.

Journal reference: PLoS One, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0038236

Site reference : http://www.newscientist.com/

The European Space Agency is continuing to prepare for the launch of its Gaia spacecraft set for 2013. Gaia's mission will see it creating a 3D map of a billion stars in the Milky Way using a 1.5-gigapixel camera.

In this photo, taken at the EADS CASA test facility in Madrid, Spain, checks are being made on Gaia's 1.5-metre-wide antenna panel to ensure data will reach Earth safely. The foam spikes on the walls of the test room block radio signals to simulate space. Electronic steering will ensure the antenna is always directed towards its target while the spacecraft rotates in space as it maps the stars, asteroids, extrasolar planets and other objects.

After launch, Gaia will take up an orbit around the sun 1.5 million kilometres beyond, but in pace with, Earth's to minimise the distance the weak signal has to travel. During its initial five-year mission, Gaia will send an estimated 200 terabytes of data to radio dishes in Spain and Australia. A working antenna is obviously central to downloading this data safely.

What's special?

Gaia will rely on the proven principles of ESA’s Hipparcos mission to create an extraordinarily precise three-dimensional map of more than a thousand million stars throughout our Galaxy and beyond. Gaia will also map the motions of stars, which encode their origins and evolution. Gaia will provide the detailed physical properties of each star observed, revealing luminosity, temperature, gravity and composition. This huge stellar census will provide the basic observational data to tackle an enormous range of important problems related to the origin, structure and evolutionary history of our Galaxy.

Gaia will achieve its goals by repeatedly measuring the positions of all objects down to magnitude 20 (about 400 000 times fainter than can be seen with the naked eye). Onboard object detection will ensure that variable stars, supernovae, other transient celestial events and minor planets will all be detected and catalogued to this faint limit. For all objects brighter than magnitude 15 (4000 times fainter than the naked eye limit), Gaia will measure their positions to an accuracy of 24 microarcseconds. This is comparable to measuring the diameter of a human hair at a distance of 1000 km. It will allow the nearest stars to have their distances measured to the extraordinary accuracy of 0.001%. Even stars near the Galactic centre, some 30 000 light-years away, will have their distances measured to within an accuracy of 20%.

Journey

Gaia will map the stars from an orbit around the Sun, at a distance of 1.5 million km beyond Earth’s orbit. This special location, known as the L2 Lagrangian point, keeps pace with Earth as we orbit the Sun.

L2 offers a stable thermal environment, a clear view of the Universe because the Sun, Earth and Moon are always outside the instruments’ fields of view, and a moderate radiation environment. An operational lifetime of five years is planned.
 

Site reference : http://www.esa.int/, http://www.newscientist.com/

The first concepts of Nanotechnology

The first use of the concepts in 'nano-technology' (but predating use of that name) was in "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom," a talk given by physicist Richard Feynman at an American Physical Society meeting at Caltech on December 29, 1959.

Feynman described a process by which the ability to manipulate individual atoms and molecules might be developed, using one set of precise tools to build and operate another proportionally smaller set, so on down to the needed scale. In the course of this, he noted, scaling issues would arise from the changing magnitude of various physical phenomena: gravity would become less important, surface tension and Van der Waals attraction would become more important, etc. This basic idea appears plausible, and exponential assembly enhances it with parallelism to produce a useful quantity of end products.

Today, in the young field of nanotechnology, scientists and engineers are taking control of atoms and molecules individually, manipulating them and putting them to use with an extraordinary degree of precision. Word of the promise of nanotechnology is spreading rapidly, and the air is thick with news of nanotech breakthroughs.

One of the most exciting technological advance in the world today is in the field of nanotechnology. Governments and bussines are investing billions of dollars in it. Public awareness of nanotech is clearly on the rise, too, partly because references to it are becoming more common in popular culture-with mentions in movies, books, video games, and television.

What is nanotechnology and how is it useful to us?

Some uses of nantechnology include :

China sent its first female astronaut into space on a mission to manually dock the Shenzhou- 9 spacecraft with an orbiting laboratory as part of the country’s plan to build a space station by 2020.

More than 50 female astronauts from seven countries have gone into space to date. The longest space flight by a female astronaut lasted 188 days. All countries that have completed manned space missions have attached great significance to their respective first female astronauts' maiden space flights, including the former Soviet Union's first female cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova and Sally Ride, the first U.S. woman astrianut in space, and Iranian-American Anousheh Ansari, the first private-sector female space explorer. Now the name of Liu Yang will be added to space history books.

Liu Yang, 33, is a People's Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force major. She was a veteran pilot with 1,680 hours of flying experience and the deputy head of a flight unit of the PLA's Air Force before being recruited as a potential taikonaut in May 2010. Air-force pilot Liu Yang and two male astronauts blasted off at 6:37 p.m. Beijing time yesterday from Jiuquan in the northwestern Gansu province, according to a live broadcast on China’s Central Television. 

China will launch its Shenzhou-9 manned spacecraft at 6:37 p.m. Saturday (6:37 a.m. in Washington), if the launch preperations continue on schedule. The three-member taikonaut for the Shenzhou 9 mission is Jing Haipeng, Liu Wang and Liu Yang.

They will complete an automated docking with the Tiangong-1, or “Heavenly Palace,” laboratory module in two days and will then attempt a manual docking that is considered a major step in the space station program, the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported.

Chinese state media have lauded Liu’s accomplishments during the past week, framing her selection as part of the country’s broader push to expand its space program while other nations cut back. China aims to put a person on the moon by 2020 as well as operate a permanent manned space station.