Late breaking news (5 pm, day of event) - due to construction the following change is being made to the directions. Sorry for any confusion. By Car: Take I95 to 3 North Exit (not 3A) in Burlington, MA. Take 3 North for 1.5 miles to first exit (Highway 62 which is Burlington Road). Make a right turn at the exit traffic light for one-tenth of a mile. Make a left turn at the first traffic light into MITRE. HERE IS WHAT HAS CHANGED: Bear *** RIGHT for 100 yards *** to the large parking lot. Enter to the A-Building lobby and view the StereoOptics Product Demonstration, Show identification to the guard who will direct you to room 1A401 for the presentation at 6:30 pm. ************************************************* Boston Chapter, IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Meeting Tuesday, October 9, 2000 Informal Discussion: 6:00 PM; Program: 6:30 PM "Visualizing Artificial Intelligence Presented by Mike Brenner, Senior Mathematician, MITRE What thoughts does a robot think when it is organizing the universe, so it can do the right thing? Which thoughts allow it to act as if it understands natural language, social skills, and emotions? Thoughts themselves exist in a special mental universe. Robotic thoughts have "mass"; they float in the gravitational field of that mental universe; they are attracted to certain other thoughts; and they cluster together like human team players. We can't see human thoughts. But we can build visualization tools to see what robots are thinking and how robots relate their thoughts to the real-world context in which they find themselves. Since robots have access to computer circuitry in their brains, robots can sometimes tend to solve problems via a brute-force computational method. Sometimes the way they think is quite obtuse and hard for humans to understand. Untwisting those thoughts is sometimes better done with the help of visualization tools to see the processes and the data flows. About the speaker Mike Brenner is a Senior Mathematician at MITRE. Mike is currently serving as the Chair of the Robotics and Automation Society Chapter. Mike Brenner loves to research robot brains, especially how robots understand things (for example, mapping Semantics to Real-world context). This area involves how robotic thoughts couple together, how they cluster in cohesive groups, how they organize themselves, and how they develop hidden relationships. Meeting information The IEEE Robotics and Automation Society will meet at 6:00 pm on Tuesday, September 12, 2001, at MITRE at 202 Burlington Road in Bedford MA 01730.Informal discussions at 6:00 PM. Formal presentation between 6:30 and 7:30 PM. The group will have a no-host dinner afterwards at a local restaurant, where more conversations can take place with the guest speaker. The meetings are open to the general public, and all are welcome at the dinner afterwards, however, MITRE is under strict military security. All attendees MUST bring positive PICTURE identification and non-citizens must have green card. For more information contact Mike Brenner at 781-271-3806 or our new Chapter email address: info@robotics-boston.org. Directions See "Meeting Information" above about the requirement to bring PICTURE ID. For a web map showing the location of MITRE, go to the MapBlast site at http://www.mapblast.com/ and enter the following information in the indicated locations: Street Address: 202 Burlington Road City, State ZIP: Bedford, MA 01730 Then click on the MapBlast icon. The resulting map can be zoomed in or out by clicking in the balloon area on the right. By Car: Take I95 to 3 North Exit (not 3A) in Burlington, MA. Take 3 North for 1.5 miles to first exit (Highway 62 which is Burlington Road). Make a right turn at the exit traffic light for one-tenth of a mile. Make a left turn at the first traffic light into MITRE. *** see changed directions at top of this file for what to do when you arrive at MITRE. For more information about our Section and Chapter, visit our web site at our new registered domain URL: http://www.robotics-boston.org/