Abstract

CALDERON, Humberto. Next Generation of Smart Machines: a survey of enabling technologies. Rev Cien Cult [online]. 2014, vol.18, n.32, pp.89-119. ISSN 2077-3323.

Last century had an accelerated pace in terms of the technological revolution, a different world has been built; one based on electronic devices. Currently, we inhabit a world in which several applications use a computer inside another device, realizing control, communication and multimedia processing tasks; these constitute the largest type of computers used in the market (embedded systems). Since the ENIAC days, computers have become smaller in size, cheaper in price, with lower power consumption and increased performance (more instructions per cycle), therefore, a new era of digital systems is emerging imposed by military, industrial, communications and entertainment needs. Our lives are surrounded by more and more intelligent multimedia environments such as in the workplace, home and on entertainment; handheld devices (cellular phones, PDAs smartphones, tablets, game consoles, etc.) are some examples of embedded systems that we use daily. Recently, reconfigurable computing technologies are enabling the creation of computational platforms supporting new and smarter human-machine collaborative environments with cheaper non-recurrent engineering costs. Clever machines with highly interactive features go beyond traditional systems; they are rich in new I/O methods (e.g. haptic). Those new cooperative environments require intelligent systems in which the system entities possess sensory-motor capabilities, such as visual, auditory and tactile features, as a part of their cognitive capabilities. Given the current technological maturity, innovative and intelligent products that are capable of problem solving, reasoning and learning are becoming possible. This paper reviews technology advancements that could enable the research and development of new intelligent systems in developing countries. The main features of reconfigurable computing as an enabling technology for system development are presented. Furthermore, we introduce the point of view of the Computer Engineering Laboratory (L-IC) at the Bolivian Catholic University and its preliminary architecture for human-machine collaborative environments that will be able to support a wide range of cognitive behaviors within real time constraints.

Keywords : Artificial Intelligence; Soft Computing; Reconfigurable Computing; Case-based Reasoning; Fuzzy Logic; Computer Arithmetic.

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