Daily Archives: July 1, 2014

Sniffer Dogs to be divided between Andhra Pradesh, Telangana

Picture for representational purpose (Photo: DC/File)
Picture for representational purpose (Photo: DC/File)

Vijayawada:

After dividing the police force, the trained sniffer dogs were divided between the two states. Apart from making the sniffer and tracker dogs stationed in each region to stay put, the intelligence security wing dogs were also distributed. According to ISW officials, AP got 10 sniffer dogs while Telangana got eight based on the population.

DSP of dog training academy at Moinabad K. Subrahmanyam said, “The dog squads are divided, but the training academy is the same. We have 40 dogs being trained in our academy and they will be inducted to the police force as per the earlier requests. We already have five attacker dogs of Belgian Malinois with Octopus the anti-terror force.

In the present batch that is undergoing training, we have five more Belgian Malinois being trained.” However, the requirement for sniffer and tracker dogs from the districts has been increasing. In Machilipatnam on Thursday a sniffer dog died and police cremated it with the official salute. “Several dogs have become old and sick. There are deaths reported from the district units regularly,” said an official.

source: http://www.deccanchronicle.com / Deccan Chronicle / Home> Nation> Current Affairs / by DC Correspondent / June 29th, 2014

Hyderabad-raised researcher finds new way to teach robots

Picture for representational purpose (DC Archive)
Picture for representational purpose (DC Archive)

Hyderabad:

We know robots are the future. But humanoids take a lot of time learning to do their tasks. Hyderabad-raised researcher Dr Rajesh P.N. Rao and his team has found a novel way of teaching robots using crowd sourcing technology. They say robots can just go online and find hints from hundreds of people to do their tasks by themselves without having to teach them with painstaking long commands.

In a first, University of Washington associate professor Dr Rajesh P.N. Rao and his team had demonstrated the first brain to brain interaction through the Internet in which one person would imagine an action and another ‘online’ would replicate the imagined action. Working on robots, Dr Rao, who studied in Hyderabad till the age of 18, says humanoids could one day proliferate in our environment.

But robots are now designed to do a particular task or a set of them. They have to be programmed to teach them how to go about a job. Robots learn by imitating humans, but it could take many lessons for it to hold a dish perfectly or place the book at the right place.

But Dr Rajesh Rao’s team has proposed using crowd sourcing techniques where robots can, all by themselves, go online, and ask for advice “Robots in the not-so-distant future will be in our homes, offices, and other human environments. We will want them to learn new skills on-the-job so that they can get better at helping us” Dr Rajesh Rao said.

“Our research demonstrates that robots can go online, and hire human helpers whenever they are stuck and get hundreds of hints and suggestions from humans all around the world,” he further said.
Crowd sourcing is the process of soliciting information from a large online community. “This is a way to go beyond just one-on-one interaction between a human and a robot by also learning from other humans around the world,” Dr Rajesh said.

However, there could be problems if some spammers in the online community feed wrong information to the robot. “There were some spammers who produced repeated data from multiple accounts, and even others who produced data without following instructions. We are planning to adopt more complex quality control techniques to improve the quality of crowd sourced data in future,” researchers said.

source: http://www.deccanchronicle.com / Deccan Chronicle / Home> Technology> Latest / by DC Correspondent / June 30th, 2014

DOWN THE MEMORY LANE : The ‘celestial voice’ remembered

Art gallery puts up a collection of visuals on the journey of the medium of radio. As the title revealed, it took the viewer on a journey, of how radio evolved with some local attention on how ‘All India Radio’ (AIR) or ‘Akashvani’ came about, since the 1930s.

At first glance, it looked as if it was a typical film function. But the resemblance ended there. Visitors could then see the distinction at ‘Journey of Radio’ a collection of visuals put together by Muse Art Gallery.

It took a while for guests to go up and down the long corridor at the Marriott Hotel here, looking at paintings and other visuals that seemed to tell a story on their own.

As the title revealed, it took the viewer on a journey, of how radio evolved with some local attention on how ‘All India Radio’ (AIR) or ‘Akashvani’ came about, since the 1930s. The collection of 50 visuals was initiated by the curator of the gallery, Kaali Sudheer.

Veteran announcers Jyothsna and Ilyas, whose tryst with AIR is over 3 decades old, spoke of how serious their programmes were in those days when there was no television. “While officially, our duty hours were 7 hours only, we would normally spend 10 hours and sometimes, during important occasions, it would go up to 15 hours too,” said Ilyas.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Hyderabad / by Special Correspondent / Hyderabad – July 01st, 2014