PARC in the news

Why AI Could Be the Key to Taking Xerox to the Next Level

Lawrence Lee, VP of Incubation and Strategy, Xerox — Thu, 07 Jun 2018 00:00:00 -0700

Xerox is developing a number of exciting innovations to help businesses communicate, connect, and work. ... AI is already appearing in our apps and solutions today. Take Xerox Easy Translate Service as an example, it constantly uses a learning engine to improve translation quality.

We see the continued impact of AI to improve the usability and reliability of our products and services, both through embedded sensing and intelligence as well as leveraging new technologies such as augmented reality to empower customers to learn how to perform a function or fix a problem.

Preparing for the Next Wave in Data Privacy

Warren Lutz — Fri, 01 Jun 2018 00:00:00 -0700

Ready or not, on May 25th, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) took effect, establishing new requirements for protecting the data and privacy of European Union residents. But GPDR doesn’t just impact European businesses — it applies to any company, no matter where it is located, that offers goods and services and handles data on European customers.

Ersin Uzun, Vice President of R&D at PARC, a Xerox company, which helps companies develop technology, says there is a sense that GDPR is the first of more regulations that will change the dynamics of how organizations handle data. “All the informed players that I’ve been interacting with, expect this to be just the beginning,” he said. “There is a little bit of panic right now."

Momentary Lapses of Reason

Chris Edwards — Fri, 25 May 2018 00:00:00 -0700

The need for machine learning in systems that have to operate safely, means that researchers require a better understanding of how these technologies work and how they make mistakes.

…the University of Edinburgh [is] working with the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) on one project under the explainable AI banner to infer models from analysis of the behavior of AI systems.

Companies Grapple With AI’s Opaque Decision-Making Process

Sara Castellanos — Wed, 02 May 2018 00:00:00 -0700

Executives at companies such as Uber Inc. and the research and development arm of Xerox Corp. said at a conference Tuesday that they’re investing in an area of AI research called “interpretability,” in an effort to understand exactly how complex AI systems solve problems.

PARC, a research and development lab wholly owned by Xerox Corp., also has researchers devoted to transparency in AI, said Tolga Kurtoglu, CEO of PARC, at the AI conference.

Not all problems require very detailed level of explainability, Mr. Kurtoglu said. But there are enough problems “where we absolutely need to build transparency into the AI systems, where we’d benefit as a society from the ability of those algorithms to articulate themselves.”

Even in Trump Era, Green Energy Innovation is Sparking, Not Sputtering

Mark Trumbull — Fri, 27 Apr 2018 00:00:00 -0700

The dozens of exhibitors in the [Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E)] summit’s showroom, at a Washington convention center overlooking the Potomac River, ranged from nuclear and ocean-wave power to improved gasoline engines for cars. But they all have something in common: As ARPA-E award recipients, they’re expected to be laser-focused on using their grants to move a potentially viable product toward the marketplace.

Some of the projects push technological frontiers.

The Palo Alto Research Center, a Xerox company, is working with Sandia National Laboratories to develop a “micro chiplet printer” that could dramatically improve solar panels.

How to Build Startup Muscle Fast

Marshall Phelps, Contributor — Tue, 27 Mar 2018 00:00:00 -0700

Everybody knows that strong patents help decide the winners and losers of business competition — which is why companies applied for roughly 600,000 of them last year (though only half that number were granted). But there’s another, little-known way for companies to acquire the patents they need: they can simply buy them.

In January of 2017, Uber purchased 66 ridesharing patents and 10 patent applications from telecom giant AT&T. Uber has also acquired patents from other companies, including Microsoft, deCarta, the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), and Apparate International covering innovations in LIDAR (light detection and ranging for autonomous vehicle navigation) and other ridesharing-related technologies.

The US Military Wants AI to Dream Up Weird New Helicopters

Jackie Snow — Tue, 20 Mar 2018 00:00:00 -0700

DARPA wants entrants to rethink the way complex components are designed by combining recent advances in machine learning with fundamental tenets of math and engineering. One project selected for funding by DARPA is D-FOCUS, from researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and PARC, the research company spun out of Xerox.

D-FOCUS doesn’t come up with new designs from scratch but offers up alternatives to existing designs. If the early phase of the design process is automated, a human designer can explore more design options and compare trade-offs with each option before committing to a potentially very expensive plan, says Johan de Kleer, the PARC lead on the project.

The Present and Future of Flexible, Hybrid and Printed Electronics

David Savastano — Fri, 09 Mar 2018 00:00:00 -0800

Dr. Janos Veres, program manager, novel and printed electronics, Electronic Materials and Devices Laboratory at the Palo Alto Research Center, Inc. (PARC), said that a little more than 10 years ago, printed displays, printed solar and even fully printed RFID were the promise. “They represented existing markets that were well understood,” Dr. Veres continued. “Significant investments were made in both by large companies as well as startups. These directions did not take off, mostly because…”

Xerox Named a 2018 Top 100 Global Technology Leader

Fri, 23 Feb 2018 00:00:00 -0800

For the sixth time since 2011, Xerox has been recognized as a Top 100 Global Tech Leader (formerly the "Top 100 Global Innovators”) by Thomson Reuters. Xerox received high marks for leadership in patent generation, corporate social responsibility and environmental impact.

"Xerox has a storied history of innovating in a socially and environmentally responsible manner,” said Steve Hoover, chief technology officer of Xerox. "Today we are on the cusp of a set of radical changes where technology at the intersection of the physical and the digital can make a huge difference in how work gets done.”

Research and development operations at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), the Xerox Research Centre of Canada and the Wilson Center for Research and Technology are constantly at work defining and developing the next generation of the digital workplace, workflow automation and printing beyond documents.

Xerox PARC CEO on Industry 4.0 and the Packaging Internet of Things (video)

David Zwang — Tue, 06 Feb 2018 00:00:00 -0800

PARC CEO Tolga Kurtoglu talks about what PARC is focusing on and how it may affect Industry 4.0 and packaging IoT in the near and mid-term future.

Xerox’s PARC Wants to Evolve Virtual Assistant Conversational Skills

Steven Norton — Wed, 31 Jan 2018 00:00:00 -0800

Half a century after helping revolutionize how people interact with PCs through its pioneering work in the graphical user interface, PARC is tackling the technology’s possible successor: the conversation-based interface.

The R&D lab wholly owned by Xerox Corp., in an effort to automate and improve manual workflows at the office, is researching technology that would allow human employees to have ongoing conversations with their digital counterparts.

PARC Begins Work on Printed Flexible Audio Speakers

David Savastano — Wed, 31 Jan 2018 00:00:00 -0800

The ability to communicate with consumers is not necessarily through visual keys alone. Audio capabilities are also an excellent approach. However, the development of cost-effective, mass producible, truly thin speakers has yet to take off.

PARC, a Xerox company, may have the key to unlocking this technology. In conjunction with FlexTech, a SEMI Strategic Association Partner, PARC researchers are working on a one-year project developing paper-like smart tags printed flexible audio speakers that could be used for smart tags, wearables and much more.

In Memoriam: Daniel G. Bobrow

Johan de Kleer — Thu, 28 Dec 2017 00:00:00 -0800

The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) honors the life of Daniel G. Bobrow (1935–2017), a research fellow at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center, former AAAI president and Fellow, Fellow of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM), and an early AI pioneer.

AI in 2018: Still More Hype than Reality, AI is Nothing to be Scared of Yet

Terese Poletti — Thu, 28 Dec 2017 00:00:00 -0800

Tolga Kurtoglu, CEO of PARC, said that what needs to be built into systems is a sense of self awareness “so that they can detect when they’re commanded to do something that is outside of their reliable and safe and secure operational regime. And that’s a really, really difficult problem to solve.”

The 1970s Conference That Predicted the Future of Work

Leslie Berlin — Wed, 27 Dec 2017 00:00:00 -0800

In November 1977, some 300 executives and their wives flew in from all over the world on first-class tickets to spend four days in the sun at the Xerox World Conference. … Now, on the last morning of the last day, they had assembled for the highlight of the conference: Futures Day, an invitation-only demonstration of the Alto personal computer system developed at Xerox PARC, the company’s research center in Palo Alto.

Dynamic Development

Fri, 22 Dec 2017 00:00:00 -0800

The third industrial revolution saw the transition from analogue or mechanical machines to digital manufacturing equipment. Now, with Industry 4.0, we witness the integration of automated, digitized machines into an intelligent industrial ecosystem.

A number of PARC’s research streams — automation, digital manufacturing, artificial intelligence and cyber security, for example — are fundamental tenets of Industry 4.0 says Markus Larsson, PARC VP for global business operations.

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin Venture Gives Notice for Spaceship Flight Test This Week

Alan Boyle — Sun, 10 Dec 2017 00:00:00 -0800

Blue Origin, the space venture founded by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, has alerted the Federal Aviation Administration that it’s planning to put a brand-new New Shepard rocket ship through an uncrewed flight test at its West Texas spaceport this week. All of Blue Origin’s test launches to date have been uncrewed, but the more recent tests have carried suborbital science payloads. Last week, Blue Origin and Xerox’s PARC lab announced a partnership to accelerate research and development in space.

The Philosopher of Palo Alto

John Tinnell — Sat, 09 Dec 2017 00:00:00 -0800

Apple’s recent product launch on 12 September has cast into the mainstream technologies that were first envisioned by Mark Weiser in the 1990s, when he was Chief Technologist at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). Though Weiser died in 1999, at the age of 46, his ideas continue to inspire cutting-edge smartphone innovations.

Behind the Scenes at Xerox PARC’s Futures Day - 40 Years Ago

Tekla Perry — Fri, 01 Dec 2017 00:00:00 -0800

When we look back at history making tech demos, first on the list is typically Doug Engelbart’s 1968 “Mother of All Demos” that introduced windows, video conferencing, and the mouse.

Next on the list? How about Xerox Parc’s “Futures Day”? Futures Day wasn’t widely recognized before last month, but thanks to a couple of 40-year-commememorations, it is claiming its place in history.

Starting the Conversation: PARC’s Interactive Dialogue Systems Enable Organizations to Work Smarter and Communicate with Technology

Laura Stamey — Mon, 27 Nov 2017 00:00:00 -0800

To hear Kyle Dent describe the explosion of voice technology over the past two years, seemingly everyone has a system controlled by speech. For instance, Amazon has Alexa, Apple has Siri, and Google has an unnamed assistant — all ready to deliver information, control your thermostat, and learn exactly what you need.

The Research Manager’s team at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), however, began exploring the notion of conversational interactions with technology years before with the goal of helping businesses work more efficiently.

Ideas to Implementation: PARC Earns Our Editor’s Retail Choice Award for Innovation in Smart Packaging Technology

Michael Senecal — Thu, 09 Nov 2017 00:00:00 -0800

One of the best-known names in tech research and development, PARC got its start in 1970 as a research division within office printing giant Xerox. Now the company partners with businesses and government agencies to bring innovations to market. A prime example is its work in the burgeoning smart packaging industry, which combines flexible printed electronics, sensors, and software to boost supply-chain efficiencies for brands and add consumer value.

The Improbable Origins of PowerPoint

David C. Brock — Tue, 31 Oct 2017 00:00:00 -0700

PowerPoint emerged during a period in which personal computing was taking over the American office. [...] The groundwork for that invasion had been laid the previous decade, in the 1970s technosocial vision of the “office of the future.” It started, like so much of what we now take for granted in our contemporary world of networked personal computing, at Xerox’s legendary Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) [PDF].

What Does it Mean When Your Home is Watching You? (podcast)

Leah Hitchings and Grant Burningham — Sat, 21 Oct 2017 00:00:00 -0700

Mike Kuniavsky, PARC scientist and author of "Smart Things," talks about smart objects, artificial intelligence and what our role should be in the Internet of Things.

Interview: Tolga Kurtoglu, CEO, Palo Alto Research Center (PARC)

Nick Smith — Wed, 18 Oct 2017 00:00:00 -0700

“There can’t be much doubt that Tolga Kurtoglu has one of the most exciting jobs in the world of technology innovation . After seven years in the wings, the new chief executive has taken up the challenge of one of the brainiest buildings on Earth.”

Future Auto Radar Goes Back to Analog

Junko Yoshida — Mon, 16 Oct 2017 00:00:00 -0700

Many carmakers, in order to increase the real-world situational awareness of their highly automated vehicles, have already accepted the necessity of literally surrounding every chassis with different types of sensors. What’s not given, however, is the quality of these sensors. How good, for example, are vision, lidar and radar sensors today, and how much better do they have to get?

Metawave Corp., spun out of PARC, a Xerox company based in Palo Alto, Calif., thinks it can alter what the automotive industry perceives as the “limitations” of conventional radars.

In Offices of the Future, Everyone Will Have a Souped-up Amazon Echo-type Robot Assistant

Catherine Clifford — Thu, 28 Sep 2017 00:00:00 -0700

Ever have one of those days where you really wish you had a second set of hands? Or maybe an assistant?

In next generation offices, that may just be a reality, because everyone will have a robot helper, says Tolga Kurtoglu, CEO of Silicon Valley research and development company PARC.

"You can think about how we have the Amazon Echoes and Google Homes at home and interact with them. And all of that data and all of that interaction would be delivered to people in a way that those agents understand the workflow, the task, the corporation hierarchy," says Kurtoglu to Recode's Kara Swisher.

PARC Spinout Metawave Adds A.I. to Metamaterials for Autonomous Cars

Benjamin Romano — Tue, 15 Aug 2017 00:00:00 -0700

Maha Achour co-founded Metawave early this year, spinning the company out of the storied PARC laboratories, a unit of Xerox, in Palo Alto, CA, with an exclusive license to commercialize metamaterials radar and antennas in two huge potential applications. Metawave co-founder and CTO Bernard Casse says Metawave is leveraging the rapid rate of progress in A.I. technologies to develop a series of algorithms for optimization, range-finding, and more. "What we want in the end… is a radar that’s smart, that can tell you there’s a child in your parking zone, that can discriminate between an SUV and a sedan, that can anticipate an accident by taking a look at traffic patterns,” he says.

Advancing AI by Understanding How AI Systems and Humans Interact

Todd Weiss — Tue, 08 Aug 2017 00:00:00 -0700

Artificial intelligence as a technology is rapidly growing, but much is still being learned about how AI and autonomous systems make decisions based on the information they collect and process. "Machine learning is becoming increasing important," said Mark Stefik, a PARC Research Fellow who runs the lab's human-machine collaboration research group. "As a consequence, if we are building systems that are autonomous, we'd like to know what decisions they will make. There is no established technique to do that today with systems that learn for themselves."

Set the Page Free in the Modern Workplace: A Silicon Valley POV

Greg Pings — Fri, 04 Aug 2017 00:00:00 -0700

“The invention of the future will depend as much on ethnographers and psychologists as engineers” says Dave Biegelsen, a Research Fellow and charter member of PARC, a Xerox company. Biegelsen and PARC have been at the center of Silicon Valley since before it was called Silicon Valley. When they asked if the paperless office was imminent, Biegelsen and his PARC cohorts spent the next 47 years setting the page free. That is to say, they invented the technologies that have since allowed “the page” to transcend print and enter the digital realm.

PARC CEO Sees Humans and AI Collaborating

Daniel Fuller — Mon, 17 Jul 2017 00:00:00 -0700

Artificial Intelligence is a topic that almost always includes discussions of human jobs disappearing, but PARC CEO Tolga Kurtoglu sees humans and AI working together to tackle things that neither could do on their own. Essentially, Kurtoglu and his people want to bring AI’s intelligence, judgment and built-in ethics up to the level of being trustworthy, and close collaboration with humans is one way that the company is looking at doing so.