Brain Controlled Wheelchair

Researchers at the Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne have developed a wheelchair that can be controlled by patients with their thoughts. The technology combines an electroencephalograph (EEG) with software that interpolates the intent of the patient.

EEG has limited accuracy and can only detect a few different commands. Maintaining these mental exercises when trying to maneuver a wheelchair around a cluttered environment can also be very tiring, says, José del Millán, director of noninvasive brain-machine interfaces at the Federal Institute of Technology, who led the project. "People cannot sustain that level of mental control for long periods of time," he says. The concentration required also creates noisier signals that can be more difficult for a computer to interpret.

Shared control addresses this problem because patients don't need to continuously instruct the wheelchair to move forward; they need to think the command only once, and the software takes care of the rest. "The wheelchair can take on the low-level details, so it's more natural," says Millán.

The wheelchair is equipped with two webcams to help it detect obstacles and avoid them. If drivers want to approach an object rather than navigate around it, they can give an override command. The chair will then stop just short of the object.

Read the full article from Technology Review titled, Wheelchair Makes the Most of Brain Control:Artificial intelligence improves a wheelchair system that could give paralyzed people greater mobility.

Ryan Calo Interviewed by Robots Podcast

Ryan Calo, a senior research fellow at Stanford Law School, who also founded the Stanford Robots and Law Blog was interviewed by robotspodcast. The full Interview can be played here.

Survey on Attitudes Regarding Unmanned Systems

Gerhard Dabringer conducted a Survey on Unmanned Systems at AUVSI in Denver in August. He has made his findings available in a Summary Report available here. Among his findings are:

1.The use of Robotic Combat Systems (RCS) is generally approved of, though there is a strong tendency towards the „man in the loop“ approach, especially when systems are weaponized.

2. There is a strong need for a broad discussion of ethical aspects as well as legal aspects of RCS.

3. Policy makers need to make sure that the existing discussions are beeing noticed.

4. RCS are recognized as a new ethical dimension in warfare and a majority sees the need for new international legislation.

5. Autonomous use of weapons by the RCS is generally not approved of.

Deceptive Robots

Gizmag describes research by Ronald Arkin and Alan Wagner in which robots are taught to deceive.

What it all boiled down to was a series of 20 hide-and-seek experiments. The autonomous hiding/deceiving robot could randomly choose one of three hiding spots, and would have no choice but to knock over one of three paths of colored markers to get there. The seeking robot could then, presumably, find the hiding robot by identifying which path of markers was knocked down. Sounds easy, except that sneaky, conniving hiding robot would turn around after knocking down one path of markers, and go hide in one of the other spots.

In 75 percent of the trials, the hiding robot succeeded in evading the seeking robot. In the other 25 percent, it wasn’t able to knock down the right markers necessary to produce its desired deception. The full results of the Georgia Tech experiment were recently published in the International Journal of Social Robotics.

The full research article is title, Acting Deceptively:Providing Robots with the Capacity for Deception.

Abstract Deception is utilized by a variety of intelligent systems ranging from insects to human beings. It has been argued that the use of deception is an indicator of theory of mind (Cheney and Seyfarth in Baboon Metaphysics: The Evolution of a Social Mind, 2008) and of social intelligence (Hauser in Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 89:12137–12139, 1992). We use interdependence theory and game theory to explore the phenomena of deception from the perspective of robotics, and to develop an algorithm which allows an artificially intelligent system to determine if deception is warranted in a social situation. Using techniques introduced in Wagner (Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI 2009), 2009), we present an algorithm that bases a robot’s deceptive action selection on its model of the individual it’s attempting to deceive. Simulation and robot experiments using these algorithms which investigate the nature of deception itself are discussed.

Newer videos of ECCEROBOT

Is a Robot Crime Wave on the Near Horizon?

The Coming Robot Crime Wave is an article by Noel Sharkey, Marc Goodman, and Nick Ross, which outlines a number of ways in which present and future robotic systems will be adapted to perpetrate a wide variety of illegal activities. One example they discuss is Narco submarines.

Major criminal organizations such as drug cartels don’t need to rely on cheap home engineering. Discoveries of submarines designed to carry tons of narcotics have been occurring since 1988. With 10 tons of cocaine netting $200 million, $2 million for a submarine would repay the robot’s cost many times over in one voyage. The drug cartels clearly have the money to adapt their technology to keep ahead of enforcement agencies.

Once the exclusive and secretive preserve of the military, this technology is becoming commonplace in civilian applications, with marine robots a prime example. So far, they’ve been used to locate the Titanic, investigate ice caps, build deep sea oil rigs, repair undersea cables, and mitigate environmental catastrophes such as the recent Deepwater Horizon explosion in the Gulf of Mexico.

In 2010, US officials secured the first convictions for remote-controlled drug smuggling when they imprisoned three men for building and selling drug subs (http://bit.ly/ b8Qawc). At the Tampa hearing, attorney Joseph K. Ruddy reported that these remote-controlled submarines were up to 40 feet long and could carry 1,800 kilograms of cocaine 1,000 miles without refueling. The effectiveness of these submarines in avoiding detection is clear, given that none have ever been seized. We only hear about the criminals’ failures, so there could be none, dozens, or hundreds of these machines in use.

The latest autonomous and semiautonomous submarine capabilities pose a greater concern. They can act on their own when required, employ programmed avoidance routines to thwart authorities, be fitted with sensors to send signals to the operator when the payload is delivered or the craft attacked, and carry self-destruct features to destroy incriminating evidence.

TILT 2011: Technologies on the stand: legal and ethical questions in neuroscience and robotics.

The Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology, and Society (TILT) is proud to announce the upcoming TILTing Perspectives 2011 conference entitled

"Technologies on the stand: legal and ethical questions in neuroscience and robotics."

The conference will be held at Tilburg University (the Netherlands) on 11 and 12 April 2011. It will focus on the legal and ethical questions raised by the application of neuroscience and robotics in various contexts. The conference will have two independent, but related tracks:

1. Law and neuroscience
The first track will focus on the legal and ethical issues surrounding recent developments in neuroscience and the legal application of neurotechnologies. Discussion topics will include, but are not limited to:
- the possible use of neurotechnologies in a legal context and the implications thereof,
- the role of neuroscience in determining legal capacities and in detecting deception,
- the legal and ethical issues surrounding the medical application of neurotechnologies, and
- the legal and ethical implications of using neurotechnologies for enhancement purposes.

2. Law, ethics and robotics
The second track will focus on the legal and ethical implications of the application of robotics in social environments (e.g., the home, hospitals and other health care institutes, in traffic, but also in war). Discussion topics will include, but are not limited to:
- the legal and ethical questions raised by the proliferation of robotics for the home environment,
- the legal and ethical questions raised by the deployment of robotics in war,
- liability and the legal status of robots, and
- autonomous action, agency and the ethical implications thereof.

The conference aims at bringing together national and international experts from the fields of (1) law and neuroscience and (2) law, ethics and robotics, and to facilitate discussion between lawyers, legal scholars, psychologists, social scientists, philosophers, neuroscientists and policy makers.

Our confirmed keynote speakers are:
- Stephen Morse (University of Pennsylvania)
- Paul Wolpe (Emory University)
- Wendell Wallach (Yale University)
- Noel Sharkey (University of Sheffield)

If you would like to present a paper at this conference, please send in an abstract (of max. 350 words) using the abstract submission system on our website:http://www.tilburguniversity.nl/faculties/law/research/tilt/events/tilting2011/abssubmission/

Abstract submission is open from 1 September until 15 October. You may submit an abstract on the topics suggested above, or on a related topic that falls within the conference theme.

Full papers will be published in the conference proceedings. The winning paper in the Best Paper Contest will be published in a special edition of the international, peer reviewed journal Law, Innovation and Technology (Hart Publishers).

Important dates for submission:
- Deadline for submission of abstract: 15 October 2010
- Notification of acceptance and invitation to write a full paper: 1 November 2010
- Deadline for submission of full papers: 15 December 2010
- Reviewers' feedback and comments: 31 January 2011
- Deadline for submission of revised papers: 15 March 2011
- Conference dates: 11 and 12 April

For more information, please visit our website: http://www.tilburguniversity.nl/faculties/law/research/tilt/events/tilting2011/