UAVs not very successful?

I am not exactly sure how anyone comes up with these numbers, because it is often hard to tell whether someone is an insurgent, even after they are captured .....

The foreign policy community’s favorite counterinsurgency adviser, or at least their favorite Australian one, David Kilcullen, told lawmakers last week that the drone strikes targeting Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters in Pakistan are creating enemies at a far faster rate than its killing them. According to statistics he provided, the success rate of the drone bombing campaign is extremely low: just 2 percent of bombs dropped have hit targeted militants. The other 98 percent? Those killed noncombatant Pakistani civilians, he said.

http://www.dodbuzz.com/2009/05/11/drones-hardly-ever-kill-bad-guys/

AAMAS '10 CFP

Call for Papers-AAMAS 2010
The 9th International Conference on Agents and Multi Agent Systems
Toronto, Canada

Important dates:
Conference: May 10 - 14, 2010
Electronic Abstract Submission: October 8, 2009
Full Paper Submission: October 13, 2009
Author Notification: December 18, 2009

Collocated with KR, NMR, ICAPS, FOIS, (all in Toronto) and DL 2010 (in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada)
Expanded and latest information: www.cse.yorku.ca/AAMAS2010/

INTRODUCTION

AAMAS is the leading scientific conference for research in autonomous
agents and multiagent systems. The AAMAS conference series was
initiated in 2002 by merging three highly-respected meetings: International
Conference on Multi-Agent Systems (ICMAS); International Workshop on
Agent Theories, Architectures, and Languages (ATAL); and International
Conference on Autonomous Agents (AA). The aim of the joint conference
is to provide a single, high-profile, internationally-respected
archival forum for scientific research in the theory and practice of
autonomous agents and multiagent systems. AAMAS-2010 is the Ninth
conference in the AAMAS series, following enormously successful
previous conferences, and will be held at the Sheraton Centre Toronto
Hotel in downtown Toronto. See www.ifaamas.org for more
information on the AAMAS conference series.

SUBMISSION DETAILS

AAMAS-2010 seeks high-quality submissions of full papers, limited to 8
pages in length. Submissions will be rigorously peer reviewed and
evaluated on the basis of originality, soundness, significance,
presentation, understanding of the state of the art, and overall
quality of their technical contribution. Reviews will be double blind;
authors must avoid including anything that can be used to identify
them. Where submission is for full (8 page) papers only, in some
cases they may be accepted as 2 page extended abstracts. For formatting
instructions, please refer to the conference page.

In addition to submissions in the main track, AAMAS is soliciting
papers in two special tracks on robotics, and on virtual agents (see
below). The review process for the special tracks will be the same as
for the main track, but with specially-selected program committee
members.

Special Track on Robotics (Chair: Michael Beetz):
Papers on theory and applications concerning single and multiple
robots will be welcome, namely those focusing on real robots
interacting with their surrounding environments. The goal is to foster
interaction between researchers on agent and robotics systems, so as
to provide a cradle for cross-fertilization of concepts from both
fields.

Special Track on Virtual Agents (Chair: Stacy Marsella):
Virtual agents are embodied agents in interactive virtual or physical
environments that emulate human-like behavior. We encourage papers on
the design, implementation, and evaluation of virtual agents as well
as challenging applications featuring them. The goal is to provide an
opportunity for interaction and cross-fertilization between the AAMAS
community and researchers working on virtual agents and to strengthen
links between the two communities.

In addition to the conference papers, presented in parallel
technical sessions, AAMAS-2010 will include:
o Industry and Applications track
o Demonstrations
o Posters presentations for full papers and extended abstracts
o Invited talks and panel discussions

The submission processes for the demonstration and industry tracks are
separate from the main paper submission process.

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE

General Chairs: Michael Luck and Sandip Sen
Program Chairs: Wiebe van der Hoek and Gal A. Kaminka
Local Organization Chair: Yves Lesperance

A list of the other members of the AAMAS-2010 Organizing Committee may
be found at www.cse.yorku.ca/AAMAS2010/

Robot brains or robot bodies?

A few weeks ago, I had a post about roboticists taking advantage of an insect body for its mechanical capabilities and giving it a brain. Now this picture in the Guardian of a roboticist using an insect brain to control a robotic body. Maybe these researchers could get together and either make robots or some cool hybrid insects!

RoboCup Rescue robots

Some interesting robot designs from 2009 RoboCup Rescue League. It feels like roboticists are starting to really understand that robot designs don't need to look like traditional vehicle designs. Many more pictures, courtesy of Amir Soltanzadeh, here.

Goldman Sach's MAS

There is a theory among, presumably bitter, AI researchers that a technology is called AI until it works and then it gets called something else. Voice recognition, OCR, face recognition in digital cameras are examples of this. Goldman Sach's intelligent, distributed trading platform seems to be continuing the tradition for MAS. From what I can glean from the various newspaper articles, they have a bunch of agents that monitor trading flows and autonomously and very quickly place trades to exploit market conditions.

http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/07/04/taibbi-nyse-ends-transparency-to-protect-goldman-sachs/

http://zerohedge.blogspot.com/2009/07/guest-post-manipulation.html

I think people overlook how MAS and MRS can process so much information, collected from a very large number of sources and make so many decisions so quickly. Humans simply can't compete. The above stories hint that this might be the case here. Assuming what Goldman is doing is legal (I have no idea), then their advantage is due to a reasonably simple MAS that can simply process more information and make more decisions faster than any human can.

I suspect that we will have to get used to this type of thing happening. It won't be just in markets, it may be in many different areas.

VTOL UAV

Here is a fun little UAV made by MLB Co. and expected to be available for about $50K within a year. I think we'll see more radical designs like this as UAV technology matures and designers understand the implications of not needing to deal with limitations of a human on board.



And for the price, I think we will see a lot of vehicles like this in use, very soon.

UCAS "Video"

Very artistic (and no doubt expensive) visualization of how UCAS might fit into next generation warfare. The video is a couple of years old, completely focused on missions and scenarios that don't feel relevant any more, but no doubt big contractors are still doing their best to sell it.