Recently, I wrote about the Big Three Auto companies and how they need to change, and change their product lines if they wanted to stay “big”.   Since those columns there has been even more evidence that these companies are struggling to keep up with current realities.  Additional plants have closed, the production of trucks has been dramatically lowered, the projected number of vehicles to be sold this year has been lowered and now Chrysler has gotten out of the leasing business because the resale value of the big vehicles leased has plummeted.

Earlier in the year I wrote several columns about Brazil and how it will be one of the countries leading the world with economic growth, vision and innovation.  It is a country that leads the world in smart use of ethanol.  It is a country that has a sustained rate of economic growth and a country that seems to be finally realizing its potential as being the country of the future.

A good friend sent me a video about a Ford plant in Brazil that shows what the new and future auto manufacturing plants of the world can and will look like.  It is interesting that this Ford plant is in Brazil and not in the U.S.    Brazil is in the stage of becoming a new model country for manufacturing while the U.S. is stuck in institutional constructs of the last century.  The good news is that Ford has found a new way to …

The first interactive game we play with infants is ‘peekaboo’.  Once they can walk we move on to hide and seek.  There is absolutely no one I know that can say that they never played hide and seek.  This primitive, universal children’s game is where we often first use our intelligence in three dimensional space to search, choose and find.  So it comes as no surprise that the first step in creating life like robots would be to teach them the game of hide and seek.

Robotics is now moving from the operation of robots remotely to the interaction of robots with humans.  In order for robots to become more human like, they must interact with humans and not jut be operated by humans.  In a number of locations that conduct robotic research and development, people are working with robots in new ways.  A recent newspaper article described how George the robot is learning the game of hide and seek at the Navy Center for Applied Research in Artificial Intelligence, where Alan Schultz is the Director.  George is an ‘off the shelf’ robot that has been reprogrammed for the game of hide and seek.  When Schultz tells George to go hide, he pauses, then moves on his wheel base to go behind a stack of boxes.  Obviously Schultz quickly finds him, but of course it takes longer for George to find Schultz.  After rounds and rounds of this children’s game, George becomes a bit more skilled in hiding and seeking.

For decades, …