When robots collide

Today's topic: some interesting articles I've accumulated from the world(s) of computer science.

Like progress toward self-driving vehicles. See how the University of Parma’s Artificial Vision and Intelligent Systems Laboratory drove a robotic car from Italy to China. (It wasn't always quite autonomous, or always entirely trusted, but this was an impressive feat nonetheless. See article for exceptions. )

The DOD, meanwhile, wants to build a massive military training ground in virtual reality. The article opens, "The Army wants to develop a massive virtual world populated by 10,000 avatars that are managed by artificial intelligence and operate over a 32-mile square simulated landscape." Talk about your amazing FPS.

And on the cusp between physics and computer science, a piece about cracking the supposedly uncrackable quantum-cryptographic systems. However foolproof quantum entanglement is in theory, things become trickier in the real world, in which we non-quantum beings must access the quantum states.

And most mind-boggling (at least to me), this suggestion that quantum memory might be used to defeat the famous Heisenberg Uncertainty principle.

Here's hoping that hackers don't crack the quantum computers in control of your robotic car ...