NASA designs ape-like robot for disasters
When we imagine the robots of the future, they often look and move like humans, standing up on two legs and using a pair of arms to grab and move objects. NASA's
Jet Propulsion Laboratory is working on a different kind of robot for disaster response that's designed to move like an ape.
Headless but covered with seven cameras that act as "eyes," the RobotSimian has four identical limbs that do double duty as arms and legs. Together, they ably move the robot across rough terrain and rubble but can also pick up and manipulate objects. It has wheels it can coast on if the surface is smooth enough.
The RoboSimian is JPL's final entry into the DARPA Robotics Challenge, a 27-month-long competition among some of the world's top robotic talent to create an emergency response robot. In situations such as a nuclear disaster, one of these robots could go into environments too dangerous for human rescue workers and execute simple tasks such as lifting debris off survivors or turning off a valve.
In June, RoboSimian and up to 18 other finalists will have to make their way through an obstacle course that simulates eight common scenarios. Each robot will attempt to drive a car, move across rubble, use a tool and climb stairs, all without a human controlling it. DARPA says the final competitors should be as competent as a 2-year-old child. The winning team will receive a $2 million prize.
JPL used leftover parts from RoboSimian to create another robot called Surrogate. The more traditional upright robot has a flexible spine, head and two arms. While better at manipulating objects, Surrogate ran on tracks and wasn't as adept at traversing the complicated terrain that is common in a disaster. After considering both candidates, the team decided to take RoboSimian to the finals.
One trade-off is that RoboSiman is slower than many other competitors. JPL's team is working with the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Caltech to increase the robot's walking speed.
"It is intentionally the tortoise relative to the other hares in the competition. We feel that a very stable and deliberate approach suites our technical strengths and provides a model for one vital element of the 'ecosystem' of robots that we expect to be deployed to disaster scenarios in the future," said JPL's Brett Kennedy, who is supervisor of the Robotic Vehicles and Manipulators Group.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory is most known for designing robotics for space exploration, such as the Mars rovers. But the DARPA competition was an opportunity for the JPL group to take its existing robotics research and compare approaches directly to other talented teams.
NASA also has a long history of taking technology developed for space exploration and using it here on Earth.
RoboSimian software was influenced by programs used to control the Mars rovers. In both cases, the system is designed to let the robots work as autonomously as possible when communication with a human operator is dropped. Spotty communications are common in disaster scenarios (and on Mars).
The team has thought hard about all aspects of RoboSimian's design, even making sure it has the right look.
"We included industrial designers in the team in an effort to create a robot that looked professional rather than either threatening or overly cute," said Kennedy. "Basically, we wanted the perceptual equivalent of a St. Bernard."
While JPL is focused on perfecting the ape-like design for Earth-bound applications for now, this is just one stop in the circular life of NASA technology.
"We intend to spin the technologies developed for the terrestrial RoboSimian back out to applications in space," said Kennedy.
"These tasks include assembly and maintenance of orbital structures; exploration of low-gravity bodies like asteroids, comets, and moons; exploration of caves and cliffs on Mars or our moon; and even preconstruction of habitats wherever humans care to venture in the solar system."
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"I think that we will be very proactive in terms of how we field AI systems, and that in the end we'll be able to get incredible benefits from machine intelligence in all realms of life, from science to education to economics to daily life."
Mr Horvitz runs Microsoft Research's lab at the parent company's Redmond headquarters. His division's work has already helped introduce Cortana, Microsoft's virtual assistant.
Despite his own reservations, Mr Gates wrote on Reddit that, had Microsoft not worked out, he would probably be a researcher on AI.
"When I started Microsoft I was worried I would miss the chance to do basic work in that field," he said.
He added that he believed the firm he founded would see "more progress... than ever" over the next three decades.
"Even in the next 10 [years,] problems like vision and speech understanding and translation will be very good."
He predicted that, in that time, robots would perform tasks such as picking fruit or moving hospital patients. "Once computers/robots get to a level of capability where seeing and moving is easy for them then they will be used very extensively."
He said he was working on a project with Microsoft called "Personal Agent", which he said would "remember everything and help you go back and find things and help you pick what things to pay attention to".
He wrote: "The idea that you have to find applications and pick them and they each are trying to tell you what is new is just not the efficient model - the agent will help solve this. It will work across all your devices."
But he admitted that he felt "pretty stupid" because he cannot speak any language other than English.
"I took Latin and Greek in High School and got As and I guess it helps my vocabulary but I wish I knew French or Arabic or Chinese.
"I keep hoping to get time to study one of these - probably French because it is the easiest... Mark Zuckerberg amazingly learned Mandarin and did a Q&A with Chinese students - incredible," he wrote. 
Microsoft declined to comment.
The Spartan browser will be built on a different software platform from IE, so it won't be backwards-compatible, ZDNet reported. That means Microsoft will continue to ship IE with Windows to ensure that corporate apps continue to function properly.
Company IT departments and governments tend to be very slow to adopt new browser versions, particularly if they build custom applications for them. That's why the most-used version of Internet Explorer stubbornly remains IE 8, which debuted in 2009.
South Korea even passed a law in 1999 requiring that banks and retailers use digital certificates -- created by Microsoft, and available exclusively on Internet Explorer.
So IE won't go away just yet. But this could be the beginning of the end.
"Some people have asked for a dislike button because they want to say, 'That thing isn't good.' That's not something that we think is good for the world.
"The thing that I think is very valuable is that there are more sentiments that people want to express."
Kevin Systrom (CEO, co-founder) Kevin Systrom[/caption]
"What we need to do is figure out how to take the fact that everyone's contributing in the world and broadcast that more globally.
"If you're interested in what's happening at the World Cup, you can peer in, see the football players and see what they're thinking and doing before they go onto the field.
"Those are the types of things that I want to enable over the next year."
Since it was set up by co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger in October 2010, Instagram has grown rapidly.
In February 2013, the company announced it had reached 100 million active monthly users.
Recently Instagram introduced advertising, with "sponsored posts" allowing brands to reach the app's growing number of users.
"Early on I would review and approve every single ad before it went on," Kevin Systrom said.
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Instagram now bigger than Twitter[/caption]
Although some users were not happy about seeing adverts on Instagram, he said that adverts were needed to allow the company to grow and cope with its increasing size.
"The reason why we're doing this is as a growth engine for Instagram.
"When you get to 300m users it's not cheap to run that service and you need to make sure to be able to hire more people."
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Instagram Growth[/caption]
The company responded to Twitter's Vine app with a video-sharing feature of its own and introduced direct messaging to compete with rivals WhatsApp and Snapchat.
In June 2014 Instagram defended its rules on nudity as "fair" after criticism for removing photos of topless women.
Kevin Systrom told Newsbeat that Instagram's close relationship with Facebook had allowed it to learn from its mistakes.
"We're absolutely paying attention to the pitfalls companies have faced before and trying our best to avoid them." 
"It would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever increasing rate," he said.
"Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn't compete, and would be superseded."
But others are less pessimistic.
"I believe we will remain in charge of the technology for a decently long time and the potential of it to solve many of the world problems will be realised," said Rollo Carpenter, creator of Cleverbot.
Cleverbot's software learns from its past conversations, and has gained high scores in the Turing test, fooling a high proportion of people into believing they are talking to a human.
Rise of the robots
Mr Carpenter says we are a long way from having the computing power or developing the algorithms needed to achieve full artificial intelligence, but believes it will come in the next few decades.
"We cannot quite know what will happen if a machine exceeds our own intelligence, so we can't know if we'll be infinitely helped by it, or ignored by it and sidelined, or conceivably destroyed by it," he says.
But he is betting that AI is going to be a positive force.
Prof Hawking is not alone in fearing for the future.
In the short term, there are concerns that clever machines capable of undertaking tasks done by humans until now will swiftly destroy millions of jobs.
In the longer term, the technology entrepreneur Elon Musk has warned that AI is "our biggest existential threat".
Robotic voice
In his interview, Prof Hawking also talks of the benefits and dangers of the internet.
He quotes the director of GCHQ's warning about the net becoming the command centre for terrorists: "More must be done by the internet companies to counter the threat, but the difficulty is to do this without sacrificing freedom and privacy."
He has, however, been an enthusiastic early adopter of all kinds of communication technologies and is looking forward to being able to write much faster with his new system.
But one aspect of his own tech - his computer generated voice - has not changed in the latest update.
Prof Hawking concedes that it's slightly robotic, but insists he didn't want a more natural voice.
"It has become my trademark, and I wouldn't change it for a more natural voice with a British accent," he said.
"I'm told that children who need a computer voice, want one like mine." 
