ScienceDaily: Computers & Math News

An Internet of Things reality check Posted: 09 Feb 2015 05:35 AM PST Connecting different kinds of devices, not just computers and communications devices, to the Internet could lead to new ways of working with a wide range of machinery, sensors, domestic and other appliances. Researchers suggest that we are on the verge of a another technological revolution but practicalities and legal obstacles may stymie the development of the so-called Internet of Things if they are not addressed quickly.

Human insights inspire solutions for household robots Posted: 05 Feb 2015 11:12 AM PST People typically consider doing the laundry to be a boring chore. But laundry is far from boring for artificial intelligence researchers. To AI experts, programming a robot to do the laundry represents a challenging planning problem because current sensing and manipulation technology is not good enough to identify precisely the number of clothing pieces that are in a pile and the number that are picked up with each grasp. People can easily cope with this type of uncertainty and come up with a simple plan. But roboticists for decades have struggled to design an autonomous system able to do what we do so casually--clean our clothes.