Robot Nation

Dark Horse Comics brings the original Astro Boy to America for the first time in an English-language edition! With graphic novels and animation exploding across America like never before, the signal creative and spiritual influence of the late master-storyteller Osamu Tezuka is being recognized worldwide, the skill, range, and emotional power of his storytelling placing him among the giants of graphic fiction and animation. And Tezuka's Astro Boy is perhaps the single-most important action/adventure archetype for the 21st century, a timeless all-ages work with its roots in classic comics and cartooning and its branches reaching into every corner of today's popular entertainment. Few works — past or present — pack the excitement, laughs, and warmth of Astro Boy. Translation by Frederik L. Schodt, author of Inside the Robot Kingdom and translator of Barefoot Gen.

As we program machines to be more like humans, how will they know what we value, if we don't know ourselves? The notion of robots gaining consciousness is beginning to become a reality, but the future of human happiness is dependent on our ability to teach machines what we value the most today. Featuring pragmatic solutions drawing on economics, emerging technologies, and positive psychology, Heartificial Intelligence provides a road map to help readers embrace the present and better define their future. Using fictional vignettes to help readers relate to larger concepts, this book paints a vivid portrait of how our lives might look in either a dystopia of robot dominance or a utopia where we use technology to enhance our natural abilities and evolve into a long-lived, super-intelligent, and caring species.

What will America do when robots render 50% of its human workforce obsolete? Accelerating progress in artificial intelligence and robotics ensures that mass human obsolescence will arrive sooner than we might expect. And it won't stop there. Economic incentives will relentlessly drive advances in robotics until robots displace the entire human workforce. How will Americans survive? Who will support them? Can a human reasonably hope to control robots that are smarter than he is? Are Asimov's laws adequate? Is a robot-human war inevitable? How can we smoothly transition from having no intelligent robots to being overrun by them? How do we avoid violence and privation on the way to becoming a robot nation? Tackling these questions head on, Robot Nation not only describes the stark consequences of mass human obsolescence, it lays out solutions and argues that these require unprecedented changes in the political, economic, social, and moral underpinnings of Western civilization.

Vulnerabilities abound in U.S. society. The openness and efficiency of our key infrastructures â€" transportation, information and telecommunications systems, health systems, the electric power grid, emergency response units, food and water supplies, and others â€" make them susceptible to terrorist attacks. Making the Nation Safer discusses technical approaches to mitigating these vulnerabilities. A broad range of topics are covered in this book, including: Nuclear and radiological threats, such as improvised nuclear devices and "dirty bombs;" Bioterrorism, medical research, agricultural systems and public health; Toxic chemicals and explosive materials; Information technology, such as communications systems, data management, cyber attacks, and identification and authentication systems; Energy systems, such as the electrical power grid and oil and natural gas systems; Transportation systems; Cities and fixed infrastructures, such as buildings, emergency operations centers, and tunnels; The response of people to terrorism, such as how quality of life and morale of the population can be a target of terrorists and how people respond to terrorist attacks; and Linked infrastructures, i.e. the vulnerabilities that result from the interdependencies of key systems. In each of these areas, there are recommendations on how to immediately apply existing knowledge and technology to make the nation safer and on starting research and development programs that could produce innovations that will strengthen key systems and protect us against future threats. The book also discusses issues affecting the government's ability to carry out the necessary science and engineering programs and the important role of industry, universities, and states, counties, and cities in homeland security efforts. A long term commitment to homeland security is necessary to make the nation safer, and this book lays out a roadmap of how science and engineering can assist in countering terrorism.

Japanese Robot Culture examines social robots in Japan, those in public, domestic, and artistic contexts. Unlike other studies, this book sees the robot in relation to Japanese popular culture, and argues that the Japanese ‘affinity’ for robots is the outcome of a complex loop of representation and social expectation in the context of Japan’s continuing struggle with modernity. Considering Japanese robot culture from the critical perspectives afforded by theatre and performance studies, this book is concerned with representations of robots and their inclusion in social and cultural contexts, which science and engineering studies do not address. The robot as a performing object generates meaning in staged events and situations that make sense for its Japanese observers and participants. This book examines how specific modes of encounter with robots in carefully constructed mises en scène can trigger reflexive, culturally specific, and often ideologically-inflected responses.

Japan is arguably the first postindustrial society to embrace the prospect of human-robot coexistence. Over the past decade, Japanese humanoid robots designed for use in homes, hospitals, offices, and schools have become celebrated in mass and social media throughout the world. In Robo sapiens japanicus, Jennifer Robertson casts a critical eye on press releases and public relations videos that misrepresent robots as being as versatile and agile as their science fiction counterparts. An ethnography and sociocultural history of governmental and academic discourse of human-robot relations in Japan, this book explores how actual robots—humanoids, androids, and animaloids—are “imagineered” in ways that reinforce the conventional sex/gender system and political-economic status quo. In addition, Robertson interrogates the notion of human exceptionalism as she considers whether “civil rights” should be granted to robots. Similarly, she juxtaposes how robots and robotic exoskeletons reinforce a conception of the “normal” body with a deconstruction of the much-invoked Theory of the Uncanny Valley.

How advanced is the technology that exists today, what are we using it for, and can machines turn on their human creators? What is transcendence and why will we all be familiar with it? Technology is growing exponentially and the moment when it merges with the human mind, called “The Singularity,” is visible in our imminent future. Can humans, limited by slow biological evolution, compete with synthetic intelligence? Science and technology are pushing forward, transforming life as we know it—perhaps even giving humans a shot of immortality. Who will benefit from this? Where did the idea of robots originate and why are humans fearful of decision-making robots that may be able to create goals and objectives, and work toward achieving them? This book examines the history and future of robotics, artificial intelligence, zombies and a Transhumanist utopia/dystopia integrating man with machine. How did it all begin, and what’s in store for humans today, in the near future, and in the distant future? Haze and Eguino explore the fascinating role of artificial intelligence from a practical human perspective and discover that the mind-altering process necessary to accept and integrate with the inevitable is already underway, molding human consciousness. 4-Page Color Section.

Ongoing advancements in modern technology have led to significant developments in artificial intelligence. With the numerous applications available, it becomes imperative to conduct research and make further progress in this field. Artificial Intelligence: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications provides a comprehensive overview of the latest breakthroughs and recent progress in artificial intelligence. Highlighting relevant technologies, uses, and techniques across various industries and settings, this publication is a pivotal reference source for researchers, professionals, academics, upper-level students, and practitioners interested in emerging perspectives in the field of artificial intelligence.

This book introduces the subject of economics using clear prose, rather than the graphs and equations common in many textbooks. The focus is on contemporary issues, particularly technological innovation and growth. To browse through the book or read some endorsements of the book, click here. The link below only gives you a brief excerpt.

Robotic vision, the combination of robotics and computer vision, involves the application of computer algorithms to data acquired from sensors. The research community has developed a large body of such algorithms but for a newcomer to the field this can be quite daunting. For over 20 years the author has maintained two open-source MATLAB® Toolboxes, one for robotics and one for vision. They provide implementations of many important algorithms and allow users to work with real problems, not just trivial examples. This book makes the fundamental algorithms of robotics, vision and control accessible to all. It weaves together theory, algorithms and examples in a narrative that covers robotics and computer vision separately and together. Using the latest versions of the Toolboxes the author shows how complex problems can be decomposed and solved using just a few simple lines of code. The topics covered are guided by real problems observed by the author over many years as a practitioner of both robotics and computer vision. It is written in an accessible but informative style, easy to read and absorb, and includes over 1000 MATLAB and Simulink® examples and over 400 figures. The book is a real walk through the fundamentals of mobile robots, arm robots. then camera models, image processing, feature extraction and multi-view geometry and finally bringing it all together with an extensive discussion of visual servo systems. This second edition is completely revised, updated and extended with coverage of Lie groups, matrix exponentials and twists; inertial navigation; differential drive robots; lattice planners; pose-graph SLAM and map making; restructured material on arm-robot kinematics and dynamics; series-elastic actuators and operational-space control; Lab color spaces; light field cameras; structured light, bundle adjustment and visual odometry; and photometric visual servoing. “An authoritative book, reaching across fields, thoughtfully conceived and brilliantly accomplished!” OUSSAMA KHATIB, Stanford