Lindsay Holmes writes for The Huffington Post about Koko, an application developed by MIT researchers to help users fight stress by crowdsourcing their questions and worries. “We want to take the same principles that keep our eyes glued to Facebook and Instagram 24 hours a day and redirect them to promote well-being,” explains founder Robert Morris.
In an article for The Boston Globe, Michael Andor Brodeur writes about the Reality Editor app, which was designed by researchers at the MIT Media Lab to allow users to connect and control physical objects. The app “could turn your smart home into a well-oiled machine (just with no oil or machines).”
Researchers from the Laboratory for Social Machines have partnered with The Washington Post to examine how people are discussing the current presidential election on Twitter. The researchers use a program that detects and categorizes tweets “to see which issues or candidates have had the biggest share of the conversation.”
Liz Stinson reports for Wired on the Reality Editor, an app created by researchers from the MIT Media Lab that can break down objects from the physical world into their functional components. “A user could break down a toaster into modular components…and then...reassign any of those functionalities to a totally different object,” writes Stinson.
Lauren Landry writes for Boston Magazine about MIT startup Lumii, which is developing glasses-free 3-D technology. Our vision is that, one day, you will take out your phone and you’ll see a 3-D, interactive hologram popping out of it,” says co-founder Tom Baran. “You won’t need to wear those goofy glasses.”
Kelly Servick writes for Science about Prof. Rosalind Picard’s work developing wearable technology that monitors and manages a user’s stress levels. “It’s one thing to study all this,” says Picard. “It’s another to build it into a form that people can start changing their lives around.”
MIT researchers have developed an algorithm that can predict household income in urban areas based off of Google Street View images, writes Bourree Lam for The Atlantic. The algorithm "explains 77 percent of the variation in income at the block-group level,” explains graduate student Nikhil Naik.
In this video, CBS Boston’s Bree Sison reports on MIT startup Affectiva, which is developing technology that can identify human emotions and could help with mental health. Rana el Kaliouby, Affectiva CSO and co-founder, explains that the technology could “tell you something is off, or flag it to a friend or doctor. Or maybe it could customize a digit experience to help you.”
Research scientist Caleb Harper speaks with Steph Yin of Popular Science about his work developing personal food computers, and the vegetables he grew for Thanksgiving using this technology with students in Boston-area schools. Harper says that food computers can help “kids understand the production of food.”
In an article for New Scientist, Anna Nowogrodzki writes that MIT researchers have developed a device that allows users to answer the phone with a kick of their foot. “The system’s algorithm analyses the foot’s motion and transmits the information via Bluetooth to your phone,” writes Nowogrodzki.
In this AP TV video, Prof. Tod Machover discusses the development of his latest work, “Symphony in D,” a piece about the city of Detroit. “I really wanted it to be a portrait of the city so I invited everybody in the city, anybody who wanted to, to collaborate,” says Machover.
AP reporter Mike Householder writes about Prof. Tod Machover’s “Symphony in D,” which features the sounds of everyday Detroit. "It somehow sounds like something that could only have been done here. And that makes me really happy," says Machover.
Graduate student Daniel McDuff is developing a computer system that can read human emotions by monitoring facial movements, reports Jane Wakefield for BBC News. “It translates that into seven of the most commonly recognized emotional states - sadness, amusement, surprise, fear, joy, disgust and contempt,” McDuff explains.
Karen Weintraub writes for The New York Times about Professor Rosalind Picard’s work developing wearable, stress-measuring devices. “If you want to learn about human variability, measure stress,” says Picard.
CNBC reporter Robert Ferris writes that MIT researchers are developing a fabric that acts as a “second skin” and has vents that open when a person begins sweating. Ferris explains that, “the vents open and close by means of tiny bacteria borrowed from an unlikely place — Japanese cooking.”