Georgia Institute of Technology robotics engineer Ron Arkin is researching how military robots could be programmed to act ethically and obey the rules of engagement and has developed an “ethical governor” intended to guarantee that robotic aircraft follow a set of ethical guidelines in combat. He is demonstrating the system in simulations based on recent campaigns by U.S. troops in the Middle East. The simulations show that the system is able to identify a group of enemy soldiers but does not fire because they are inside a cemetery, and firing would violate international law, or that the system can limit a robot’s fire to weapons that would only damage an enemy vehicle but not any surrounding vehicles or buildings. To develop the software, Arkin used studies of military ethics and conversations with military personnel, with the objective of reducing non-combatant casualties. Arkin emphasizes that his research, which is funded by the U.S. Army, is not intended to develop prototype battle robots. “The most important outcome of my research is not the architecture, but the discussion that it stimulates,” Arkin says. He believes that the development of machines capable of determining when to use lethal force is inevitable, which means it is critical that when such robots are developed that they are capable of being trusted.

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The European Commission (EC) has developed a 14-point action plan to address some of the problems that could develop when everyday objects such as food packaging and prescription drug containers are equipped with radio frequency identification (RFID) tags as part of an effort to create an “Internet of things.” Such a network could have a number of benefits, including the ability of food packaging to record temperatures along a supply chain or warn patients when they are taking two prescription drugs that are incompatible with one another. However, a number of problems could begin appearing when the use of RFID technology increases, including issues with governance, privacy, and data protection. The EC says the action plan will address these issues and help Europeans benefit from the development of an Internet of things. Meanwhile, the EC is planning to gather a representative group of stakeholders in Europe to monitor the development of the Internet of things. However, the network’s development could be hampered by the fact that Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) has yet to be introduced. The EC says IPv6 is necessary for dealing with the large number of IP addresses that will be created by putting RFID tags on everyday objects.

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Embedded data mining, inertial sensors, and global positioning systems are used in a wireless device being developed to monitor the amount of energy a person consumes on a daily basis. Developed by researchers at Cambridge University’s Computer Laboratory, the Personal Energy Meter (PEM) would record everything from the energy consumed while traveling, the heating and appliances people use, to the indirect energy used as a result of consuming manufactured food and goods. “Our Personal Energy Meter builds on existing environmental foot-printing efforts by considering if it is possible to apportion a fair share of the energy consumed by an activity or artifact down to a personal level,” says Cambridge’s Computer Lab Simon Hay. “We believe that it is possible to make the process virtually automatic, so that PEM users are free to go about their day normally without manually entering data.” The PEM could be created as a separate device, but also could be incorporated into a mobile phone. The project is part of Computing for the Future of the Planet, a larger research program at the university.

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More than 6,000 volunteers around the world are contributing computing power to the University of Delaware (UD) in an attempt to help biomedical researchers find cures for HIV, Parkinson’s, arthritis, and breast cancer. UD’s Docking@Home project is using the computing power to model and simulate the combinations of molecules and their binding orientations, or docking, in an effort to discover candidates for new drugs. The computer users are helping UD complete 30,000 docking tasks a day, according to professor and project leader Michela Taufer. The volunteers are using the open source program Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing to enable UD to automatically access their computers when idle. UD also is developing software for ExSciTecH, an immersive volunteer computing system to explore science, technology, and health, which will enable volunteers to “throw” a molecule into a protein with a Nintendo Wii. “Other people do yoga with a Wii,” Taufer says. “We are doing science.”

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The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) will explore whether computer systems, sensors, or cell phones contributed to the deadly Washington, D.C., Metrorail accident on June 22 in which nine people were killed. Although there are several other possible reasons for why the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) train crashed into the rear of another train, the WMATA computer systems will likely be closely examined because they are designed to prevent such rear-end accidents. The computer systems are constantly making decisions on train speed using data from track-bed sensors that monitor train movement. NTSB investigators will likely try to rule out possible causes, such as a misconfigured control system, a physical computer or hardware failure, or a security breach, says consultant Kegan Kawano. Security breaches have been known to happen in transportation systems, and Kawano says he is aware of 10 security incidents in transit systems since 2003. For example, a Polish teen allegedly derailed a train by hacking the network, and in 2003 a widespread worm affected systems used by rail hauler CSX Corp., causing the company to stop some passenger and freight service. Kawano says the design of rail automation systems is so unique that hackers often cannot figure out how to access them. NTSB investigator Debbie Hersman also says the agency will examine the actions of onboard operators and investigate the possibility of a mechanical failure.

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Flying pixels have the potential to offer a more immersive three-dimensional (3D) viewing experience than 3D television sets, according to engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The engineers describe their unique 3D display, called Flyfire, as a flock of tiny aircraft carrying multicolored light-emitting diodes (LEDs). The pixels can hover in front of a viewer and form an image, but they also can change their position to add greater depth to the image. “It’s a 3D display with a dual aspect–it can show an image like a traditional display, but then those pixels can move and transform into another shape,” says MIT’s E. Roon Kang. The initial proof-of-principle experiments used quad-rotor helicopters more than 10 centimeters across, and the precise control of their altitude was within three centimeters. Kang says it could take at least five years to make a display with 1,000 or more of the small flying pixels. MIT’s Emilio Frazzoli says onboard controls and a central control system also will be needed to coordinate pixel movement.
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Recent advancements in supercomputer design coupled with falling prices are breaking down the barriers that have traditionally surrounded computing-intensive research, which could give ordinary users with a novel idea the opportunity to explore its potential using powerful computers. Ninety percent of the world’s 500 fastest computers use standard microprocessors, which enable supercomputers to be built much more inexpensively. “I think this says that supercomputing technology is affordable,” says Advanced Micro Devices director Margaret Lewis. “We are kind of getting away from this ivory tower.” This possibility has inspired some of the world’s top computing experts to make valuable sources of information available, with the goal of filling supercomputers with scientific data and allowing anyone in the world with a PC to access these systems. “It’s a good call to arms,” says Silicon Graphics’ Mark Barrenechea. “The technology is there. The need is there. This could exponentially increase the amount of science done across the globe.” Sharing data and supercomputing resources could allow labs to accomplish far more than was previously possible. Argonne Leadership Computing Facility director Pete Beckman says shifting science research into the cloud democratizes science. Argonne, with funding from the U.S. Department of Energy, is working on Magellan, a project to explore the creation of a cloud-computing infrastructure that scientists around the world could use. Beckman says such a system would reduce the need for smaller universities and labs to spend money on their own computing infrastructure.

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The World Wide Web Consortium has published File API, an interface draft that Web browsers can use to better manipulate files and is part of a larger effort to provide a better foundation for interactive applications. File API defines ways browsers and Web sites can improve how they handle files, including selecting multiple files for upload, such as on photo-sharing sites or Web-based email. Other improvements govern the use of “blobs,” or packages of raw binary data such as video files. Google has supported blobs for its Gears browser plug-in as a way to separate large videos into smaller pieces so uploads can be more easily resumed if a network problem interrupts the process. A major benefit is that files are handled asynchronously, meaning the browser will not freeze while a file is being uploaded or managed, and the browser reports back on the progress of file transfers. The interface is compatible with several standards, including the drag-and-drop support in HTML5, currently in development, and the Web Workers technology that improves the way browsers perform numerous operations simultaneously. The interface also can help Web applications process and understand the contents of files. For example, the interface could allow for Web applications that automatically search through a music playlist and find the lyrics to the songs on that playlist.

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Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications researchers have experimented with using visible light from commercial light-emitting diodes (LEDs) to transmit data wirelessly at speeds of up to 230 Mbit per sec. One advantage to using light to carry data over Wi-Fi or another system is that the lights are already in the room, says Fraunhofer researcher Jelena Vucic. A signal from a LED is generated by slightly flickering all the lights in unison at a rate millions of times faster than the human eye can detect. Although the bandwidth for commercial LEDs is limited to a few megahertz, Vucic’s team increased the amount tenfold by filtering out all the light except for the blue part of the spectrum. The researchers say the data rate could be doubled with some modulation adjustments.
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U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) programs that assist specific racial and ethnic groups would be consolidated under a new proposal from the agency. According to the Obama administration’s budget recommendations for the 2011 fiscal year, the Historically Black Colleges and Universities Undergraduate Program, the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation, and the Tribal Colleges and Universities Program would be replaced by the $103 million Comprehensive Broadening Participation of Undergraduates in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) program, which would be allotted 14 percent more in funding than the three programs currently receive. NSF director Arden L. Bement Jr. says the number of minority students majoring in the sciences was not increasing fast enough under the old approach. “Linear growth is no longer acceptable, so we have to go into geometric growth,” Bement says.
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