Our favorite 24th-century android has joined an elite group of artificial lifeforms by being named to Carnegie Mellon University's "Robot Hall of Fame." Data is one of four inductees in this year's list, and the only fictional one. The announcement was made last week at the fourth annual RoboBusiness Conference in Boston.

"Data played a pivotal role on questions of robot 'right to life' matters and human/machine philosophies," explained Ray Jarvis, director of the Intelligent Robotics Research Centre at the Australian National University, a juror for the Robot Hall of Fame.

Further, according to fellow juror Anne Balsamo, "In one episode, Data is put on trial to determine whether he has the right to refuse to submit to a procedure that would disassemble him ["The Measure of a Man"]. During the trial, it is determined that Data is not 'property,' like a computer or a toaster, but rather a sentient life form entitled to rights of self-determination." Balsamo is managing director of the Institute for Multimedia Literacy at the University of Southern California.

The other three 2007 honorees are "Raibert Hopper," a hopping robot that revolutionized thinking about walking robots; "NavLab 5," the first car to steer itself on a coast-to-coast U.S. trip; and LEGO Mindstorms, a kit that made it possible for anyone to build robots.

"This is the first time since we established the Robot Hall of Fame in 2003 that most of the inductees are real robots rather than those of science fiction," said Matt Mason, director of Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute. "As much as we love fictional robots such as Data, those of us in the robotics field take heart when the real accomplishments of our colleagues get this well-deserved recognition."

Data is the first Star Trek entry in the Robot Hall of Fame. Past inductees include the HAL 9000 from "2001: A Space Odyssey"; the "Star Wars" duo of R2-D2 and C-3PO; and Gort, the metallic giant from Robert Wise's "The Day the Earth Stood Still." Other real-world bots previously recognized include the Mars Pathfinder & Sojourner Rovers and Honda's ASIMO robot.

"The great robots of science fiction, such as Gort, have a powerful hold on people's imaginations, which is why we honor them and their creators," said Don Marinelli, executive producer of Carnegie Mellon's Entertainment Technology Center. "It's precisely because Data was not confined by real-world limitations that he could address philosophical questions, such as whether a machine can have rights."

To learn more, visit www.RobotHallOfFame.org.

Replicators Coming Soon to Your Home

They may not be able to produce edible food out of thin air just yet, but they'll be able to replicate almost any other solid object, and they'll start selling this year. According to a New York Times feature article titled "Beam It Down From the Web, Scotty," several technology companies are developing "3-D printers" for home use, which will allow owners to download three-dimensional plans online, push Print, and in a few hours remove a solid object from the printer. (The author likens it to the transporter, but the replicator is a more direct analogy.)

Three-dimensional printers, often called "rapid prototypers," assemble objects out of an array of specks of material, just as traditional printers create images out of dots of ink or toner. They build models in a stack of very thin layers, each created by a liquid or powdered plastic that can be hardened in small spots by precisely applied heat, light or chemicals.

"In the future, everyone will have a printer like this at home," said Hod Lipson, a professor at Cornell University, who has led a project that published a design for a 3-D printer that can be made with about $2,000 in parts. "You can imagine printing a toothbrush, a fork, a shoe. Who knows where it will go from here?"

Three-dimensional printers have been used in industrial design shops for about a decade, but they can cost upwards of $15,000. One entrepreneurial firm, IdeaLab in Pasadena, plans to start selling its consumer model this year for about $5,000, and the price could fall to $1,000 in four years. Applications include housewares, toys and models of avatars created by online gamers. Read the full article at this NYTimes.com link.

Breakthroughs Likened to Tricorder

Step by step it seems the Tricorder — both the general field model and the medical version — is becoming reality. A couple of recent scientific and medical breakthroughs have been likened to Star Trek's tricorder concept.

Researchers at Purdue University have developed a handheld sensing system that can be used in the field for chemical analysis, with such applications as testing food for contaminants or detecting explosives residue on luggage. The instrument is a miniature mass spectrometer combined with a technique called "desorption electrospray ionization." Unlike the conventional mass spectrometer — a cumbersome laboratory instrument that analyzes specially prepared samples in a vacuum chamber — the lightweight device can perform the ionization step in the air or directly on surfaces, explains project leader R. Graham Cooks. "We like to compare it to the tricorder because it is truly a handheld instrument that yields information about the precise chemical composition of samples in a matter of minutes without harming the samples," he said. Read more in this Purdue press release.

In another recent science story, medical researchers are one step closer to analyzing disease without the need for invasive biopsies. Scientists in California have discovered that X-ray images — like the CT scans a cancer patient routinely gets — contain patterns that can help doctors identify the unique genetic characteristics of a tumor, and thus lead to a personalized treatment without having to remove body tissue. "In almost every episode of Star Trek, there is a device called a tricorder, which they used noninvasively to scan living or nonliving matter to determine its molecular makeup,” said Dr. Howard Chang of the Stanford University School of Medicine. "Something like that would be very, very useful." For more, see this Stanford press release.

Page 2:
The Search for Vulcan
Scientists Prove Data Can Be Stored in DNA
De Lancie Talks Technology