The BotPrize is a three-month contest in which programmers are challenged to develop a software bot to control a game character that can pass for human, with the goal of devising better artificial intelligence (AI) for games as well as non-game applications. “The BotPrize [is] important for AI in general because it highlights a central question in AI: How is human intelligence related to computer intelligence?” says Edith Cowan University’s Philip Hingston. The second annual BotPrize competition placed bots in Unreal Tournament 2004, a first-person-shooter game in which the winner is the one that scores the most virtual kills. The humanness of the bots was judged solely on the basis of their physical behavior, and a bot had to fool at least 80 percent of the judges in order to win the $6,000 prize. Epic Games programmer Steve Polge says developers often prefer creating AIs “that can make unexpected plans and present emergent and surprising challenges to the player”–not only because it can improve games, but also because AIs that mimic humans too closely can be as irritating and obnoxious as human opponents. Simulation game creator Will Wright is hoping that the BotPrize fosters an interest among AI researchers to create programs that emulate emotions. “Machine interactions are becoming a ubiquitous part of our environment, but they’re not necessarily the most satisfying, so acknowledging our emotional dimension is an interesting task to go for in AI,” he says.

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The University of Granada is funding a project led by Jose Carlos Segura Luna that would help provide machine-assisted living for the disabled. Segura Luna’s team has constructed a model room with a computer system that can track the movements of the person inside it. The system uses ceiling sensors, a receiver that moves throughout the room, and a computer that analyzes the information sent from both. The room can automatically brake a wheelchair when it nears the stairs and open doors when it approaches them. Researchers plan to expand the system to encompass open spaces and entire buildings with the help of more sophisticated communication technologies, such as global positioning systems. They also plan to use a program based on ultrasound for when the system needs to know the inhabitant’s exact position. Researchers hope to successfully combine different kinds of technologies, although the nature of that collaboration will depend on the needs of the inhabitant. If researchers meet their goal of integrating a wireless device with a location system, for example, they will avoid a lengthy system installation and cut down on the number of electronic devices needed. The team’s prototype is currently being tested in a hospital in Rome.

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Three University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) engineers and a Rush University nursing specialist have been awarded a three-year, $989,000 National Science Foundation grant to develop robots that can help care for the elderly and people with limited mobility. “We want to help elderly people communicate with robots, to tell them what they need, and to perform physical activities,” says UIC professor Milos Zefran, the project’s lead investigator. The researchers plan to create software that will enable the elderly to communicate with robots capable of responding to a variety of verbal language and non-verbal gestures and touch commands. Zefran says helping the elderly stay in their own homes will improve their health outlook and relieve the burden on family members and health care providers. The researchers are developing communication interface software that will feature a novel adaptive and reliable recognition methodology known as Recognition by Indexing and Sequencing (RISq). RISq will enable robots to comprehend speech even if it is altered by impairments. Techniques from natural language processing and haptics will allow the robot to understand and respond to various forms of human touch, and help it know how to respond to the user safely when performing chores such as cooking or making a bed. “We’ll identify what kind of language, physical interactions, and non-verbal interactions are used,” Zefran says. “Then we’ll develop a mathematical framework to model this interaction so it can be treated by the robot as a single way of communicating.”

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The new Web site for Communications of the ACM (CACM) was named one of 10 Great Media Web Sites and won the award for best new site by Media Business. The new CACM site debuted in May and provides daily news, the current magazine issue, an expert blog, a Careers section, a searchable digital library, and CACM’s complete 50-year archive. The Web site’s daily news is provided by ACM technical and staff writers as well as various news feeds. “Our goal is to ensure that the content enables readers and browsers alike to gain essential insights into industry information that are invaluable for their professional development,” says CACM editor-in-chief Moshe Vardi in a statement released by ACM. The Web site has been very successful, says Scott Delman, group publisher of the ACM Media Group. “The Communications Web site has triggered dynamic dialogues within the computing community as a trusted resource for computing professionals worldwide that goes beyond the print edition,” he says. The Web site enables users to comment on news items or share them with others using more than 60 social media services. “Having the ability for people to interact online on a real-time basis was very important,” Delman says. Future plans for the site include building out its multimedia capabilities. “There is video very deep within some of the sections, but it’s in our plans to put video on the front page,” he says.

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British prime minister Gordon Brown apologized for the way the government treated Alan Mathison Turing after convicting the computer pioneer of gross indecency for admitting he had a sexual relationship with a man. “While Mr. Turing was dealt with under the law of the time and we can’t put the clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him,” Brown says. “So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan’s work, I am very proud to say: We’re sorry, you deserved so much better.” Computer scientist John Graham-Cumming came up with the idea for a posthumous government apology, and the campaign was backed by author Ian McEwan, scientist Richard Dawkins, and gay-rights activist Peter Tatchell. Thousands signed a petition on the government’s Web site. Turing received experimental chemical castration as a “treatment,” and the removal of his security privileges meant he could no longer work for the U.K. Government Communications Headquarters. The mathematician killed himself two years after his prosecution in 1952. Turing is known for his efforts to crack messages enciphered with the German Enigma machines during World War II, and he also helped lay the foundation for the fields of artificial intelligence and computing. The A.M. Turing Award, ACM’s most prestigious technical award, is named after him and is often referred to as the Nobel Prize of computing.

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University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) researchers are developing a material that could enable a computer circuit to repair itself. The researchers have created capsules, filled with conductive nanotubes, which break apart under mechanical stress, releasing the nanotubes to bridge any breaks on the circuit. The capsules could be placed on a circuit board in failure-prone areas. The researchers also are developing capsule additives designed to fix failures in lithium-ion battery electrodes to prevent short-circuiting, which can sometimes cause a fire. The ability for circuitry to repair itself may become even more important as flexible electronics, which are subject to significantly more mechanical stress, are developed and released, says UIUC professor Paul Braun. To make the self-healing material, the researchers encapsulated carbon nanotubes inside polymer spheres about 200 micrometers in diameter. Carbon nanotubes were chosen because of their high electrical conductivity and their elongated shape. In a proof of concept studies, the researchers opened the capsules and placed the mixture between the tips of two electrical probes. The nanotubes successfully formed a bridge to complete the circuit between the probes. The researchers are currently working on techniques to precisely position the spheres and other tests for the capsules.

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BlindAid, developed by Tel Aviv University’s Orly Lahav, is a new program that helps the blind navigate through unfamiliar locations. BlindAid digitally maps real-world places and, with the help of a pre-existing three-dimensional haptic device, enables blind users to navigate them virtually before visiting them in person. The program uses a joystick that produces different sensations under a user’s fingertips. “Walking” around a virtual room, blind users can feel a digital wall ahead when the stick tenses; it also recreates the feeling of grass, sidewalks, asphalt, and tiled floors. Moreover, the device replicates sounds, such as the hiss of an espresso machine to indicate a nearby coffee shop, or the ringing of phones for a customer service desk. Lahav gave the program to several volunteers from the Carroll Center for the Blind. After three or four uses of BlindAid, a partially blind woman successfully visited 12 unknown, real-world locations while wearing a blindfold. Lahav says that blind users “get feedback from the device that lets them build a cognitive map, which they later apply in the real world. It’s like a high-tech walking cane.” She says that with the help of a geographic information system, the program could help blind users explore any unknown area virtually before visiting it alone in the real world.

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Approximately 11,000 researchers, scientists, engineers, and computing experts from around the world are expected to attend SCO9 high-performance computing (HPC) conference, which takes place Nov. 14-20 in Portland, Ore. More than 275 organizations have signed on as exhibitors, including 40 first-time exhibitors. “This is an amazing testimony to the importance of the SC conference series as the premier gathering of HPC ecosystem stakeholders who assemble each year seeking education, technology, and science information, and networking with colleagues, peers, and industry leaders,” says Wilf Pinfold, general chair of SC09. The conference’s lineup of featured speakers includes Intel’s Justin Rattner, who will give an opening address; Leroy Hood, president and co-founder of the Institute for Systems Biology, invited plenary speaker; and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, who is a conference keynote speaker. The theme of SC09 is “Computing for a Changing World,” and there will be special focus discussions on bio-computing, sustainability, and the three-dimensional Internet.

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Machine lip-reading technology could help lip readers improve their ability to read others’ lips. A University of East Anglia team led by Sarah Hilder contrasted the success rate of a machine lip-reading program with that of human lip readers. Machine readers had a success rate of 80 percent, while humans had a success rate of only 32 percent. Machines also could use an abstract face shape to interpret lips, while humans needed a video of a real person. Researchers gave volunteers with weak lip-reading skills a chance to try a new training program that improved their ability to interpret monosyllabic words in a few hours. The program, which is video-based, enabled users to see moving lips and gestures as opposed to two-dimensional drawings. “With just four hours of training, it helped them improve their lip-reading skills markedly,” Hilder says. “We hope this research will represent a real technological advance for the deaf community.” One possibility would be free online video lessons, says Royal National Institute for Deaf People campaign manager Agnes Hoctor.

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