Summaries | Headlines

A Walking Robot Goes Mountaineering (July 16, 2007) -- Scientists around Florentin Wörgötter, Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience at the University of Göttingen, have simulated the neuronal principles that form the basis of this adaptivity in ... > full story

Games That Fit Into Daily Life Are Serious Business (July 10, 2007) -- Computer games of the future are easily accessible online games that fit into our busy everyday life. The market has exploded and adult women in particular are taking part in this growth wave. ... > full story

Search Engine Mashup (July 9, 2007) -- A mashup of two different types of web search tools could make find the useful nuggets of information among all the grit on the Internet much ... > full story

Coaching Computer Canines In Clambering (July 8, 2007) -- The mutts are metal, the size of toy poodles, with four pointy feet ending in little balls. They need to learn how to make their way on those little feet across a treacherous terrain of broken rocks. ... > full story

Most Middle-school Boys And Many Girls Play Violent Video Games (July 4, 2007) -- A new study by researchers at the Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Mental Health and Media dispels myths and uncovers surprises about young teens and violent video and computer games. The ... > full story

Mathematicians Discover A Simple Way To Formulate Complex Scientific Results (June 28, 2007) -- A new analysis of behaviour in a structured population illuminates Darwin's theories of co-operation and competition between kin, and provides an abstract model that could simplify scientists' quest ... > full story

Using Computerized Sense Of Touch Over Long Distances: Haptics For Industrial Applications (June 22, 2007) -- Firstly, what is "Haptics"? This term means "of or relating to the sense of touch." Haptic technology, or haptics, refers to the technology that connects the user to a computerized system via the ... > full story

Two Qubits In Action, New Step Towards The Quantum Computer (June 17, 2007) -- Researchers have succeeded in carrying out calculations with two quantum bits, the building blocks of a possible future quantum computer. Quantum computers have superior qualities in comparison to ... > full story

Guessing Robots Predict Their Environments, Navigate Better (June 13, 2007) -- Engineers at Purdue University are developing robots able to make "educated guesses" about what lies ahead as they traverse unfamiliar surroundings, reducing the amount of time it takes to ... > full story

Rescue Robot Tests To Offer Responders High-tech Help (June 11, 2007) -- NIST engineers are organizing the fourth in a series of Response Robot Evaluation Exercises for urban search and rescue responders. A simulated structural collapse of a municipal building will allow ... > full story

Surgery By Satellite: New Possibilities At Medicine's Cutting Edge (June 7, 2007) -- Robots that perform surgery can be driven by surgeons who no longer stand by the patient, but direct the operation from a computer console. In most cases the surgeon is seated at a console within the ... > full story

Miniature Robot For Precise Positioning And Targeting In Neurosurgery Wins Award (June 6, 2007) -- While recent advances in neurosurgery have made it possible to precisely target areas in the brain with minimum invasiveness -- using a small hole to insert a probe, needle or catheter -- there ... > full story

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Artificial intelligence -- Artificial intelligence (AI) is a branch of computer science and engineering that deals with intelligent behavior, learning, and adaptation in machines. Research in AI is concerned with producing ... > full article

Robotic surgery -- Robotic surgery is the use of robots in performing surgery. Three major advances aided by surgical robots have been remote surgery, minimally invasive surgery, and unmanned surgery. Major potential ... > full article

Industrial robot -- An industrial robot is an automatically controlled, reprogrammable, multipurpose manipulator programmable in three or more axes. The field of industrial robotics may be more practically defined as ... > full article

Robot calibration -- Robot calibration is the process of identifying the real geometrical parameters in the kinematic structure of an industrial robot, i.e., the relative position and orientation of links and joints in ... > full article

Humanoid robot -- A humanoid robot is a robot with its overall appearance based on that of the human body. In general humanoid robots have a torso with a head, two arms and two legs, although some forms of humanoid ... > full article

Computer vision -- Computer vision is the science and technology of machines that see. As a scientific discipline, computer vision is concerned with the theory and technology for building artificial systems that obtain ... > full article

Android -- An android is a robot made to resemble a human, usually both in appearance and behavior. The word android has been used to denote several different kinds of artificially constructed beings: a robot ... > full article

Robot -- A robot is a mechanical device that can perform physical tasks. A robot may act under the direct control of a human (eg. the robotic arm of the space shuttle) or autonomously under the control of a ... > full article

Speech recognition -- Speech recognition technologies allow computers equipped with a source of sound input, such as a microphone, to interpret human speech. The challenge for developers of Automatic Speech ... > full article

Computing power everywhere -- Ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) integrates computation into the environment, rather than having computers which are distinct objects. Other terms for ubiquitous computing include pervasive computing, ... > full article

Data mining -- Data mining, also known as knowledge-discovery in databases (KDD), is the practice of automatically searching large stores of data for patterns. To do this, data mining uses computational techniques ... > full article

Computer -- A computer is a machine for manipulating data according to a list of instructions - a program. Computers can be extremely versatile. In fact, they are universal information processing machines. ... > full article

Computer animation -- Computer animation is the art of creating moving images via the use of computers. It is a subfield of computer graphics and animation. Increasingly it is created by means of 3D computer graphics, ... > full article

Motion perception -- Motion perception is the process of inferring the speed and direction of objects that move in a visual scene given some visual input. While this process appears straighforward to most observers, it ... > full article

Computer software -- Software is a program that enables a computer to perform a specific task, as opposed to the physical components of the system (hardware). This includes application software such as a word processor, ... > full article

Computing -- Originally, the word computing was synonymous with counting and calculating, and a science that deals with the original sense of computing mathematical ... > full article

Computer-generated imagery -- Computer-generated imagery (CGI) is the application of the field of computer graphics (or more specifically, 3D computer graphics) to special effects. CGI is used in films, television programs and ... > full article

Application software -- Application software is a loosely defined subclass of computer software that employs the capabilities of a computer directly to a task that the user wishes to ... > full article

Graphical user interface -- A graphical user interface (or GUI, often pronounced "gooey"), is a particular case of user interface for interacting with a computer which employs graphical images and widgets in addition to text to ... > full article

User interface design -- User interface design or user interface engineering is the design of computers, gadgets, appliances, machines, mobile communication devices, software applications, and websites with the focus on the ... > full article