Three decades ago, the U.S. government launched the Human Genome Project, a 13-year endeavor to sequence and map all the genes of the human species. Although initially met with skepticism and even opposition, the project has since transformed the field of genetics and is today considered one of the most successful scientific enterprises in history. Now the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), a research organization for the intelligence community modeled after the defense department's famed DARPA, has dedicated $100 million to a similarly ambitious project. The Machine Intelligence from Cortical Networks program, or MICrONS, aims to reverse-engineer one cubic millimeter of the brain, study the way it makes computations, and use those findings to better inform algorithms in machine learning and artificial intelligence. IARPA has recruited three teams, led by David Cox, a biologist and computer scientist at Harvard University, Tai Sing Lee, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University, and Andreas Tolias, a neuroscientist at the Baylor College of Medicine.

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. Do you find yourself worried by the implications of Humans, Channel 4's new drama about the exploits of near-human intelligent robots? Have you ever fretted over the apocalyptic warnings of Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk about the threat of superintelligent artificial intelligence? Have your children ever lay wide-eyed thinking aboutrobot drone armies, such as those in Marvel's film Avengers: Age of Ultron? If you find this creepy or have answered "yes" to any of these questions, you should immediately watch footage from the recent DARPA Robotics Challenge.

During the DARPA Robotics Challenge Finals, which took place here June 5 and 6, the winning team's DRC-HUBO robot finished all eight tasks in less than 45 minutes. The winning bot had a humanoid design that could transform itself into a wheeled kneeling position for faster, more stable movement. The Running Man robot from Florida's Institute for Human and Machine Cognition claimed second, finishing all the tasks in just over 50 minutes. Team Tartan Rescue's CHIMP robot came in third, completing all the tasks in just over 55 minutes. The second and third place teams took home $1 million and $500,000, respectively.

There is a strong possibility that in the not-too-distant future, artificial intelligences (AIs), perhaps in the form of robots, will become capable of sentient thought. Whatever form it takes, this dawning of machine consciousness is likely to have a substantial impact on human society. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and physicist Stephen Hawking have in recent months warned of the dangers of intelligent robots becoming too powerful for humans to control. The ethical conundrum of intelligent machines and how they relate to humans has long been a theme of science fiction, and has been vividly portrayed in films such as 1982's Blade Runner and this year's Ex Machina. Academic and fictional analyses of AIs tend to focus on human–robot interactions, asking questions such as: would robots make our lives easier?

Driverless cars should have a fairly easy time getting the green light to operate on U.S. roadways, as long as they look and act like the vehicles people have been driving for the past century. Take away the steering wheel and brake pedal--as Google hopes to do from its self-driving car--and that vehicle is no longer street legal and probably would not be for some time, according to a new report from the U.S. Department of Transportation (DoT). As carmakers move at full throttle on efforts to rethink the automobile, the DoT is scrambling to figure out how it can adjust decades of driver safety regulations to accommodate vehicles driven entirely by computers. DoT's Volpe, The National Transportation Systems Center reviewed current Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards and concluded that increasing levels of automation for parking, lane changing, collision avoidance and other maneuvers is acceptable, provided that the vehicle also has a driver's seat, steering wheel, brake pedal and other features commonly found in today's automobiles. Implementing more radical changes, such as using smartphone-control, replacing the windshield with large video displays or realigning seats so there is no clear "driver," would prevent approval under current safety standards, according to the new report.

How much do we really know about what so-called self-driving vehicles can and cannot do? The fatal traffic accident involving a Tesla Motors car that crashed while using its Autopilot feature offers a stark reminder that such drivers are in uncharted territory--and of the steep cost of that uncertainty. The sensor systems that enable Tesla's hands-free driving are the result of decades of advances in computer vision and machine learning. Yet the failure of Autopilot--built into 70,000 Tesla vehicles worldwide since October 2014--to help avoid the May 7 collision that killed the car's sole occupant demonstrates how far the technology has to go before fully autonomous vehicles can truly arrive. The crash occurred on a Florida highway when an 18-wheel tractor-trailer made a left turn in front of a 2015 Tesla Model S that was in Autopilot mode and the car failed to apply the brakes, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)--which is investigating--said in a preliminary report.

Mobile devices have become incredibly popular for their ability to weave modern conveniences such as Internet access and social networking into the fabric of daily life. For people with disabilities, however, these devices have the potential to unlock unprecedented new possibilities for communication, navigation and independence. This emergence of mobile "assistive" technologies, influenced heavily by the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) 25 years ago, marks a major step forward for people with disabilities. The U.S. Congress passed the ADA in July 1990 as a civil rights law to protect people with disabilities from discrimination. The act requires that businesses, schools and government agencies must follow certain requirements to ensure people have equal access to their services and facilities.

The word "drone", a short term for an unmanned aerial vehicle, usually conjures up images of a menacing machine that spies and shoots from on high. However, over the past three years, a new generation of drones has emerged to address civilian and humanitarian needs, from surveying disaster zones to delivering aid. In the future, friendly drones could even whisk commuters above congested streets or haul cargo across Africa – if a desperate lack of legislation is addressed. Rapid progress in two key technological areas lies behind this new wave of friendly drones. On the one hand, essential parts including batteries and sensors have become smaller and cheaper, largely because of progress in commercial electronic devices.

The autonomous robots are designed to climb scaffolding and buildings by wrapping around a poll or beam and then rolling upward via an oscillating joint motion. Using built-in sensors and cameras, the robots would then inspect the structures or handle other dangerous tasks now done by humans, said Dennis Hong, director of Virginia Tech's Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory and the faculty adviser on the project. The robots are each roughly three feet in length and use a movement unique even in nature. "These are really wicked cool robots," he added. The need for autonomous tools in the construction field is great.

Just what computer scientists want - dumb jocks getting all of the credit for artificial intelligence. Or maybe computer scientists are simply letting football players think they matter, and they are really just data. For artificial intelligence to get out of its 20-year rut, a computer has to be able to observe a complex operation, learn how to do it, and then optimize those operations or accomplish other related tasks. What if a computer could watch video of football plays, learn from them, and then design plays and control players in a football simulation or video game? As it turns out, football is very complex, and computers struggle to see and understand plays a coach or even an average fan would find routine, just like a 4-year-old could see a cartoon drawing of a chicken and say "that's a chicken" while a computer could not.