Liat Clark reports on Jibo, the family friendly robot developed by Professor Cynthia Breazeal, in a piece for Wired. "Jibo is a very different concept of a personal robot where the focus is on human engagement and bringing content, apps, services 'to life' beyond flat screens," Breazeal explains.
Penelope Green writes for The New York Times about “Enchanted Objects: Design, Human Desire and the Internet of Things” by David Rose of the MIT Media Lab. Rose proposes that new technologies in the home actually mimic the qualities found in magical tools in fantasy and folklore.
“The robot, which is a stack of three components allowing the display to swivel freely in any direction, is intended to be a family companion performing a variety of interactive tasks,” writes John Markoff for The New York Times about Jibo, a robot created by MIT Media Lab Professor, Cynthia Breazeal.
Boston Globe reporter Scott Kirsner writes about David Rose’s new book “Enchanted Objects: Design, Human Desire and the Internet of Things” and his vision for the future. Rose believes that as the cost of building smart devices drops, there will be an increase in their production and application to all sorts of objects.
In a piece for Forbes, Federico Guerrini writes about the FingerReader, a device designed to help visually impaired people read. Guerrini writes that the device, which allows users to scan a line of text and receive an audio feedback, has the potential to be a, “real game changer.”
Kate Tuttle of The Boston Globe reviews “Enchanted Objects: Design, Human Desire, and the Internet of Things,” by David Rose of the MIT Media Lab. The book focuses on how we will interact with technology in the future. “As inventors we should take a lesson from the magicians of the world,” says Rose.
Ashley Esqueda and Tom Merritt discuss the FingerReader audio reading device developed by researchers at the MIT Media Lab on the CNET show “Tomorrow Daily”. The device could be used by people who are visually impaired or for translating foreign languages.
"You're going to swallow a pill and know English,” said Nicholas Negroponte of the MIT Media Lab in a TedTalk video reviewed by Sara Gates of The Huffington Post. Negroponte discussed the possibility of being able to learn information by ingesting pills in the future.
Katie Collins writes for Wired that MIT researchers have developed a system that allows people to choose exactly what information they share online. “The primary benefit of this is that you as an individual would not be able to be identified from an anonymised dataset,” writes Collins.
Liat Clark reports for Wired on Changing Environments, an MIT Media Lab spinoff that is developing solar-powered smart benches to be placed around Cambridge and Boston. These benches allow users to charge their mobile devices and download environmental data.
Liat Clark writes for Wired about the FingerReader, a 3-D printed device developed at the MIT Media Lab that can translate text from printed materials into a robotic voice for the visually impaired. The device has been in development for three years.
“Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a ring-shaped device that slips around a user’s pointer finger, scans any text above the fingertip, and reads it aloud in a robotic voice,” writes Dan Kedmey for Time.
“Lexington-based MicroCHIPS, a developer of implantable drug delivery devices, has been quietly working on a birth control product that can be embedded in a woman’s body,” writes Steve Annear of Boston Magazine. The technology was originally developed in Professor Robert Langer’s lab.
Associated Press reporter Rodrique Ngowi writes about how researchers at the MIT Media Lab have developed a prototype of an audio reading device for the blind. The device, which is in the early stages of development, is produced by a 3-D printer and is equipped with a small camera that scans text.
Washington Post reporter Emily Badger writes about the Social Computing Group’s transportation visualization maps showing which mode of transportation is the most efficient between two points in a city.