Council Releases Blueprint for Federal Cybersecurity
Research
GovExec.com (04/25/06) Pulliam, Daniel
A presidential advisory council has released guidelines for coordinating
cybersecurity research and development among different federal agencies.
Released last week by the National Science and Technology Council, the
Federal Plan for Cyber Security and Information Assurance Research and
Development involved members of more than 20 federal entities. The plan
calls for the creation of standard cybersecurity metrics and other measures
to inform researchers of the government's priorities, said Simon Szykman,
director of the National Coordination Office for Networking and Information
Technology Research and Development. While the blueprint was developed
solely by government officials, true coordination will be an ongoing effort
that will include public comments and workshops to provide a forum for the
private sector. "Certainly having a plan is one thing and executing it is
another," said Szykman. "This group of people was focused on the [research
and development] issues and understanding the existing issues and the
priorities." The document is notable for its call for metrics and its
emphasis on emerging technologies and incorporating security at the
beginning of any deployment, though it is remiss in not defining how
recipients of federal funding are to be held accountable, said Alan Paller,
research director of the SANS Institute. "Researchers are going to look at
this as justification for anything they want to do," said Paller.
Gartner's John Pescatore says the blueprint should have identified specific
areas where the government could fill in the gaps in research and
development left by the market.
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Stingy Immigration Policy Stifles U.S. Innovation
USA Today (04/26/06) P. 13A; McNealy, Scott; Westine, Lezlee
Restrictive U.S. immigration policies are closing the door to much-needed
international talent and threatening to end the rich tradition of
foreigners who have revolutionized the technology industry through their
work in the United States, write Sun Chairman Scott McNealy and TechNet CEO
Lezlee Westine. Foreign-born workers helped found Intel, Sun, and Google,
helping establish the United States as a global leader in the technology
sector and creating millions of U.S. tax dollars and thousands of jobs for
American workers in the process, but the admittance of the next class of
innovators into the country is jeopardized by an immigration system beset
by arbitrary visa caps and red tape. The competition for technology talent
is now a global race, as more nations are recognizing the value of
innovation, often subsidizing research and development initiatives with tax
incentives to entice foreign talent into their own countries. The demand
for technical jobs in the United States in math and computer science is
expected to increase 39 percent by 2012, while demand for jobs in science
and engineering will rise by more than 25 percent. The current program
allows for 65,000 foreign workers with unique technical skills and a
bachelor's degree to enter or remain in the country annually with H-1B
visas, though the cap for the year beginning on Oct. 1 had been reached two
months earlier, effectively halting the influx of foreign talent for 14
months. The H-1B program makes it difficult for foreign-born students
graduating from college to find work, while many workers already in the
country on the visas are being denied permanent U.S. residency. While the
long-term solution to the challenge of preserving innovation is to improve
math and science education, loosening immigration rules is a crucial step
in the short term to satisfy the urgent needs of today's economy.
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The Total Information Awareness Project Lives On
Technology Review (04/26/06) Williams, Mark
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has filed new evidence supporting
its class-action suit against AT&T, alleging that the company provided the
National Security Agency (NSA) with total access to vast repositories of
telephone and Internet communications. The new evidence follows the
revelation that the purportedly defunct Total Information Awareness (TIA)
project, founded by DARPA in 2002 but halted by Congress the next year, had
actually been acquired by NSA. While the names of individual projects have
been changed, the overall TIA initiative still enjoys its original sources
of funding, though Congress has stated that component technologies are only
to be used for military or foreign intelligence applications that collect
data on non-U.S. citizens. One of the components of the program acquired
by NSA's Advanced Research and Development Activity (ARDA) is the core
architecture that would integrate the original TIA information extraction,
analysis, and dissemination tools. In February, Attorney General Alberto
Gonzalez defended the legality of the Bush administration's surveillance
policy against charges that it violates the Fourth Amendment and the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978. Gonzalez claimed
alternatively that the administration was abiding by the stipulations of
FISA and that parts of the law do not apply to the surveillance program,
though he refused to elaborate for reasons of national security. The EFF
has demonstrated that AT&T provided NSA with access to enormous quantities
of data, such as the electronic records of 1.92 trillion telephone calls
made over several decades that are stored in a data center in Kansas. With
such access, NSA's supercomputers can perform sophisticated data mining
operations, using search algorithms and techniques such as content
filtering and machine learning to cull through the records in the search
for terrorist activity.
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Pullet Surprise at CHI 2006
PCWorld.com (04/24/06) Townsend, Emru
Dr. Adrian David Cheok of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore
has given one of the more intriguing presentations at ACM's CHI 2006, the
annual conference of the computer-human interaction community. The
solution that Cheok and his team have in mind to allow busy people to
reconnect with their pets made for a humorous presentation. In
"Poultry.Internet: A Remote Human-Pet Interaction System," Cheok showed
that a haptic vest could be used to transmit feedback between humans and
pets, with the aid of a motorized remote dummy. The pet is to be outfitted
with the vest, and running in a circle would also prompt the dummy to run
in a circle for the pet owner. But rubbing the dummy would allow the pet
to feel the stroking through the haptic vest. Cheok uses chickens to test
the haptic technology, and his team has made significant strides since
SIGGRAPH 2003. He also believes first responders would be able to use the
technology to guide dogs through areas that humans are unable to reach.
The event will continue in Montreal over the next few days, with
presentations and discussions that will impact all aspects of life from
privacy and health to social issues.
For more on CHI 2006, visit
http://www.chi2006.org
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For Academia, Patents Mean BIG $$
EE Times (04/24/06) Merritt, Rick
The increasing focus in academia on securing patents sometimes puts
universities at odds with businesses that sponsor academic research.
Patents awarded to universities account for more than $1 billion in
licensing revenue a year, and the number of patent applications filed by
universities increased from 1,584 in 1991 to 10,517 in 2004. The mounting
competition for patents has complicated the relationship between academia
and industry, leading to deals such as the agreement ARM reached with a
top-level university to pay the salaries of the school's research
assistants in exchange for co-ownership of any patents they file. Though
they derive most of their patent revenue from royalties, schools also cash
in from the equity amassed in successful startups spun off from university
research. Second-tier colleges are responsible for the recent increase in
patent activity, as they are attempting to develop a menu of patents that
could ultimately serve as the basis for a spinoff company. "There's a huge
[patent] opportunity outside the Stanfords and MITs. That's where the
hunger is," said Victor Hwang, president of the Larta Institute, a
nonprofit that dedicated to furthering the connection between academia and
industry. Smaller companies without the luxury of large research staffs
particularly benefit from partnerships with universities, notes University
of Michigan electrical engineering professor Trevor Mudge, explaining that
universities become an inexpensive way of conducting innovative research.
For their part, more second-tier universities are aggressively pursuing
venture capital funding in an attempt to boost the cache of their research
programs. As more universities are creating research and incubator
centers, they are clashing more frequently with companies over intellectual
property and licensing issues. A roundtable discussion in Washington,
D.C., will take up the issue of guidelines for university patents, though
most argue against a universal template out of the belief that every deal
must be treated uniquely.
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Researchers Use Tongue as Interface
Top Tech News (04/24/06) Levine, Barry
Researchers at the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition are
exploring a technique for using the human tongue as a computer interface
for Navy SEAL divers, Army Rangers, and other soldiers on the front lines.
"Brain Port" uses the tongue's ability to detect sonar echoes to control a
PC. "Most of the human-computer interaction so far has been on using the
eyes, ears, and hands," said Geri Gay, a professor of communications and
information sciences at Cornell University. "Everything nowadays is so
ubiquitous with mobile computing, and we need to find new, hands-free ways
of interacting for environments where your hands and eyes are busy." The
research takes a cue from nature, where animals such as pit vipers have
sensitive tongues that enable them to detect scents in the air. For
humans, a red plastic strip loaded with microelectrodes is placed on the
tongue, where it can convey information from handheld devices such as an
electronic compass. The DARPA-funded project will also attempt to create
infrared tongue-vision, enabling divers or pilots to see in the dark
without the aid of night-vision goggles. The research owes its origins to
the work of University of Wisconsin neuroscientist Paul Bach-y-Rita, who 30
years ago identified the tongue as a superior conduit after attempting to
relay camera images via electrodes that he taped to the backs of his test
subjects. The researchers hope to get the project fast-tracked once they
present a prototype to the military in May. The technology also holds
potential for helping the blind walk or even catch balls, and a custom
interface could help restore balance for people who have suffered damage to
their inner ears.
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Wanted: Girls Interested in Computers
Seacoast (04/24/06) Kane, Amy
For three years running, Norm Messa has not had a single female student in
the high school programming classes that he teaches at the Seacoast School
of Technology in Exeter. To address the problem at its source, Messa has
begun hosting free game programming nights for middle school girls, hoping
to catch them at a time when many girls are still undecided about math and
science. Messa notes that despite media reports heralding the decline of
the technology sector, the industry is actually quite healthy and even
growing. "Of the 10 fastest growing jobs, five are in health care and five
are in IT," he said. "You have to be good at it, but the payoff is
immense." Messa walked the students through a tutorial for Gamemaker and
had them program a simple maze game. The girls enjoyed editing the games,
creating their own characters, and telling stories, aligning with Carnegie
Mellon researcher Caitlyn Kelleher's theory that girls are more interested
in the applications of technology than they are in the technology itself.
Kelleher is developing the next version of Alice, an object-oriented Java
platform featuring elements from Electronic Arts' "The Sims," the most
popular computer game of all time. After a short instruction session, the
girls got to try their hands at Alice, building worlds and creating
characters to tell stories while still learning some of the basics of
programming in a non-threatening environment. "The language in these is
consistent with programming language, but it's not intimidating," Messa
said. "They are learning to think procedurally and algorithmically."
Messa still looks for more ways to kindle female interest in technology,
and looks forward to a new free educational program called Kids Programming
Language.
For information about ACM's Committee on Women in Computing, visit
http://women.acm.org
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Internet2 Unveils Plans for an Improved Version of its
Academic High-Speed Network
Chronicle of Higher Education (04/26/06) Kiernan, Vincent
Leaders of the Internet2 academic-computing consortium announced plans on
Tuesday for a new national academic fiber-optic network, tentatively called
"Newnet," that would replace the Abilene high-speed network. Internet2
President Douglas E. Van Houweling says Newnet would initially carry data
on 10 different wavelengths of light, each of which would be able to handle
10 gigabits of data per second--or the total capacity of Abilene--at a
time. Institutions connected to the new network would have access to one
light wavelength that, like Abilene, would carry conventional Internet
traffic, said Steve Cotter, director of network services for Internet2.
Cotter added that each institution would also have access to a second
wavelength that could be used however the institution desired, or even
subdivided for multiple users. He said Internet2's goal is to develop a
Web-based system that scientists could use to order extra fiber-optic
capacity as needed for their research. The system would be able to find
unused capacity on the network and deliver it to the researcher within
moments, which is far faster than three months' lead time that is often
required when requesting extra fiber-optic capacity from a
telecommunications company, Cotter said. Newnet is expected to become
operational in about 18 months, and will be offered at a cost that is
"comparable" to Abilene's, Van Houweling said.
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Net Neutrality Debate Heats Up
InternetNews.com (04/26/06) Mark, Roy
A House Judiciary Committee task force took up the issue of network
neutrality and heard differing opinions on whether legislation should be
established to prevent discrimination by broadband providers. Verizon and
AT&T have publicized their intent to charge content providers different
fees according to bandwidth consumption to access consumers while promising
not to block, distort, or hinder the transmission of content, a strategy
that tech companies and consumer organizations have branded as
discriminatory with the argument that those who cannot afford the broadband
providers' rates will be at a competitive disadvantage. Republicans are in
favor of the telecoms' tiered access proposal and believe the FCC should be
charged with enforcing network neutrality violations. Democrats and a
coalition of consumer groups and tech companies would prefer that the FCC's
network neutrality principles become law. Columbia University professor
Tim Wu said the network neutrality issue is, at its core, an issue about
the concentration of market power, and noted that distorting competition
between Internet firms would be a more profitable strategy for power
players such as Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T.
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IU Scientists Devise Means to Test for Phony Technical
Papers
EurekAlert (04/24/06)
Researchers at Indiana University have developed an application that can
detect bogus technical papers using compression to determine whether the
text was produced by a human or a computer. "This is a potential problem
since no existing systems, the Web for example, can or do discriminate
between content that is meaningful or bogus," said assistant professor of
informatics Mehmet Dalkilic. "We believe that there are subtle, short-,
and long-range word or even word string repetitions that exist in human
texts, but not in many classes of computer-generated texts that can be used
to discriminate based on meaning." The Inauthentic Paper Detector relies
on a mixture of compression algorithms that save space and transmission
time by condensing the volume of data. The researchers assembled two
groups of text: one consisting of several hundred thousand syntactically
correct sentences that are entirely meaningful, while the other was
comprised of several hundred thousand syntactically correct sentences that,
in aggregate, are meaningless. The inspiration for the project came from a
2004 prank where three MIT students created a program that could randomly
produce fake computer code. When the students submitted a meaningless
four-page document to an international conference, it was accepted with no
review. The Inauthentic Paper Detector easily identified the bogus MIT
paper and numerous others as fraudulent. "We hypothesized that we could
build a reliable and fast model that recognizes fake papers automatically,"
said Predrag Radivojac, an assistant professor of informatics who joined
Dalkilic along with informatics doctoral student James Costello and
undergraduate Wyatt Clark.
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Nokia Teams Up With MIT
Cellular-News (04/24/06)
The joint research facility of Nokia and MIT has now opened its doors, and
about 20 researchers and scientists each from Nokia Research Center and
MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) will
staff the center in Cambridge, Mass. The new facility, called Nokia
Research Center Cambridge, is directed by Dr. James Hicks from Nokia
Research Center, and its program manager is Arvind, the Johnson Professor
of Computer Science and Engineering at MIT. The work of the researchers
and scientists at Nokia Research Center Cambridge will focus on creating an
"ecosystem" of information, services, peripherals, sensors, and other tools
that will enable mobile devices to operate more intuitively with users,
machines, and environments. Current projects include using speech to
interact with mobile devices, and developing a platform for Semantic Web
applications that understand policy, preference, and context. Other
communications technologies projects include providing a way to verify the
interoperability of Web services, and facilitating easy and secure
connection of devices to each other and across the Internet.
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Robo-Ethics
Albany Times Union (NY) (04/21/06) Lisi, Michael
The fear that robots will eventually appear in surveillance systems and
computer networks to monitor every element of human activity is a pressing
concern for Chico MacMurtie, artistic director of Amorphic Robot Works. "I
am frightened to death of the way technology controls our society and is
used against us," he said. "Technology can be a wonderful tool, and at the
same time it's a very controlling tool. (Robotics) will continue to be
used to give us luxury, and to repress us." MacMurtie was scheduled to
deliver a keynote address at the Schenectady Museum's High Voltage Fields
symposium on Sat. April 21 entitled "How Robotics Affects Our Society and
Why It Concerns Me." MacMurtie worries that, just as in the movie "I,
Robot," humans will instinctively create robots to perform undesirable
tasks and endow them with human-like qualities. This year's symposium is
thematically centered on the ethics of robotics to reflect the convergence
of art and technology. The panel discussion will take up the issue of
whether robots already play too much of a role in people's lives. The
museum is also preparing a June exhibit entitled "Robots Rock!," featuring
an ensemble of self-playing robotic musical instruments. That sort of
application for robotics is less concerning to MacMurtie, who acknowledges
the field's many productive uses, such as space exploration and powerful
computers. He is more concerned with the government's use of technology as
an instrument of oppression in the post-9/11 age. "The really important
thing to keep in mind is as our government is protecting us from terrorism,
they've locked us down and used technology as the tool to lock us down
with," he said. "The question is what (our government) has up its sleeve
at this point. The stuff that's not out there is always more interesting
than the stuff that's out there."
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New Group Aims to 'Save the Internet'
CNet (04/24/06) Broache, Anne
A group of media, consumer, and Internet groups has launched a campaign
and Web site under the banner "Save the Internet" to lobby federal
lawmakers considering revision of the nation's telecommunications policy to
maintain so-called Net neutrality. "The fight for Internet freedom is now
being waged in earnest," said Tim Karr, campaign director for Free Press, a
media reform organization that opposes large media companies and organized
the coalition. "On one side you have the public...on the other side you
have the nation's largest telephone and cable companies, who have aligned
with some in Congress to strip the Internet of the First Amendment." The
group says the latest version of the reform bill does not go far enough in
protecting neutrality. A first vote on the bill failed to grant passage
for an amendment that would give content providers the right to bandwidth
"with equivalent or better capability than the provider extends to itself
or affiliated parties, and without the imposition of any charge," a measure
the coalition supports. The group says current FCC regulations regarding
neutrality are too vague. The bill would require the agency to investigate
complaints of violations of its Net neutrality rules and give it the power
to impose fines of up to $500,000 per violation, but denies it the right to
make new rules regarding the issue. "You could have a system where I might
be able to get my Vonage service but because Verizon has its own voice over
Internet protocol service, they may degrade my Vonage service," says Gigi
Sohn, president of the advocacy group Public Knowledge. "So technically I
could get a degraded Vonage service, still in keeping with principles, but
I'm accessing a degraded service, and that's why a non-discrimination
principle must be put in the law."
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Software Insecurity: Plenty of Blame to Go Around
Government Computer News (04/18/06) Jackson, William
Attendees at the recent International Conference of Network Security were
unable to agree about who should shoulder the blame for the persistent
unreliability of software. Eset Chief Research Officer Andrew Lee
attributed the poor quality to the barrier between developers and users,
noting that an application that may seem perfectly intuitive to a developer
can be put to illogical and destructive ends in the hands of a user. Lee
also said most software is too complex to ever receive sufficient testing.
Careful deployment could minimize disruptions caused by even the most
flawed software, said Lockheed Martin's Eric Cole. "In a lot of cases,
even though the bugs are still there, the impact to your organization can
be mitigated" with a suitably architected and well-protected network, just
as perfectly coded software is still vulnerable if improperly deployed, he
explained. In response to an audience member's charge that organizations
are more concerned with clever workarounds than with methodologies for
solving problems, Stuart Katzke of the National Institute of Standards and
Technology (NIST) said his organization could help, noting that the same
level of due diligence created by the documents prepared for government
users under the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) could
also apply to private industry. "The framework that we have established
for federal agencies is really applicable to any environment," Katzke said.
Participants also debated the relative worth of the Common Criteria
program maintained by NIST and the NSA. Supporters claimed that the
program enables a comparison between products, while critics charged that
it is more about red tape than software quality.
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ICT Only Part of the Answer to Poverty
Computerworld New Zealand (04/24/06) Bell, Stephen
A debate over the use of information communication technologies (ICTs) to
bridge the world's poverty divide took place at ICANN's recent conference
in Wellington, New Zealand. Some proponents suggest that ICTs play a key
role in reducing poverty, while others believe that this view is overly
optimistic. Ultimately, this debate centers on the conflict between the
Internet and real-world governance. In the United Nations' "Reforming
Internet Governance: Perspectives From the Working Group on Internet
Governance," Alejandro Pisanty wrote that the effectiveness of the World
Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) was undermined by an obsession
about who controls Internet naming and numbering. "Excessive focus, first
on Internet governance generally and then, almost exclusively on the names
and numbers, has made the whole WSIS effort a waste of goodwill effort,
genuine work, and genuine hope to make the information society inclusive
and its development beneficial to all," wrote Pisanty. In the same report,
Kangsik Cheon, a top executive of Korean firm Netpia.com, addressed the
issue of international domain names, while Trevor Clarke wrote that there
needs to be a global forum for Internet governance, explaining, "Despite
its very successful past, the Internet is much too important to global
peace and prosperity to be left alone."
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You Vs. Offshoring
InformationWeek (04/24/06)No. 1086, P. 44; McGee, Marianne Kolbasuk
Despite noticeable pay hikes and a generally better attitude toward IT as
a career path, offshoring has bred a less than sanguine IT job outlook
among U.S. tech workers polled in InformationWeek's National IT Salary
Survey. Sixty-four percent report the elimination of jobs by outsourcing,
and almost 60 percent say the trend is having a detrimental effect on
morale. Meanwhile, most respondents do not think the salaries of current
workers will be hurt by global IT competition, but they are split over
whether entry-level professionals will be disadvantaged. Though American
IT pros seem increasingly sure their careers can prevail in the face of
global IT competition, only a small percentage expect to work on more
innovative projects as menial chores are outsourced, or anticipate new
hires to support offshoring work. Foote Partners President David Foote
thinks workers who combine technical skill with business acumen are less
likely to be outsourced, though just 6 percent of managers and 2 percent of
personnel polled in the salary survey assign great value in "understanding
the company's business strategy." IT pros have a better shot of keeping
their employment by updating their skills, yet the survey finds that less
than half of staffers and managers receive education and training as part
of their benefits packages, while an even lower percentage are reimbursed
for tuition. Fifty-three percent of managers and 61 percent of staffers
say IT career prospects appear less promising than they did five years ago.
E.&J. Gallo Winery CIO Kent Kushar forecasts that cost savings in
offshoring will eventually be tightened as other countries try to keep
their workforces' skills up to date, thereby increasing the value of U.S.
workers with both technology and business knowledge.
To view "Globalization and Offshoring of Software--A Report of the ACM's
Job Migration Task Force, visit
http://www.acm.org/globalizationreport
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A Red Flag in the Brain Game
BusinessWeek (05/01/06)No. 3982, P. 32; Hamm, Steve
Eastern European and Asian computer programming teams' trouncing of their
American counterparts in the world finals of the Association for Computing
Machinery's International Collegiate Programming Contest on April 12
reflects the widening gap between the output of U.S. computer science
programs and that of China, India, and Eastern Europe. "If our talent base
weakens, our lead in technology, business, and economics will fade faster
than any of us can imagine," cautions George Mason University professor
Richard Florida. Reasons for the decline in U.S. computer science
graduates include a lack of excitement among students toward programming as
a career choice, and fears that programming jobs will be outsourced to
lower-wage countries. Meanwhile, restrictive immigration policies
instituted in the wake of 9/11 are forcing many foreign students enrolled
in U.S. graduate computer science programs to leave the country, while
others are being encouraged to leave by burgeoning tech markets and
entrepreneurialism in their native countries. IBM's Nicholas Donofrio is
worried about complacency among American students: "There has to be a
passion to be innovative," he explains. Owen Astrachan, who coached the
Duke University programming team that participated in the ACM contest,
believes students' flagging interest in computer science could be revived
by connecting the field to more practical, real-world scenarios. However,
computer science proponents say such efforts cannot reverse America's brain
drain without a firm legislative strategy by the government to enhance the
country's technology competitiveness.
For more on the results of the ICPC, visit
http://icpc.baylor.edu/icpc
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New Hunt Is on for Robot Top Dog
New Scientist (04/24/06) Vol. 190, No. 2548, P. 24; Wald, Chelsea
Sony's decision to discontinue production of its Aibo robotic dogs has
created major concern among robotics researchers, who have long used the
products to test new artificial intelligence systems. The popularity of
Sony's Aibo made it the closest thing to a standard robot the industry has
seen, and researchers have been frantically moving to secure the remaining
stocks of the device. A group of scientists who compete in the
Aibo-inspired RoboCup soccer tournament is preparing a volume of published
research papers based on Aibo studies to present to Sony in an attempt to
convince the company to resurrect the robot or develop an alternative.
Though it was designed as a consumer product, Aibo comes with a camera,
sensors, a computer chip, and the ability to walk, which offered
researchers all the features they needed to test new systems in an
off-the-shelf package, saving them the trouble of building their own
devices from scratch while providing a common platform to compare different
systems. While Sony has pledged to service the latest Aibo model for seven
years, many researchers hoping to stockpile the robots for the RoboCup
Four-Legged Challenge are finding inventories depleted. "Anybody who is
planning to restock now is out of luck," said Peter Stone, an artificial
intelligence researcher from the University of Texas at Austin. A
potential substitute is the Robosapien, a device produced by Hong Kong's
WowWee Robotics that, while lacking Aibo's sensors and processing power,
has a level of flexibility that inventor Mark Tilden hopes will enable the
device to be easily modified for research purposes. As another potential
alternative, University of Pennsylvania researcher Daniel Koditschek has
developed the EduBot, which can run faster than the Aibo and also leap and
flip.
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