Sandia team develops thinking machines

ALBUQUERQUE, Aug. 15 (UPI) -- A new type of "smart" machine that remembers tasks and people, and lets them call simulated experts, may soon be built by Sandia National Laboratories.

Over the past five years, experts have been hard at work at a "simulated human" who remembers experiences with users and makes decisions based on human interaction, and taking in to account emotions, fatigue and stress.

Now, the scientists at the Department of Energy's national laboratory say they're not too far away from a computer-based simulated human.

Users would be able to call on simulated experts to help them analyze situations and make decisions, once the prototype is built.

"In the long term, the benefits from this effort are expected to include augmenting human effectiveness and embedding these cognitive models into systems like robots and vehicles for better human-hardware interactions," says John Wagner, manager of Sandia's Computational Initiatives Department.

The next step for Sandia is to develop these thinking machines to help "analysts, engineers, war fighters, critical decision makers, scientists and others in crucial jobs to detect and interpret meaningful patterns based on large volumes of data derived from diverse sources," said Larry Ellis, principal investigator into what Sandia calls "The Grand Challenge."