Communications of the ACM
An edited collection of advanced computing news from Communications of the ACM, ACM TechNews, other ACM resources, and news sites around the Web.
From ACM TechNews
Iran Demonstrates New Humanoid Robot Surena Iii
Researchers at Iran's University of Tehran have unveiled a humanoid robot that can walk, mimic a person's arm gestures, and stand on one foot while bending backwards...
From ACM TechNews
Disney Software Makes It Easy to Design and Print Custom Walking Robots
A joint research project has yielded an interactive design system that enables hobbyists to create custom walking robots that can be printed in three dimensions...
From ACM News
Leap Second Heads Into Fierce Debate
When Earth's rotation gets far enough out of sync with the drumbeat of atomic time, a leap second is added to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) and the world’s clocks...
From ACM News
Spider Silk Sensors Could Search For Life on Mars
Ziggy Stardust would love this: Spiders could help find life on Mars.
From ACM TechNews
Novel Nanostructures Could Usher in Touchless Displays
The swipe--without actually needing to touch a screen with a finger--will be the next dominant computer interface method, according to researchers in Germany.
From ACM News
Neural Implant Enables Paralyzed Als Patient to Type Six Words Per Minute
Typing six words per minute may not sound very impressive. But for paralyzed people typing via a brain-computer interface (BCI), it's a new world record.
From ACM TechNews
Europe Gears p For Land, Air, and Sea Robotics Competition
The euRathlon 2015 Grand Challenge is designed to assess how well cooperative robot systems perform as part of a simulated emergency-response operation.
From ACM TechNews
Researcher Hacks Self-Driving Car Sensors
Laser-ranging (lidar) systems that most self-driving cars use to detect obstacles can be hacked by a setup costing about $60.
From ACM TechNews
Is a Cambrian Explosion Coming For Robotics?
New technological developments are fomenting an explosion in the diversity and application of robotics.
From ACM TechNews
Mother Robots Build Children Robots to Experiment With Artificial Evolution
ETH Zurich researchers sought to bypass some of the limitations of evolutionary robotics by training a "mother robot" to autonomously assemble children robots.
From ACM News
The Computer Chip That Never Forgets
In 1945, mathematician John von Neumann wrote down a very simple recipe for a computer.
From ACM News
Medical Microbots Take a Fantastic Voyage Into Reality
In the 1966 film Fantastic Voyage, scientists at a U.S. laboratory shrink a submarine called Proteus and its human crew to microscopic size and then inject the...
From ACM TechNews
Soggy Computing: Liquid Devices Might Match the Brain's Efficiency
Researchers are studying a class of materials capable of switching from an insulating state to a conductive, metallic one.
From ACM TechNews
Mitsubishi Quiets Car Noise With Machine Learning
Mitsubishi Electric says its new noise suppression technology can improve the quality of hands-free phone communication in cars.
From ACM News
Atlas Drc Robot Is 75 Percent New, Completely nplugged
We've always known that the ATLAS DRC humanoid robot was due for some serious upgrades before the DARPA Robotics Challenge Finals, because having a robot that's...
From ACM Opinion
Machine-Learning Maestro Michael Jordan on the Delusions of Big Data and Other Huge Engineering Efforts
The overeager adoption of big data is likely to result in catastrophes of analysis comparable to a national epidemic of collapsing bridges.
From ACM TechNews
Robot Octopus Takes to the Sea
Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas researchers have nearly doubled the swimming speed of their robotic octopus.
From ACM TechNews
Spherical Display Lets You See 3-D Animations from Any Angle
Researchers at the University of Sao Paulo and the University of British Columbia have developed Spheree, a spherical display that enables users to see and interact...
From ACM News
Introducing the Vacuum Transistor: A Device Made of Nothing
In September 1976, in the midst of the Cold War, Victor Ivanovich Belenko, a disgruntled Soviet pilot, veered off course from a training flight over Siberia in...
From ACM News