Stanford University professor Sebastian Thrun and Google engineer Chris Urmson — the brains behind Google’s autonomous vehicle project — explained how the self-driving cars work and showed off videos of successful road tests during a recent keynote at the 2011 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems in San Francisco. According to IEEE Spectrum, which has complete coverage of the keynote: Google’s fleet of robotic Toyota Priuses has now logged more than 190,000 miles (about 300,000 kilometers), driving in city traffic, busy highways, and mountainous roads with only occasional human intervention. The project is still far from becoming commercially viable, but Google has set up a demonstration system on its campus, using driverless golf […]

A Science Nation story published today describes a public-private partnership funded in part by the National Science Foundation (NSF) that is attempting to link mind and machine to ultimately improve the living conditions of those with “locked-in syndrome” — a malady in which people with normal cognitive brain activity suffer severe paralysis, often from injuries or an illness such as Lou Gehrig’s disease. From the Science Nation article (see a video after the jump!):

Last month, the President announced plans to develop a National Bioeconomy Blueprint, describing government-wide steps “to harness biological research innovations to address national challenges in health, food, energy, and the environment.” And earlier this month, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) issued a Request for Information (RFI), seeking input on how best to develop such a blueprint, including: strategies to meet grand challenges in lean budget times; commercialization and entrepreneurship opportunities to open new markets; research and development investments in areas that will provide the foundation for the bioeconomy; enhancements of workforce training to prepare the next generation of scientists and engineers for the bioeconomy jobs of the […]

(This entry has been updated. Please scroll down for the latest.) Earlier this afternoon, the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) held the first of two webinars to provide an overview of the various Science, Engineering, and Education for Sustainability (SEES) solicitations in FY 2012 — with a particular focus on the details of interest to the CISE research community. Joined by CISE Deputy Assistant Director Cynthia Dion-Schwarz and Computing and Communications Foundations (CCF) Division Director Susanne Hambrusch, Program Director Krishna Kant noted that “sustainability questions present new and exciting opportunities for CISE research that can at the same time have significant societal impact.” Kant and […]

Later this week, five teams from across the country will compete before a blue-ribbon panel of judges — and officials from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) — in the inaugural RoboBowl venture competition. RoboBowl Pittsburgh, as it’s being called (the competition will take place on the campus of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh), is the first in a series of next-generation robotics venture competitions co-sponsored by the Robotics Technology Consortium and Innovation Accelerator “to find and foster startup and early-stage companies seeking to develop products and services that address unmet and underserved market needs in targeted industrial sectors.” The emphasis in Pittsburgh will be on next-generation robotics for healthcare. […]

A reminder that proposals responsive to the Computing Community Consortium’s (CCC) call for workshop programs that will define visions and agendas for exciting frontiers of computing research are due by 5pm EDT next Friday, Oct. 14th. From the official solicitation: Successful [workshop] programs will ultimately articulate and mobilize community support for a research vision(s), with the intention of generating support from funding agencies. Proposals are encouraged across the full spectrum of work in the creation and application of information technologies to important challenges, from the theoretical to the practical. Awards can range from $10,000 to $200,000. (Proposers are encouraged to ask for an amount commensurate with activities outlined in their […]