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<dc:date>2009-11-06T20:48+02:00
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<title>From nature, robots</title>
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<description><![CDATA[To a robot designer like Sangbae Kim, the animal kingdom is full of inspiration."I always look at animals and ask why they are the way they are," says Kim, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at MIT. "As an engineer, looking at them and speculating is fascinating."While a graduate student at Stanford, Kim drew inspiration from the gecko to build a climbing robot, and he is now designing a running robot that mimics the movements of a cheetah. Such agile, fast-moving robots could perform military surveillance and search-and-rescue missions deemed too dangerous for humans to undertake.His Biomimetic Robotics Lab is one of several at MIT pursuing biologically inspired engineering. A team of mechanical engineers has built robotic fish, and materials scientists have designed moisture-collecting materials that mimic a beetle's shell. Evolution has produced finely tuned adaptations over millions of years, so it only makes sense to turn to nature for design ideas. However, while Kim seeks inspiration in nature, he's not trying to produce exact robotic copies of a particular animal. Such copying would be difficult to achieve and not necessarily the most effective design strategy."There are millions of things that animals have to adapt for, and it is almost impossible to compare evolution to our engineering/mathematical optimization process," says Kim. "And you have to be careful about copying other features that may not be related to the particular function you want to achieve. Therefore, extracting scientific principle is extremely important for designers like me."StickybotWhen Kim and his colleagues at Stanford set out to build a climbing robot, at first they figured they needed to make the robot's feet sticky. However, they soon realized that very sticky feet can't detach very easily.Their approach shifted dramatically with the 2006 discovery, by Lewis and Clark College biologist Kellar Autumn, that geckos use a phenomenon called directional adhesion to stick to walls."The gecko gave us a completely new perspective. Stickiness does not necessarily come from chemical composition; it can come from mechanical properties and geometry," says Kim. "The geometry enables strange phenomena such as directional adhesion, which sticks in only one direction."The pads of a gecko's feet are covered with a forest of tiny hairs called setae, some of which are one-twentieth the width of a human hair. The setae, in turn, branch into hundreds of tiny smaller hairs called spatulae, which are about one-thousandth the width of a human hair. These hairs cling to surfaces using tiny molecular interactions known as van der Waals forces. Collectively, the forces are strong enough to support the gecko's weight as it scrambles up a vertical surface.To demonstrate, Kim rummages around in a desk drawer in his office and pulls out a small rectangle of the gecko-inspired adhesive material, which resembles a tiny patch of blue Astroturf. A compact disc gently held against the horizontal surface attaches securely in one direction and then easily detaches in the opposite direction. The adhesive is covered with hairs made of rubber silicone, which are thicker than those on a gecko's paw (about four times thicker than a human hair). Because thicker hairs require smoother surfaces for adhesion, Stickybot can only climb extremely smooth surfaces like glass.Kim and his colleagues, led by Stanford professor Mark Cutkosky, first demonstrated Stickybot in 2006, and Time magazine named it one of that year's best inventions. The paper describing the robot also won the 2008 Best Paper Award for the IEEE Transactions on Robotics.Potential applications for the stickybot technology include exterior repair of underwater oil pipelines and window washing. Kim also plans to start designing climbing equipment for humans using the directional adhesion technology.Need for speedKim, who arrived at MIT as an assistant professor in June, is now turning his attention to a speedier robot, inspired by the cheetah. Four graduate students have just begun working on the cheetah project, and within the next two years Kim hopes to have a prototype that can run 35 miles per hour.Though his design incorporates principles from a variety of running animals, including horses and dogs, Kim zeroed in on the cheetah because of its special adaptations for speed. One feature he plans to mimic is the flexibility of the cheetah's backbone, which gives extra speed or force to its running motion.To demonstrate how extra joints can add force and speed, Kim leans back in his chair and mimics throwing a baseball, in slow motion — first the shoulder, then the elbow, then the wrist bend. The force imparted by each of those joints adds up, allowing a pitcher to throw a faster pitch. In the same way, the joints of the cheetah's leg — hip, knee and ankle — are aided by the extra speed generated by its bending backbone, which is much more flexible than that of other running mammals.Kim and his students plan to start building and testing prototypes within the next 18 months, after using a computer model to calculate the optimal limb length and weight, gait and torque of the hip and knee joints. He expects that the biggest challenge will be getting enough power out of the motor to furnish the desired speed. To that end, he plans to build the robot out of lightweight carbon fiber-foam composite, so less power is needed to propel it. Another difficult problem is coordinating the control of three joints in four legs. Those 12 joints each have to move in concert with the others, and they need to be able to react smoothly to disturbances in the gait, such as tripping over a rock, and regain balance.Kim believes his robots could be a significant improvement over current wheeled robots used for scouting and search and rescue, which are efficient but slow. "It's going to be very exciting to see how fast we can go and how rough a terrain we can navigate."]]></description>
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<title>Fish and chips</title>
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<description><![CDATA[Borrowing from Mother Nature, a team of MIT researchers has built a school of swimming robo-fish that slip through the water just as gracefully as the real thing, if not quite as fast.Mechanical engineers Kamal Youcef-Toumi and Pablo Valdivia y Alvarado have designed the sleek robotic fish to more easily maneuver into areas where traditional underwater autonomous vehicles can't go. Fleets of the new robots could be used to inspect submerged structures such as boats and oil and gas pipes; patrol ports, lakes and rivers; and help detect environmental pollutants."Given the (robotic) fish's robustness, it would be ideal as a long-term sensing and exploration unit. Several of these could be deployed, and even if only a small percentage make it back there wouldn't be a terrible capital loss due to their low cost," says Valdivia y Alvarado, a recent MIT PhD recipient in mechanical engineering.Robotic fish are not new: In 1994, MIT ocean engineers demonstrated Robotuna, a four-foot-long robotic fish. But while Robotuna had 2,843 parts controlled by six motors, the new robotic fish, each less than a foot long, are powered by a single motor and are made of fewer than 10 individual components, including a flexible, compliant body that houses all components and protects them from the environment. The motor, placed in the fish's midsection, initiates a wave that travels along the fish's flexible body, propelling it forward.The robofish bodies are continuous (i.e., not divided into different segments), flexible and made from soft polymers. This makes them more maneuverable and better able to mimic the swimming motion of real fish, which propel themselves by contracting muscles on either side of their bodies, generating a wave that travels from head to tail."Most swimming techniques can be copied by exploiting natural vibrations of soft structures," says Valdivia y Alvarado.As part of his doctoral thesis, Valdivia y Alvarado created a model to calculate the optimal material properties distributions along the robot's body to create a fish with the desired speed and swimming motion. The model, which the researchers initially proposed in the journal Dynamic Systems Measurements and Control (ASME), also takes into account the robot's mass and volume. A more detailed model is described in Valdivia y Alvarado's thesis and will soon be published along with new applications by the group. Other researchers, including a team at the University of Essex, have developed new generations of robotic fish using traditional assembly of rigid components to replicate the motions of fish, but the MIT team is the only one using controlled vibrations of flexible bodies to mimic biological locomotion."With these polymers, you can specify stiffness in different sections, rather than building a robot with discrete sections," says Youcef-Toumi. "This philosophy can be used for more than just fish" — for example, in robotic prosthetic limbs.Mimicking fishWith motors in their bellies and power cords trailing as they swim, the robo-fish might not be mistaken for the real thing, but they do a pretty good fish impersonation. The team's first prototypes, about five inches long, mimic the carangiform swimming technique used by bass and trout. Most of the movement takes place in the tail end of the body. Fish that use this type of motion are generally fast swimmers, with moderate maneuverability.Later versions of the robo-fish, about eight inches long, swim like tuna, which are adapted for even higher swimming speeds and long distances. In tuna, motion is concentrated in the tail and the peduncle region (where the tail attaches to the body), and the amplitude of body motions in this region is greater than in carangiform fish.Real fish are exquisitely adapted to moving through their watery environment, and can swim as fast as 10 times their body length per second. So far, the MIT researchers have gotten their prototypes close to one body length per second - much slower than their natural counterparts but faster than earlier generations of robotic fish.The new robo-fish are also more durable than older models — with their seamless bodies, there is no chance of water leaking into the robots and damaging them. Several four-year-old prototypes are still functioning after countless runs through the testing tank, which is filled with tap water.Current prototypes require 2.5 to 5 watts of power, depending on the robot's size. That electricity now comes from an external source, but in the future the researchers hope to power the robots with a small internal battery.Later this fall, the researchers plan to expand their research to more complex locomotion and test some new prototype robotic salamanders and manta rays."The fish were a proof of concept application, but we are hoping to apply this idea to other forms of locomotion, so the methodology will be useful for mobile robotics research — land, air and underwater — as well," said Valdivia y Alvarado.The work was funded by the Singapore-MIT Alliance and Schlumberger Ltd.]]></description>
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<item rdf:about="http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/1992/quanta-0717.html">
<title>Quanta Computer extends collaboration with CSAIL</title>
<link>http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/1992/quanta-0717.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[Quanta Computer is extending its research collaboration with MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) for another five years. As part of the collaboration, the company is devoting an additional $25 million to work with CSAIL on developing new information technologies."Through Project T-Party, Quanta Computer has become an extraordinary partner for MIT, inspiring and supporting our research at the very frontiers of mobile computing," said MIT President Susan Hockfield. "Given our shared passion for inventing the future, we enter this new phase of our relationship with high hopes for equally important results."The original five-year collaboration, the $20 million T-Party Project, was launched in 2005 as a joint research effort between Quanta Computer, Inc., the largest notebook computer company in the world, and MIT's CSAIL. T-Party focused on mobile information technologies and supported the work of 15 principal investigators and more than 50 PhD students. The additional funding will extend this work through 2015 and support new research into operating systems and programming environments for cloud computing.  "Quanta is CSAIL's largest sponsor and our only strategic partner. For the past four years, we have jointly defined a multi-faceted research agenda around the common goal of future mobile communication. We look forward to working even closer with Quanta in the next six years on an equally ambitious goal of reengineering cloud computing," said CSAIL Director Victor Zue.Quanta Chairman and CEO Barry Lam said, "It is both our privilege and honor to engage with MIT CSAIL for another six years. We hope Quanta and MIT can jointly create innovative technologies and products both to enhance and enrich people's life. It is also our wish that we can contribute to the evolution of our culture through revolutionary engineering inventions."]]></description>
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<item rdf:about="http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/robotherapy-0519.html">
<title>Robotic therapy holds promise for cerebral palsy</title>
<link>http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/robotherapy-0519.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[Over the past few years, MIT engineers have successfully tested robotic devices to help stroke patients learn to control their arms and legs. Now, theyâ€™re building on that work to help children with brain injuries and disorders such as cerebral palsy."Robotic therapy can potentially help reduce impairment and facilitate neuro-development of youngsters with cerebral palsy," says Hermano Igo Krebs, principal research scientist in mechanical engineering and one of the project's leaders.Krebs and others at MIT, including professor of mechanical engineering Neville Hogan, pioneered the use of robotic therapy in the late 1980s, and since then the field has taken off.       Above: Robotics: A New Hope in Cerebral Palsy. This video shows devices developed at MIT as well as non-MIT robots.View this post on MIT TechTV."We started with stroke because it's the biggest elephant in the room, and then started to build it out to other areas, including cerebral palsy as well as multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease and spinal cord injury," says Krebs.The team's suite of robots for shoulder-and-elbow, wrist, hand and ankle has been in clinical trials for more than 15 years with more than 400 stroke patients. The Department of Veterans Affairs has just completed a large-scale, randomized, multi-site clinical study with these devices. All the devices are based on the same principle: that it is possible to help rebuild brain connections using robotic devices that gently guide the limb as a patient tries to make a specific movement. When the researchers first decided to apply their work to children with cerebral palsy, Krebs was optimistic that it would succeed, because children's developing brains are more plastic than adults', meaning they are more able to establish new connections.The MIT team is focusing on improving cerebral palsy patients' ability to reach for and grasp objects. Patients handshake with the robot via a handle, which is connected to a computer monitor that displays tasks similar to those of simple video games.In a typical task, the youngster attempts to move the robot handle toward a moving or stationary target shown on the computer monitor. If the child starts moving in the wrong direction or does not move, the robotic arm gently nudges the child's arm in the right direction. Krebs began working in robotic therapy as a graduate student at MIT almost 20 years ago. In his early studies, he and his colleagues found that it's important for stroke patients to make a conscious effort during physical therapy. When signals from the brain are paired with assisted movement from the robot, it helps the brain form new connections that help it relearn to move the limb on its own.Even though a stroke kills many neurons, "the remaining neurons can very quickly establish new synapses or reinforce dormant synapses," says Krebs.For this type of therapy to be effective, many repetitions are required -- at least 400 in an hour-long session.Results from three published pilot studies involving 36 children suggest that cerebral palsy patients can also benefit from robotic therapy. The studies indicate that robot-mediated therapy helped the children reduce impairment and improve the smoothness and speed of their reaching motions.The researchers applied their work to stroke patients first because it is such a widespread problem -- about 800,000 people suffer strokes in the United States every year. About 10,000 babies develop cerebral palsy in the United States each year, but there is more potential for long-term benefit for children with cerebral palsy."In the long run, people that have a stroke, if they are 70 or 80 years old, might stay with us for an average of 5 or 6 years after the stroke," says Krebs. "In the case of cerebral palsy, there is a whole life."Most of the clinical work testing the device with cerebral palsy patients has been done at Blythedale Children's Hospital in Westchester County, N.Y., and Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Boston. Other hospitals around the country and abroad are also testing various MIT-developed robotic therapy devices.Krebs' team has focused first on robotic devices to help cerebral palsy patients with upper body therapy, but they have also initiated a project to design a pediatric robot for the ankle. Among Krebs' and Hogan's collaborators on the cerebral palsy work are Dr. Mindy Aisen '76, former head of the Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Research and Development and presently the director and CEO of the Cerebral Palsy International Research Foundation (CPIRF); Dr. Joelle Mast, chief medical officer, and Barbara Ladenheim, director of research, of Blythedale Children's Hospital; and Fletcher McDowell, former CEO of the Burke Rehabilitation Hospital and a member of the CPIRF board of directors. MIT's work on robotic therapy devices is funded by CPIRF and the Niarchos Foundation, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the New York State NYSCORE, and the National Center for Medical Rehabilitation Research of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. 


A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on May 20, 2009 (download PDF).

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<title>&#x27;Bother bots&#x27; win the day</title>
<link>http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/2.007-0508.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[There were a variety of ways to score points in this year's 2.007 competition, which culminated in head-to-head (or wheel-to-wheel) matches among about 150 robots built by the students over the course of the semester. But one strategy seemed to prevail: preventing one's opponent from scoring, using a secondary "bother bot" to get in the way.The final contest, which had no effect on students' grades for the class but nevertheless spurred intense competition and effusive cheering, was held Thursday evening at the Johnson Athletic Center's ice rink. And the best bother bot brought home the gold -- or rather, its creator, sophomore Edward Grinnell, did.Asked to deliver a victory speech after the final round, Grinnell offered oration of machinelike economy and precision: "2.007 is awesome!" he said.2.007, which evolved from a class started in 1970 by Woodie Flowers SM '68, ME '71, PhD '73, the Pappalardo Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Emeritus, focuses on design and manufacturing and is a required class for sophomores in mechanical engineering. The class's traditional semester-ending competition features robots built mainly from identical kits of components issued to each student. The matches were played on a two-meter square playing field divided down the middle by a row of cinderblock "buildings" separated by alleys 3 inches wide. The robots, which operated autonomously for the first 10 seconds of each minute-long match and then were controlled using radio control devices, could score by moving blocks to a designated spot, extra points for stacking the blocks, more points for picking up crushed cans and placing them in a slot, and the highest scores for crushing a can and then placing it in the slot. The scores could also be multiplied by moving a boot, attached to a pulley, toward one's own side of the field -- something that none of the robots managed to do.Many students built elaborate can-crushing devices, some of which worked well in the preliminary elimination rounds on Wednesday. But because the bother bots were so effective in thwarting can crushers, not a single can was successfully crushed during the final contest, which featured the 32 highest-scoring bots."The bother bots seemed to rise to the top," said lead instructor Daniel Frey PhD '97, a professor of mechanical engineering and engineering systems. "A good defense often beats a good offense." Simple but robust strategies prevailed. In second place was a machine built by Pablo Bello, which also had a bother bot of its own but was defeated by Grinnell's more sturdy low-slung wedge-shaped bother bot. The third-place finisher, built by Elvine Pineda, was decorated with blue lights and was one of the most attractive robots in the contest; very effective in the early rounds, it quickly grabbed the pre-crushed cans and placed them in the slot. But in its semifinal matchup, it was successfully thwarted by Bello's bother bot, which prevented it from reaching the slot.Trophies and t-shirts were given to the top eight finishers, and the top four finishers will have an opportunity to attend a similar international robot design competition in Tokyo this summer. Organizers also presented the Whitelaw prize --Â a special award for excellence in design and manufacturing --Â to four competitors.Dick Fenner, director of the Pappalardo Lab, emphasized that while the competition is a fun and exciting conclusion for the class, just creating a novel design and building a machine that works at all, in the brief period of one semester, is a significant accomplishment. "If you put something on the table and it wiggles, you're a hero in my book," he said.


A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on May 13, 2009 (download PDF).

]]></description>
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<item rdf:about="http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/2.007-adv-0501.html">
<title>Robots on a recycling rampage</title>
<link>http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/2.007-adv-0501.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[More than 150 robots, in a wide variety of sizes, shapes and capabilities, will battle it out on May 6 and 7 in a contest to see which can collect the most soda cans and simulated bales of trash and return then to a recycling facility -- actually a milk crate in the corner-- all in under a minute. The robots will be competing head-to-head in a series of elimination matches, and the top eight finishers will get trophies or T-shirts.The matchups are the culmination of 2.007, a required class for sophomores in mechanical engineering, and it's an MIT tradition that goes back more than two decades. The popular contest has spawned a host of imitators over the years, including the very popular FIRST competition for teams of high school students.The students, who each build their own robots individually from identical kits of components, will not have their grades for the class affected by the contest outcome, nor will they win any prizes beyond the trophies and shirts -- except, of course, the all-important bragging rights.The competition, called "Sweeping the Nation," takes place on a square playing field two meters on a side. It is divided in half by a line of cinderblocks painted to resemble buildings, with narrow alleys between them. There is also a "tunnel" in that row, which rotates at random intervals and directions, so robots that start on opposite sides can cross into the opponent's side by passing through the tunnel, or by being built narrow enough to go through the alleys, or by climbing over the buildings.Points are awarded for collecting a crushed soda can and returning it to a narrow slot  (the "recycling bin"). There are more points for picking up an intact can and crushing it before returning it. Points are also awarded for taking the "bales" to a designated spot, more points for stacking them up, and even more for grabbing one from the opponent's side and returning it to one's own stack.In short, the many possible strategies contribute to very different robots, and students are encouraged to use their creativity. In addition to the provided components in the kits, students can add decorative elements to their 'bots, and that's where they often unleash their imaginations.A preliminary elimination round will take place Wednesday evening, followed by the finals Thursday evening, starting at 7 p.m., at the Johnson Athletic Center's ice rink. The event will also be shown live by webcast and on MIT's cable TV.


A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on May 6, 2009 (download PDF).

]]></description>
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<title>Gardening the CSAIL way</title>
<link>http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/1992/robotic-garden-0318.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[

In CSAIL's indoor tomato garden, robots have supplanted humans. Could this be the future of agriculture? 


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A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on March 18, 2009 (download PDF).

]]></description>
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<item rdf:about="http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/1992/turing-liskov-0310.html">
<title>Barbara Liskov wins Turing Award</title>
<link>http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/1992/turing-liskov-0310.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[Institute Professor Barbara Liskov has won the Association for Computing Machinery's A.M. Turing Award, one of the highest honors in science and engineering,Â for her pioneering work in the design of computer programming languages. Liskov's achievements underpin virtually every modern computing-related convenience in people's daily lives.Liskov, the first U.S. woman to earn a PhD from a computer science department, was recognized for helping make software more reliable, consistent and resistant to errors and hacking. She is only the second woman to receive the honor, which carries a $250,000 purse and is often described as the "Nobel Prize in computing." "Computer science stands squarely at the center of MIT's identity, and Institute Professor Barbara Liskov's unparalleled contributions to the field represent an MIT ideal: groundbreaking research with profound benefits for humankind. We take enormous pride that she has received the Turing Award," said MIT President Susan Hockfield."Barbara Liskov pioneered some of the most important advances in fundamental computer science," said Provost L. Rafael Reif. "Her exceptional achievements have leapt from the halls of academia to transform daily life around the world. Every time youÂ exchange e-mail with a friend,Â check your bank statement online or run a Google search, you are riding the momentum of her research."Liskov heads the Programming Methodology Group in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT, where she has conducted research since 1972. Last year, she was named an Institute Professor, the highest honor awarded to an MIT faculty member."For nearly four decades, Barbara has been a seminal leader in programming languages and systems research at MIT, combining great intellectual insights with practicality," said CSAIL Director Victor Zue, the Delta Electronics Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. "All of us at CSAIL are extremely pleased and proud of this latest accolade --Â the highest honor in computer science."Advances in Software DesignLiskov's early innovations in software design have been the basis of every important programming language since 1975, including Ada, C++, Java and C#. Liskov's most significant impact stems from her influential contributions to the use of data abstraction, a valuable method for organizing complex programs. She was a leader in demonstrating how data abstraction could be used to make software easier to construct, modify and maintain. Many of these ideas were derived from her experience at Mitre Corp. in building the VENUS operating system, a small, interactive timesharing system.In another contribution, Liskov designed CLU, an object-oriented programming language incorporating clusters to provide coherent, systematic handling of abstract data types. She and her colleagues at MIT subsequently developed efficient CLU compiler implementations on several different machines, an important step in demonstrating the practicality of her ideas. Data abstraction is now a generally accepted fundamental method of software engineering that focuses on data rather than processes. Building on CLU concepts, Liskov followed with Argus, a distributed programming language. Its novel features led to further developments in distributed system design that could scale to systems connected by a network. This achievement laid the groundwork for modern search engines, which are used by thousands of programmers and hundreds of millions of users every day and which face the challenges of concurrent operation, failure and continually growing scale.  Her most recent research focuses on techniques that enable a system to continue operating properly in the event of the failure of some of its components. Her work on practical Byzantine fault tolerance demonstrated that there were more efficient ways of dealing with arbitrary (Byzantine) failures than had been previously known. Her insights have helped build robust, fault-tolerant distributed systems that are resistant to errors and hacking. This research is likely to change the way distributed system designers think about providing reliable service on today's modern, vulnerable Internet.The Turing Award is given annually by the Association for Computing Machinery and is named for British mathematician Alan M. Turing, who helped the Allies crack the Nazi Enigma cipher during World War Two. Liskov will formally receive the award at an ACM gathering on June 27 in San Diego.

A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on March 11, 2009 (download PDF).
]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/roll-0122.html">
<title>Lincoln Laboratory is on a &#x27;ROLL&#x27;</title>
<link>http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/roll-0122.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[In response to the growing popularity of robotics programs in high schools and elementary schools, several Lincoln Laboratory staff members have joined together to mentor students in robotics competitions. In the process, they're getting kids excited about science, technology, engineering and math --Â and the pride that comes with building high-tech equipment. 	Members of the mentoring group, Robotics Outreach at Lincoln Laboratory (ROLL), are offering their time and engineering knowledge in workshops, classroom demonstrations and competitions. Four Laboratory staff members conceived of ROLL after they were overwhelmed by demands for help while volunteering for recent robotics programs. "I was asked to organize mentors for a robotics workshop at Boston University; the response was so overwhelming that teams of mentors had to be scheduled in shifts," said Jonathan Williams of the Air Defense Techniques Group, who formed ROLL with fellow Laboratory staff members Raquel "Rocky" Velez, Bryan Bonvallet and Joe Usoff. "Mentoring for robotics was an eye-opening experience for all of us. Afterward, we held a meeting to discuss how to better prepare for future events and ways to continue robotics outreach."Each ROLL member manages a different aspect. Williams oversees mentoring duties. Bonvallet, of the Biodefense Systems Group, handles outreach, visibility, and communication. He has developed an internal wiki to promote group membership; 30 members have already signed up to volunteer.  Velez, of the Advanced Systems Concepts Group, is in charge of developing weekend robotics workshops for ninth- and 10th-graders. A pilot workshop in July, which introduced the kids to the engineering design process, proved so successful that ROLL plans to hold weekend robotics workshops throughout the school year. Joe Usoff, of the Aerospace Sensor Technology Group, coordinated three teams of 9- to 14-year-olds to compete in the For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST) Lego League robotics competition in December as well as a high-school-age team that will compete in the FIRST Tech Challenge. "Although Lincoln Laboratory has volunteered and mentored for the Boston FIRST competitions, this was the first time Lincoln Laboratory teams participated," Usoff said. The FIRST Lego League competition is just one indicator of the growing popularity of robotics. Between 1998 and 2007, the number of children participating in the tournaments rose from 1,600 to more than 100,000.  Already, ROLL members are routinely fielding requests for mentors and demonstrations. Members have recently helped Boston high school students build robots as part of assistive technology project. "I was blown away by how motivated these kids were, using technology to help people with disabilities," Williams said. "It wasn't hard to find five more mentors interested in helping these kids." Velez is particularly excited about coordinating the weekend robotics programs that let kids try out engineering in a full-immersion setting and team environment. Velez had such an opportunity when she was in high school, and it inspired her to choose science as a career. "We want to take advantage of every opportunity to bring engineering to as many people as possible," she said.]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/forklift-0121.html">
<title>Robo-forklift keeps humans out of harm&#x27;s way</title>
<link>http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/forklift-0121.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[Researchers in MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) are working on a better way to handle supplies in a war zone: a semi-autonomous forklift that can be directed by people safely away from the dangers of the site.Currently, when supplies arrive at military outposts in war zones such as Iraq, people driving forklifts unload the pallets and put them into storage, and later load them onto trucks to take the material to where it's needed. These forklift operators must often scramble for cover, slowing the work and putting them at risk.When completed, the new robotic device will provide a safer way to handle pallet-loaded supplies of everything from truck tires to water containers and construction materials, says Matt Walter, a CSAIL postdoctoral researcher with a lead role in the project. The device is designed to operate outdoors on uneven terrain such as gravel or packed earth.In Iraq, it has not been uncommon for workers to "have to abandon the forklift three or four times a day because they come under fire," Walter says. "A lot of the work could be automated," thus alleviating people's exposure to danger, "but it's a very difficult task."HEAVY LIFTING IN HOSTILE TERRITORYThe forklift is designed to operate autonomously with high-level direction from a human supervisor who could be physically nearby, or safely ensconced in a remote bunker. In an initial training phase, the forklift learns the basic layout of the storage depot facility, such as where the reception area ism where incoming supply trucks arrive with a load of pallets ready to be stored, and where the storage areas are for those pallets to be deposited. The forklift can then be commanded to transport pallets from one place to another within the depot.Determining which pallets to pick up and where they need to go requires guidance from a human supervisor, at least for now. The supervisor's tablet computer, wirelessly linked to the forklift, displays the view from the forklift's forward-looking video camera. Using stylus gestures on the image, the supervisor indicates the truck to be unloaded, the pallet to be engaged next, and perhaps where on the pallet to insert the forklift tines. The supervisor also speaks to the tablet, indicating the desired destination of the target pallet. As the system gets more sophisticated, the supervisor would need to do less and less, eventually simply gesturing and saying "unload that truck," for example.But to ensure that it can always carry out the necessary tasks, if there's ever a problem with the automated system the machine reverts to a conventional manned forklift whenever someone climbs into the operator's cabin.TESTS UNDER WAYResearch began with a small test platform rigged with forklift tines and a variety of sensors and computers that was used for a series of indoor tests and is now continuing with a full-scale prototype being tested outdoors on the MIT campus. The work is part of several projects at CSAIL focused on "the development of situational awareness for machines," explains Seth Teller, professor of computer science and engineering and project lead. Situational awareness, Teller says, involves the use of sensing, motion, inference and memory to acquire "a model of the spatial layout of the world and its contents, to allow us to plan and move purposefully in the world." Humans develop these internal maps of their surroundings without even thinking about it, but "machines can't yet do it automatically."In developing the robotic system, the CSAIL researchers have made extensive use of computer code developed for other projects, including the autonomous vehicle MIT entered in the 2007 DARPA Grand Challenge auto race, in which unmanned cars navigated roads without human intervention, Teller says. That work has been reported in papers in the Journal of Field Robotics, and the forklift project itself is the subject of a paper being submitted for publication at an upcoming robotics conference. Among the tasks the robot must carry out automatically is avoiding unexpected obstacles, especially people who may be walking around in the area. That turned out to be less of a challenge than expected: "It is possible to detect moving people using laser range scanners," Walter says. "Things get much harder if people are trying to trick the system by hiding or standing very still," Teller notes.The forklift project has involved about 30 faculty, staff and students (including postdocs, PhD and MEng students, and UROPs) from MIT's CSAIL, LIDS, and Courses 2, 6 and 16, as well as from Lincoln Laboratory, Draper Laboratory and BAE Systems. It has been funded by the U.S. Army Logistics Innovation Agency.


A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on January 14, 2009 (download PDF).

]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/roboclam-1125.html">
<title>Dig this: RoboClam</title>
<link>http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/roboclam-1125.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[The simple razor clam has inspired a new MIT robot that could lead to a "smart" anchor that burrows through the ocean floor to reposition itself and could even reverse, making it easier to recover.The so-called RoboClam is being developed to explore the performance capabilities of clam-inspired digging, as well as to shed light on the behavior of the real animal. 

Above: A razor clam, Ensis directus, digging into sand View this post on MIT TechTV. 
"Our original goal was to develop a lightweight anchor that you could set then easily unset, something that's not possible with conventional devices," said Anette "Peko" Hosoi, an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering whose collaborators on the work are Amos Winter, a graduate student in her lab, and engineers at Bluefin Robotics Corp.Such devices could be useful, for example, as tethers for small robotic submarines that are routinely repositioned to monitor variables such as currents and temperature. Further, a device that can burrow into the seabed and be directed to a specific location could also be useful as a detonator for buried underwater mines.Winter presented the team's latest results Nov. 23 at a meeting of the American Physical Society.For several years, Hosoi's research has focused on novel propulsion mechanisms inspired by nature. So when faced with the anchor problem, "We thought, 'is there an animal that's well adapted to moving through sediments on the seafloor?'"The first stage of the research, Winter said, involved "looking at all the organisms I could find that dig into the ocean bottom, stick to it or cling to it mechanically."He found what the researchers dub the Ferrari of underwater diggers: the razor clam. The animals, about seven inches long by an inch wide, "can go about a centimeter a second, so you have to dig fast to catch them," said Winter, who became a licensed clam digger as a result of the research. Another reason razors make a good model for novel anchors: they can dig deeply (up to about 70 centimeters). Plus, in a measure of anchoring force, or how hard you pull before an anchor rips out of the soil compared to the energy required to embed the anchor, "razor clams beat everything, including the best anchors, by at least a factor of 10," Winter said. Research subject in hand, one of the team's first tests gave perplexing results. They pushed a clam shell cast in epoxy into "sand" composed of glass beads, and compared the amount of force necessary to do so to what the living animal is capable of. They found a major discrepancy between the two."They're much too weak to do what they do," Hosoi said. "So we knew they were doing something tricky."To find out what, Winter created a glass-sided box filled with water and beads, added a living clam, and watched the animal burrow. It turns out to be a multi-step process. The animal's tongue-like "foot" wiggles down into the sand, then the animal makes a quick up-and-down movement accompanied by opening and closing its shell. Together these movements propel it.By filming the movement of the beads, Winter made a startling discovery. The clam's quick up-and-down, opening-and-closing movements turn the waterlogged "sand" around it into a liquid-like quicksand. Experiments showed that "moving through a fluidized substrate [the quicksand] rather than a packed granular medium [ordinary sand] drastically reduces the drag force on the clam's body, bringing it to a point within the animal's strength capabilities," Winter reported.Over the past summer, Winter completed the RoboClam itself. Although only about the size of a lighter, it is supported by a large apparatus of pressure regulators, pistons and more that control such things as how hard the robot is pushed in each direction."Right now we're getting it up and running" for tests, Winter said. Among them, "we want to use RoboClam to verify the theory we've generated to describe how to dig like a clam."This work was sponsored by Bluefin, Battelle and Chevron.


A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on December 3, 2008 (download PDF).

]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/medialab-plymouth-1118.html">
<title>Media Lab creates Center for Future Storytelling</title>
<link>http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/medialab-plymouth-1118.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[The MIT Media Laboratory today announced the creation of the Center for Future Storytelling, made possible through a seven-year, $25 million commitment from Plymouth Rock Studios, a major motion picture and television studio that is expected to open in 2010 in Plymouth, Mass.With the establishment of the center, whose research program begins immediately, the Media Lab and Plymouth Rock Studios will collaborate to revolutionize how we tell our stories, from major motion pictures to peer-to-peer multimedia sharing. By applying leading-edge technologies to make stories more interactive, improvisational and social, researchers will seek to transform audiences into active participants in the storytelling process, bridging the real and virtual worlds, and allowing everyone to make their own unique stories with user-generated content on the Web. Center research will also focus on ways to revolutionize imaging and display technologies, including developing next-generation cameras and programmable studios, making movie production more versatile and economic."Storytelling is at the very root of what makes us uniquely human," said Frank Moss, Media Lab director and holder of the Jerome Wiesner Professorship of Media Arts and Sciences. "It is how we share our experiences, learn from our past, and imagine our future. But how we tell our stories depends on another uniquely human characteristic -- our ability to invent and harness technology.  From the printing press to the Internet, technology has given people new ways to tell their stories, allowing them to reach new levels of creativity and personal fulfillment. The shared vision of the MIT Media Lab and Plymouth Rock Studios allows us to take the next quantum leap in storytelling, empowering ordinary people to connect in extraordinary ways.""This is a great opportunity to draw on the exceptional intelligence and innovation for which the Media Lab is known worldwide," said David Kirkpatrick, chairman and executive managing officer of Plymouth Rock Studios and former president of Paramount's Motion Picture Group. "Plymouth Rock Studios was conceived as a source for innovation and as a proving ground for new storytelling technologies. This collaboration will transform the movie-making model, and erase some of the technology barriers that constrain the narrative form."The Center for Future Storytelling will be co-directed by three Media Lab principal investigators: V. Michael Bove Jr., an expert in object-based media and interactive television; LG Associate Professor Cynthia Breazeal, a leader in the field of personal robots and human-robot interaction; and Associate Professor Ramesh Raskar, a pioneer in the development of new imaging, display and performance-capture technologies.Research will range from on-set motion capture to accurately and unobtrusively merge human performers and digital character models; to next-generation synthetic performer technologies, such as richly interactive, highly expressive robotic or animated characters; to cameras that will spawn entirely new visual art forms; to morphable movie studios, where one studio can be turned into many through advanced visual imaging techniques; to holographic TV. It will draw on technologies pioneered at the Media Lab, such as digital systems that understand people at an emotional level, or cameras capable of capturing the intent of the storyteller."We see this as an experiment in collaborative education, but also as a bold adventure in business innovation that could have significance well beyond the motion picture industry," Moss said.


A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on November 19, 2008 (download PDF).

]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/surgical-robots-1117.html">
<title>Going under the (robotic) knife</title>
<link>http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/surgical-robots-1117.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[MIT students will take to the operating table next Monday, Nov. 24, to show off their robotic engineering skills in the final presentations for Course 2.12 (Introduction to Robotics).Four teams of students have spent the past seven weeks building robotic arms and writing software that will allow them to remotely make an incision in a silicone "organ" and remove a jelly bean masquerading as a tumor.The final presentation will be held at 3 p.m. Monday in Room 1-005 and is open to the public.Surgery is a rapidly growing sector of robotics business, says Professor of Mechanical Engineering Harry Asada, who teaches the course."Augmenting a surgeon's skills and expertise with superb precision and dexterity of robotic devices, we can expect highly reliable, minimally invasive surgical operations," he says. "However, there are many technical challenges to make the system truly useful."The course emphasis is on learning to design a robot that can perform a specific task and operate within a confined space, says Harrison Chin, laboratory instructor for the class.Past years' course assignments include building search and rescue robots, and building robots for automated inspection of Big Dig tunnels."We try to motivate it with a real world problem," says Lael Odhner, one of the laboratory TAs for the class and a graduate student in mechanical engineering.


A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on November 19, 2008 (download PDF).

]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/odyssey4-0925.html">
<title>MIT&#x27;s new underwater robot can hover in place</title>
<link>http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/odyssey4-0925.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[MIT researchers have designed a new robotic underwater vehicle that can hover in place like a helicopter -- an invaluable tool for deepwater oil explorers, marine archaeologists, oceanographers and others.



The Odyssey IV AUV, temporarily tethered, is driven around by a joystick. Video courtesy MIT AUV Lab.
  View more Odyssey IV videos on YouTube

&nbsp;				


The new craft, called Odyssey IV, is the latest in a series of small, inexpensive artificially intelligent submarines developed over the last two decades by the MIT Sea Grant College Program's Autonomous Underwater Vehicles Laboratory. The Odyssey series revolutionized underwater research in the 1990s by introducing the thrifty and highly capable underwater robots. But the previous Odyssey vehicles still had one significant limitation: Like sharks, they could only operate while continuously moving forward.No more. The new Odyssey IV, which has just completed sea trials off Woods Hole, Mass., can move through the deep ocean, up to 6,000 meters down, stopping anywhere in the water column and constantly correcting for currents and obstacles. Navigating to its preprogrammed destination, it can hover in place, making detailed inspections of the footings of an offshore oil platform, or photographing the flora and fauna around an undersea vent."Our old subs needed to swim, to go forward, in order to maintain maneuvering capability," says Chryssostomos Chryssostomidis, director of the MIT Sea Grant Program. "People wanted to be able to work in the ocean and stop and hover to do a specific task. In the past, you could only fly over a scene, take a picture, then fly over again and take another picture. Now, I can stop over a scene that's of interest, and stay and make measurements. We'll be able to observe underwater scenes in much more detail."This summer, this latest-generation craft has been demonstrating its new abilities on its first scientific mission, a study of the George's Bank area of the Gulf of Maine, which is hugely important to the region's commercial fisheries. Odyssey is being deployed in a series of dives to map and observe an invasive species of sea squirt called Didemnum that has been infesting New England waters. MIT Sea Grant's Judy Pederson has been tracking the Didemnum invasion for several years, hoping to prevent it from smothering important native species; Odyssey IV will be her eyes on the seafloor.And the new craft's unique capabilities go beyond just looking at objects. "Like a giant helicopter, this can pick up cargo underwater," Chryssostomidis says. "Now, we can visit an oil well, pick up a sample and bring it back to shore." With the addition of a mechanical arm, the vessel will be able to do manipulations such as twisting a valve open or closed.Not only can the craft hover, it can move quickly, up to two meters per second going straight ahead. Both its speed and its ability to stop in place are achieved through the combined action of fins and thrusters on each side, and at the bow and stern of the two-meter-long craft.The new vehicle may be able to stop in place, but Chryssostomidis and his colleague Franz Hover, an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, and their team, research engineers Jim Morash, Victor Polidoro, Justin Eskesen and graduate student Dylan Owens, certainly are not. With the initial sea trials of Odyssey IV just completed, they are focused squarely on moving ahead to their goals. They need to develop vastly improved power-storage and communications capabilities, to enable these vehicles to stay underwater longer, cover more terrain, and send back more data to scientists on shore. Ultimately, Chryssostomidis says, he hopes his team will produce an AUV that can spend a full year underwater, collecting data and transmitting it to its home base, without any need to surface at all."Once we prove the hovering capability foolproof, as we think it is now, the next challenge for me to worry about is the issue of recharging, so that I can be free of the surface vessel," he says. He also hopes to develop better manipulator arms that will be able to interact more flexibly with the undersea environment, to pick up objects or carry out repairs.While Odyssey IV just successfully passed its first sea trials over the summer, its progress over the last few years has been detailed in a series of MIT Sea Grant technical papers, journal articles and conference presentations. For now, Chryssostomidis is reveling in the fact that Odyssey IV, after years of development, has passed its initial tests in the ocean with flying colors. No matter how good the design, that's not something you can take for granted, he explains. "The sea is very unforgiving. If there's anything that can go wrong, the sea will find it."


A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on October 1, 2008 (download PDF).

]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/wheelchair-0919.html">
<title>Robot wheelchair finds its own way</title>
<link>http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/wheelchair-0919.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[MIT researchers are developing a new kind of autonomous wheelchair that can learn all about the locations in a given building, and then take its occupant to a given place in response to a verbal command.

       

Demonstration of an MIT-designed wheelchair that responds to verbal commands. Video courtesy Nicholas Roy.
  View video post on MIT TechTV

&nbsp;				


Just by saying "take me to the cafeteria" or "go to my room," the wheelchair user would be able to avoid the need for controlling every twist and turn of the route and could simply sit back and relax as the chair moves from one place to another based on a map stored in its memory."It's a system that can learn and adapt to the user," says Nicholas Roy, assistant professor of aeronautics and astronautics and co-developer of the wheelchair. "People have different preferences and different ways of referring" to places and objects, he says, and the aim is to have each wheelchair personalized for its user and the user's environment. Unlike other attempts to program wheelchairs or other mobile devices, which rely on an intensive process of manually capturing a detailed map of a building, the MIT system can learn about its environment in much the same way as a person would: By being taken around once on a guided tour, with important places identified along the way. For example, as the wheelchair is pushed around a nursing home for the first time, the patient or a caregiver would say: "this is my room" or "here we are in the foyer" or "nurse's station." Also collaborating on the project are Bryan Reimer, a research scientist at MIT's AgeLab, and Seth Teller, professor of computer science and engineering and head of the Robotics, Vision, and Sensor Networks (RVSN) group at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). Teller says the RVSN group is developing a variety of machines, of various sizes, that can have situational awareness, that is, that can "learn these mental maps, in order to help people do what they want to do, or do it for them." Besides the wheelchair, the devices range in scale from a location-aware cellphone all the way up to an industrial forklift that can transport large loads from place to place outdoors, autonomously.Outdoors in the open, such systems can rely on GPS receivers to figure out where they are, but inside buildings that method usually doesn't work, so other approaches are needed. Roy and Teller have been exploring the use of WiFi signals, as well as wide-field cameras and laser rangefinders, coupled to computer systems that can construct and localize within an internal map of the environment as they move around. "I'm interested in having robots build and maintain a high-fidelity model of the world," says Teller, whose central research focus is developing machines that have situational awareness. For now, the wheelchair prototype relies on a WiFi system to make its maps and then navigate through them, which requires setting up a network of WiFi nodes around the facility in advance. After months of preliminary tests on campus, they have begun trials in a real nursing home environment with real patients, at the Boston Home in Dorchester, a facility where all of the nearly 100 patients have partial or substantial loss of muscle control and use wheelchairs.As the research progresses, Roy says he'd like to add a collision-avoidance system using detectors to prevent the chair from bumping into other wheelchairs, walls or other obstacles. In addition,Teller says he hopes to add mechanical arms to the chairs, to aid the patients further by picking up and manipulating objects -- everything from flipping a light switch to picking up a cup and bringing it to the person's lips. The research has been funded by Nokia and Microsoft.


A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on September 24, 2008 (download PDF).

]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/vision-memory-0908.html">
<title>MIT researchers find memory capacity much bigger than previously thought</title>
<link>http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/vision-memory-0908.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[In recent years, demonstrations of memory's failures have convinced many scientists that human memory does not store the details of our experiences. However, a new study from MIT cognitive neuroscientists may overturn this widespread belief: They have shown that given the right setting, the human brain can record an amazing amount of information.In the study, the results of which could have implications for artificial intelligence and for understanding memory disorders, people viewed thousands of objects over five hours. Remarkably, afterward they were able to remember each object in great detail."Visual long-term memory capacity is much higher than previously believed and shown," said Aude Oliva, associate professor of brain and cognitive sciences and senior author of a paper describing the work, which will appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of Sept. 8.Co-authors include MIT graduate students Timothy Brady and Talia Konkle, and George Alvarez, a former postdoctoral associate in brain and cognitive sciences and current assistant professor of psychology at Harvard University.Oliva and her students showed subjects nearly 3,000 images, one at a time, for three seconds each. In tests the same day, they were shown pairs of images and asked to select the exact image they had seen earlier.Subjects were tested with three types of pairings: two totally different objects; an object and a different example of the same type of object (e.g. two different remote controls); and an object and a slightly altered version (e.g. a cup that is either full or half-full).Against all expectations, subjects' recall rates on the three types of memory tests were 92 percent, 88 percent and 87 percent, respectively. "To give just one example, this means that after having seen thousands of objects, subjects didn't just remember which cabinet they had seen, but also that the cabinet door was slightly open," Brady said.While a previous study from the 1970s showed that people could remember many individual images, scientists assumed that people could only remember abstract descriptions of the images (for example, "a photo of a wedding"), but not details about each one.The new results suggest that visual capacity is several orders of magnitude higher than the older study implied. "If you encode a lot of detail for each object, you need a lot more space," Alvarez said.Traditional models of vision theorize that details necessarily slip away as visual input travels from the eyes to higher processing centers in the brain. The new results may prompt neuroscientists to revise those models to account for how people remembered so many details, Konkle said.Previous studies had never found that we could hold so many details in memory, in part because they didn't look for it.However, the researchers believe that multiple factors play a critical role in how well people remember details. For instance, it makes a huge difference if people are motivated to pay attention to detail, which they were in this study."You have to try. You have to want to do it," Konkle said.Second, it helps if the objects viewed are familiar. The images used in this study were all everyday items such as remote controls, dollar bills and loaves of bread. The results would likely be different if subjects were asked to remember details of abstract artworks, Oliva said. In future studies, the team hopes to explore factors that affect the level of detail at which memories are encoded.These results establish a new bound on the size of human memory, and give credence to artificial intelligence approaches that depend primarily on a large memory capacity. The research also has implications for diagnosing memory disorders using more sensitive tests of what is remembered and what is forgotten.The research was funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship, and a National Research Service Award.For a demo of the study or more information, see cvcl.mit.edu/MM.


A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on September 10, 2008 (download PDF).

]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/brain-data-0825.html">
<title>MIT model helps computers sort data more like humans</title>
<link>http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/brain-data-0825.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[Humans have a natural tendency to find order in sets of information,Â a skill that has proven difficult to replicate in computers. Faced with a large set of data, computers don't know where to begin -- unless they're programmed to look for a specific structure, such as a hierarchy, linear order, or a set of clusters.Now, in an advance that may impact the field of artificial intelligence, a new model developed at MIT can help computers recognize patterns the same way that humans do. The model, reported earlier this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, can analyze a set of data and figure out which type of organizational structure best fits it."Instead of looking for a particular kind of structure, we came up with a broader algorithm that is able to look for all of these structures and weigh them against each other," said Josh Tenenbaum, an associate professor of brain and cognitive sciences at MIT and senior author of the paper.The model could help scientists in many fields analyze large amounts of data, and could also shed light on how the human brain discovers patterns.The computer algorithm was developed by recent MIT PhD recipient Charles Kemp, now an assistant professor of psychology at Carnegie Mellon University, along with Tenenbaum.The model considers a range of possible data structures, such as trees, linear orders, rings, dominance hierarchies, clusters, etc. It finds the best-fitting structure of each type for a given data set and then picks the type of structure that best represents the data.Humans perform the same feat in everyday life, often unconsciously. Several scientific milestones have resulted from the human skill of finding patterns in data -- for example, the development of the periodic table of the chemical elements or the organization of biological species into a tree-structured system of classification. Children exhibit this data organization skill at a young age, when they learn that social networks can be organized into cliques, and that words can fit into overlapping categories (for example, dog, mammal, animal)."We think of children as taking in data, forming theories, and testing those theories with experiments. They're like little scientists," Tenenbaum said. "Until now there's been no good computational model for how children can, like scientists, grasp the underlying global structure of a set of data."The research was funded by the James S. McDonnell Foundation Causal Learning Research Collaborative, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and the NTT Communication Sciences Laboratory.]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/moon-tt0521.html">
<title>MIT class asks: Fly me to the moon?</title>
<link>http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/moon-tt0521.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[Even for MIT, where so many classes and activities involve competitions and the creation of proposals that might lead to new businesses and to solving large technological challenges, this one was unusual. This semester's aero-astro graduate space systems engineering class, 16.89, was aimed at figuring out whether MIT could, or should, mount an entry into the $20-million Google Lunar X-Prize competition, announced last fall.After three and a half months of research on what it would take to meet the prize's requirements--getting a privately-funded robotic craft to the moon, having it travel at least 500 meters once it gets there, and sending back streams of high-definition still and video imagery--the bottom line the students arrived at was: Yes, we can (technically)!Whether it's possible to raise the necessary funding and pull together the necessary partnerships with industry, and whether the investment of time, money and hard work is worth pursuing, are matters still under discussion. A decision is expected within about six weeks, says Aeronautics and Astronautics Professor of the Practice Jeffrey Hoffman, who taught the class together with Professor Edward Crawley.A prize entry would cost between $20 and $30 million, the class concluded, most of it for purchasing launch services to get the craft into low-Earth orbit.The class looked at several different options for each phase of the mission. For example, one choice is whether to launch the craft to the moon directly from Earth, or send it into Earth orbit first and then to the moon. Another is how to achieve the 500-meter trip once it arrives on the moon: Either having a wheeled rover or a spherical "roller" separate from the craft after lunar touchdown, or using a "hopper" approach, by having the whole craft land, then take off again, move to the side, and land again. And there were dozens of smaller choices to be made, including the materials to use for the structure, the kind of batteries to use and the best ways of communicating data back to Earth.Hoffman, a former astronaut who flew five shuttle missions and carried out the first repair mission to the Hubble Space Telescope, says this class served a dual purpose. First, as students in the class do every year, they got to solve a very specific challenge to design an entire space mission, learning about all the different aspects involved in that process, from evaluating the technical tradeoffs involved in every choice of hardware or strategy, to the challenges of working together as an effective team.Going through that process "illustrates some of the basic principles of the design process," Hoffman says, and thus fulfills the pedagogical purpose of the course. But in addition, "in this case, the idea of designing a lunar robotic mission is interesting in its own right," and because of the possibility that an MIT-led team might actually enter the contest, gives this project an extra dose of reality and excitement."It's not just a paper study, in the sense that something is riding on it," Hoffman says. And if the decision is made to go ahead with a contest entry, "it's a major undertaking, a multiyear project. It will mean putting together a team--students will come and go, and faculty will provide continuity," he says.There were 15 students in the class, but if MIT decides to enter the competition, the team might include some of them as well as others who are not yet involved. "We would hope to attract others, including participants from other departments," such as EECS, CSAIL, EAPS and the MIT Sloan School of Management."It's a big challenge," Hoffman says. Ten teams have already officially registered to participate in the lunar challenge, which was created by X-Prize Foundation founder Peter Diamandis '83, SM '88. Among the teams is a student group from Carnegie-Mellon University, which has a partnership with Raytheon and has vowed to reach the moon by July 20, 2009--the 40th anniversary of the first lunar landing by astronauts. 


A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on May 21, 2008 (download PDF).

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<item rdf:about="http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/2007-contest-0509.html">
<title>Beaver-like robots face off in annual MIT contest</title>
<link>http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/2007-contest-0509.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[Robots designed to toss pool-noodle trees into a river of ping-pong balls ruled over competitors focused on rescuing fuzzy toy beavers in this year's 2.007 contest, "Da (yes) MIT, or Save the Baby Beavers," held on Thursday, May 8, in the Johnson Athletic Center at MIT. The student machines were designed and built for the MIT mechanical engineering course, Introduction to Design and Manufacturing. Each was required to perform beaver-like tasks--knocking down trees, gathering food in the form of street hockey balls--while warding off competitors in 45-second rounds. Contestants used PlayStation controllers to drive their autonomous 'bots. The top four 2.007 winners are all sophomores in mechanical engineering. Gregory Tao used the tree-toss strategy to win the contest, defeating Ethan Huwe in the final rounds of the two-night adventure in extreme engineering.Aaron Ramirez, a persistent high scorer, came in third in the contest yet triumphed in couture: He wore an Iron Man suit made of blue foamies, a snap-together toy, for the evening. Radu Gogoana took fourth place. All will travel to Brazil this summer to participate in the annual International Design Contest, a global version of MIT's 2.007 in which students from different countries form engineering design teams and build robots. Alexander Slocum, professor of mechanical engineering, emceed the event, mixing his signature auctioneer's patter with a message about why the contest and MIT students' excitement about hands-on engineering is so important. "MIT is the world university, and when kids work together this way I know there's hope. This is what the future of the planet is about--experimenting, testing, failing and playing with ideas. That's how learning takes place," he said. "That's how deep geek-dom turns into cool technology." Slocum, who has run the 2.007 contest and taught the Introduction to Design course for more than a decade, added energy-awareness as an engineering principle this year, he said. Notably absent were the massive plywood and lumber contest tables of previous years. The robots now run on the floor, saving wood and other materials. "This is our first attempt to do a green contest. We've saved materials by using the floor, and other MIT programs like MITES and the Edgerton Center will use the scoring furniture. Everything is recycled," Slocum said.Yet the spirit of invention prevails. As Slocum put in his wrap-up of 2.007 for 2008, "The machines, the students, it's all geek-alicious. It's geek-aliciously manufacturistic robustification." 
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on May 14, 2008 (download PDF).

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<item rdf:about="http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/nexi-0409.html">
<title>Meet Nexi, the Media Lab&#x27;s latest robot and Internet star</title>
<link>http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/nexi-0409.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[A new experimental robot from the MIT Media Lab can slant its eyebrows in anger, or raise them in surprise, and show a wide assortment of facial expressions to communicate with people in human-centric terms. Called Nexi, it is aimed at a range of applications for personal robots and human-robot teamwork.Â  Nexi has become something of an Internet celebrity after aÂ preliminary video demonstration of its facial expressions using pre-scripted movements was posted this month on YouTube. The spot has been accessed more than 70,000 times, and viewers have reacted with comments ranging from awe and bemusement ("This robot seems more humane then most humans") to shock and alarm ("Creepy. Very creepy").Created by a group headed by Media Lab's Cynthia Breazeal, known for earlier expressive robots such as Kismet, the new product is known as an MDS (mobile, dextrous, social) robot. Unlike Kismet, which consisted only of a robotic head, the Nexi MDS is a complete mobile manipulator robot augmented with rich expressive abilities. It is designed to ultimately ride on self-balancing wheels like the Segway transporter, but it currently uses an additional set of supportive wheels to operate as a statically stable platform in its early stage of development. It has hands to manipulate objects, eyes (video cameras), ears (an array of microphones), and a 3-D infrared camera and laser rangefinder to support real-time tracking of objects, people and voices as well as indoor navigation.Â Â The development of Nexi was led by the MIT Media Lab's Personal Robots Group in collaboration with Prof. Rod Grupen at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and two MIT robotic spin-off companies. The project was originally funded by an Office of Naval Research Defense University Research Instrumentation Program (DURIP) award to develop a novel class of robots that can engage in sophisticated forms of peer-to-peer teamwork with humans in uncertain environments. A recent ONR Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) award, for which Breazeal is the PI, aims at developing technologies and demonstrations for teams comprised of humans and autonomous aerial robots in addition to the MDS robots. Several MIT faculty are part of the MURI effort (Nick Roy and Jon How in Aero Astro, and Deb Roy at the Media Lab) in addition to other collaborators at Stanford, Vanderbilt, UMass-Amherst and University of Washington.Â A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on April 16, 2008 (download PDF).
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<title>An empirical study of constraint logic programming and answer set programming solutions of combinatorial problems</title>
<link>http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/tandf/teta/2009/00000021/00000002/art00001</link>
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<title>A model for the dynamic coordination of multiple competing goals</title>
<link>http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/tandf/teta/2009/00000021/00000002/art00002</link>
<description><![CDATA[ ]]></description>
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<title>Computational theories of mind, and Fodor&#x27;s analysis of neural network behaviour</title>
<link>http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/tandf/teta/2009/00000021/00000002/art00003</link>
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