Surveillance robot knows when to hide

A surveillance robot that knows when to hide has been developed by Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Technology Laboratories.

The robot avoids visible detection by sentries of known locations, potential detection by sentries whose positions are unknown, areas in which the robot has no means of escape, and areas that are well lit.

It builds a computer model of its surroundings and incorporates information on lines of sight. A laser scanner covertly maps its environment in 3D, and acoustic sensors distinguish nearby footsteps and their direction.

"Lockheed Martin's approach does include a sort of basic theory of mind, in the sense that the robot makes assumptions about how to act covertly in the presence of humans," says Alan Wagner of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, who works on artificial intelligence and robot deception.

But the level at which the robot's software operates is probably limited to task-specific instructions such as, "if you hear a noise, scurry to the nearest dark corner", he says. That's not sophisticated enough to hide from humans in varied environments.

"Significant AI will be needed to develop a robot which can act covertly in a general setting," Wagner says. "The robot will need to consider its own shape and size, to have the ability to navigate potential paths, [to be aware of] each person's individual line of view, the impact that its movement will have on the environment, and so on."

Army deploying ‘Individual Gunshot Detector’

U.S. Army forces in Afghanistan will begin receiving the first of more than 13,000 gunshot detection systems for the individual dismounted soldier later this month, according to the U.S. Army.

The Individual Gunshot Detector (IGD), made by QinetiQ North America, consists of four small acoustic sensors worn by the individual soldier and a small display screen attached to body armor that shows the distance and direction of incoming fire. The system weighs just under two pounds.

The small sensor, about the size of a deck of cards, detects the supersonic sound waves generated by enemy gunfire and instantaneously alerts soldiers to the location and distance toward the hostile fire.

In the future, the Army plans to integrate this technology with its Land Warrior and Nett Warrior systems. These are network-situational-awareness systems for dismounted units, complete with a helmet-mounted display screen that uses GPS digital-mapping-display technology.

Now I See You

Weill Cornell Medical College researchers have built a new type of prosthetic retina that enabled blind mice to see nearly normal images. It could someday restore detailed sight to the millions of people who’ve lost their vision to retinal disease.

They used optogenetics, a recently developed technique that infuses neurons with light-sensitive proteins from blue-green algae, causing them to fire when exposed to light.

The researchers used mice that were genetically engineered to express one of these proteins, channelrhodopsin, in their ganglion cells. Then, they presented the mice with an image that had been translated into a grid of 6,000 pulsing lights. Each light communicated with a single ganglion cell, and each pulse of light caused its corresponding cell to fire, thus transmitting the encoded image along to the brain.

In humans, such a setup would require a pair of high-tech spectacles, embedded in which would be a tiny camera, an encoder chip to translate images from the camera into the retinal code, and a miniature array of thousands of lights. When each light pulsed, it would trigger a channelrhodopsin-laden ganglion cell. Surgery would no longer be required to implant an electron array deep into the eye, although some form of gene therapy would be required in order for patients to express channelrhodopsin in their retinas.