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 News
AIs Invent Weird New Limbs to Beat Virtual Obstacle Courses
What are the best two legs for running an obstacle course? One leg that crawls at the knee joint, and one massive leg dragged behind for stability like a kangaroo's...
From ACM TechNews
Smartphone With a Finger Crawls Across the Table to Stroke Your Wrist
MobiLimb is a realistic-looking mechanical finger that plugs into the USB port of a mobile device as an additional way to interact with a smartphone or tablet. ...
From ACM TechNews
This Robot Crawls Over Your Body and Scans Your Skin With a Microscope
A palm-sized bipedal robot can carry out a medical inspection of a patient when a doctor is unavailable.
From ACM TechNews
Stupid AI: How Humans Can Stop Machines From Falling for Visual Tricks
Research from Johns Hopkins University suggests new ways to prevent artificial intelligence from being visually deceived.
From ACM TechNews
AI Tries Bad Improv Comedy to Trick People Into Thinking It Is Human
Improbotics is an artificial intelligence-based comedy theater that includes a human, a puppet, and a cyborg.
From ACM TechNews
AIs Are Being Tested to See How Well They nderstand Our Thoughts
Researchers have created a set of tests to explore the progress of artificial intelligence in understanding the world.
From ACM TechNews
Flint Water Crisis: How AI Is Finding Thousands of Hazardous Pipes
Georgia Institute of Technology researchers have developed an artificial intelligence algorithm that can determine the location of dangerous lead pipes in Flint...
From ACM TechNews
Future Robot Swarms Should Copy Lazy Ants Who Let Others Do the Work
Researchers found insights into ant cooperation could be incorporated into the development of large swarms of robots.
From ACM TechNews
Replacing Your Boss With a Cruel Robot Could Make You Concentrate More
A mean robot could motivate human employees to improve their cognitive performance, compared to supervision by a friendly robot or no robot supervision, researchers...
From ACM TechNews
The nderwater Drones That Hunt for Oil Spills
Researchers at the Technical University of Cartagena in Spain deployed five autonomous underwater vehicles to locate and track oil spills below the surface of the...
From ACM TechNews
AI Camera to Help Spot the Best Grapes for Making Pesticide-Free Wine
Researchers in Germany have developed a mobile laboratory to automate and accelerate the process of checking the wax coverage of grapes, a task prone to human error...
From ACM TechNews
Think Your Surfing Is Secret in Private Browsing Mode? Think Again
Many computer users incorrectly believe private browsing protects them against computer viruses, targeted ads, geolocation, and tracking by employers and governments...
From ACM TechNews
Delivery Drones Can Learn to See, Dodge Obstacles In-Flight
The University of Zurich in Switzerland and Intel jointly developed a method to enable aerial drones to learn to avoid in-flight collisions.
From ACM TechNews
How to Stop Artificial Intelligence Being Biased
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Germany have developed a new method to avoid embedding bias into machine learning algorithms....
From ACM TechNews
4 Tweets Can Reveal the Identity of an Anonymous Troll
Four geotagged posts are sufficient to identify an anonymous account from a telephone company's database of customers.
From ACM TechNews
A Robot Has Performed Eye Surgery on Humans for the First Time
Researchers used a robot developed to can perform eye surgery on humans to help six patients who needed a membrane removed from their retina to improve their vision...
From ACM TechNews
Underwater Robot Finds Second World War Bomber Plane on Seabed
Harvey Mudd College researchers have developed a novel autonomous underwater vehicle that can explore the sea floor looking for signs of wrecked ships.
From ACM TechNews
Anti-Swearing AI Takes the Edge Off Abuse on Reddit and Twitter
IBM researchers have developed a system that translates offensive comments on social media into more polite language, while keeping the content intact.
From ACM TechNews
Watch Real Football Matches in Miniature Played on Your Desk
Researchers have taught a machine learning neural network algorithm to render two-dimensional video clips posted on YouTube as three-dimensional images.
From ACM TechNews