Man and machine

One place where artificial intelligence has found a natural home is in the development of computer games. AI (artificial intelligence) in computer games is becoming increasingly sophisticated as consumer appetites for better, faster, more challenging games grows. In games, AI is often present in the opponents you play against, or in allies or other team members.

In 1997, then world chess champion Garry Kasparov played against IBM’s Deep Blue supercomputer – and lost. After six games, the mighty Kasparov lost 2.5 to 3.5 to the silicon upstart. In February 2003, Kasparov salvaged some credibility for humanity by drawing against the Israeli-built supercomputer Deep Junior. Kasparov went on to draw 2-2 against US company X3D Technologies' supercomputer X3D Fritz in November 2003, proving that the human brain can keep up with the latest developments in computing (at least in chess).

The RoboCup football championship features robots playing the beautiful game. The tournament has different leagues for different robot types, including one for Sony’s Aibos and one for humanoid robots. Despite the mechanical style of play on show, the tournament is proving a popular annual fixture.

In the RoboCup junior championships, independent robots compete one-on-one on a miniature football table with a greyscale pattern. The robots use this dark to pale gradient to navigate their way to the opponent's goal. A special ball is used which contains sensors that communicate with sensors in the robot.

Despite these entertaining applications, the original point of AI research was to create machines that could understand us. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), scientists have designed a robot called Kismet that can have realistic conversations with people. Kismet is capable of seven different facial expressions and can vary the tone of its voice. It also adjusts its gaze and the orientation of its head towards the person it is speaking to.

Scientists at HP (Hewlett Packard) have designed an electronic DJ. The 'hpDJ' selects beats and baselines from its memory bank and mixes them. Its makers say it could be made to react to the mood of clubbers.

At the University of Texas, Dallas, researchers have designed a lifelike human face to capable of 28 facial movements, including smiling, sneering, furrowing its brow and arching its eyebrows. It could be used to put a human face to the artificial brains of the future.

A computer program developed at Brandeis University in Massachusetts has learnt how to design and build bridges, cranes and tables all by itself. It reinvented support structures such as the cantilever and the triangle without prior knowledge of them.

Credit card companies use a computer program called The Falcon to detect card fraud. The Falcon works by constantly updating a profile of how customers use their credit cards. It then looks for uncharacteristic patterns of credit card use in the data.

A robotic head built by a Scottish robotics company can determine a woman’s attractiveness. It works by examining faces to determine how 'feminine' or 'masculine' they are. It doesn’t work in reverse because men’s appeal is supposedly not based as much on looks. Perhaps jokingly, researchers say it could be put to use as an artificial receptionist.

Robots designed for the consumer market and employing very basic forms of AI have become increasingly popular in recent years. Sony's Aibo robot dog behaves like a puppy when it is first activated. But it "learns" new behaviour as it spends more time with its human owner.

Omron's NeCoRo robotic cat and Sanyo's robotic guard dog are other examples of this wave of consumer robots. This is likely to continue in future as consumer robots become more and more sophisticated.

A software program called FACES could stop mid-air collisions between planes. It makes planes perform avoidance manoeuvres in synch. When tested in a flight simulator, the software prevented a pile-up between 35 planes sharing airspace.

Over the coming century, breakthroughs in nanotechnology, the science of ultra-small machines constructed at the molecular level, may help us build more sophisticated machines that are more compact.

We may also see breakthroughs from scientists who are experimenting with connecting biological cells to silicon circuits - a phenomenon called wetware.

From BBC site