In the most recent episode of Building 32, Popescu explains how her research sits at the intersection of computational design, digital fabrication, and structural engineering.
MIT CSAIL researchers are joining the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) new Center for Human and Robot Co-Adaptation, where they’ll tackle a crucial question: What happens when assistive robots actually work with us?
Researchers from the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST), Korea, in collaboration with researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (MIT CSAIL), have developed “EMSWalker,” a new VR locomotion system that provides walking-related bodily sensations while the user remains seated.
RNA vaccines, which have been proven effective against Covid-19, are now being developed for many other diseases, including cancer. One of the drawbacks to these vaccines is that they require ultracold storage, but researchers from MIT have found a promising way to overcome that limitation.
Researchers created a new technique that accurately and rapidly matches X-rays captured during surgery with a patient’s preoperative 3D medical scan. This method could make it easier for clinicians to precisely pilot minimally invasive surgical tools, leading to faster and safer procedures.
As a child, you likely saw a few Disney movies depicting inanimate objects, such as clocks, cups, and toys, as interactive companions to humans — an act of pure magic, seemingly. But scientists at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) are now doing something similar: transforming stationary items into self-aware tools that perceive and respond to human motion to complete a task.
“What you see is what you get” is a guiding principle for many software engineers — create programs where the content you’re editing looks the same as the final product. But when you’re using generative AI (genAI) systems to 3D print, say, a mug, you’ll likely get a cup that can’t hold your coffee. Why is that?
Self-driving cars are often controlled by deep learning models that sometimes fail in unexpected situations. For instance, the car might inexplicably brake and block the path of an oncoming emergency vehicle. A human driver or passenger may need to react rapidly to prevent a collision.
A region of the brain called the striatum is critical for many cognitive and motor functions, including decision-making, control of movement, habit formation, and processing of reward. It also plays a role in addiction and is significantly affected by Huntington’s disease, schizophrenia, and other disorders.
It all started with some exasperated emails. Back in 2009, a group of researchers began venting their frustration with the programming languages designed to help scientists and other researchers perform complex mathematical operations and statistical simulations without learning how to code. These programming languages were rigid and slow. If scientists built something that really worked, they’d need to rewrite the entire program in another language just to run it more quickly.
