MIT engineers have developed a wireless, reconfigurable chip that could easily be snapped onto existing devices like a LEGO brick, reports Miriam Fauzia for The Daily Beast. “Having the flexibility to customize and upgrade an old device is a modder’s dream,” writes Fauzia, “but the chip may also help reduce electronic waste, which is estimated at 50 million tons a year worldwide.”
Indian Express reporter Sethu Pradeep writes that MIT researchers have developed a low-energy security chip designed to prevent side channel attacks on smart devices. “It can be used in any sensor nodes which connects user data,” explains graduate student Saurav Maji. “For example, it can be used in monitoring sensors in the oil and gas industry, it can be used in self-driving cars, in fingerprint matching devices and many other applications.”
Nextiles, an MIT startup founded by alumnus George Sun, is developing smart threads, reports John Koetsier for Forbes. “We’re literally trying to sew the same kind of highway of data streams that you can normally find in a computer chip, but do that in clothing,” says Sun.
MIT researchers have developed new programmable fibers that could help transform clothing into wearable computers, reports Kyle Mizokami for Popular Mechanics. “The polymer fibers contain hundreds of tiny silicon microchips that, once electrified, can sustain a digital connection across tens of meters,” Mizokami writes.
Forbes contributor Eric Tegler spotlights how MIT researchers are developing a fiber with digital capabilities. “Individuals wearing garments with digital fibers could be alerted to vital information about their physiology and environmental exposures, and share health/injury and location data with support forces,” Tegler explains.
UPI reporter Brooks Hays writes that researchers from MIT and other institutions have developed a programmable digital fiber that can capture, store and analyze data. The technology could “be paired with machine learning algorithms and used to make smart fabrics to record health data and aid medical diagnosis,” writes Hays.
Writing for Wired, Will Knight spotlights how MIT researchers developed a new technique to squeeze an AI vision algorithm onto a low-power computer chip that can run for months on a battery. The advance “could help bring more advanced AI capabilities, like image and voice recognition, to home appliances and wearable devices, along with medical gadgets and industrial sensors.”
NPR’s Scott Simon remembers former MIT Professor Michael Hawley. Simon notes that Hawley’s “Things That Think and Toys of Tomorrow projects prophesied so much of the ways in which our world would become digitally connected.”
Technology Review reporter Will Knight spotlights how MIT researchers have developed a new chip that is many times more efficient than silicon chips and could help bring AI to a multitude of devices where power is limited. “We need new hardware because Moore’s law has slowed down,” explains Prof. Vivienne Sze.
Writing for Wired, Prof. Carlo Ratti predicts that in 2019 researchers will develop new methods for allowing people to use the internet in less intrusive ways. “The internet of things will continue to grow, and we will work out more ways to develop ‘things’ that allow us to enjoy the internet without being overwhelmed by it,” writes Ratti.
Writing for The Wall Street Journal, Dr. Joseph Coughlin, director of the AgeLab, writes that smart technologies and on-demand services could allow seniors to stay in their own homes. Coughlin notes that the freedom the connected home provides for choosing services, “is an enormous benefit not only for older adults’ wallets, but for their own sense of independence and personal control.”
MIT researchers have developed a way to prevent the theft of sensitive data hidden on a computer’s memory, writes TechCrunch’s Zack Whittaker. Storing sensitive data in different memory locations creates “clear boundaries for where sharing should and should not happen, so that programs with sensitive information can keep that data reasonably secure,” explains graduate student Vladimir Kiriansky.
Prof. Yoel Fink speaks with BBC Click about his work developing fabrics embedded with light-emitting diodes that could help keep pedestrians safe. Fink explains that the fabric can detect the lights from an oncoming vehicle and establish an “affirmative link between the car and pedestrian.”
In an article for Forbes, AgeLab Director Joseph Coughlin explores how the advent of smart devices and the sharing economy could transform the senior housing industry. “Senior housing properties could become centers of services enabling aging in place in the home,” argues Coughlin, “forming a virtual pipeline to senior housing residences from assisted living to skilled nursing.”
Kate Baggaley writes for NBC News that movement tracking technology developed by MIT researchers can be helpful for monitoring the elderly or sick. The system could be used to monitor an elderly relative and, “receive an instant alert if he or she falls,” or a doctor could use it to monitor the progression of a patient’s disease, explains Baggaley.