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New Scientist reporter Chelsea Whyte writes that MIT researchers have developed a smart glove that enables neural networks to identify objects by touch alone. “There’s been a lot of hope that we’ll be able to understand the human grasp someday and this will unlock our potential to create this dexterity in robots,” explains MIT alumnus Subramanian Sundaram.
MIT researchers have developed a low-cost electronic glove equipped with sensors that can use tactical information to identify objects, reports Katherine Wu for NOVA Next. Wu writes that the glove is “easy and economical to manufacture, carrying a wallet-friendly price tag of only $10 per glove, and could someday inform the design of prosthetics, surgical tools, and more.”
In this video, Mashable highlights how CSAIL researchers have developed a new system that can help lift heavy objects by mirroring human activity. The system uses sensors that monitor muscle activity and detect changes in the user’s arm.
Boston.com reporter Nik DeCosta-Klipa speaks with Bernard Fabrot about the cryptographic puzzle -- developed by Prof. Ron Rivest -- that he recently solved. Fabrot explains that he realized “basically that the way computers evolved 15 years after the puzzle was created meant that it was possible to solve it on a regular PC much faster than what was expected in 1999.”
Boston Globe reporter Emily Sweeney writes about the opening of a time capsule housed at MIT’s Stata Center. The capsule held an “array of tech treasures, including the original 1992 proposal for the World Wide Web; a 1979 user manual for VisiCalc, an early spreadsheet program developed by MIT alumni Bob Frankston and Dan Bricklin; and an Altair BASIC interpreter that was donated by Microsoft founder Bill Gates.”
CSAIL unsealed a time capsule containing artifacts from computing history at MIT after a self-taught programmer cracked the capsule’s cryptopuzzle, reports Kathryn Sotnik for NECN. MIT alumnus, Bob Frankston, who programmed the first electronic spreadsheet, noted “it’s really a reminder in a sense how long ago it was, and how much people today take these things for granted.”
Eric Kane reports for 7 News on how a time capsule at the Stata Center was unsealed at MIT this week after a Belgium programmer solved the cryptopuzzle sealing the container. The time capsule contained “MIT computing artifacts and material relating to the invention of the Internet, the ethernet, and the digital spreadsheet.”
Bloomberg News reporter Carol Massar spotlights how MIT researchers have developed a robot that can identify and sort recyclables. “The system includes a soft Teflon hand that uses tactile sensors to detect the size of an object and the pressure needed to grasp it,” Massar reports. “From there it can determine if it’s made of metal, paper or plastic.”
WCVB-TV’s Jennifer Eagan reports that researchers from MIT and MGH have developed a deep learning model that can predict a patient’s risk of developing breast cancer in the future from a mammogram image. Prof. Regina Barzilay explains that the model “can look at lots of pixels and variations of the pixels and capture very subtle patterns.”
Scientific American reporter Jeremy Hsu highlights how CSAIL researchers have developed a robot that can automatically sort recycling. The robot “uses soft Teflon ‘fingers,’ which have fingertip sensors to detect object size and stiffness,” Hsu explains.
MIT researchers have identified a new method to engineer neural networks in a way that allows them to be a tenth of the size of current networks without losing any computational ability, reports Avery Thompson for Popular Mechanics. “The breakthrough could allow other researchers to build AI that are smaller, faster, and just as smart as those that exist today,” Thompson explains.
HealthDay News reporter Amy Norton writes that MIT researchers have developed an AI system that can help predict a woman’s risk of developing breast cancer and provide more personalized care. “If you know a woman is at high risk, maybe she can be screened more frequently, or be screened using MRI,” explains graduate student Adam Yala.
Writing for The Washington Post, postdoctoral associate Gregory Falco argues that the computer systems operating satellites are vulnerable to cyberattacks. “Computer systems running our satellites haven’t kept up, making them prime targets for an attack,” warns Falco. “This makes our space assets a massive vulnerability — and it could get much worse if we’re not careful.”
Boston Globe reporter Emily Sweeney writes that a programmer has cracked a 20-year-old cryptographic puzzle that was created to celebrate 35 years of research at MIT’s Laboratory for Computer Science (now CSAIL). When he created the puzzle, Prof. Ron Rivest expected it would require “35 years of continuous computation to solve, with the computer being replaced every year by the next fastest model available.”
A cryptographic puzzle used to seal a time capsule at the Stata Center has been solved, reports Tim Caputo for WHDH News. Prof. Ron Rivest explains that the puzzle is based on a fairly simple operation. “Multiply a number by itself, divide by a third number and take the remainder,” he explains. “But, you do that over and over and over again.”