MIT researchers developed a new system that enables individuals to more easily create customized social applications that can seamlessly interoperate with one another (Credits: MIT News; iStock).
CSAIL article
System lets people personalize online social spaces while staying connected with others

Say a local concert venue wants to engage its community by giving social media followers an easy way to share and comment on new music from emerging artists. Rather than working within the constraints of existing social platforms, the venue might want to create its own social app with the functionality that would be best for its community. But building a new social app from scratch involves many complicated programming steps, and even if the venue can create a customized app, the organization’s followers may be unwilling to join the new platform because it could mean leaving their connections and data behind.

The “Steerable Scene Generation” approach creates digital scenes of things like kitchens, living rooms, and restaurants that engineers can use to simulate lots of real-world robot interactions and scenarios (Credit: Image courtesy of the researchers).
CSAIL article
Using generative AI to diversify virtual training grounds for robots

Chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude have experienced a meteoric rise in usage over the past three years because they can help you with a wide range of tasks. Whether you’re writing Shakespearean sonnets, debugging code, or need an answer to an obscure trivia question, artificial intelligence (AI) systems seem to have you covered. The source of this versatility? Billions or even trillions of textual data points across the Internet.

CSAIL researchers highlighted their research at the intersection of holographic art and human-computer interaction. Including among these projects were objects w/angle-dependent hues generated by nanoscale diffraction, as well as multi-perspective imagery on 3D-printed items (Credit: Alex Shipps/MIT CSAIL and the researchers).
CSAIL article
CSAIL research at the intersection of holographic art and human-computer interaction

In 1968, MIT Professor Stephen Benton transformed holography by making three-dimensional images viewable under white light. Over fifty years later, holography’s legacy is inspiring new directions at MIT CSAIL, where the Human-Computer Interaction Engineering (HCIE) group, led by Professor Stefanie Mueller, is pioneering programmable color — a future in which light and material appearance can be dynamically controlled.

Startup Events
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From Useful to Meaningful: Teaching Robots an Emotional Quotient
Tech Talk with iRobot and LDV Partners

Join CSAIL Alliances and Alliances member LDV Partners for an exciting fireside chat with the founder of iRobot.


Robots earned their place in our homes by being reliably useful. What will it take for them to become meaningfully social? In this fireside chat, Colin Angle—founder and longtime CEO of iRobot, now building Familiar Machines & Magic—joins Dionysis Panagiotopoulos, Partner at LDV Partners and an investor in FMM, to explore the next wave of embodied AI: machines that can “read the room,” act with social appropriateness, and earn human trust.

“Our system can turn a seemingly static, abstract image into an attention-catching animation,” says MIT PhD student Ticha Sethapakdi, a lead researcher on the FabObscura project. “The tool lowers the barrier to entry to creating these barrier-grid animations, while helping users express a variety of designs that would’ve been very time-consuming to explore by hand” (Credits: Courtesy of the researchers).
CSAIL article
MIT software tool turns everyday objects into animated, eye-catching displays

Whether you’re an artist, advertising specialist, or just looking to spruce up your home, turning everyday objects into dynamic displays is a great way to make them more visually engaging. For example, you could turn a kids’ book into a handheld cartoon of sorts, making the reading experience more immersive and memorable for a child.

A new software and hardware toolkit called SustainaPrint can help users strategically combine strong and weak filaments to achieve the best of both worlds. Instead of printing an entire object with high-performance plastic, the system analyzes a model, predicts where the object is most likely to experience stress, and reinforces those zones with stronger material (Credits: Alex Shipps/MIT CSAIL, using assets from Pixabay and the researchers).
CSAIL article
A greener way to 3D print stronger stuff

3D printing has come a long way since its invention in 1983 by Chuck Hull, who pioneered stereolithography, a technique that solidifies liquid resin into solid objects using ultraviolet lasers. Over the decades, 3D printers have evolved from experimental curiosities into tools capable of producing everything from custom prosthetics to complex food designs, architectural models, and even functioning human organs. 

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