A Midsummer Night’s Dream (with flying robots)

Seven flying robot “fairies” joined human actors in the Texas A&M production of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The production was a collaboration between the departments of Computer Science and Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Theater Arts. The collaboration was motivated by two assertions. First, that the performing arts have principles for creating believable agents that will transfer to robots. Second, the theater is a natural testbed for evaluating the response of untrained human groups (both actors and the audience) to robots interacting with humans in shared spaces, i.e., were believable agents created? The production used two types of unmanned aerial vehicles, an AirRobot 100-b quadrotor platform about the size of a large pizza pan, and six E-flite Blade MCX palm-sized toy helicopters. The robots were used as alter egos for fairies in the play; the robots did not replace any actors, instead they were paired with them. The insertion of robots into the production was not widely advertised so the audience was the typical theatergoing demographic, not one consisting of people solely interested technology. The use of radio-controlled unmanned aerial vehicles provides insights into what types of autonomy are needed to create appropriate affective interactions with untrained human groups. The observations from the four weeks of practice and eight performances contribute (1) a taxonomy and methods for creating affect exchanges between robots and untrained human groups, (2) the importance of improvisation within robot theater, (3) insights into how untrained human groups form expectations about robots, and (4) awareness of the importance of safety and reliability as a design constraint for public engagement with robot platforms. The taxonomy captures that apparent affect can be created without explicit affective behaviors by the robot, but requires talented actors to convey the situation or express reactions. The audience’s response to robot crashes was a function of whether they had the opportunity to observe how the actors reacted to robot crashes on stage, suggesting that pre-existing expectations must be taken into account in the design of autonomy. Furthermore, it appears that the public expect robots to be more reliable (an expectation of consumer product hardening) and safe (an expectation from product liability) than the current capabilities and this may be a major challenge or even legal barrier for introducing robots into shared public spaces. These contributions are expected to inform design strategies for increasing public engagement with robot platforms through affect, and shows the value of arts-based approaches to public encounters with robots both for generating design strategies and for evaluation

The future of Cybersecurity in Italy: Strategic focus area

This volume has been created as a continuation of the previous one, with the aim of outlining a set of focus areas and actions that the Italian Nation research community considers essential. The book touches many aspects of cyber security, ranging from the definition of the infrastructure and controls needed to organize cyberdefence to the actions and technologies to be developed to be better protected, from the identification of the main technologies to be defended to the proposal of a set of horizontal actions for training, awareness raising, and risk management

Hadron

Pg 4 : Anxiety and Evolution Pg 5 : Prescription Fires Pg 7 : The New Uber? Pg 8 : Changing Society Pg 10 : The Rare and Elusive Spirit Bear Pg 12 : How Lasers Could Solve the World Energy Crisis Pg 14 : The Physics of Water Wakes Pg 17 : Schwarzschild Cosmology and Black Hole-ception! Pg 19 : The Future of Space Tourism Pg 20 : Not Just Bitcoin Pg 21 : The Evolving Medical Power of Psychedelics Pg 24 : Usage of Hydrogels in Wound Healing Pg 26 : New COVID-19 Variant Spreading Across South America and the United Stateshttps://digitalcommons.imsa.edu/hadron_magazine/1004/thumbnail.jp

AI, Robotics, and the Future of Jobs

This report is the latest in a sustained effort throughout 2014 by the Pew Research Center's Internet Project to mark the 25th anniversary of the creation of the World Wide Web by Sir Tim Berners-Lee (The Web at 25).The report covers experts' views about advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics, and their impact on jobs and employment

What is 21st Century Photography?

Commissioned by The Photographers' Gallery, in this essay Rubinstein answers "one of photography’s most complicated questions": In our contemporary image-world of computers and algorithms, what are the key philosophical questions proposed by the medium of photography today

The Analysis of the Limitations Which Hinder Inquiry-based Learning and Students’ Creativity Development in Chinese Science Education

ABSTRACT It is believed that developing the creative thinking ability is the key to maintaining competitiveness in the automation age. Science education plays an important role in preparing the young generation’s creativity to face the unpredictable future. Inquiry-based learning, which is a creativity promoting pedagogy, has been presented as the major teaching strategy in China. However, several deficiencies of Chinese science education still limit the utilization of inquiry-based learning and students’ creativity development. This paper analyzes the combination of creativity development and science education in China through the vision of inquiry-based learning. The purpose of this paper is to emphasize the importance of students’ creativity ability training and demonstrate the limitations of science education in China. Further, the paper provides several recommendations in nurturing Chinese students’ creativity in science learning

The will to love that makes a difference

This essay deals with the question of what really makes human beings exceptional. It is argued that it is a special kind of love that ultimately distinguishes humans from other animals. Although other kinds of considerations, preferably cognitive ones, have most often been invoked to make such a distinction, these might eventually be found to be, at least in part, a matter of degree and not something qualitatively different, as argued here with respect to this type of love. Arguments from both scientific and philosophical sources are brought to bear on the question