Autonomous robots will soon rove the buildings and streets of The University of Texas at Austin campus. But unlike other commercial delivery services, this fleet of robots will help researchers understand and improve the experience of pedestrians who encounter them.
Seven faculty in The University of Texas at Austin's College of Natural Sciences have recently received distinguished Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Awards from the National Science Foundation. The CAREER award recognizes junior faculty for their potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization.
When self-propelling objects or living things interact with each other, interesting phenomena can occur. Birds align with each other when they flock together. People at a concert spontaneously create vortices when they nudge and bump into each other. Fire ants work together to create rafts that float on the water's surface.
The University of Texas at Austin and the MITRE Corporation, a nonprofit dedicated to solving problems for a safer world, have formed a partnership that includes accelerating innovative ethical artificial intelligence (AI) research currently underway by interdisciplinary teams of researchers who are part of UT Austin's Good Systems research grand challenge.
Artificial intelligence has reached a critical turning point in its evolution, according to a new report by an international panel of experts assessing the state of the field for the second time in five years.
Ethics will be at the forefront of robotics education thanks to a new University of Texas at Austin program that will train tomorrow's technologists to understand the positive — and potentially negative — implications of their creations.
The Association for Computing Machinery, the primary professional organization in the field of computer science, has named two University of Texas at Austin professors — Peter Stone and Lizy Kurian John — as ACM Fellows. The award goes only to highly distinguished computer scientists representing the top 1% of ACM members.
A methodical voice tells the watching crowd, "I am going to remove the lid." Everyone is quiet as a robot using artificial intelligence (AI) opens a trash can and lifts out a bag. Students and researchers hold their breath as it navigates across the floor of a mock house, avoiding obstacles to its destination. "Mission accomplished," it says. The trash has been taken out and the audience applauds. This is a huge achievement for the robot designed by a Texas Robotics team for the 2019 RoboCup competition.
Imagine that you are a robot in a hospital: composed of bolts and bits, running on code, and surrounded by humans. It's your first day on the job, and your task is to help your new human teammates—the hospital's employees—do their job more effectively and efficiently. Mainly, you're fetching things. You've never met the employees before, and don't know how they handle their tasks. How do you know when to ask for instructions? At what point does asking too many questions become disruptive?
Artificial intelligence is becoming more and more a part of our daily lives. But will AI have mostly positive or negative impacts on society?
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