Latest Term: Remote Controlled Weapon

A Remote Controlled Weapon or RCW is basically what happens when you militarise a waldo. These teleoperated devices are used to protect installations or kill enemy soldiers / destroy enemy vehicles whilst the operator is somewhere safely away from all the fighting.

Slowly RCWs are being transferred to operation by AI systems rather than human operators. The AI can identify and track potential targets, manoeuvre one or more RCWs under their control into pointing at them, load it and make it ready to fire. However they typically require approval from a human operator before they actually open fire. This is due to the limited intelligence of the weak AI, limitations in distinguishing objects with machine vision, and a normal cultural requirement to have a person ultimately responsible for firing live rounds.

See Also: Weak AI, Neural Network, Machine Vision, Waldo, Teleoperated Device

Visit the Dictionary

Ten Most Recent Entries

Neuroprosthetics >> VR Interfaces: Inupathy - Neural Interface Dog Mood collar
(added 01/02/2017)
The Inupathy collar is an empathic collar, a brain machine interface for your dog, that visually transmits your dogs emotions in real-time, by reading the dog's heartbeat as a biometric marker for the emotional turmoil going on inside. It learns and adapts to the dog, and offers an insight into your best friend's thought process, to bolster the ones you already have. It's a brain machine interface for the heart.


VR & Crime >> Telepresence used for Criminal Court Proceedings
(added 11/01/2017)
Industry news, originally posted 11-01-2017, deemed too important to allow to fade. On the 11th of January 2017 the trial of Rolf Harris's alleged sexual misconduct started - marking the first time telepresence was used for the sole representiation of the defendant in a UK court of criminal law, and quite possibly the first anywhere.


Augmented Life >> US Research Indicates Thousands are Using Pokemon Go Whilst Driving
(added 18/09/2016)
It would seem that when mirror worlds combine with mobile phones, there is a very real problem that too many users don't understand that it is not always safe nor appropriate to access the mirror world. A study here looks at the incidence of driving with or near misses with pedestrians whilst playing Pokemon Go via social media in a ten day period, with alarming results.


Alternate Lives >> People conform to the norm – whether that norm is physical or virtual
(added 15/01/2015)
Industry news, originally posted in January 2015, deemed too important to be allowed to fade. Often enough it is human nature to conform. This website makes us follow the lead of computers, even if the machines give us the wrong advice. This is the finding of a study in Springer’s journal Psychonomic Bulletin & Review that investigates how people make judgment calls after interacting within a virtual environment.


Augmenting Surgery >> Improving Robotic Surgery by integrating Augmented Reality Elements
(added 31/03/2014)
Robotic surgical procedures are carried out with the aid of a camera system attached alongside the tools on the robotic arm that is inserted into the body of a patient. A surgeon carries out the operation by seeing through the camera's eye. As such, augmented reality systems have always seemed a good fit to overlay a virtual representation of the patient's innards, along with the full size and shape of the target area, on the display screen. However, the difficulty of AR object recognition inside the body has always proven too much of a hurdle. Until now.


Artificial Intelligence >> Simple Yet Highly Effective Robotic Boost to Mass Spectrometry
(added 30/03/2014)
A group of biochemists at Georgia Tech had a dream; a dream of being able to automate the process of gathering samples for mass spectrometry. A dream whereby they could just hand the analysis tool a sample. It didn't matter what colour, shape, size, density, or anything it was. The tool would take over and just know how best to approach the problem of obtaining the sample. A nice pipe dream... until the College of Computing at the same university got wind of it.

Embodied Avatars >> Futureworld
(added 16/04/2010)
Futureworld is the sequel to Westworld, yet it takes an entirely different direction. Meant to be the film that spun the Westworld franchise into an anthology set, instead it was the film that buried it. Futureworld has some great ideas, and like many films of the era, is a goldmine of nuggets concerning robotic technology, virtual reality, augmented reality and social implications.


Pure Research >> Programming the Universe: A Quantum Computer Scientist Takes on the Cosmos
(added 25/03/2010)
Programming the Universe is a Simulation Argument book. Lloyd, a professor at MIT, works in the vanguard of research in quantum computing: using the quantum mechanical properties of atoms as a computer. He contends that the universe itself is one big quantum computer producing what we see around us, and ourselves, as it runs a cosmic program.


Pure Research >> Decoding Reality: The Universe as Quantum Information
(added 25/03/2010)
Decoding Reality is very much a Simulation Argument book. In its pages, physicist Vlatko Vedral argues that we should regard the entire universe as a gigantic quantum computer.


Teaching and Training via VR >> Women and Gaming: The Sims and 21st Century Learning
(added 21/02/2010)
Video games have become both big business and a technological focal point for new forms of learning. Today games are not just played; players engage in game design, write fan fiction, and organise themselves into collaborative learning communities. In these communities players acquire 21st century skills in technology, but, in the best of these communities, they hone these technical skills and strengthen emotional and social intelligence.