April 5th, 2008
Every move you make tracked by RFID tags
We’ve been told for several years that RFID tags would appear everywhere. This is not the case yet, but researchers at the University of Washington would like to know if the future of social networking could be affected by these tags and check the balance between privacy and utility. They’ve deployed 200 antennas in one UW building and a dozen researchers are carrying RFID tags on them. According to the Seattle Times, all their moves are tracked every second in the building. Of course, it can be practical to know if a colleague is available for a cup of coffee. Still, it has of implications for privacy. As the lead researcher said, ‘what we want to understand is what makes it useful, what makes it threatening and how to balance the two.’ But read more…
You can see on the left how the RFID Ecosystem can alert users when they have left something behind. (Credit: UW) Here is a link to a larger version of this illustration.
This project has been initiated by Gaetano Borriello, professor of computer science & engineering at UW and a dozen of other researchers. Their large RFID Ecosystem Project “investigates user-centered RFID systems in connection with technology, business, and society” and “one central question in this research is in the balance between privacy and utility.”
One of the researchers, graduate student Evan Welbourne, has put a video on YouTube in January 2008. This movie describes various aspects and applications of the project. Here is a direct link to this video (6 minutes and 17 seconds).
April 2nd, 2008
Tiny music files almost as good as MP3 ones
Researchers at the University of Rochester have encoded a 20-second clarinet solo in a file smaller than a kilobyte. This is about 1,000 times smaller than regular MP3 files. But the sound is almost as good according to the scientists. The system works by ‘recreating in a computer both the real-world physics of a clarinet and the physics of a clarinet player.’ The researchers are also working on modeling other instruments and on a graphical user interface allowing ‘normal’ people to play music without almost any training. However, in our years of increased bandwidth and larger memories for our gadgets, I doubt that this music reduction in size can lead to a successful commercial product. But read more…
This system has been developed by Mark F. Bocko, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and who manages the Center for Superconducting Digital Electronics, with two of his doctoral students, Xiaoxiao Dong and Mark Sterling. You can listen to two 20-second audio files available from the news release mentioned above, a human performance recorded using MP3 format and a virtual performance using Bocko’s new compression.
Here is what they did. “They built a computer model of the clarinet, and the result is a virtual instrument built entirely from the real-world acoustical measurements. The team then set about creating a virtual player for the virtual clarinet. They modeled how a clarinet player interacts with the instrument including the fingerings, the force of breath, and the pressure of the player’s lips to determine how they would affect the response of the virtual clarinet. Then, says Bocko, it’s a matter of letting the computer ‘listen’ to a real clarinet performance to infer and record the various actions required to create a specific sound. The original sound is then reproduced by feeding the record of the player’s actions back into the computer model.”
In “UR finds way to cut size of music files,” Matthew Daneman provides additional details about the sound quality of these small musical files in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle (April 2, 2008). “Parts of the computer simulation ’sound virtually identical’ to a recording of a clarinet, Bocko said, while some other parts — such as the computer simulation of tonguing at the beginning of notes — still needs work.
So what are the researchers working on today?
April 1st, 2008
A firefighting beetle robot
According to Popular Science, German researchers have designed firefighting robots mimicking beetles. The OLE robotic beetle (short for ‘Offroad Löscheinheit’ — which means ‘off-road extinguishing apparatus’ in German) has been developed at the University of Magdeburg-Stendal. The OLE would be autonomous and guided by GPS, infrared and heat sensors and could be equipped with tanks of water and powdered fire-extinguishing agents.’ According to the developers, such a robot would cost between $125 and $200K. But a small army of 30 OLEs could survey a 7,000 square kilometers area. But read more…
You can see above one of these OLE firefighting robots in action in a forest. (Credit: Unknown)
This other picture shows how the design of the OLE has been inspired from a common beetle, the pill millipede. (Credit: Unknown)
[Note: I’ve found several versions of these images online. The two pictures above have been picked from “OLE the Fire-Fighting Beetle” on a site named SlipperyBrick. It’s interesting to note that SlipperyBrick claims to be part of Pragmatic Labs, whose address is “Somewhere, Someplace 10090, USA.” It’s even more puzzling that almost all the pages on this site start with “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat.” Is this a new way to do business?]
If you want to look at more professional images, please visit this photo gallery available from Popular Science.
Now, let’s return to the Popular Science article to learn more about the OLE.
March 31st, 2008
Women’s attractiveness judged by software
According to Haaretz, an Israeli team of computer scientists has developed a software that ranks facial attractiveness of women. Instead of identifying basic facial characteristics, this software has been designed to make aesthetic judgments — after training. The lead researcher said this program ‘constitutes a substantial advance in the development of artificial intelligence.’ It is interesting to note that the researchers focused on women only. Apparently, men’ faces are more difficult to grade. But read more…
The picture on the left shows how the system is initially calibrated: “Facial coordinates with hair and skin sample regions as represented by the facial feature extractor. Coordinates are used for calculating geometric features and asymmetry. Sample regions are used for extracting color values and smoothness.” (Credit: Amit Kagian, Tel Aviv University, Israel).
This software has been developed by Amit Kagian, a Tel Aviv University (TAU) student, for his master’s thesis in computer science. He has been supervised by Gideon Dror, an associate professor in computer science at the Academic College of Tel-Aviv-Yaffo and Eytan Ruppin, a TAU professor who manages the Complex Network Systems Lab.
Here are some details about how the software was tested. “In the first stage, 30 human participants were asked to rate from 1-7 the beauty of several dozen pictures. Participants did not say why they ranked certain faces as more beautiful than others. The pictures were then processed and mathematically mapped. ‘We came up with 98 numbers that represent the geometric shape of the face, as well as characteristics like hair color, smoothness of skin and facial symmetry,’ Kagian explains. Participants’ rankings of the pictures were also input in the computer.”
But what was the second stage? “‘We input new pictures of faces into the computer and it graded them based on the information it had.’ Human subjects were then asked to rank the new pictures too. ‘The computer produced impressive results
March 30th, 2008
Silicon chips for optical quantum computing
UK researchers at Bristol University have shown that it is possible to control single photons on a silicon chip. The team developed ‘the world’s smallest optical controlled-NOT gate — the building block of a quantum computer.’ As said the lead researcher, ‘This is a crucial step towards a future optical quantum computer, as well as other quantum technologies based on photons.’ But read more…
This research work has been led by Dr Jeremy O’Brien, Senior Research Fellow in Physics and Electrical Engineering at Bristol University, who is pursuing experimental quantum information science and technology. You can see a picture of O’Brien on the left. He worked with his colleagues at the Centre for Quantum Photonics and his PhD student Alberto Politi. He also worked with other Bristol University researchers, Dr Martin Cryan, Professor John Rarity and Dr Siyuan Yu.
As you probably all know, quantum technologies are based on the unique properties of quantum mechanics. And “photons are an excellent choice for quantum technologies because they are relatively noise free.” O’Brien used them since 2003 to build ‘conversations’ between two — and then four photons.
So what’s new behind these silica-on-silicon wave-guide quantum circuits? “‘Despite these and other impressive demonstrations, quantum optical circuits have typically relied on large optical elements with photons propagating in air, and consuming a square metre of optical table. This has made them hard to build and difficult to scale up,’ said Alberto Politi. ‘For the last several years the Centre for Quantum Photonics has been working towards building controlled-NOT gates and other important quantum circuits on a chip to solve these problems,’ added Dr O’Brien.
March 29th, 2008
A single-photon channel to space
According to the Institute of Physics (IOP), European researchers have successfully identified individual returning photons from space ‘after firing and reflecting them off of a space satellite in orbit almost 1,500 kilometers above the earth.’ This experiment could lead to a global quantum-encrypted communications network in the future. In other words, we could one day have access to completely secure channels for global communications via satellites in space. But read more…
You can see above a scheme of the satellite single-photon link. “A fraction of the beam in the uplink path irradiates the satellite (LAGEOS shown). The corner cubes on the satellite retro-reflect back to the Earth a small portion of the photons in the laser pulse (downlink) and the gathered portion, according to the receiver field of view (FOV) is indicated in green. This, according to the experimental parameters, is the single-photon channel.” (Credit: 11 researchers from Austria and Italy) The researchers also used other satellites for their experiment were the most visible ones from MLRO: Ajisai (perigee height of 1485 km), Lageos II (5625 km), Topex-Poseidon (1350 km) and Beacon-C (927 km).
This research effort has been led by Paolo Villoresi, associate professor of Physics and Cesare Barbieri, professor of Astronomy, both from the University of Padova, Italy. Anton Zeilinger, professor of Experimental Physics at the University of Vienna, Austria, and the 2008 winner of the Newton Medal award given by the IOP was also involved in the research.
For their experiments, the researchers used the Matera Laser Ranging Observatory (MLRO), located at the Centre for Space Geodesy (CGS) in Matera, Italy, operated by the (ASI) Agenzia Spaziale Italiana — or Italian Space Agency. The best results were obtained by communicating with the Experimental Geodetic Satellite Ajisai belonging to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).
This research work has been published in the New Journal of Physics, one of the journals of the Institute of Physics
March 28th, 2008
A microscope that emails medical images
A team of Chinese and U.S. researchers has successfully applied for a patent for a virtual telemicroscope. It is the only one of its kind capable of emailing electronic slides. It has been specifically designed to allow ‘off-site pathologists to diagnose cancer or other diseases in patients living in remote locations around the world,’ like China, where many hospitals don’t have on-site pathologists. Real systems based on this patent have already been deployed. And the results of the first clinical trials are pretty encouraging. Telepathologists reached the same level of diagnostic accuracy as pathologists using standard light microscopy. Using this software, telepathologists were able to remotely deliver their diagnosis in about 15 minutes. But read more…
You can see above a diagram of the functional structure of the virtual telemicroscope system patented by the researchers. (Credit: Virginia Anderson and Jiang Gu).
This system was developed by Virginia Anderson, associate Department of Pathology at SUNY Downstate, and Jiang Gu, dean and chairman of pathology at Beijing Medical University. A Chinese company, Motic, has already built “a microscope with a robotic stage that scans whole slides at various magnifications and then creates compressed images that can be emailed all over the world.”
Here is how the system works. “The Motic telepathology system utilizes a computer and microscope, which enables interactive communication on a user network. A robot scans the whole tissue sample on the microscope. Subsequent images corresponding to the selected area of the specimen are linked at higher magnifications. The patented software turns an ordinary computer into a virtual microscope. High magnification images are compressed and linked to the low power scanned glass slide that is stored as a virtual slide file. Images can then be emailed and analyzed by pathologists at remote locations. Once received, Internet independent images can be stored and viewed as part of the electronic medical record or medical student teaching file.”
So far, the SUNY Downstate Medical Center system “produces the only virtual slides that can be emailed around the world. Moreover, it is also the least expensive, Internet independent solution for expert consultation.” The researchers already have started clinical trials using this telemicroscope.
March 27th, 2008
A new kind of cognitive autonomous robots
European computer scientists have developed a new kind of cognitive robots. In two articles, ICT Results describes how the researchers have combined classical rule-based artificial intelligence and artificial neural networks (ANNs) (links to part 1 and to part 2). This learning robot ‘employs ANNs to manage the low-level functions based on the visual input it receives and classical AI to serve as a supervisory mechanism.’ So far, this robot can solve puzzles by itself and other complex tasks with no additional programming. The project has been so successful that the European Union decided to fund 13 additional projects based on these results. But read more…
You can see on the left how such a system can learn by itself. In this example, it is used to solve puzzle problems. Here is what you can see from top to bottom: the system starts with selecting one object (the circle) and moves it to the corresponding hole; the system then selects the arch, which cannot be put into the corresponding hole, since it is occluded by the square; the system puts the arch back to its original position and continues with another object: after the triangle and the semi-circle, the system selects the square, such thatthe occlusion of the arch-hole is removed: finally, the arch is put in the correct hole and the puzzle is solved. (Credit: Linköping University, Sweden)
This figure has been extracted from a paper presented at the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI)’s 2005 Fall Symposium held in Crystal City, Arlington, Virginia, in a session focused on From Reactive to Anticipatory Cognitive Embodied Systems.Here are two links to the abstract and to the full paper, A COSPAL Subsystem: Solving a Shape-Sorter Puzzle (PDF format, 5 pages, 1.13 MB).
The COSPAL project — short for “COgnitive Systems using Perception-Action Learning” — was funded by the European Union. It was coordinated by Michael Felsberg, who works at the Computer Vision Laboratory at Linköping University (LiU), Sweden. He worked closely with professor Goesta Granlund, head of the Division of Computer Vision at LiU.
The cost of this project, completed in 2007, was €2.35 million. It was apparently so successful that 13 other projects with LiU participation have been awarded funds from the EU Seventh Research Framework Programme (FP7). Here is the list of these programs.
Here is why the researchers decided to combine two AI approaches.
March 26th, 2008
North America polluted by East Asia?
In a recently released study, NASA researchers have confirmed that air pollution travels around the world. They’ve used new satellite sensor capabilities to measure pollution traveling from East Asia to North America between 2002 and 2005. According to NASA, the amount of pollution arriving in North America is equivalent to about 15 percent of local emissions of the U.S. and Canada. This study is interesting, but seriously biased. First, it doesn’t measure pollution coming from Europe. And even more important, where are going the pollutants created in North America? But read more…
You can see above a world map showing how the huge amounts of dust generated by the East Asian fires of 2003 have moved over the Pacific Ocean (Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center) You’ll find a larger version of this map on this page at NASA.
Now, let’s look at the researchers’ findings. “‘We used the latest satellite capabilities to distinguish industrial pollution and smoke from dust transported to the western regions of North America from East Asia. Looking at four years of data from 2002 to 2005 we estimated the amount of pollution arriving in North America to be equivalent to about 15 percent of local emissions of the U.S. and Canada,’ said Hongbin Yu, an associate research scientist of the University of Maryland Baltimore County working at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. ‘This is a significant percentage at a time when the U.S. is trying to decrease pollution emissions to boost overall air quality. This means that any reduction in our emissions may be offset by the pollution aerosols coming from East Asia and other regions.’”
These measurements have been done with the help of the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument on NASA’s Terra satellite. What are the results? “Yu and his colleagues measured the trans-Pacific flow of pollution in teragrams, a unit of measurement of the mass of pollution aerosol (1 teragram is about 2.2 billion pounds). Satellite data confirmed 18 teragrams — almost 40 billion pounds — of pollution aerosol was exported to the northwestern Pacific Ocean and 4.5 teragrams — nearly 10 billion pounds — reached North America annually from East Asia over the study period.”
This research work has been published in the American Geophysical Union (AGU)’s Journal of Geophysical Research (Atmospheres) under the title “A satellite-based assessment of transpacific transport of pollution aerosol.” There is no way to purchase the article, but here is a link to a PDF document available to AGU members.
Finally, while I was preparing this post, I found that Technology Review has just released an article by Brittany Sauser on the same subject, “Measuring Asia’s Pollution Exports.” Please read this well-written article which also gives you an easy access to a 48-second streaming video showing “the transport of particulate pollution across the North Pacific in 2003, as observed by the moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) onboard the Terra satellite.”
Sources: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center news release, March 17, 2008; and various websites
You’ll find related stories by following the links below.
March 25th, 2008
VR game to help burn patients
The Loyola University Medical Center in Illinois will be one of the first hospitals in the U.S. to use a virtual reality game to help burn patients. By using SnowWorld, developed at the University of Washington, patients recovering from severe burns will enter a virtual ‘polar landscape of gently falling snowflakes, snowmen, penguins, igloos and icy rivers.’ But it’s not the cold effect that will reduce the patients’ pain. It’s the distraction from their pain. As said one of the developers, ‘It blocks your view of the real world. It blocks out everything. It helps you escape from your pain.’ But read more…
You can see above a SnowWorld image by Stephen Dagadakis from the 2003 version (Credit: Hunter Hoffman, University of Washington)
And here is another SnowWorld image by Ari Hollander from the 2006 version (Credit: Hunter Hoffman, University of Washington) Both pictures were extracted from Alienware Ensures SnowWorld Stays Cool, a document published by Alienware and the University of Washington Virtual Reality Research Center (PDF format, 7 pages, 229 KB).
This software has been developed in recent years at the Human Interface Technology Laboratory (HITLab) of the University of Washington by Hunter Hoffman, a research scientist. He worked with David Patterson, a rehabilitation psychologist who studies pain management at the Harborview Medical Center of the University of Washington. Here are two links which will give you more details about their work, Virtual Reality Pain Reduction and fMRI Research on Virtual Reality Analgesia.
But how is SnowWorld used in hospitals?
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