Don't ask what it means, but rather how it is used. - L. Wittgenstein

Latest News Items

23rd FIPA meeting -- The 23rd meeting of the FIPA agents standards organization will be held in Pleasanton CA (outside San Francisco) from 8-12 October, 2001 hosted by Sandia National Laboratories. A preliminary agenda is available and hotel rooms should be booked by 21 September, 2001. The quarterly FIPA meetings are free and open to FIPA members and interested non-members who are willing to actively contribute to the FIPA process. More information on how to participate in FIPA can be found at http://fipa.org/. (9/12)

Humanoid for Open Architecture Platform -- Fujitsu is poised to release technical details on Tuesday of HOAP-1, a humanoid robot that can walk on its own two legs. The company began selling the automaton, called Hoap-1, last week. The 48cm-tall robot is shaped like a humanoid, weighs 6kg and has been designed "for wide applications in research and development of robotic technologies", according to the Japanese manufacturer. (9/18)

Robots Scour WTC Wreckage -- Dozens of experimental search-and-rescue robots are scouring the wreckage of the World Trade Center's collapsed twin towers. At least two separate teams of roboticists are at Ground Zero operating up to two dozen experimental robots, which are being used to probe the rubble and locate bodies. This is the first time robots have been used in a search-and-rescue operation. (9/18)

BT ponders bacterial intelligence -- BT researchers are studying bacterial colonies to help develop communication networks that will self-organise and self-configure. They believe that soon many people will be carrying around or using so many small, smart devices that they will not have the time to do their own configuration. Self-organising systems will then be essential to keep networks running. (9/18)

Open Agent Architecture 2.1 released -- A new release of the Open Agent Architecture, OAA 2.1.0, is now available from the OAA Web site. Oaa a research framework for constructing agent-based systems, makes it possible for software services to be provided through the cooperative efforts of distributed collections of autonomous agents. Communication and cooperation between agents are brokered by one or more facilitators, which are responsible for matching requests, from users and agents, with descriptions of the capabilities of other agents. (9/17)

Search-and-rescue robots tested at WTC -- Three experimental robots, each about the size of a shoebox, are being used to search for victims in the mountain of rubble that was once the World Trade Center in New York City. Researcher Robin Murphy and three of her graduate students have been clambering over the jagged piles of debris - powdered concrete and twisted steel - with the camera-carrying robots, lowering them into voids that are inaccessible to people, dogs, and other cameras involved in the search for bodies. (National Geographic Today) (9/17)

Hey Asimo, bring me a beer -- This Yahoo Internet Lift article offers g guide to consumer robots, including Asimo, PaPero, DC06, Mindstorms, and Aibo. (9/15)

Soul in the machine -- An article from Yahoo Internet Life from August 2001 by Charles Platt -- "As the Net takes baby steps toward artifical intelligence, Web surfing may take on a life of its own". (9/15)

Artificial ants solve network problems -- Ants might be able to run telecommunication networks better than humans. "Researchers have found that control programs based on the foraging behaviour of ants can keep data networks running more efficiently and cope with congestion better than many human alternatives. ..." (BBC online) (9/13)

Ontologies: A Silver Bullet for KM and EC -- Dieter Fensel, "Ontologies : A Silver Bullet for Knowledge Management and Electronic Commerce", Springer Verlag, ISBN: 3540416021, June 2001. "The author systematically introduces the notion of ontologies to the non-expert reader and demonstrates in detail how to apply this conceptual framework for improved intranet retrieval of corporate information and knowledge and for enhanced Internet-based electronic commerce. In the second part of the book, the author presents a more technical view on emerging Web standards, such as XML, RDF, XSL-T." (9/12)

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