Many digital tools are available to help photographers achieve better results. But those tools only augment the photographer’s ability to see. Computer vision researchers have been working on programs that allow computers to see. Subhabrata Bhattacharya, working with Intel Labs, helped to develop algorithms that enable computers to analyze the aesthetic qualities of images. [...]

A seamless and ubiquitous computing experience on the Internet also requires the user to take on a certain amount of risk that personal information would get into the wrong hands. Computer scientists are developing tools that protect a user’s privacy. In this Future Lab podcast, researchers discuss some of these tools as well as concepts [...]

Researchers are developing technologies that will eventually allow users to control devices like computers, televisions and cell phones with their thoughts. Scientists have created Brain Computer Interface, also known as “BCI,” technology that allows computer programs to interpret human intentions by reading their brain waves. Researchers have used BCI to develop a system that enables [...]

Open Cirrus, a test bed for cloud computing (spearheaded by the companies HP, Intel and Yahoo, and including research partners such as Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Illinois) recently announced its expansion. An Internet service such as Facebook is one example of cloud computing which presents certain data management challenges. Large sets of [...]

A coming major advance in computer technology is a form of context awareness known as Socially Enabled Services or SENS, which refers to mobile devices that can anticipate user needs, such as advising the best routes to take on the road or providing information to other people about the user’s availability. SENS technology is possible [...]

We have Isaac Asimov to thank for thinking about robots as a science when he coined the term “robotics” in the 1940s. Originally, the term came from the word “robota” from Czech (possessing a similar meaning in other Slavic tongues) referring to hard labor. In an interesting twist, robots portrayed in movies are often nearly [...]

When Intel Labs established its Interactions and Experience Research Lab, known as IXR, this past summer, it was a sign that the making of technology has profoundly changed. It is one thing to invent a machine or a process, it is another to make one that people want to use. And to do that, one [...]

In ancient Greece, potters would never have believed the vases they created – donning a vast array of inscriptions about daily life – would fetch hundreds of thousands of dollars at auction. They also would have not guessed how much precious information about their (and our) civilization would be gleaned from this pottery. Today, millions [...]

In 2009 the Irish rock band U2 experienced the realities of space communication when they connected in a live 2-way video conference between Bono on the concert stage in front of stadium audiences and astronauts in the International Space Station. There’s only about a half second delay from the surface of our planet to the [...]

In this week’s show we explore computer vision and perception, and the research involved in advancing a computer’s ability to understand the real world. We talk with Intel senior researchers Rahul Sukthankar and Lily Mummert from the Intel research lab in Pittsburgh about practical applications like tracking honeybees in a hive, watching for signs [...]