MIT

Engineers at MIT, in partnership with the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, have devised a way to build a camera lens that avoids the typical spherical curve of ultra-wide-angle glass, while still providing true optical fisheye distortion. The fisheye lens is relatively specialist, producing images that can cover as wide an area as 180 degrees […]

MIT engineers develop a totally flat fisheye lens that could ...

This entry was posted in Gadgets glass hardware MIT smartphones TC on September 18, 2020 by Darrell Etherington

I see far more research articles than I could possibly write up. This column collects the most interesting of those papers and advances, along with notes on why they may prove important in the world of tech and startups. This week: one step closer to self-powered on-skin electronics; people dressed as car seats; how to […]

R&D Roundup: Sweat power, Earth imaging, testing ‘ghostdrivers’

This entry was posted in artificial intelligence Gadgets Health machine learning MIT self-driving car TC on April 28, 2020 by Devin Coldewey

One of the best tools we have to slow the spread of the coronavirus is, as you have no doubt heard by now, contact tracing. But what exactly is contact tracing, who does it and how, and do you need to worry about it? In short, contact tracing helps prevent the spread of a virus […]

What is contact tracing?

This entry was posted in Health MIT Mobile TC and tagged apple google on April 18, 2020 by Devin Coldewey

RFocus asks a simple question: What if instead of just antennas and transmitters on access points and mobile devices, we put the things just about everywhere? You know, just totally slather the walls with the stuff? The new “smart surface” from MIT’s CSAIL uses in excess of 3,000 antennas to boost signal strength by nearly […]

MIT’s RFocus technology could turn your walls into antennas

This entry was posted in CSAIL hardware MIT Mobile on February 3, 2020 by Brian Heater

Science is exciting in theory, but it can also be dreadfully dull. Some experiments require hundreds or thousands of repetitions or trials — an excellent opportunity to automate. That's just what MIT scientists have done, creating a robot that performs a certain experiment, observes the results, and plans a follow-up... and has now done so 100,000 times in the year it's been operating.

This robot scientist has conducted 100,000 experiments in a year

This entry was posted in artificial intelligence Gadgets hardware MIT robotics robots TC on November 27, 2019 by Devin Coldewey

As much as we'd like to think that we're entering an era of autonomous robots, they're actually still pretty helpless. To keep them from falling down all the time, a human's fast reflexes could be the solution. But the human has to feel what the robot is feeling — and that's just what these researchers are testing.

This robot relies on human reflexes to keep its balance

This entry was posted in Gadgets hardware MIT robotics robots on October 30, 2019 by Devin Coldewey

Sometimes it does seem the entire tech industry could use someone to talk to, like a good therapist or social worker. That might sound like an insult, but I mean it mostly earnestly: I am a chaplain who has spent 15 years talking with students, faculty, and other leaders at Harvard (and more recently MIT […]

Why AI needs more social workers, with Columbia University’s Desmond ...

This entry was posted in artificial intelligence facial recognition Government machine learning MIT Philanthropy Policy privacy Security Social TC and tagged facebook social media on August 9, 2019 by Arman Tabatabai

Why AI needs more social workers, with Columbia University’s Desmond ...

The days when you could simply grow a basil plant from a seed by placing it on your windowsill and watering it regularly are gone — there's no point now that machine learning-optimized hydroponic "cyber-agriculture" has produced a superior plant with more robust flavors. The future of pesto is here.

MIT’s ‘cyber-agriculture’ optimizes basil flavors

This entry was posted in artificial intelligence Gadgets GreenTech hardware machine learning MIT on April 3, 2019 by Devin Coldewey

Artificial intelligence, or what passes for it, can be found in practically every major tech company and, increasingly, in government programs. A joint Harvard-MIT program just unloaded $750,000 on projects looking to keep such AI developments well understood and well reported.

Harvard-MIT initiative grants $750K to projects looking to keep tech ...

This entry was posted in artificial intelligence Government Media MIT Philanthropy Social TC on March 12, 2019 by Devin Coldewey

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