[From the University of Lincoln; two videos are available from ITV] It’s ERWIN the friendly robot 6th February 2014 Marie Daniels – PR Officer A ‘friendly robot’ called ERWIN will be used to help scientists understand how more realistic long-term relationships might be developed between humans and androids. ERWIN (Emotional Robot with Intelligent Network) is the brainchild of Dr John Murray, from the School of Computer Science, University of Lincoln, UK. It is now being used as part of a PhD study to find out how some of the human-like thought biases in robot characteristics affect the human-robot relationship.…

[From Tech Times] [Image: EA is considering working on virtual reality gaming. CEO Andrew Wilson says VR gaming may be the fourth “modality” of gaming. (Photo: Eliot Lash)] EA bets big on virtual reality games but when can we expect them? By Alex Saltarin, Tech Times | March 11, 2014 At the Las Vegas CES last January, we’ve seen a taste of what’s to come with the latest incarnation of the Oculus Rift. At the South by Southwest (SXSW) show in Austin, EA’s CEO hinted that the company is also exploring what it can do to virtual reality gaming.…

[From LiveScience] [Image: Philip Rosedale, creator of the game Second Life, and Adam Gazzaley, a neuroscientist at the University of California San Francisco, demonstrated their “glass brain” here at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive festival on March 10, 2014. Here, the interior of Rosedale’s wife’s brain in real-time on a projector screen. Credit: Tanya Lewis for Live Science] Virtual Reality System Lets You Explore Your Brain in Real-Time By Tanya Lewis, Staff Writer  |  Updated March 11, 2014 AUSTIN, Texas — What if it were possible to explore your brain in virtual reality, watching your thoughts flashing before your…

[From Mashable, where the story includes more images and two videos] Are Interactive Toys Interfering With Child Development? By Travis Andrews Feb 25, 2014 It’s common to find a child talking to his Lego figures or Barbie dolls, but it’d probably knock your socks off if those toys talked back. Well, find some tighter footwear, because interactive toys are popping up faster than you can say “Polly Pocket.” The Winston Show, for example, is an interactive program for iOS in which the characters hold detailed conversations with the viewers. FooPets are the digital, veterinarian-created “world’s most realistic virtual pets” and…

[From Prahaar] On India visit- Robots that can sing, emote, read humans! Charlie, one of the world’s most advanced robot is designed by Rajiv Khosla, an Ex-IITian Wednesday, March 5th, 2014 | Author prahaar Web Team New Delhi: Talk about robots that can walk, talk, sing, read the news, tell the weather, go Internet shopping and even read human feelings! Meet Charles or Charlie, one of the world’s most advanced robot, designed by Rajiv Khosla an alumni of Indian Institute of Technology and professor at Australia’s La Trobe University, which can do all of that. At mere 20 cm tall,…

[From NPR’s cosmos & culture blog] The Limits Of Simulation by Alva Noë February 28, 2014 The idea that the world might be living in a simulation — discussed in Marcelo’s post this week — is brought to life with wit and power in Peter Weir’s 1998 film The Truman Show. Young Truman, who has been raised inside a simulation — a reality TV show! — is free to explore his environment; he can move around and pursue his interests and interrogate and probe. If he looks to his right, he sees the hustle and bustle of the world around…

[From V3; a 3:27 minute video with more details about the system is available on YouTube and analysis can be found at Telepresence Options] Polycom unveils giant video conference system to rival Cisco by Dan Worth 11 Feb 2014 Polycom has announced a giant new video-conferencing tool that sees the firm take on Cisco’s TelePresence suite at the top end of the market. The system will start from a not inconsiderable $425,000. The RealPresence Immersive Studio boasts top-of-the-range specs, with the firm touting it as a true “floor-to-ceiling” product that uses three 84in displays to create a giant video wall.…

[From MIT’s Technology Review] Virtual Reality Startups Look Back to the Future Thirty years after the first wave of virtual reality, new startups are determined to take it mainstream. By Simon Parkin on March 7, 2014 It’s been almost 30 years since the computer scientist Jaron Lanier formed VPL Research, the first company to sell the high-tech goggles and gloves that once defined humanity’s concept of where technology might soon take our species. In the late-1980s, a person could pull on a $100,000 head-mounted display and electronic gauntlet and fool their brain into thinking they had stepped inside the simulated…

[From Fast Company Labs] [Image: From GottaBeMobile.com] This Cambridge Researcher Just Embarrassed Siri A new spoken dialogue system called VocalIQ could revolutionize computers’ understanding of human speech By Michael Grothaus 2014-02-27 Siri held lots of promise when Apple introduced it in iOS 6. However, in the two years since Siri’s release, the virtual assistant has improved little–offering clever ways to do simple tasks via voice command, but no more. That’s because Siri, and other virtual assistants like it, have built-in problems that doom it to be a simple system forever. But one Cambridge researcher thinks there’s a better way to…

[From Psychology Today’s Love and Sex in the Digital Age blog] Are Two Actual People Still Required For a Relationship? Does a “relationship” still need actual people to provide sex and love? Published on February 19, 2014 by Robert Weiss, LCSW, CSAT-S in Love and Sex in the Digital Age Recapping Her If you don’t know, the much lauded Spike Jonze film Her is the tale of Theodore, a very lonely man in the final stages of a sad, ugly divorce. Feeling down, he decides to treat himself to the new OS1, advertised as the world’s first artificially intelligent operating…

[From Eurogamer, where the story includes a different image and the 1:20 minute video] Explore the Seinfeld apartment in Oculus Rift Worlds are colliding By Jeffrey Matulef Published Monday, 3 March 2014 If you’ve ever wanted to explore one of the most iconic sets in television history, now you can with Jerry’s Place VR, a fan-made mod that details the home base from Seinfeld.…

[From Fast Company, where the story includes a photo gallery and the referenced 2:20 minute video] Interactive Virtual Reality In 3-D, The Newest Learning Tool Watch what happens when the Oculus Rift headset and the Leap Motion 3-D gesture controller are combined to help kids learn the periodic table. By Ariel Schwartz February 27, 2014 Remember the days when students would come to class armed with only a notebook and a textbook? In some places, that time is long gone, as laptops and iPads make their way into schools. Now a creative technology studio has come up with a platform…