Eight giant robotic spiders, programmed with artificial instincts (and painted in Beetle colors by Scott Volkswagen), will dart about a Charles River cove (USA) in a spirited ballroom dance of avoidance on May 6th 2001. Pioneer cyberartist, Remo Campopiano, designed and built the spiders with the help of the Robotics Art Club of New England, a group of 10-13 year olds. The spiders will be dancing to an original composition by composer/conductor, Ernesto Klar.

Keep watch of your house while on vacation, make sure the kids don't get into trouble by watching their play areas, remotely monitor dangerous, hazardous and inhospitable industrial areas or maintain a safe and secure office from the comfort of your computer.
Video VoxPhoneMONITOR lets you aim the camera where you'd like to watch. You can actually see and hear the areas you are monitoring live, in real-time and full motion. The only limitations are from your Internet Service Provider's available bandwidth. The higher-speed the bandwidth, the better the images are.

Project eLiza is working toward systems using artificial intelligence that can configure, optimise, heal, and protect themselves, while the user focuses on the more significant things.
In five years, given the rapid proliferation of technology and the growing shortage of trained systems administrators, the majority of corporations will not be able to manage their systems using the current computing technologies. Project eLiza's goal is to give businesses the ability to manage systems and technology infrastructures that are hundreds of times more complex than those in existence today.

Some 500 Houston-area households (USA) will soon be part of an energy-saving pilot program that enables consumers to control their thermostats via the Internet. The program will allow thermostats to be adjusted from almost anywhere, with any Internet-enabled device. The program will be launched this summer by The New Power Company™, and its partners. For the typical household, the three-month pilot could result in up to 10-15 percent utility bill savings based on personal usage and home size.

This book provides a guided tour of the pioneering work and major technical issues, Multiagent Robotic Systems addresses learning and adaptation in decentralized autonomous robots. Its systematic examination demonstrates the interrelationships between the autonomy of individual robots and the emerged global behavior properties of a group performing a cooperative task. The author also includes descriptions of the essential building blocks of the architecture of autonomous mobile robots with respect to their requirement on local behavioral conditioning and group behavioral evolution. The book costs $89.95 and it will be published during this month (May 2001).