Herself’s Artificial Intelligence

Kites flying in figure eights generate far more energy than kites just riding the wind. Now kites are being tethered to turbines to generate electricity. This works well when the wind is steady, not so well when the wind speed drops or there are gusts. So a neural network has been trained to maximize the kites ability to produce energy when the wind is not steady.

Abstract. Recent development in tethered airfoil i.e. kite technology allows the possibility of exploitation of wind energy at higher altitudes than achievable with traditional wind turbines, with greater efficiency and reduced costs. This study describes the use of evolutionary robotics techniques to build neurocontrollers that maximize energy recoverable from wind by kite control systems in simulation. From initially randomized starting conditions, neurocontrollers rapidly develop under evolutionary pressure to fly the kite in figure eight trajectories that have previously been shown to be an optimal path for power generation. Advantages of this approach are discussed and data is presented which demonstrates the robustness of trajectory control to environmental perturbation. Control of tethered airfoils for a new class of wind energy generator

. . .Two years ago, a Phoenix homicide detective asked for help on a case.
Someone had been killed, but police had few clues. “Look for two brothers and a mother whose first name is all we know,” the homicide detective said.So planning and research Detective Ben Vermillion keyed the information into a special program that pools and searches police department databases.“Within 15 minutes, I had the shooter for his homicide,” Vermillion said. “They were listed in some departmental reports and … (the program) links them together.”Vermillion says he couldn’t have done that so quickly without a tool called COPLINK. Named for it’s ability to link cops with one another, the program links and compares databases within agencies and shares the information with others to help solve crimes. . . . [ read more Coplink data sharing program aids crime solving]

More information:
Coplink
Data warehousing, Coplink/BorderSafe/RISC
An electronic cop that plays the hunches
CBI’s DNA robot pays for itself in solved crimes

Terrorists and extremists have set up shop on the Internet, using it to recruit new members, spread propaganda and plan attacks across the world. The size and scope of these dark corners of the Web are vast and disturbing. But in a non-descript building in Tucson, a team of computational scientists are using the cutting-edge technology and novel new approaches to track their moves online, providing an invaluable tool in the global war on terror.. . .
This is where the Dark Web project comes in. Using advanced techniques such as Web spidering, link analysis, content analysis, authorship analysis, sentiment analysis and multimedia analysis, Chen and his team can find, catalogue and analyze extremist activities online. According to Chen, scenarios involving vast amounts of information and data points are ideal challenges for computational scientists, who use the power of advanced computers and applications to find patterns and connections where humans can not.One of the tools developed by Dark Web is a technique called Writeprint, which automatically extracts thousands of multilingual, structural, and semantic features to determine who is creating ‘anonymous’ content online. Writeprint can look at a posting on an online bulletin board, for example, and compare it with writings found elsewhere on the Internet. By analyzing these certain features, it can determine with more than 95 percent accuracy if the author has produced other content in the past. The system can then alert analysts when the same author produces new content, as well as where on the Internet the content is being copied, linked to or discussed. . . .Scientists use the ‘dark web’ to snag extremists and terrorists online

More information:
From Fingerprint to Writeprint ( pdf )
Digital Fingerprints: tiny behavioral differences can reveal your identity online
The Dark Web Portal: collecting and analyzing the presence of domestic and international terrorist groups on the web ( pdf)
The Dark Net ( blog )

Always one of the driving forces in robotics has been the economy. As labor gets more expensive and the demand for cheap goods increases, machinery has replaced people. Early on the machines were simplistic. In the 1970s we began to see simple robots replace people in factories and assembly lines. Now perhaps we will see them replace people in farming. Farmers have welcomed newer smarter equipment with open arms for centuries. All that is needed is a price point that can justify the cost. Many have blamed the open border policy in the US for delaying and slowing down the farm robot development. If the border policy changes we could see a booming farm robot industry here soon.

With authorities promising tighter borders, some farmers who rely on immigrant labor are eyeing an emerging generation of fruit-picking robots and high-tech tractors to do everything from pluck premium wine grapes to clean and core lettuce.
Such machines, now in various stages of development, could become essential for harvesting delicate fruits and vegetables that are still picked by hand.

“If we want to maintain our current agriculture here in California, that’s where mechanization comes in,” said Jack King, national affairs manager for the California Farm Bureau.

Robots may become essential on US farms

See also:
AgBots: Agricultural robots take the field: Science fiction in the news
Service robots: Agriculture and harvesting robots