Mathematics takes us into the region of absolute necessity, to which not only the actual word, but every possible word, must conform. -- Bertrand Russell

Latest News Items

ISWC late-breaking topics - The 1st International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC2002, June 9-12th, 2002, Sardinia, Italy) seeks abstracts and posters on late-breaking topics by April 25, 2002. (3/24)

Bots Invade the Arts -- "'Robotic art expresses our ambivalence toward machines,' says Ollivier Dyens, author of Metal and Flesh, a book about the relationship between technology, biology and culture. Today, machines are not only a ubiquitous part of our environment, but they are also slowly encroaching upon our personal space --with microchips finding their way into prosthetic limbs, intravenous communications systems, clothing and jewelry. (3/22)

Wild Things, fighting, flocking, free willing -- They fight. They flock. They have free will. Get ready for game bots with a mind of their own. By Steven Johnson. Wired (10.03). (3/22)

Chess Monster in a Box -- The inside story of an ingenious chess-playing machine that thrilled crowds, terrified opponents, and won like clockwork. (3/22)

http://lobaltech.com/ is building a brain -- A small London based start-up called Lobal Technologies (http://www.lobaltech.com/) is working on a system to simulate the way humans use language more closely than ever before. Lobal is working on an artificial intelligence system so intelligent its staff hate it being called 'artificial intelligence' In a tiny office on a quiet mews development near Baker Street tube station in London the six staff of Lobal spend their working days raising a virtual baby. The baby is called LAD - which stands for Language Acquisition Device. (3/22)

World's 'first' talking washing machine unveiled -- "The Electrolux Kelvinator, which will be launched in India, has a vocabulary of more than 90 English and Hindi phrases. It says things like 'drop the detergent', 'close the lid' and 'relax' accompanied by a tinkling of piano keys or a trumpet fanfare." (3/22)

Humanoid robot goes to work on Linux -- Japanese manufacturer Kawada has released details of a Linux-based humanoid robot that it believes could be employed in the workplace. The robot, called HRP-2P (which stands for Humanoid Robotics Project-2 Prototype) runs on a real-time version of the Linux operating system, called ART-Linux. ART-Linux is based on the well-known RT-Linux, which is designed for robotic applications, as well as data acquisition and systems control functions. (3/22)

Robots rule in soccer tournament -- RoboCup has existed as an annual international, inter-robot soccer competition since 1997, and by 2050, the co-op of artificial intelligence and robotics researchers behind the event say they will have a team of “fully autonomous humanoid robots capable of defeating the human soccer world champions.” (3/22)

Scientist becomes world's first cyborg -- A Reading UK scientist has become the world's first cyborg after undergoing an operation to fit his arm with a device that effectively makes him part-human, part-robot. (3/22)

Sony robot sings, dances and isn't cheap -- The silver, round-eyed "SDR-4X" humanoid robot will go on sale later in 2002. Sony Corp. would not say much more about its plans for the 23-inch tall robot. "This robot was designed to live with people in homes," said Toshitada Doi, Sony executive vice president. (3/21)

On the Road to the Semantic Web -- A short article on http://searchenginewatch.com talks about the W3C's OWL semantic web language. (3/21)

Voice Recognition Leaps Into Appliances -- Voice control, long the stuff of science fiction and computer lab experiments, is popping up in more and more mundane household devices like clock radios, MP3 players, television remotes, telephones and light switches. (3/21)

Furrybot to Watch Over You -- A furry, robotic teddy bear that can alert doctors to a medical emergency is the latest in elderly care management to come out of Japan. (3/20)

Latest Directory Additions

The Intelligent Wireless Web -- The Intelligent Wireless Web ( Peter Alesso, and Craig Smith, Addison Wesley, Dec. 2001, ISBN:0201730634) presents a vision of the Web's near future and overviews the technologies that will make it possible. It explores developments in speech recognition, mobile wireless devices, network integration, and software, examining the convergence and synergy among five key technological components: speech as a primary user interface; wireless personal area networks; an integrated wired/wireless network infrastructure; supporting wireless protocols; and intelligent applications. (3/23)

web-iq.com -- Web-iq.com is a software research and development laboratory specializing in customized (XML/J2EE/.NET/GLUE/SOAP) software for Corporate Portal Web Services running over today's and tomorrow's Web Architecture. This connecting software links XML/Web Services with Semantic Architecture. (3/23)

Co-Ordination in Artificial Agent Societies : Social Structures and Its Implications for Autonomous Problem-Solving Agents -- Agents are equipped with expertise about their environment in order to detect and overcome specific types of problem, they make use of their social knowledge to mutually adjust their activities, and they are coerced toward coherent collective behavior through normative rules. (3/23)

The Mind Doesn't Work That Way -- Fodor explores the relationship among computational and modular theories of mind, nativism, and evolutionary psychology and takes on nativism, massive modularity and over-reliance on natural selection to explain the development of innate mental structures. The book's title refers to Steve Pinker's How the Mind Works. (3/23)

Defining RDF and DAML+OIL schemata -- An article from IBM in which Uche Ogbuji moves on to define RDF and DAML+OIL schemata for the issue tracker application, continuing the discussion of modeling as he goes along. (3/21)

Agent Oriented Software, Inc -- The AOS Group, with offices in Australia, the US, and the UK, markets JACK Intelligent AgentsTM. Based on the Group's ongoing research and development work on BDI software agent technologies, JACK is leading the field as a tool for building commercial-grade, agent-based systems. (3/17)

Conversation Technology Inc -- Conversation Technology is a Gaithersburg MD company which has developed QNAgent -- a scriptable conversational agent for commercial applications. (3/17)

AAMAS Workshop on Ubiquitous Agents -- A workshop on ubiquitous agents on embedded, wearable, and mobile devices the University of Bologna in conjunction with the 2002 Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (submit papers by 22 April). (2/19)

AAAI Workshop on Agent-based Systems for IR -- A workshop on agent-based IR will be held in conjunction with AAAI 02 -- papers are due March 31, 2002. (2/23)

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