Welcome to the website of the Center of Excellence for Document Analysis and Recognition (CEDAR). A wide variety of documents are encountered by each of us everyday. They cover all spheres of our lives including commerce, education, law, health, religion, music and entertainment. Some of these documents have a simple and predictable structure such as a page in a printed book. Others have much more complex structure such as those involving figures, tables, logos, signatures, handwriting, etc. Discovering methods and algorithms for analyzing the structure and content of complex documents, and their generalization to related domains, is the focus of research at CEDAR.

The CCC-sponsored initiative in robotics, led by Henrik Christensen, has made great progress and provided a model example of a CCC initiative. Having finished their series of workshops and developed a roadmap, they are now bringing targeted portions of that roadmap to NSF, NIST, DARPA, NIH and the Office of Science and Technology Policy. They are also organizing a U.S. Congressional caucus on robotics to take place in March. Additionally several companies have expressed an interest in engaging in a broader effort on robotics across United States. Back in early 2008, they began organizing four workshops, one each in four topical areas of robotics: manufacturing and logistics, healthcare and medical robotics, service robotics and emerging technologies.

Evidence of humans fearing technology dates back to the Industrial Revolution, when what came to be known as "technophobia" was first observed. Eighteenth-century factory workers worried that the development of new machines would take away their livelihoods and ability to survive. As it turns out, some of those fears were justified. Violent man-versus-machine conflicts saw members of the British working class destroying the devices that had replaced their jobs well into the 1800s, setting the stage for centuries of anti-robot rhetoric played out in books, movies and ideological movements. Today, serious fears of a "robot revolution" are only just starting to crystallize for the average person – but it's happening quickly, and spreading far beyond the confines of science fiction.

Four sister robots built by NASA could be pioneers in the colonization of Mars, part of an advance construction team that sets up a habitat for more fragile human explorers. But first they're finding new homes on Earth and engineers to hone their skills. The space agency has kept one Valkyrie robot at its birthplace, the Johnson Space Center in Houston. It has loaned three others to universities in Massachusetts and Scotland so professors and students can tinker with the 1.8-metre tall, 125-kilogram humanoids and make them more autonomous. One of the robots, nicknamed Val, still hasn't quite harmonized its 28 torque-controlled joints and nearly 200 sensors after arriving at a robotics centre at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell. Northeastern University Ph.D. student Murphy Wonsick adjusts the leg of a six-foot-tall, 125 kg Valkyrie robot at University of Massachusetts-Lowell's robotics centre in Lowell, Mass.

The Calgary Police Service became the first force in Canada to start using facial recognition software to match suspects against a mug shot database this week, but it likely won't be the last. The use of facial recognition technology is growing not just in law enforcement and security fields but also in commerce. "One of the reasons face [recognition] is so popular is that face images exist of almost everybody," said Kevin Bowyer, an expert on biometrics and computer vision and chair of the department of computer science and engineering at the University of Notre Dame. Some cellphone apps use face recognition instead of passwords to give users access to devices. "You've got your driver's licence photos, you've got your identity badges wherever you work, so you've got this legacy of images that are easily accessible for everyone."

Big names in the worlds of big brains and cutting-edge technology are investing millions of dollars in the quantum computing technology of the Burnaby, B.C.-based company D-Wave. They say they're starting to see promising results, despite criticism from some quantum physicists that the technology might never live up to its promise. Quantum computing is a new form of computing based on quantum mechanics, the strange physics that affects very, very small particles such as atoms. In theory, it has the potential to revolutionize artificial intelligence, space travel and other fields by solving problems conventional computers either can't solve or can only solve very slowly. But even Google acknowledges that D-Wave's limited form of quantum computing hasn't yet proven capable of doing anything conventional computers can't.

Chris Urmson, director of Google's self-driving cars program, will tell the Senate Commerce Committee that legislators should grant new authority to the U.S. Transportation Department to help get fully autonomous vehicles on the road, acccording to his prepared testimony, which was reviewed by Reuters. "We propose that Congress move swiftly to provide the secretary of transportation with new authority to approve life saving safety innovations. This new authority would permit the deployment of innovative safety technologies that meet or exceed the level of safety required by existing federal standards, while ensuring a prompt and transparent process," according to the prepared testimony. Major automakers and technology companies are racing to develop and sell vehicles that can drive themselves, but have complained that state and federal safety rules are impeding testing and ultimate deployment of such vehicles. California in December proposed draft rules that would bar autonomous vehicles without human controls and a licensed driver.

Big defense budgets during the aughts financed the deployment of thousands of robots, including unmanned aerial and underwater vehicles, to Iraq and Afghanistan. The Pentagon's fascination with robots hasn't slackened even in these more austere times. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) is funding Boston Dynamics' development of a prototype robot called the Cheetah. On March 5, the company announced that the cat-like bot managed to gallop 18 mph on a treadmill, setting a new land speed record for legged robots. Boston Dynamics, a 1992 spinoff from MIT that's headed by Marc Raibert, has also developed a quadrupedal pack robot called the Legged Squad Support System (LS3).

The government has released a report highlighting some of the benefits and challenges that are likely to come about as a result of advances in artificial intelligence being made by companies like Google, DeepMind, and Facebook. Written by Chief Scientific Adviser Sir Mark Walport and published on Thursday, the report provides an overview of where we're at with AI before going on to highlight how it has the potential to fuel innovation and improve government services. The report -- titled "Artificial intelligence: opportunities and implications for the future of decision making" -- also looks at how government should "manage and mitigate" any negative effects that may be brought about as a result of AI. "It is important to recognise that, alongside the huge benefits that artificial intelligence offers, there are potential ethical issues associated with some uses," Walport writes. "Many experts feel that government has a role to play in managing and mitigating any risks that might arise." Walport also wants to open up the conversation on AI to ensure that scientists in the field gain public trust. "Public trust is a vital condition for artificial intelligence to be used productively," he writes.

We're all familiar with the standard search engines such as Google and Yahoo, but there is a new technology on the scene that does more than just search the web – it discovers it. Trapit, which is a personalized discovery engine for the web that's powered by the same artificial intelligence technology behind Apple's Siri, launched its public beta last week. Just like Siri, Trapit is a product of the $200 million CALO Project (Cognitive Assistant that Learns and Organizes), which was the largest artificial intelligence project in U.S. history, according to Mashable. This million-dollar project was funded by DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), the Department of Defense's research arm. Trapit, which was first unveiled in June, is a system that personalizes content for its users based on keywords, URLs and reading habits.