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Bumped into this great quote in  an interview with Tom Friedman . Context of the quote is what the future of work is and if robots will take our jobs. Here's the quote: ... we used to work with our hands for many centuries; then we worked with our heads, and now we’re going to have to work with our hearts, because there’s one thing machines can not, do not, and never will have, and that’s a heart. I think we’re going from hands to heads to hearts, which is just another way of saying what you just said: “What are the most human capabilities we can tap into?” This doesn't mean when we worked with our hands and heads, we didn't work with our heart. We did. But now and/or in the future working with our hearts will be the differentiator, that's where humans will distinguish themselves from machines (and robots). And always have and always will. Curious what you think of this quote and if you agree.

It wasn't too long ago I wondered if there would be another DARPA Grand Challenge. I wondered because the Challenges I'd followed and watched were so inspirational. Remember the 2006 Grand Challenge when the Stanford team passed the finish line first ? Man, I almost jumped up and down with the team... And if the DARPA Challenges weren't continued, would the research team go forth with their work or would it be commercialized? Then, just recently, we heard Google is working on a secret project, the Google Car. An autonomous vehicle driving around in the SF area. Wow! Techcrunch , Robert Scoble , the NY Times and ReadWriteWeb have the story. Oh, and Google of course. So, the work done for the DARPA Grand Challenges is continued by Google. And who's responsible for this project? Right, the team leader of the winning team in 2006, Dr. Sebastian Thrun. In 2006 he was lead researcher at the Stanford AI lab. So, now we have the Google algorithm and the Google Car com...

Something for the weekend, to watch and re-watch. Wow, this is so good, you'd almost think you were faked. Thanks Jan & Rob, for pointing me to this. Post to Del.icio.us / Furl It

The winners of the Darpa Urban Challenge have been announced! 1st Place - Tartan Racing, Pittsburgh, PA 2nd Place - Stanford Racing Team, Stanford, CA 3rd Place - Victor Tango, Blacksburg, VA Wired has full coverage of the finals. For videos look here . Can't wait for the Google Tech Talk with the winning team!

Just one more day to go and the Finals of the Darpa Urban Challenge will start! Technology Review has an interesting short post on the Challenge and pointers to video's of the finalists. Here are links to two of them and an overview video: MIT , Stanford and 6 other video's .

This summer I wrote shortly about the Darpa Challenge . (More specifically on the Google Tech Talk on the Darpa Challenge 2006.) The finals for the this year's challenge, the Darpa Urban Challenge are coming up. I'm really curious who's going to win this year! And if the contestants will be able to ride the whole route. Last year the autonomous vehicles had to drive over a route with no everyday obstacles (but that was difficult enough). This year the vehicles will have to move through a mock urban area, with regular streets, cars parked along the way, crossroads, etc. The finals will be on Nov. 3 and you can follow it via a live webcast.

Wow, ran into this on Nova Spivak's blog ! Just to inspire you. The "genius" who makes these 'robots'/'creatures' is a Dutch guy by the way. (Yes, most of the time I'm proud to be Dutch...)