Social Engineering Blogs

An Aggregator for Blogs About Social Engineering and Related Fields

Deception Robots

Surveillance has been power boosted to a new level.

Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Technology Laboratory has developed a “spybot”.  Ieee spectrum inside technology has the scoop.

Lockheed’s new robotic creation knows how to operate incognito around humans.  It actually listens for humans, guesses where they might be looking and then finds itself a hiding spot.

How can it be so sneaky, you ask?  It is equipped with a 3D laser scanner.  It also has an array of acoustic sensors that allow it to localize footsteps and voices.

Lockheed Martin’s robot is not the first of its kind; however, it is on technology’s cutting edge.  Georgia Tech also created a “spybot” , which uses deliberately deceptive tactics to fool other robots and humans.

Is covert robotics now emerging as power field of engineering?  This technology is unique because these robots can build a computer program of their surrounding s, incorporating information on line of sight so that it can covertly map its environment in 3D.

According to NewScientist.com , Brian Satterfield, lead engineer, stated that the robot was designed to operate within four constraints:  “ Avoiding visible detection by sentries of known locations, avoiding potential detection by sentries whose positions were unknown, avoiding areas in which the robot would have no means of escape and as this robot was designed to run at night, avoiding areas that were well lit”

Video of spybot:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Angry Emotions

The universal emotion of anger is often seen as a negative social norm.  If someone “loses” their temper in public many people find that unacceptable especially for an adult.

Of course, everyone gets angry at least once in a while.  However, society views people who remain “calm” do not show outward signs of anger, as displaying acceptable and in some sense, revered behavior.

According to PBS’s This Emotional Life website, not expressing anger is not as great or beneficial as one might think.  They suggest that society sees angry displays as uncomfortable and less acceptable than expressing sadness or anxiety.  This makes more people try to mask their anger.  Well, the down side of that could be an explosive “temper tantrum”, which never solves any problem.

This was the case in a recent episode of the Apprentice when Meatloaf lost his cool with Gary Busey.  What that video clip does not show is that Meatloaf later sincerely apologized to Gary and accepted full responsibility for his actions.

As a result of not fully expressing our anger, we do not learn how to handle our anger constructively.  Anger can be managed correctly, TEL website purports, and can be a force for reflection and perhaps a breakthrough in how we feel and live our lives.

So the questions are why do we get angry, and how can one get over their anger issues and become a happier person?

Well, first accept your anger and express yourself (appropriately of course).  Second, reflect on your anger don’t suppress it. The other thing you can do, according to The Emotional Life website, is to surround yourself with happy people and you in turn will be happier.

Take a look at the video below about social networking and happiness.

Watch the full episode. See more This Emotional Life.

Emotional Lethargy

Research has already determined that a side effect of Botox is the inability to fully express emotions.  New research, according to msnbc.com , reveals anther side effect: the inability to fully feel emotions.

Botox is made of a toxic protein called Botulinum toxin , and it temporarily paralyzes muscles that cause wrinkles.  Botox’s paralyzing side effects mean no wrinkles but also no movement of those muscles.

Scientists believe that facial expressions themselves may influence emotional experiences.  If a person with limited ability to make facial expressions may also have a limited ability to feel emotions.

Researcher Joshua Davis, a psychologist at Barnard College in New York, commented, “With Botox, a person can respond otherwise normally to an emotional event, a sad movie scene, but will have less movement in the facial muscles that have been injected, and therefore less feedback to the brain about such facial expressivity.”

In his study called “Botox Linked to Weakened Ability to Experience Emotions“, Davis and his colleagues showed groups of individuals emotionally charged videos before and after they were injected with either Botox or Restylane (the control group), which adds filler but doesn’t limit the movement of the muscles.

Compared to the control group, the Botox participants experienced a decrease in the strength of emotional experience and responded less strongly to mildly positive clips after the Botox injections rather than before.

This study suggests that feedback from facial expressions to the brain can influence the overall experience of emotions.  The simple act of smiling can help make a person feel happy.

Take a look at the video below about a woman who has had 52 cosmetic procedures and read about how botox has also been suggested as a cure to depression.