Wired reporter Margaret Rhodes writes that Media Lab spinoff Ori is developing transformable furniture to help maximize living spaces. “With the push of a button—or, with future versions of the software, at the sound of a voice or wave of a hand—pieces of Ori furniture will slide up, down, or over, reconfiguring spaces in mere moments.”
Research Scientist Caleb Harper speaks with ABC News' Justine Quart about his work developing growing chambers that can be used to cultivate plants around the world. Harper explains that he wanted to “create a tool that other people could use to solve problems. I’m just a tool maker for the next generation of farmers.”
Barbara Ortutay writes for the Associated Press about several startups aiming to make breast pumps more user-friendly. Ortutay notes that many of the startups, including Mighty Mom Hush-a-Pump, started at the Media Lab’s 2014 “Make the Breast Pump Not Suck” Hackathon.
April Glasper writes for Wired about the robot Prof. Cynthia Breazeal created specifically for domestic purposes. Glasper explains that robot, dubbed Jibo “learns by listening and asking questions. Jibo uses machine learning, speech and facial recognition, and natural language processing to learn from its interactions with people.”
Researchers at the Media Lab believe it’s possible to virtually transfer thoughts to an artificial intelligence entity that continues to live after we’ve died, writes Dan Tynan for The Guardian. “My ultimate goal is to bridge the gap between life and death by eternalizing our digital identity,” says Visiting Prof. Hossein Rahnama.
Janissa Delzo writes for CNN that MIT researchers have developed a platform to 3-D print thousands of hair-like structures in minutes. "The purpose of this project is looking beyond the aesthetic perspective," explains graduate student Jifei Ou. "What kind of new functionality can we bring to the material?"
Jordan Graham of the Boston Herald writes that the Open Music Initiative - a new collaboration between MIT, Berklee College of Music, and the music industry - will create a new standard method of calculating and tracking how artists, rights holders, music labels, and distributors get paid in the internet era.
Using data compiled by the Media Lab’s Laboratory for Social Machines concerning Twitter conversation before and after the mass shooting in Orlando, Aaron Blake of The Washington Post shows that political priorities leading up to the presidential election “may depend heavily on world and domestic events that nobody can predict.”
Andrea Shea reports for WBUR that researchers from the MIT Media Lab and the Berklee College of Music have started a new initiative aimed at tackling ownership, licensing and distribution rights within the music industry. Shea explains that the initiative is focused on “laying the groundwork for a shared, open database of ownership rights.”
Prof. Hugh Herr has been named the recipient of Spain’s 2016 Princess of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research, according to the AP. Herr’s achievements “have had a major impact on people with disabilities, through adaptive knee prostheses for femoral amputees, and ankle-and-foot orthopedic prostheses for those with clubfoot or disabilities caused by cerebral palsy or multiple sclerosis.”
Researchers in MIT’s Tangible Media Group have developed visual cues to help people learn how to play the piano, reports G. Clay Whittaker for Popular Science. “Animated figures walk, dance, and lumber across the keyboard in telling motions that help you learn not just which keys to strike, but how hard and for what duration to strike them.”
Popular Science reporter G. Clay Whittaker writes that MIT researchers have developed a new interface that mimics the properties of other materials. Whittaker writes that the project “goes a step past responsive design. Your interactions with the surface changes based on what you've programmed it to replicate: water, rubber, a mattress.”
Wired reporter Liz Stinson writes about the MIT Tangible Media Group’s new shapeshifting interface that can mimic the characteristics of a wide variety of materials. The interface “hints at how materiality could be used to build a tangible bridge between our digital and physical interfaces,” writes Stinson.
Professors Edward Boyden and Max Tegmark are honored as “Game Changers” in a Boston Globe special section dedicated to highlighting people and organizations for their work. The Globe features Boyden’s work developing tools to better understand the brain, and Tegmark’s involvement in the Future of Life Institute.
Hashim Sarkis, dean of SA+P, speaks with Vanessa Quirk of Metropolis about MIT’s widespread presence at the 2016 Venice Biennale, the Institute’s approach to architectural challenges and its interdisciplinary ethos. “MIT thrives on what it calls complex societal problems,” says Sarkis. “And what better complex societal problems are there today than cities and architecture and the environment.”