"The best way to predict the future is to invent it." -- Alan Kay

Latest News Items

Radical Agent Concepts -- The Goddard/JPL Workshop on Radical Agent Concepts will be held in McLean, VA January 16-18, 2002. (12/27)

Los Alamos Lab scientists creates brainy bug toys -- Don't tell Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist Mark Tilden that robots need computer brains. His robots don't use them. Tilden has created an army of lifelike robotic bugs that use transistors, rather than computers, to control their actions. The result of his work is a hot new toy line from Hasbro's WowWee Toys called B.I.O.-Bugs. (12/23)

Computer beats humans at guessing sex from face/voice info -- A new computer classification system developed at Penn State uses SVMs to correctly identify a person's sex -- based only on eyes, nose, mouth and voice cues -- better than human beings can. Prof. Rajeev Sharma says the new system is right nearly 100 percent of the time. Human beings consistently score in the low 90 percents. (12/15)

Have Your Agent Call My Agent -- An InformationWeek.com article on agents..."Exciting new research in autonomous software agents could lead to new software entities that are active players in the economy, explains Karyl Scott." (12/13)

Our Impulse to Connect the Dots Is Pre-Wired -- The human brain is a master of the connect-the-dots game, drawing heavily on its ability to remember the past, make associations in the present and come to conclusions about the future. Indeed, our brains are such talented and overzealous extrapolators that we regularly see patterns where none exist. (12/11)

Boneless, brainy, and ancient -- How to make a robotic arm that is able to flex in an infinite number of ways and order it to do so without disorder and confusion? Get yourself an octopus and study it. That is exactly what researchers funded by the Office of Naval Research are doing. (12/11)

24th FIPA agents standards meeting -- The 24th FIPA meeting will be held in Lausanne Switzerland area during 11-15 February, 2002. 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/. (11/24)

Latest Directory Additions

Project Oxygen's New Wind -- A story from Technology Review on MIT's effort aimed at replacing the PC with ubiquitous -- ofteninvisible -- computing machines. (12/23)

Building The Web of Tomorrow -- ABC News story: "Thousands of people are now betting they can build a smarter Web, one where information can be manipulated automatically, without human intervention." (12/23)

slugbot -- The SlugBot Project at the University of West England "represents the first stage of a study in energy autonomy; a proof-of-concept vehicle capable of detecting and collecting slugs." (12/18)

Dave Barry on slugbot -- Dave Barry offers his own ideas inspired by the University of West England's slugbot. (12/18)

Creation : Life and How to Make It -- Creation : Life and How to Make It, Steve Grand, October 2001, Harvard Univ Press; ISBN: 0674006542. Harvard Univ Pr; ISBN: 0674006542. "Blending aspects of philosophy, computer science, artificial intelligence, biology and computer gaming, Grand attempts to define life, discuss the nature of the human soul and demonstrate how it is possible to create entities that demand to be called both living and intelligent. A tall order indeed, and to wonderful effect, Grand draws heavily on his experience writing computer code (he developed the popular computer game Creatures, e in which cyberbeings "live," learn and reproduce). (12/16)

NetLogo -- NetLogo is a distributed programming language and agent modeling language and simulator based which is descended from StarLogo. It is also an authoring language for a network of handheld devices called HubNet, that enables students to engage in "participatory simulations" where students control individual agents, actors or particles within a simulation and can view and reflect on the aggregate patterns that emerge from the interactions. (ACE News) (12/16)

Social dynamics -- Social Dynamics (Economic Learning and Social Evolution) by Steven N. Durlauf (Editor), H. Peyton Young (Editor), "...individuals are directly influenced by the choices and characteristics of others, creating a feedback loop from the past choices of some people to the current context and hence future choices of others. The essays in this book, by some of the creators of the field, provide an overview of social economics and represent a variety of approaches, including theoretical model building, empirical studies, statistical analyses, and philosophical reflections." (12/16)

GlobalWisdom -- Globalwisdom is a DC area company that develops AI related software for knowledge management. (12/11)

HAL's Legacy -- HAL's Legacy is a video broadcast on PBS in the US written and narrated by David Stork, author of the book by the same name. (12/11)

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