Social Intelligence Design in Ambient Intelligence

This Special Issue of AI and Society contains a selection of papers presented at the 6th Social Intelligence Design Workshop held at ITC-irst, Povo (Trento, Italy) in July 2007. Being the 6th in a series means that there now is a well-established and also a growing research area. The interest in this research area is growing because, among other things, current computing technology allows other than the traditional efficiency-oriented applications associated with computer science and interface technology. For example, in Ambient Intelligence (AmI) applications we look at sensor-equipped environments and devices (robots, smart furniture, virtual humans and pets) that support their human inhabitants during their everyday activities. These everyday activities also include computer-mediated communication, collaboration and community activities

Whole-Body MPC for a Dynamically Stable Mobile Manipulator

Autonomous mobile manipulation offers a dual advantage of mobility provided by a mobile platform and dexterity afforded by the manipulator. In this paper, we present a whole-body optimal control framework to jointly solve the problems of manipulation, balancing and interaction as one optimization problem for an inherently unstable robot. The optimization is performed using a Model Predictive Control (MPC) approach; the optimal control problem is transcribed at the end-effector space, treating the position and orientation tasks in the MPC planner, and skillfully planning for end-effector contact forces. The proposed formulation evaluates how the control decisions aimed at end-effector tracking and environment interaction will affect the balance of the system in the future. We showcase the advantages of the proposed MPC approach on the example of a ball-balancing robot with a robotic manipulator and validate our controller in hardware experiments for tasks such as end-effector pose tracking and door opening

Identification of Fully Physical Consistent Inertial Parameters using Optimization on Manifolds

This paper presents a new condition, the fully physical consistency for a set of inertial parameters to determine if they can be generated by a physical rigid body. The proposed condition ensure both the positive definiteness and the triangular inequality of 3D inertia matrices as opposed to existing techniques in which the triangular inequality constraint is ignored. This paper presents also a new parametrization that naturally ensures that the inertial parameters are fully physical consistency. The proposed parametrization is exploited to reformulate the inertial identification problem as a manifold optimization problem, that ensures that the identified parameters can always be generated by a physical body. The proposed optimization problem has been validated with a set of experiments on the iCub humanoid robot.Comment: 6 pages, published in Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2016 IEEE/RSJ International Conference o

Our Fear of AI: Exploring Its Creators and Creations in Fiction

The idea of technological creation has proliferated across fiction for the last century. As the world becomes increasingly technologically advanced, these fears have become more tangible. With the rise of Artificial Intelligence particularly, from Alexa to self-driving cars, comes a rise in the fear of what intelligent creations might lead to. In order for AI to continue growing and adding value to society, experts must contend with the apprehension surrounding AI. While these conversations are already occurring, they generally focus on the fear of the machine itself. This thesis argues that the fear of the creators and regulators of AI, not just the machine, heavily influences the fear of AI as a field. It examines three different AI takeover narratives, "With Folded Hands", Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, and Ex Machina, in order to analyze the fears surrounding technology creators in conjunction with the influence of societal events and systems of the times.Plan II Honors Progra

Metal-organic dual layer structure for stretchable interconnects

This paper reports a novel method for obtaining stretchable interconnects using gold and organic material (PEDOT:PSS) in a dual-layer structure on PDMS substrate. With an appropriate design and carefully carried out microfabrication steps, the structure was successfully patterned into serpentine shape and highly stretchable interconnects were obtained. The fabricated interconnects can be stretched up to 170% of their original length while retaining an adequate level of conductivity

Sosyal hizmette füturizm: Transhümanizm, insan hayatının oyunlaştırılması, homo roboticus ve bakım

Bu çalışmada sanatsal bir akım olarak ortaya çıkıp toplumsal ve teknolojik bir boyut kazanan fütürizm hareketinin temelleri üzerinden sosyal çalışma disiplinine ve mesleğine yönelik bir değerlendirme yapılması amaçlanmaktadır. Böylece sosyal çalışma disiplininin ve mesleğinin gelecek yıllardaki olası ajandasına yönelik öngörülerin açıklanması planlanmaktadır. Bu çalışmada fütürizm ile sosyal hizmet arasındaki ilişki insan hakları, sosyal adalet, eşitlik, toplumsal refah, bireyin onuru ve saygınlığı gibi evrensel değerler üzerine kurulmuş olan sosyal hizmet uygulamalarının nasıl bir geleceğe doğru yol aldığını ortaya koyma çabasıyla kurulmaktadır. Bu bağlamda, yeni bir felsefi hareket olarak ortaya çıkan transhümanizm kavramı sosyal hizmetin geleceği ile ilgili olarak ele alınmaktadır. Daha sonra insan hayatının oyunlaştırılması, homo roboticus ve bakım gibi konular tartışılmaktadır. Bu konular son birkaç yıldır sosyal bilimlerin gündemindedir. Bu makalenin sosyal hizmet alanında bu konularla ilgili olarak hazırlanan ilk çalışmalardan biri olması nedeniyle bir başlangıç çalışması olarak kabul edilmesi ve gelecekteki çalışmalarla desteklenmesi beklenmektedir.This study aims at making an assessment of the social work discipline and profession on the basis of the futurism movement, which emerged as an artistic movement and gained social and technological dimensions. Therefore, predictions for a possible agenda of the future social work discipline and profession are discussed. In this study, the relationship between futurism and social work is established in an effort to reveal how social work practices, based on universal values such as human rights, social justice, equality, social prosperity and the dignity of the individual, are moving forward. In this context, the future of social work is discussed under the following three topics: (1) transhumanism, (2) gamification of human life, (3) homo roboticus and care. In fact, all these topics have been on the agenda of social sciences for the last few years. Despite this interest, to the best of the researcher’s knowledge, this article is one of the first studies on these issues in the field of social work and has raised many questions in need of further studies