Reach out and touch a virtual object

“The audiovisual aspects of VR have come a long way in recent years, so adding a sense of touch is the next step,” says Andreas Schweinberger, a researcher at Technische Universität Munchen in Germany. “We know that the more senses that can be used, the more interaction, the greater the sense of presence. And a stronger sense of presence means the experience is more immersive and realistic.”

Schweinberger led a team from nine universities and research institutes in developing technology to make VR objects and characters touchable. With funding from the EU in the Immersence project, they developed innovative haptic and multi-modal interfaces, new signal processing techniques and a pioneering method to generate VR objects from real-world objects in real time.

The latter technology, developed at the Computer Vision Laboratory of Swiss project partner ETH Zürich, uses a 3D scanner and advanced modelling system to create a virtual representation of a real object, such as a cup, box or, in one experiment, a green fluffy toy frog. The 3D digital representation of the object can then be transmitted to someone at a remote location, who, by wearing VR goggles and touching a haptic interface, can move, prod and poke it.

Read the full article here.

Artificial Skin for Robots Can Make Them Safer

A mobile robot carefully transports a sample through a biotech lab where it is surrounded by the routine hustle and bustle. Lab technicians are conversing with one another and performing tests. One technician inadvertently runs into the robot, which stops moving immediately.

An artificial skin covering the robot makes this possible. Consisting of conductive foam, textiles and an intelligent evaluation circuit, the sensor system detects points of contact and differentiates between gentle and strong contact. It registers people immediately. The shape and size of the sensor cells implemented in the skin can be varied depending on the application. They detect any contact. The higher the number of sensor cells, the more precisely a point of collision can be detected. A sensor controller processes the measured values and transmits them to the robot or, alternatively, a computer, a machine or production line.

Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Factory Operation and Automation IFF in Magdeburg designed and patented this sensor system in 2008 ..."Our artificial skin can be adapted to any complex geometry, including curved or very flat. We use large-area floor sensors to define safety zones that people may not enter", says Markus Fritzsche, researcher at the Fraunhofer IFF. "These areas can be changed dynamically."

Red the full article titled, Robots get an artificial skin.

BINA48 Makes Her Debut

A robot head, commission by Martine Rothblatt, that emulates her spouse Bina Rothblatt, was featured in a NYTIMES article by Amy Harmon titled, Making Friends With a Robot Named Nina48. A video of Harmon interacting with Bina48 accompanies the article. The robot Bina lacks the charm of her living counterpart, but nevertheless, demonstrates a few beguiling trick that play upon the human tendency to anthropomorphize artifacts.

Harmon also has a companion piece in the NYTIMES titled, A Soft Spot for Circuitry, that discusses the proliferation of companion robots in nursing homes, schools, and even living rooms.

When something responds to us, we are built for our emotions to trigger, even when we are 110 percent certain that it is not human,” said Clifford Nass, a professor of computer science at Stanford University. “Which brings up the ethical question: Should you meet the needs of people with something that basically suckers them?”

An answer may lie in whether one signs on to be manipulated.”

Special Issue of ETIN: Robot Ethics and Human Ethics

In September, Springer will publish a special issue of Ethics and Information Technology dedicated to "Robot Ethics and Human Ethics." The first two paragraphs of the editorial are offered here, along with the Table of Contents.

It has already become something of a mantra among machine ethicists that one benefit of their research is that it can help us better understand ethics in the case of human beings. Sometimes this expression appears as an afterthought, looking as if authors say it merely to justify the field, but this is not the case. At bottom is what we must know about ethics in general to build machines that operate within normative parameters. Fuzzy intuitions will not do where the specifics of engineering and computational clarity are required. So, machine ethicists are forced head on to engage in moral philosophy. Their effort, of course, hangs on a careful analysis of ethical theories, the role of affect in making moral decisions, relationships between agents and patients, and so forth, including the specifics of any concrete case. But there is more here to the human story.

Successfully building a moral machine, however we might do so, is no proof of how human beings behave ethically. At best, a working machine could stand as an existence proof of one way humans could go about things. But in a very real and salient sense, research in machine morality provides a test bed for theories and assumptions that human beings (including ethicists) often make about moral behavior. If these cannot be translated into specifications and implemented over time in a working machine, then we have strong reason to believe that they are false or, in more pragmatic terms, unworkable. In other words, robot ethics forces us to consider human moral behavior on the basis of what is actually implementable in practice. It is a perspective that has been absent from moral philosophy since its inception.

"Robot Minds and Human Ethics: The Need for a Comprehensive Model of Moral Decision Making"
Wendell Wallach

"Moral Appearances: Emotions, Robots and Human Morality"
Mark Coeckelbergh

"Robot Rights? Toward a Social-Relational Justification of Moral Consideration"
Mark Coekckelbergh

"RoboWarfare: Can Robots Be More Ethical than Humans on the Battlefield"
John Sullins

"The Cubical Warrior: The Marionette of Digitized Warfare"
Lamber Royakkers

"Robot Caregivers: Harbingers of Expanded Freedom for All"
Yvette Pearson and Jason Borenstein

"Implications and Consequences of Robots with Biological Brains"
Kevin Warwick

"Designing a Machine for Learning and the Ethics of Robotics: the N-Reasons Platform"
Peter Danielson

Book Reviews of Wallach and Allen, Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right from Wrong, Oxford, 2009.

• Anthony F. Beavers
• Vincent Wiegel
• Jeff Buechner

Wallach to Give Keynote at WFS Conference in Boston July 8th

Wendell Wallach will be giving the keynote talk at the plenary session of the World Future Society Conference in Boston on July 8th. The title of the talk will be, Navigating the Future: Moral Machines, Techno Humans, and the Singularity. Other speakers at WorldFuture 2010:Sustainable Futures, Strategies, and Technologies will be Ray Kurzweil, Dennis Bushnell, and Harvey Cox.

Self-Replicating Creature Spawned in Simulator

NewScientist has a story about a replicating creature spawned by Andrew Wade in the Game of Life. The full story is available here.

Self-Replicating Organism Spawned in Simuklator

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