Tag Archives: Robots

Where is my OLIVER?

By alex | Published: 11/3/2004
I was recently rereading Licklidder’s “The computer as a communications device” (1968; available as a pdf) and was struck by this image of a personal network agent. It seems as though people do a lot of talking about this, but I want to know where mine is. Is the Bayesian spam filter the best we […]
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Rats!

By alex | Published: 10/26/2004
Somebody call Cyberdyne! A University of Florida researcher has grown a working neural net using cortical cells harvested from a rat. And what to do with this “rat brain in a dish”? Have it play video games, naturally. What I really want to know is if they have it running SETI@home when it’s not flying […]
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Book Scanning

By alex | Published: 11/28/2003
Pictured to the left is the Kirtas APT Bookscan 1200. The “1200” refers to the number of pages it can scan in an hour. Automatic page turners and book scanners have been a longheld interest of mine. Check out their site and watch the demo video. The process itself seems like one that is simple […]
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Extreme cruise control

By alex | Published: 11/4/2003
DAPRA has sponsored a competition for self-driving vehicles that takes them through a 250 mile desert track. The prize is $1,000,000, though most of the teams are spending far more than that on the project. What would be cool is if there were an underdog: a team that was doing it with an old VW […]
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