Robots taught to deceive

Researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed algorithms that allow a robot to determine whether it should deceive a human or other intelligent machine and which techniques to use for the best deceptive strategy. The new work, published in the International Journal of Social Robotics, is believed to be the first detailed examination of robot deception.

Georgia Tech's Alan Wagner (right) says that robots capable of deception will likely be valuable for military and search and rescue operations. A search and rescue robot may need to deceive in order to calm or receive cooperation from a panicking victim. Robots on the battlefield with the power of deception will be able to successfully hide and mislead the enemy to keep themselves and valuable information safe.

Wagner and his co-researchers focused on the actions, beliefs and communications of a robot attempting to hide from another robot to develop programs that successfully produced deceptive behavior. Their first step was to teach the deceiving robot how to recognize a situation that warranted the use of deception. The researchers used interdependence theory and game theory to develop algorithms that tested the value of deception in a specific situation. A situation had to satisfy two key conditions to warrant deception -- there must be conflict between the deceiving robot and the seeker, and the deceiver must benefit from the deception.

Once a situation was deemed to warrant deception, the robot carried out a deceptive act by providing a false communication to benefit itself. The technique developed by the Georgia Tech researchers based a robot's deceptive action selection on its understanding of the individual robot it was attempting to deceive.

To test their algorithms, the researchers ran 20 hide-and-seek experiments with two autonomous robots. Colored markers were lined up along three potential pathways to locations where the robot could hide. The hider robot randomly selected a hiding location from the three location choices and moved toward that location, knocking down colored markers along the way. Once it reached a point past the markers, the robot changed course and hid in one of the other two locations. The presence or absence of standing markers indicated the hider's location to the seeker robot.

"The hider's set of false communications was defined by selecting a pattern of knocked over markers that indicated a false hiding position in an attempt to say, for example, that it was going to the right and then actually go to the left," explained Wagner.

The hider robots were able to deceive the seeker robots in 75 percent of the trials, with the failed experiments resulting from the hiding robot's inability to knock over the correct markers to produce the desired deceptive communication.

"The experimental results weren't perfect, but they demonstrated the learning and use of deception signals by real robots in a noisy environment," said Wagner. "The results were also a preliminary indication that the techniques and algorithms described in the paper could be used to successfully produce deceptive behavior in a robot."

The researchers are not unaware of the ethical issues that robotic deception creates. "We have been concerned from the very beginning with the ethical implications related to the creation of robots capable of deception and we understand that there are beneficial and deleterious aspects," explained co-researcher Ronald Arkin. "We strongly encourage discussion about the appropriateness of deceptive robots to determine what, if any, regulations or guidelines should constrain the development of these systems."

New Research Explores 'False Memories': you have to know

Did you really lock your door, or is it all in your head? Researchers exploring the 

fascinating phenomenon of false memories have observed subjects who had false 

memories created by watching someone else. Researchers found the subjects were 

much more likely to falsely remember doing an action if they had watched someone else 

do it.

 eaPsychological resrch has shown various ways "false memories" are created, such as through the power of suggestion or through vivid imagination. Now scientists studying imagination have found that people who watched a video of someone else doing a simple action often didn't remember and thought they had done it themselves when asked about it two weeks later.

"This is a completely new type of false memory," says Gerald Echterhoff, a psychology professor at the University of Muenster in Germany and co-author of the paper published in the September issue of the journal Psychological Science.

"This is a false memory from just observing someone," he says.

Psychologist Daniel Schacter of Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., who has edited a book on false memories, says he hasn't read the new paper, but it "sounds like an extension of earlier work that has shown imagining you'd done something can result in false memories."

"I think it's partly new and partly related to earlier work," Schacter says. "You saw something on TV that you think actually happened. It's another kind of example of what people have talked about as a source memory failure."

Echterhoff says more than 25 percent of participants in the study, as well as in several follow-up experiments, had false memories created by watching someone else. Since the first research on 170 participants was done, findings have been replicated with almost 500 participants, he says.

The paper details three different experiments in which participants read about or actually performed a series of simple actions, such as shaking a bottle or shuffling a deck of cards. Then they watched videos of someone else doing simple actions -- some of which they had done and some they had only seen being done. Two weeks later, they were asked which of as many as 30 actions they had done themselves.
Researchers found the subjects were much more likely to falsely remember doing an action if they had watched someone else do it. Echterhoff says the research controlled for the common situation of thinking you had done something because you do it yourself every day.

New Siemens study on biodrying: end-product can be used as fertilizer or fuel

Industry requests for a versatile biosolids end-product that could be produced using less energy fueled Siemens Water Technologies to conduct a pilot study focusing on Mechanically Enhanced Biodrying (MEB) as a new application of the existing Siemens IPS composting technology.

The study illustrated how the IPS system serves a dual purpose by biodrying materials for fertilizer or fuel while using minimal energy expenditure, compared to conventional drying methods. It was determined that an automated, agitated bin composting technology could achieve 65 percent solids concentration (35 percent moisture) in biosolids by using only the finished dried product as the amendment.

In the pilot study, the IPS Composting System was found to consistently dry to 65 percent solids with an in-feed mixture of at least 40 percent solids, comprised of dewatered cake (of at least 20 percent solids) and recycled dried product discharged from the IPS system (of at least 60 percent). Overall, the solids concentration increased an average of approximately one percent per day and as much as two percent per day in the agitated bin system when minimum in-feed conditions were met. Summer and winter studies focused on such variables as ambient air temperature, feedstock properties, turning frequency, bin retention time, and process aeration cycles.

The MEB process uses the biosolids’ own biological characteristics to heat the material and, in doing so, to evaporate some of the moisture. Aeration and agitation from the IPS equipment further enhance the biological process drying. The IPS biodrying process is more cost effective and energy efficient than thermal drying, and the resultant end-product can be used as fertilizer or feedstock for incineration. Creating a biosolids fuel product with an energy-conservative process makes MEB an ideal companion for conversion technologies. It was also found that applying similar MEB principles to biosolids composting addresses the challenge confronting plants when wood waste and other carbon-rich amendments are in short supply. Further research is looking at also possibly using the process before gasification.

Besides municipal WWTPs, the IPS system is also applicable to other industries: the UK Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) recently approved the IPS system, to be considered a "closed reactor" under Regulation (EC) 1774/2002 to compost catering wastes. The United Kingdom has composting guidelines that are more stringent than most of the other EU countries because of concerns over swine vesicular disease, foot-and-mouth disease, and other animal-related infections.

Contact USA:
Ms. Karole Colangelo
Corporate Public Relations Manager
Siemens Water Technologies Corp.
Hoffman Estates, IL
847-713-8458 phone
E-mail address karole.colangelo@siemens.com