Tomorrow is Today

Researchers Establish Direct Brain-to-Brain Link Between Humans and Rats

it just experimented with a system that lets a human mind trigger actions in a rat’s motor cortex. The test had sensor-equipped humans watch a screen that flashed in sync with their EEG brain patterns for visual stimulation; as soon their attention shifted to controlling the rat, they triggered an ultrasonic pulse that twitched the rodent’s tail. There’s a few problems with the implementation beyond the obvious lack of autonomy for the poor target creature, though. The rat’s anaesthetized state likely affected the results, and the system isn’t currently sophisticated enough to map specific thoughts to corresponding actions.

(via Harvard lets human minds control rats, private rodent armies remain distant (video))

Japanese Augmented Reality Robot Lets Users Physically Interact With Avatars

U-Tsu-Shi-O-Mi is a “virtual assistant” that is actually a green-clad humanoid robot. Users look at her using virtual reality goggles and instead of seeing a mildly creepy, ninja-like blog they see an actual face and body. You can reach out, touch the body, and even shake hands with your robotic pal.

Made by a Japanese company called Different Dimension Inc., the robot uses a program called MMDAgent to interact with users. An initial prototype looked like a ‘tween in footie pajamas and a full-face hood. The newest version consists of half of a body and a much smaller profile. The pre-order price will be about $5,000.

via Gizmag (via This Augmented-Reality Robot Is The Closest Thing You Can Get To A Real-Life Hologram | TechCrunch)

Bilingual Avatar to Pre-Screen “Trusted Travellers” at Nogales Border Crossing

CBP is installing an updated version of the University of Arizona’s kiosk …to determine its ability to help enroll applicants in its Trusted Traveler programs at the Mexican border.

The programs, also available for airline passengers, were created after 9/11 at various ports of entry into the U.S. to expedite preapproved, low-risk travelers through dedicated lanes and kiosks. All Trusted Traveler applicants must voluntarily undergo a background check against criminal, law-enforcement, customs, immigration, agriculture and terrorist databases. The process also includes biometric fingerprint checks and an interview with a CBP officer.

In Nogales, human CBP officers monitor the avatar-administered pilot-test interviews, which provide them with automated feedback uploaded wirelessly to an iPad tablet that these officers can use to conduct follow-up interviews. Exchanges that the avatar flags as questionable and worthy of follow-up interrogation—using its speech recognition and voice anomaly–detection software—are color coded green, yellow or red to highlight the potential severity of questionable responses.

Everyone who applies for Trusted Traveler status at Nogales ends up speaking with an officer after her or his avatar interview. One of CBP’s goals is to implement several kiosks that can administer preliminary interviews that save time by making the follow-up, face-to-face interviews more efficient.

The kiosk is not designed to indicate that an interviewee is lying or to diagnose that person’s intent, says Aaron Elkins, a University of Arizona postdoctoral researcher in the Management Information Systems department who helped develop the kiosk. Instead the kiosk analyzes an interviewee’s voice for anomalies that may prompt a border officer to probe deeper into a particular response. Anomaly detection is based on vocal characteristics—changes in factors such as rate, volume, pitch and intonation—that may be related to different emotional, arousal and cognitive states.

An inflection in one’s voice may indicate uncertainty, or a pause might imply that an interviewee may have been devising a deceptive answer, Elkins says. The kiosk’s speech recognition software monitors the content of an interviewee’s answers and can flag a response indicating when, for example, a person acknowledges having a criminal record.

(via Avatar Officer Installed at Arizona-Mexico Border Station: Scientific American)

Remotely Operated Avatars to Replace Low-Skilled Labor

In our economy, many of the jobs most resistant to automation are those with the least economic value. Just consider the diversity of tasks, unpredictable terrains, and specialized tools that a landscaper confronts in a single day. No robot is intelligent enough to perform this $8-an-hour work. But what about a robot remotely controlled by a low-wage foreign worker?

(via The Avatar Economy - Technology Review)

Japanese Telepresence (“Telexistence”) Avatar Transmits Touch, Temperature and Vibration to Remote Operator

The TELESAR V’s hands and fingers are equipped with a number of sensors to capture and relay tactile information to its operator through special gloves.  The primary sensor inside each fingertip is a vision-based force sensor which is comprised of a wide-angle camera that looks through a gel-layer mixed with thermochromic ink.  When the gel compresses, the thermochromic ink becomes denser, which the camera interprets as force information.

Microphones underneath the robot’s fingertips convert low to mid level vibrations; when pouring marbles from one cup to another (as the robot), the operator feels the tactile sensation from doing so.  Furthermore, the operator is able to sense changes in temperature at the robot’s fingertips, thanks to thermoelectric peltier devices which reproduce warm and cold temperature inside the operator’s gloves.  Now even an object’s texture can be relayed to the operator.

(via TELESAR V Avatar Transfers Touch, Vibration, Temperature)

Robot Avatar in France Controlled by Thoughts of Operator in Japan

The scanner works by measuring changes in blood flow to the brain’s primary motor cortex, and using this the team was able to create an algorithm that could distinguish between each thought of movement. The commands were then sent via an internet connection to a small robot at the Béziers Technology Institute in France.

The set-up allowed Shapira to control the robot in near real time with his thoughts, while a camera on the robot’s head allowed him to see from the robot’s perspective. When he thought of moving his left or right hand, the robot moved 30 degrees to the left or right. Imagining moving his legs made the robot walk forward.

To test the extent of his feelings of embodiment, the researchers also surprised him with a mirror.

“I really felt like I was there,” Shapira says. “At one point the connection failed. One of the researchers picked the robot up to see what the problem was and I was like, ‘Oi, put me down!’”

(via Robot avatar body controlled by thought alone | KurzweilAI)

Study of MMORPG Confirms Conventional Wisdom on How Men and Women Manage Social Networks

Szell and Thurner say the data reveals clear and significant differences between men and women in Pardus.

For example, men and women interact with the opposite sex differently. “Males reciprocate friendship requests from females faster than vice versa and hesitate to reciprocate hostile actions of females,” say Szell and Thurner.

Women are also significantly more risk averse than men as measured by the amount of fighting they engage in and their likelihood of dying. They are also more likely to be friends with each other than men.

These results are more or less as expected. More surprising is the finding that women tend to be more wealthy than men, probably because they engage more in economic than destructive behaviour.

“These results confirm quantitatively that females and males manage their social networks drastically different,” say Szell and Thurner.

Of course, there are important questions over the extent these findings reflect gender differences in the real world. One obvious problem is that of gender swapping: men who play as women and vice versa. Szell and Thurner say that other studies have shown that around ten per cent of online gaming populations engage in gender swapping. They say there’s no reason to think this would be any different in Pardus and that it shouldn’t effect the results.

A more serious problem could be the well known phenomenon that women tend to receive better treatment in male-dominated online gaming communities. Indeed, Szell and Thurner say they can see evidence of this in their data. That’s something they’ll need to look into in more detail.

There s one group for whom this kind of study will be invaluable: advertisers and marketeers. That makes it potentially valuable form a commercial point of view.

(via How Men and Women Manage Their Social Networks Differently - Technology Review)