Simulator sickness—which often induces vertigo and even nausea—often afflicts players of virtual reality games, but inserting a “virtual nose” into the picture may be a way to lessen the queasiness. Various physiological systems govern the onset of simulator sickness: an overall sense of touch and position, or the somatosensory system; liquid-filled…
Read moreIn 2012, a paralyzed woman with a 96-electrode sensor the size of a baby aspirin implanted onto the surface of her brain was able to think about steering a robotic arm toward a canister with a straw in it, move the canister toward her mouth, tilt it so the straw fell into…
Read moreMOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Two groups of scientists, working independently, have created artificial intelligence software capable of recognizing and describing the content of photographs and videos with far greater accuracy than ever before, sometimes even mimicking human levels of understanding. Until now, so-called computer vision has largely been limited to…
Read moreUW students Darby Losey, left, and Jose Ceballos are positioned in two different buildings on campus as they would be during a brain-to-brain interface demonstration. The sender, left, thinks about firing a cannon at various points throughout a computer game. That signal is sent over the Web directly to the…
Read moreBrain to brain communication edges closer (including downloading information from the internet!) Indonesia is now at the forefront of new advances in neuroscience and technology. In a remote laboratory two hours from the Indonesian capital, scientists are working on technology to research on the brain. A 47-year-old scientist – Warsito…
Read moreEver since humans first envisioned robots, we’ve thought about how to make the machines more like us. Robots compete against us on game shows, and rendezvouswith us in the bedroom (or at least, make virtual sex feel real). But part of being human is sensing the world around us in a particular way,…
Read moreAs social networks, apps, and websites strive to make the most of the vast amounts of data users share with them, and deliver smarter, better services to the people who use them, there’s one approach that many of them have in common. It draws on methods of artificial intelligence and…
Read moreHumans are social animals, and feelings of attachment, connection and empathy are the glue that binds societies together. Before an infant’s immune system is fully operational, before a baby can even use its hands, it recognizes its parents’ voices, responds uniquely to human faces and even, incredibly, smiles back. Yet,…
Read moreWhat does it mean to be human? That’s the question being asked in a thought-provoking new exhibition of stunningly lifelike androids, which also suggests that maybe the singularity could be closer than we think. On June 25, the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation, more commonly known as the Miraikan, will…
Read more
Techniques from natural-language processing enable computers to efficiently search video for actions
With the commodification of digital cameras, digital video has become so easy to produce that human beings can have trouble keeping up with it. Among the tools that computer scientists are developing to make the profusion of video more useful are algorithms for activity recognition — or determining what the…
Read more