NICTA at The Conversation
The below articles were written by NICTA staff and students and featured on The Conversation.
Rise of the machines: how computer could control our lives
14 March, 2012
Predicting the future is a risky business. If it wasn’t, we’d all be very wealthy by now. The Danish physicist Neils Bohr famously opined: “Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future”.
Despite this, I confidently predict that machines will come to run our lives. And I’m not alone in this view. US mathematician Claude Shannon, one of the fathers of computation, wrote: “I visualize a time when we will be to robots what dogs are to humans, and I’m rooting for the machines.”
And physicist Stephen Hawking, who is never short of a quote on life, the universe and everything has said that: “Unless mankind redesigns itself by changing our DNA through altering our genetic makeup, computer-generated robots will take over our world”.
Read the full article at The Conversation.
Eyes in the sky: how unmanned aircraft could patrol our beaches (and more)
9 March, 2012
For the past hundred-odd years, commercial aviation has relied on a human pilot sitting behind the controls of an aircraft. Today, designers and engineers are beginning to ask: “Is it even necessary to have someone onboard? Can we have adequate control with the human pilot on the ground, rather than in the cockpit?”
This school of thought is driving a revolution in aviation, with intelligent technology become thoroughly integrated into avionic systems and aeronautical processes. Sure, it might be a while before we see commercial airliners being piloted from the ground, but the development of miniature unmanned aircraft is well underway.
One early-adopter of this technology is Surf Life Saving Australia – one of the largest water rescue organisations in the world. The organisation has an extensive fleet of rescue helicopters and watercraft, a closed-circuit camera network linked with regional communication centres and, as of next summer, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) to help protect beach-goers.
Read the full article at The Conversation.
Cutting Cake (and eating it too) – the sticky maths of fair division
29 August, 2011
I work on the mathematics of sharing resources, which has led me to consider emotions such as envy, behaviour such as risk-taking and the best way to cut a cake.
Like, I suspect, many women, my wife enjoys eating dessert but not ordering it. I therefore dutifully order what I think she’ll like, cut it in half and invite her to choose a piece.
This is a sure-fire recipe for marital accord. Indeed, many mathematicians, economists, political scientists and others have studied this protocol and would agree. The protocol is known as the “cut-and-choose” procedure. I cut. You choose.
Read the full article at The Conversation.
Crisis management: using Twitter and Facebook for the greater good
21 July, 2011
With new technology comes new ways of communicating with one another in times of crisis. Platforms such as Twitter and Facebook allow important information to be shared widely and instantaneously.
But new technology is needed to extract and preserve the fruit of these new media, to allow crisis managers, crisis communicators and other key decision-makers to better manage a response.
Read the full article at The Conversation.
Want to assemble the human genome on your desktop? Now you can …
5 July, 2011
Imagine taking a thousand copies of a phone book, shredding them all together, then trying to use the overlapping pieces to reconstruct a copy.
This is a simple problem compared to assembling the human genome, which has about 3 billion “letters”.
Now imagine trying to piece these together on a desktop computer. Sound impossible? The Computational Genomics group at NICTA have produced a new software program called Gossamer to do just that.
Read the full article at The Conversation.
Smart sensors save swimmers seconds
16 June, 2011
For Olympic swimmers, the blink of an eye can be the difference between first and forgotten. Everyone wants an edge, which is why elite athletes train relentlessly and why coaches push them hard. Alongside traditional techniques, wearable smart devices are now helping save those vital milliseconds.
You wouldn’t notice these devices: they’re smaller than a thumb and measure swimmers' movements – information that can then be uploaded to the internet and used by coaches to improve performance, whether or not at an Olympic level.
Read the full article at The Conversation.
Frustration to salvation: a code to end computer crashes
30 May, 2011
Computer crashes and software bugs are infuriating and – usually belatedly – teach us the value of regular back-ups. But could they be a thing of the past?
We’ve all been there: the work of days or weeks destroyed in an instant. It might have been a crashed word processor, a crashed operating system, the computer eating your homework, destroying your lab results, your report …
But what if software is responsible for more than data? What if your money or your life depended on a particular piece of software not failing?
Read the full article at The Conversation.
All-seeing eye: the future of surveillance and social media
May 27, 2011
Advanced surveillance and social media might seem like strange bedfellows. Until you look a bit closer, that is.
Technologies developed for surveillance applications are typically designed with robustness in mind: that is, they should work reliably at all times in a variety of lighting conditions (indoor/outdoor) and effects (glare, saturation or shadows).
Compare this to the task of recognition from a photographic portait. Here the professional photographer has positioned the camera, lighting and subject and then chosen the exact moment to click the shutter. The photographer takes dozens of photos and selects the best.
Read the full article at The Conversation.
Something to watch over me: policing our national borders
May 26, 2011
Commercial ports, railway stations and other crucial infrastructure are at constant risk from security incidents that can halt operations and, more worryingly, put you and I in harm’s way.
This is a reality around the world, and Australia is no different.
Intelligence officers and others have their work cut out, and advanced video surveillance systems – which use complex algorithms to analyse security footage – are a vital tool.
Read the full article at The Conversation.
Face-in-the-crowd biometrics: here’s looking secretly at you
25 May, 2011
In the surveillance world there are certain grand challenges – holy grails that researchers and those who use surveillance pursue doggedly, spurned on by the technical issues such challenges pose.
Paramount in these is real-time face-in-the-crowd technology: a recognition system advanced enough to sift through large crowds of people, none of whom are consciously facing CCTV cameras, to get results.
Not for nothing is this type of face recognition referred to as the “killer application” in biometrics.
Read the full article at The Conversation.
Big Brother is watching, but it’s nothing to fret about … honest
24 May, 2011
It’s hard to discuss public surveillance without immediately being asked about privacy issues. As technologists working on computer-based surveillance, it’s tempting to say this is outside our area of expertise, but we believe there may be a moral imperative to state our views on this thorny issue.
Firstly, it would seem public perception of CCTV surveillance has changed over the years.
Some 20 years ago, if I’d mentioned Big Brother to a class they would all think of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, and the abuse of video surveillance by a totalitarian state. Now they’re more likely to associate it with covorting housemates in the hit reality TV show.
Read the full article at The Conversation.
You, yes you: welcome to the world of advanced surveillance
May 23, 2011
The use of surveillance in public spaces is growing at an unprecedented pace in response to acts of terror and threats to critical infrastructure.
But while it is relatively easy (albeit expensive) to install increasing numbers of cameras, it is quite another issue to adequately monitor surveillance video.
The trend has been to simply record CCTV feeds without monitoring and then use the recordings to investigate acts of crime and terrorism after the event.
Read the full article at The Conversation.
The BitTorrent lawsuit: why Sly Stallone is out to get you
16 May, 2011
Ever downloaded a Hollywood flick from the internet?
If the answer is “yes” then you could be next on Rambo’s hit list. As reported recently, an American federal judge has agreed to allow the U.S. Copyright Group to subpeona at least 23,000 BitTorrent users for illegally downloading Sylvester Stallone’s meat-head heavy film The Expendables.
This decision could effect the single largest illegal BitTorrent downloading case in U.S history.
Read the full article at The Conversation.
Turning it on for work meetings: is Avatar Kinect the new you?
May 11, 2011
New technology about to be released by Microsoft has the potential to revolutionise workplace meetings, removing the need to “be” anywhere for those all-important face-to-face encounters.
If you believe the hype, Microsoft’s Avatar Kinect system for the Xbox 360 will bring people together in a way that – even in the age of Skype and video calls – seems in the realms of science fiction.
As someone who often has to travel to meetings around the world (in my role as a Network Systems researcher at NICTA) this new technology has piqued my interest.
Read the full article at The Conversation.
Have computers finally eclipsed their creators?
March 28, 2011
In February this year, game shows got that little bit harder. And at the same time, artificial intelligence took another step towards the ultimate goal of creating and perhaps exceeding human-level intelligence.
Jeopardy! is a long running and somewhat back-to-front American quiz show in which contestants are presented with trivia clues in the form of answers, and must reply in the form of a question.
Host: “Tickets aren’t needed for this ‘event’, a black hole’s boundary from which matter can’t escape."
Watson: "What is event horizon?"
Host: "Wanted for killing Sir Danvers Carew; appearance – pale and dwarfish; seems to have a split personality."
Watson: "Who is Hyde?"
Host: "Even a broken one of these on your wall is right twice a day.” Watson: “What is clock?”
Read the full article at The Conversation.