sri

Another Siri co-founder leaves Apple

One of Siri's founding members from long before it was acquired by Apple and turned into the feature found in the iPhone 4S, has left the company.

Adam Cheyer, who co-founded Siri, Inc. in March 2008, has left his job at Apple, Bloomberg reports. CNET has learned that his departure took place months ago, and that the decision was fueled by a desire to spend more time with his family and eventually work on other projects.

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Apple purchased Siri in early 2010. At the time, the company had a … Read more

Translating math problems into the real world (video)

Why do many students struggle in math when they enter middle school?

SRI researcher Phil Vahey has been studying just that. He's found that by using visualization techniques and storytelling to translate complex math problems into the real world, kids can perform better.

SmartPlanet visits the research organization and gets a tutorial on a more visual approach to learning math.

This video originally appeared on SmartPlanet with the headline "How SRI aims to improve middle school math skills."

ABCs of Car Tech: Talk like a tuner

If you've ever tried to join a conversation on an enthusiasts' forum about modifying your car for better performance, it may have seemed to you that everyone was speaking a foreign, abbreviation-based language.

What's the difference between NA and FI? I/H/E? What's that? Should you just add more NOS? If so, do I pour it straight into my FMIC? Some of you may already know the answers to these questions, but many are probably staring blankly at these seemingly random groupings of letters.

In this week's edition of the ABCs of Car Tech, I'… Read more

Anonymous claims DNS attacks against Symantec, Apple, Microsoft

The Sri Lankan branch of Anonymous claims to have hacked into the DNS servers of Symantec, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and several other large organizations over the past few days.

Posting the news and records of its exploits on Pastebin, the group is taking credit for launching "DNS Cache Snoop Poisoning" attacks against its victims.

DNS cache snooping is the process whereby hackers can query a DNS server to find out which domain names are being resolved into IP addresses.

DNS cache poisoning is a method through which hackers are able to insert malicious and fake records into the … Read more

SRI shows the benefits of shrinking tech

MENLO PARK, Calif.--If you've seen the Oscar-winning film "The Hurt Locker," you know how dangerous bomb dismantling can be. But researchers have developed a system that they say can allow military and police to disarm explosives without risking anyone's life.

The system, developed by scientists at SRI International, is known as Taurus, and it is a miniature robot that can allow a trained dismantler to remotely do the work that used to require getting up close and personal, often too close for comfort, to a bomb.

According to Tom Low, SRI's director of medical systems and telerobotics, Taurus will be in field trials this summer and is expected to be commercially available by early 2012. While he would not say specifically what the 14-inch wide robot would cost, SRI's goal is to sell it for "less than the price of a squad car," meaning that many police departments, as well as military agencies, could conceivably buy it.

I got a presentation on Taurus from Low yesterday during a visit to SRI as part of my Road Trip at Home series. I've been to SRI before and seen things like wall-climbing robots, but seeing the way that Taurus could potentially help save lives was a much starker reminder of the ways that robots can make a real difference.

Taurus is a cousin of some of SRI's previous efforts into remote-controlled telemanipulation robotics. For years, the institution has worked on systems designed to allow remote surgical procedures, such as a military doctor being able to operate from afar on a wounded soldier. Low explained that this work began in the mid-to-late 1980s, and was intended to allow highly-trained surgeons to work on such soldiers within minutes of them sustaining injuries.

Over the years, this technology led to the creation of more general-purpose robots, such as the M7 system, which could allow security personnel to remotely explore, say, an abandoned bag at an airport. Low explained that it was crucial that the system be easy to use and quick to learn. … Read more

At SRI, developing an expertise in R&D, innovation

MENLO PARK, Calif.--If you've never seen a robot climb straight up an entirely flat vertical wall, I dare you not to be impressed the first time you do.

That was my certainly experience when I watched a wall-climbing robot do its thing at SRI International here the other day. Indeed, my host, who had been with me through several product and project demonstrations over about three hours, noticed how excited I was by watching this little device go straight up the wall, and, I think, began to wonder if I was actually interested in any of the other … Read more

40th Anniversary of "Mother of all demos"

Today is the 40th anniversary of what came to be known as "The Mother of All Demos", Doug Engelbart's presentation to the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco. In this one 90 minute presentation he showed, in working form, for the very first time all of the following technologies:

The mouse Graphical user interface with point and click and menus Intermingling of text and graphics within a document, styling of text in a document Hypertext and linking between documents Remote collaboration plus videoconferencing

That's a pretty astonishing list. It basically described the landscape of computing … Read more

Start-up developing new Web interaction paradigm

In the midst of the financial meltdown and a contentious upcoming election, you might think the U.S. government and taxpayers are just funding wars, bank bailouts, and bridges to nowhere or somewhere. But this is the same government that funded the Internet way back when and is also funding the next generation of technologies that will make the current Internet seem like a Model-T.

Over the last several years, the U.S. government--via DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) grants--has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in PAL, an acronym for "Personalized Assistant that Learns." Smarter software … Read more

iLink to deliver answers to military online communities

A Silicon Valley company has integrated iLink, a social network analytics technology, into three online military communities in hopes of improving the way users, ranging from Army wives to platoon leaders, share critical information across a wide variety of domains.

iLink is a machine learning-based system that models users and content in a social network and then points the user to relevant content, discussions, and other network members with shared interests and goals across a broad range of scenarios.

"iLink learns to deliver the right answers to the right people at the right time," SRI International's David … Read more

Sticky robot scales walls

SRI International has announced the development of a wall-climbing robot that uses a new electrical adhesive technology called "compliant electroadhesion" that can stick to anything from brick to glass--even damp, dirty glass.

Electroadhesion, or electrically controlled electrostatic attraction, is an electrically controlled adhesion technology that induces an electrostatic charge using a power supply connected to pads placed on the robot allowing it to scale walls, even those covered with dust or moisture, SRI says.

"Recent events such as natural disasters, military actions, and public safety threats have led to an increased need for robust robots--especially ones that … Read more