The Faster Times: Augmented Reality Boosting Case for Smartphones. “As if the trend for smaller devices wasn’t clear enough, a relatively new kind of software for smartphones (it was first demonstrated in late 2008) is going to make hand-held devices even hotter. And with good reason. Augmented Reality (AR) may sound like an ominous sci-fi dystopia waiting to happen, but it’s actually a way of adding a layer of metadata to what your smartphone’s camera viewfinder shows you when you look through the lens. Point an AR-equipped smartphone at a landscape, an apartment building or a tennis court, and you’ll be able to know how high that mountain, how big and expensive that apartment or the score on center court, thanks to a collaboration between software vendors like Layar or Mobilizy and partners like tourism boards, realtors, and Wimbeldon.”

News 8 (Austin): “Robot monitors emotional state of autistic children.” “Researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center built a robot that can monitor the emotional state of autistic children and respond to their reactions. Nilanjan Sarkar, Ph.D., from Vanderbilt University’s departments of mechanical and computer engineering, developed a method that uses physiological measurements, including heart rate, skin response, temperature and muscle movement, to monitor the emotional state of these children. Researchers say the robots allow for doctors to understand and respond to the needs of autism patients.”

Neoseeker: Common Operating System for Robots Under Development. “Work is underway on developing a common operating system for robots. The premise makes a great deal of sense. The overwhelming majority of all robots built so far have been constructed for specific purposes. Almost all of them have required new software to be made just for them. Developed at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Robot Operating System is an attempt to standardize the basic software requirements of robotics. A sort of base to build all other specialized software on. For example, the Robot Operating System may include programming for movement, facial recognition and object identification. With the base in place, people would be freed from re-writing all this code for each new robot; instead, they can use ROS as a foundation to build more high-level software.”

The Atlantic: “Robots and the Future of Unemployment.”
“As production in the United States evolves to include more machines, programming, and robots, will that have a negative long-term impact on unemployment? Economist Greg Clark says yes, and recent evidence suggests that it may already be happening.”

Boston Globe: “Navy contract goes to iRobot.” “The company makes robots that perform such household tasks as vacuuming a room as well as PackBots, robots designed for military uses such as detecting and disabling explosive devices. To date, iRobot said that it has delivered more than 2,500 PackBot robots that ‘keep warfighters out of harm’s way’.”