Mobile devices

In an effort to get ahead of the problem of counterfeit wireless chargers, MIT researchers have built a chip that blocks attempts to wirelessly charge a device’s battery unless the charger first provides cryptographic authentication.

Secure wireless chargers

New chip would thwart the counterfeiting that plagues the market for wired device chargers.

February 9, 2017

A new study estimates that, since 2008, access to mobile-money services — which allow users to store and exchange monetary values via mobile phone — increased daily per capita consumption levels of 194,000, or roughly 2 percent, of Kenyan households, lifting them out of extreme poverty (living on less than $1.25 per day).

Study: Mobile-money services lift Kenyans out of poverty

Greater access to services raises daily spending, especially among female-headed households.

December 8, 2016

“I have considered working in social entrepreneurship or academia — ultimately I think I will seek out a combination of both. I think they both have advantages to addressing these kinds of problems, and their own drawbacks. I think ultimately I’m going to draw fulfillment from working on a problem that really matters to people,” senior Charlie Andrews-Jubelt says.

Life lessons from the climbing wall

MIT senior Charlie Andrews-Jubelt encourages students to look out for each other and lend support.

November 9, 2016

Cambridge Mobile Telematics co-founders Hari Balakrishnan (left) and Samuel Madden (right).

Rewarding Boston’s safest driver

Mayor Martin Walsh announces a competition aimed at improving Boston driving with an app developed by an MIT spinout.

October 5, 2016

A study led by MIT researchers suggests that using mobile-phone data to track people’s movement provides a deeper picture of exposure to pollution in urban settings, compared to only studying air-quality levels in fixed places.

Measuring exposure to pollution

Mobile-phone data helps researchers study an urban problem in greater detail.

September 1, 2016

Researchers from MIT and Ford Motor have developed a new computational system that uses cellphone location data to infer urban mobility patterns.

Inferring urban travel patterns from cellphone data

Big-data analysis could give city planners timelier, more accurate alternatives to commuter surveys.

August 29, 2016

SolidEnergy Systems' battery (far right) is twice as energy-dense, yet just as safe and long-lasting as the lithium ion batteries used in consumer electronics. The battery uses a lithium metal foil for an anode, which can hold more ions and is several times thinner and lighter than traditional lithium metal, graphite, carbon, or silicon anodes. A novel electrolyte also keeps the battery from heati...

Doubling battery power of consumer electronics

New lithium metal batteries could make smartphones, drones, and electric cars last twice as long.

August 16, 2016

MIT $100K grand-prize-winning team Astraeus Technologies (left to right): Graham Lieberman, Jay Kumar, Alexander Blair, and Joseph Azzarelli.

Lung cancer “breathalyzer” wins $100K Entrepreneurship Competition

Team’s smartphone-connected device can detect lung cancer early from a single breath.

May 12, 2016

QualiT, an app launched as part of a collaboration between MIT and the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA), allows riders of the Silver Line to rate their bus trips.

Crowdsourcing the Silver Line commute

New app from MIT researchers gathers rider feedback to improve Boston bus service.

May 3, 2016

"The whole premise of our project is to harness the best science and innovation to bring education to the world’s most underresourced children," Cynthia Breazeal says. Pictured are students in Ethiopia.

Can technology help teach literacy in poor communities?

Project to provide children with tablets loaded with literacy apps reports encouraging results in Africa, U.S.

April 26, 2016

CSAIL researchers are presenting a new infrared depth-sensing system built from off-the-shelf components, that works outdoors as well as in.

Phone-based laser rangefinder works outdoors

Depth sensor built from off-the-shelf parts filters out ambient infrared light.

March 25, 2016

A prototype of a new speech-controlled nutrition-logging system allows users to verbally describe the contents of a meal. The system then parses the description and automatically retrieves the pertinent nutritional data.

Voice-controlled calorie counter

Spoken-language app makes meal logging easier, could aid weight loss.

March 24, 2016

MIT researchers have designed a new chip to implement neural networks. It is 10 times as efficient as a mobile GPU, so it could enable mobile devices to run powerful artificial-intelligence algorithms locally, rather than uploading data to the Internet for processing.

Energy-friendly chip can perform powerful artificial-intelligence tasks

Advance could enable mobile devices to implement “neural networks” modeled on the human brain.

February 3, 2016

The DriveWell app runs in the background of a smartphone, collecting data on driving behavior. Drivers receive a score on a scale from 1 to 100, a route map, and tips for improvement. Scores can also be used for insurance discounts, or to compete with friends and other drivers worldwide.

Smarter driving, using your phone

App that rates drivers’ behavior yields promising safety results on the road.

January 5, 2016

By combining the information from the Kinect depth frame in (a) with polarized photographs, MIT researchers reconstructed the 3-D surface shown in (c). Polarization cues can allow coarse depth sensors like Kinect to achieve laser scan quality (b).

Making 3-D imaging 1,000 times better

Algorithms exploiting light’s polarization boost resolution of commercial depth sensors 1,000-fold.

December 1, 2015

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