Rapyuta, Robot Brain.

Robots need processing power and in the current stage of robot technology, it is hard to carry all that processing power in one small robot head (or body). So European scientists have developed, what they hope will be a standard for online 'brains', where the robot in question is constantly consulting an online encyclopedia which contains information on objects it may encounter, speech and conversations of people and other information, from which it can learn to navigate its world. It is an important step in the development of robot technology in that it enables these machines, to go beyond their onboard capacity, when completing tasks.

The system was developed by European Robo Earth project, shared by five different European research labs. It utilises cloud computing. "The system could be particularly useful for drones, self-driving cars or other mobile robots who have to do a lot of number crunching just to get round", said Mohanarajah Gajamohan, technical head of the project at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.

Learning speech and conversation from cloud computing technology would be an important part of any Internet Based AI, and this is part of what would be needed for computers and humans to take part in a conversational dialogue of any quality (see: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21714191). The next step would be for more of the capacity to be stored on-board a robot, as computing technology gets smaller and more powerful.

Channel 4 News Data Baby.

Channel 4 have launched a project aiming to discover what happens to our data as we use the internet. They are developing an online character, with her own name, laptop computer and personality, hoping to find out how the internet is shaped around our use of it:



This is of course related to my paper: Internet Based Artificial Intelligence.

Along with this is the development of the a dog robot, last seen flinging breeze blocks around a hanger:

Internet Based Artificial Intelligence: Second Generation Internet

This paper presents a range of ideas about internet based artificial intelligence, whether it’s possible, whether it is already conscious, given its size and complexity and if not how we might build an internet based artificial intelligence, including suggested architecture, applications and management of an AI system. Also the political aspects and ideas for the future of internet AI.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B2Dz_84YF4ELOV91RkNyak00bFU/edit?usp=sharing

Flood Proofing Our Towns and Cities

Protecting homes from flooding is no time for wild imaginings about happy homes, where people walk or use bikes, and let the flood water come in around them and say 'oh how nice'. But these are among proposals coming for Norwich. 'Rain Square' in Norwich is a proposed development of housing, using 'using wetlands, reed beds, drainage channels and porous driveways' to allow develoment of housing in flood plains. The first rule of disaster prevention is don't build near disaster prone areas. The proposals have recieved a lot of complaints from the local planning authorities who called it 'folly'. However, all the above schemes, (reed beds, wetlands and porous driveways) are all good ideas in their own right. Director of Baca architects, a flood architectural specialist, says that 'We are saying let water in rather than letting it flood properties further downstream'. Planning to build on flood plains or areas prone to flooding shouldn't go ahead, simply because we don't know yet the extent to which flooding in the UK will get worse. There maybe other factors, such as severity and frequency and there maybe areas that haven't flooded before that will in the future. What seems to be folly is allowing developers to offer home buyers housing in flood prone areas in the first place.

Kalkion Publishes Short

Kalkion the online short story publisher has just published my story The Rioters Candle. Please go read it...It follows a young man arrested during the Arab Spring uprising. He is put into jail beneath the Presiential Palace, where he is visited by a mysterious stranger.

Vagabond Unlimited Relaunches

I have just launches a new version of http://www.vagabond-unlimited.co.uk, which uses HTML5 instead of flash to keep up with changing web use on phones and tablets. Flash has for a long time been unavailable for use on many hand held devices. I've added some new content including some new Ted on Street cards and some articles, including one on post apocalyptic literature. Please check it out before you go.