Using a few ultracold ions, intense lasers and some electrodes, researchers have built the first programmable quantum computer. The new system, described in a paper to be published in Nature Physics, flexed its versatility by performing 160 randomly chosen processing routines. |
| based their quantum computer on two beryllium ions chilled to just above absolute zero |
| In the quantum world, a single qubit can represent a mixture of 0 and 1 simultaneously, a state called a superposition. |
| A laser pulse operation could change the composition of the mixture within the qubit, tipping the scales to make the qubit more likely to become a 1 when measured. |
| On average, the quantum computer operated accurately 79 percent of the time |
| “Getting this kind of control over a quantum system is really interesting from a physics perspective,” |
| to be useful, a quantum computer must operate accurately 99.99 percent of the time |
“We think that consumers should at least be aware that there is the possibility that someone would listen in on their robot and take over their robot and have mobile eyes and ears in their home,” said Tamara Denning a PhD student who also worked on the paper. “They’re little computers.” It seems like a question ripped from the back of a cheap sci-fi novel: What happens when the robots are turned against us? |
| time to start paying some serious attention to the question of robot security |
| Not because they think robots are about to go all Terminator on us, but because the robots can already be used to spy on us |
| In a paper published Thursday the researchers took a close look at three test robots: the Erector Spykee, and WowWee’s RoboSapien and Rovio |
| “We were shocked at how easy it was to actually compromise some of these robots,” |
| Some of today’s robots operate as wireless access points, and Kohno’s team found that a nearby attacker could connect to someone else’s robot quite easily. |
| Robots such as the Rovio can also be controlled over the Internet, meaning that if a hacker could somehow sniff the victim’s user name and password, he could turn the robot into a remote-controlled spy machine |
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