Three Dimensional Digital Knitting

   Interesting application for mundane and health care applications. 

3DKnITS: Three-dimensional Digital Knitting of Intelligent Textile Sensor for Activity Recognition and Biomechanical Monitoring   MIT Media Labs

We present an approach to develop seamless and scalable piezo-resistive matrix-based intelligent textile using digital flat-bed and circular knitting machines. By combining and customizing functional and common yarns, we can design the aesthetics and architect and engineer both the electrical and mechanical properties of a sensing textile. Further, by incorporating a melting fiber, we propose a method to shape and personalize three-dimensional piezo-resistive fabric structure that can conform to the human body through thermoforming principles. It results in an intimate and robust textile structure, eliminating sensor drifts and maximizing accuracy while ensuring comfortability. In this work, we cover 3DKnITS textile design, fabrication approach, wireless hardware system, deep-learning enabled recognition methods, experimental results, and application scenarios. Our digital knitting approach enables the fabrication of 2 to 3D pressure-sensitive textile interiors and wearables, including an intelligent mat, sock, and shoe that can be used for a variety of applications ranging from rehabilitation and sport science to gaming interfaces. ....'

Explaining Bioprinting

From MIT's 'Audio Explaining' feature, well done.   Full audio at the link below.

Audio explainer: Exploring the fields of bioprinting and biohybrid materials  MIT News Office

The following audio excerpt and transcript features an explanation of bioprinting and biohybrid materials by MIT graduate student Rachel Smith of the Mediated Matter Group at the Media Lab. It corresponds with this MIT News article on those subjects.

HOST: 3-D printing is everywhere. From bike parts to fashion, to novelty key chains, to tools and light fixtures. We often see it employed to accelerate production processes and prototyping, but what about the biological potential of printing? You may have heard terms such as bioprinting, bioinks or biomaterials, but what exactly are they? We’ve asked Rachel Smith, a graduate student of the Mediated Matter Group at the MIT Media Lab to explain what bioprinting is and what biohybrid materials are, and to give us some idea of where these fields of study are going.

RACHEL SMITH: Bioprinting and biohybrid materials: though these terms overlap, it is a bit like comparing apples to oranges. Bioprinting is a type of material fabrication process, whereas biohybrid materials are one type of material resulting from fabrication processes like this. Both bioprinting and biohybrid materials involve the use of living cells.

First, lets think about living cells as fabrication materials: something that you could integrate, like other components, into human-made engineering processes and products.

Many cells can naturally replicate, differentiate, and self-organize, and over time, we have also engineered ways to guide their movement, their growth, and the products that they excrete and consume. Thus, you can think of living cells as sensing and computing machines that are extremely sensitive to their surroundings, but we can control and ‘code’ their responses. As a material, they have uniquely responsive and programmable properties.

Bioprinting is the process of printing with living cells. You can include living cells in the ink of a 2D printer, or in the build material for a 3D printer to create tissue-like structures. Currently, 3D-bioprinting can be used to print tissues and organs with the appropriate biological and mechanical properties as the real thing to help with a wide variety of medicinal research. In some cases, researchers print with porous materials that encourage cells to migrate inside and begin to ossify into bone. Another exciting example is 3D printing cardiac cells, which can begin to contract in sync to regenerate mechanical functions of the heart.  ... "

Machine Behavior

We behave, machines exhibit behavior.   Both can be trained with examples and practice and direction.   Both have been collaborating for some time.   But only recently have machines been given the opportunity to take small amounts of autonomous opportunity.  With our direction.   But that direction is still largely imprecise once we get beyond fundamental but basic arithmetic, statistics  and logic.

A new paper frames the emerging interdisciplinary field of machine behavior   by Janine Liberty

As our interaction with “thinking” technology rapidly increases, a group led by researchers at the MIT Media Lab are calling for a new field of research—machine behavior—which would take the study of artificial intelligence well beyond computer science and engineering into biology, economics, psychology, and other behavioral and social sciences.

“We need more open, trustworthy, reliable investigation into the impact intelligent machines are having on society, and so research needs to incorporate expertise and knowledge from beyond the fields that have traditionally studied it,” said Iyad Rahwan, who leads the Scalable Cooperation group at the Media Lab.

Rahwan, Manuel Cebrian and Nick Obradovich, along with other scientists from the Media Lab convened colleagues at the Max Planck Institutes, Stanford University, the University of California San Diego, and other educational institutions as well as from Google, Facebook, and Microsoft, to publish a paper in Nature making a case for a wide-ranging scientific research agenda aimed at understanding the behavior of artificial intelligence systems.

“We’re seeing the rise of machines with agency, machines that are actors making decisions and taking actions autonomously,” Rahwan said. “This calls for a new field of scientific study that looks at them not solely as products of engineering and computer science but additionally as a new class of actors with their own behavioral patterns and ecology.” .... '

Related Nature article.

Autonomous Cars Reading Passenger Emotions

Driver emotions might be interesting, but if there aren't any drivers?   Have always been interested in how the behavior of passengers in self-driving cars, which will now include the former driver, will change.  We followed the affective group at MIT for some time as members, worth a look.

Kia wants future autonomous cars to be able to read passengers’ emotions   By Stephen Edelstein in DigitalTrends

At CES 2019, Kia will look into the future, to a time when self-driving cars are the norm. When every person is a passenger, companies will need new ways to improve the experience, Kia reasons. The automaker believes artificial-intelligence technology that can recognize human emotions is the way to do that.

Kia is working with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab’s Affective Computing group to develop a system called READ, short for Real-time Emotion Adaptive Driving. Kia calls the system a world first, claiming it can analyze a person’s emotional state through “bio-signal recognition technology” and artificial intelligence. The system can then alter certain aspects of the cabin to lift the occupant’s mood, according to Kia.  ... " 

Calm Software

We were members of the MIT Media Lab for some time and I got to visit many times.   The most unusual and intriguing part of it was the 'Tangible Media Group', which I recalled then studied things identifying themselves, known as RFID, which we spent lots of time testing.   But in organizing tours it was hard to find many other applications of tangible media that would be practical for a company like ours.   Here is another of those things, am intrigued but also mystified.  Their further list of projects  is worth a look.

MIT researchers turn water into 'calm' software
The Tangible Media Group has some bold ideas for the future of computing.   By Aaron Souppouris, @AaronIsSocial in Engadget

Our lives are busy and full of distractions. Modern computing. with its constant notifications and enticing red bubbles next to apps, seems designed to keep us enthralled. MIT Media Lab's Tangible Media Group wants to change that by crafting "calm interfaces."

The Tangible Media Group demonstrated a way to precisely transport droplets of liquid across a surface back in January, which it called "programmable droplets." The system is essentially just a printed circuit board, coated with a low-friction material, with a grid of copper wiring on top. By programmatically controlling the electric field of the grid, the team is able to change the shape of polarizable liquid droplets and move them around the surface. The precise control is such that droplets can be both merged and split.

Moving on from the underlying technology, the team is now focused on showing how we might leverage the system to create, play and communicate through natural materials. .... " 

Target Tests Vertical Farms in/on Stores

Interesting play that uses existing real estate footprints.  Attract new consumers.  Place to test other technologies like drones and robotics to test sensor and labor alternatives?

Target to test vertical farms in stores  Retailwire, discussion. by Tom Ryan

Target is looking to shorten the distance from farm to plate with a planned test of vertical farms, an agricultural technique that involves growing plants and vegetables indoors in climatized conditions.

The initiative, to take place within select U.S. stores, is part of ongoing research and development being pursued by Target’s Food + Future CoLab, a collaboration with the MIT Media Lab and Ideo launched last November that has been exploring urban farming, food transparency and food innovation.

According to Business Insider, tests of the vertical farms could begin in spring 2017. If the trials succeed, Target’s stores will likely be filled with growing leafy greens, the most common stock for vertical farming at present. Potatoes, beetroot and zucchini could potentially be made available as well. MIT could give Target access to ancient seeds for rare tomatoes or peppers. .... " 

On Useful Intelligence Augmentation

A talk with Pattie Maes about Intelligence augmentation, a favorite topic,  We had been members of the Media lab years ago, and had been intrigued by her practical consumer applications of AI.   She continues to address useful AI, in Echo: 

" ... Maes: I started out doing artificial intelligence, basically trying to study intelligence and intelligent behavior by synthesizing intelligent machines. I realized that what I've been doing in the last seven years could better be referred to as intelligence augmentation, so it's IA as opposed to AI. I'm not trying to understand intelligence and build this stand-alone intelligent machine that is as intelligent as a human and that hopefully teaches us something about how intelligence in humans may work; instead what I'm doing is building integrated forms of man and machine, and even multiple men and multiple machines, that have as a result that one individual can be super-intelligent. So it's more about making people more intelligent and allowing people to be able to deal with more stuff, more problems, more tasks, more information. Rather than copying ourselves, I'm building machines that can do that. ... " 

Boxie Gathers Stories

I was reminded of this MIT Media Lab 'Lab Cast'.    An old example, but made me think of gathering and telling stories.  " .... Boxie is a mobile interactive robotic camera built with the goal of actively capturing stories about its environment and the people within it. ....  ".   We considered it for internal 'pedia' construction, but it was not culturally compliant.

MIT Media Lab Changes Software Default to Encourage Open Source

MIT pushes free and open source, in Medium:

The MIT Media Lab is part of an academic ecosystem committed to liberal sharing of knowledge. In that spirit, I’m proud to announce that we are changing our internal procedures to encourage more free and open-source software.

Previously, software releases using free and open source licenses were approved by an internal committee. But since we’ve always allowed our developers to open-source their work, we’re eliminating the unnecessary hurdle: from now on any open source request will be viewed as the default and automatically approved. We respect the autonomy of our community members and will continue to let them choose whether to release their software as proprietary or open. But removing the open source approval step will level the playing field. ... " 

Conceptual Map of the FLOSS (Free/Libre Open Source Software). Source: VARGUX via https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ConceptualMapFLOSS.png

Looking at Target's Future Lab

Continue to be a student of spaces devoted to innovation.  See my tag links below for years of looking into the space, including a decade plus of my work in CPG and retail spaces.  Contact me for more, glad to participate.    The space below collaborates with groups we also worked with.

In Retailwire:
In its collaboration with global design firm IDEO and MIT Media Lab, Target's Food + Future coLab last week unveiled its first two innovations with a focus on food transparency.

Opened in January near MIT's campus in Cambridge, MA, "the bustling lab full of bioengineers, students, nutritionists and farmers [are] hard at work testing big ideas about the future of food," Target said on its Bullseye View blog. The multi-year collaboration, first unveiled last November, is concentrating efforts on urban farming, food transparency and authenticity, supply chain and health.

The first of the two ideas developed by the team focused on food labeling. The line, Good & Gather, displays ingredients on the front of packaging rather than in fine print on the back. .... " 

Badge Driven People Analytics

Intriguing approach.  Looked at some related methods, but not with badges.

‘People Analytics’ Through Super-Charged ID Badges

Humanyze helps companies make surprising connections about what makes employees effective.  ... What if “people analytics“ were able to bring new clarity to the hidden patterns of why some people are more successful at their jobs than others? What if managers could essentially read people the way they read statistics?

Those are two of the questions that drive Ben Waber, the CEO and a cofounder of Humanyze. Using a sort of turbo-charged company ID badge to track all sorts of data points about employees, Humanyze helps companies find surprising connections and insights in data about what its most effective employees do differently. The company is a spinoff of the MIT Media Lab, founded by a group that includes MIT professor Alexander “Sandy“ Pentland.  .... " 

Social Robot for the Home: Jibo

The idea of a social, family robot is an interesting idea. None I have I have ever seen has worked very well, or has been very comforting.   Shades of Kismet from the same lab.    Now a new attempt, available in 2015, that is worth a look.  Nothing here to help you do any physical home chores, but just to be friendly.  The idea has been tried and sometimes successfully used  to amuse children, but will it work with adults?

" ... Cynthia Breazeal, the famed roboticist at MIT’s Media Lab and a pioneer of social robotics, is unveiling her latest creation today. Unlike her previous robots, created for research and used in settings like classrooms and hospitals, her newest robotic device is designed for people to use at home. Breazeal hopes users will find the robot, called Jibo, so fun and friendly that it will become "part of the family."

"Jibo, please introduce yourself," Breazeal says, looking at the little robot next to her during a demo last week in New York City.

Jibo doesn’t move. She tries again, and this time the robot springs to life, spins its body, blinks its eye, and talks about itself in an excited—if a bit robotic—voice. .... 

Jibo will come equipped with an initial set of apps, or "skills," as Breazeal calls them, that will allow it to play different "roles." For example, the robot will be able to act as a cameraman, tracking faces and snapping pictures so you can be in the photos. It could also act as an assistant who reminds family members of their schedules, or as a telepresence avatar that helps people connect with each other.  ... "  

Tangible Media Group and Enchanted Objects

David Rose,  Head of the Tangible Media Group at MIT Media Lab and author of the book: "Enchanted Objects: Design, Human Desire, and the Internet of Things"     Reading.  We followed this work for years.  How can consumer products be enchanted objects?  " ... specializing in how digital information interfaces with the physical environment. A former CEO at Vitality, a company that reinvented medication packaging, he founded Ambient Devices, which pioneered technology to embed Internet information in everyday objects like lamps, mirrors, and umbrellas. Currently Rose is the CEO of Ditto Labs, and his work has been featured at New York Museum of Modern Art and in The New York Times, and parodied on The Colbert Report. ... " 


See also his TedX presentation on Enchanted Objects.    And recent interview on the Daily Show.  Which included a look at Smartstones Startup (at minute 6).

Smartstones on the Daily Show this Week

Heard this somewhat late, but a startup I am connected with will be featured on the Daily Show this week (8 PM EST each night this week):

" ... Someone in our Smartstones "early bird" VIP community is going to be on the Jon Stewart Daily Show tonight.  He also offered to give a peak-a-boo spotlight on Smartstones! Wow!!! Thank you!

David Rose, head of the Tangible Media Group at MIT Media Lab and author of "Enchanted Objects" is a thought leader in the area of connected devices and new experiences that bring joy to the world of people, and great progress for technology.  We encourage you to look for Smartstones on The Daily Show tonight - it will also be airing for the next four nights if you miss it. Please check out David's book on Amazon. ... " 

David will be interviewed by Jon Stewart, The Daily Show on Comedy Central tonight at 8:00pm EDT/5:00pm PDT.

He will raise awareness of Smartstones and the power of touch, to the millions of people who watch John Stewart and The Daily Show every night!!!

Also, he'll share a personal story about how he and his daughter have a special way of communicating non-verbally (I'm sure David and John will put a funny spin on this), and are excited for the possibility to have that closeness go mobile with the help of Smartstones!  ...  " 

Full message information.      @Smartstones_inc    #SmartstonesTouch

Update: Here is recording of the interview

http://thedailyshow.cc.com/extended-interviews/nkja04/david-rose-extended-interview
Jump to 6:00 of the interview on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on Smartstones.

Here are some of Jon's quotes about Smartstones:

"It's very awe inducing"
"It's a lovely way of humanizing technology"
"I love the idea that it helps connect you to your family or other people" .... 

Negroponte on the Future

Founder of the Media Lab, gives a TED talk on a 30 year History of the Future ...  We were members of the MIT Media Lab for years and enjoyed his thoughts then.

Scratch Creation Language from MIT

Scratch. Was pointed out to me a year ago but just had a chance to take a look.   Has existed publicly since 2006. Creation environment for kids. This reminds me of other environments, like Turtle Programming of longer ago.  This adds sharing and takes the idea of creating more broadly.  " ... Create stories, games, and animations ... Share with others around the world .. ." .   Also the idea of providing help through a process of curation.

" ... With Scratch, you can program your own interactive stories, games, and animations — and share your creations with others in the online community.

Scratch helps young people learn to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively — essential skills for life in the 21st century.

Scratch is a project of the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab. It is provided free of charge. ... " 

Made in the Future

Tim Brown of IDEO announces: Made in the Future.  Looks to be of interest:

Does changing how you make things change the way you live?

The answer is “yes,” according to Made in the Future, an experimental project I collaborated on with some colleagues at IDEO Boston. The Made in the Future website recently launched and it explores how today’s innovations in maker technology might affect designers and society at large five to ten years from now.

To get inspired about what making something by hand means to people, we constructed toy airplanes with kids, cooked alongside chefs, built motorbikes with weekend gear heads, and hung out with gifted researchers at the MIT Media Lab. We looked at cutting-edge innovations in designing, manufacturing and distributing, and asked: where’s it all heading next? It was all incredibly inspiring and we learned a lot. ... " 

Government Data Visualization

Interesting work at the MIT Media Lab, where we were members for years.   This looks like a good approach to examine further as a means of democratizing data.  More at the Media Lab.  This reminded me to get an update of their work, will publish more about it here in coming weeks.

" ...  Sure, government data is publicly available, but that doesn't mean the average person can comprehend it. The MIT Media Lab's Macro Connections group is working to break down that barrier, however, and make data digestible — at least in Brazil.

A team of researchers, led by Director César Hidalgo, worked in collaboration with the Brazilian state government of Minas Gerais to develop DataViva, currently live in beta. The platform offers a variety of Web apps that turn dizzying datasets into something visual that students, fellow policy makers, entrepreneurs or your next door neighbor can more easily understand. ... " 

Thinking this through, wouldn't we rather use sets of standard open source tools?  It's true that linking to the data would be the hardest thing to make standard.

Shapeshifting Touch Display

An example of virtual interaction.

" ... The Tangible Media Group at MIT's Media Lab has unveiled a futuristic display made of atoms, not pixels. We live in an age of touch–screen interfaces, but what will the UIs of the future look like? Will they continue to be made up of ghostly pixels, or will they be made of atoms that you can reach out and touch? ...  " 

Crowdsourced AI Includes Everyday Knowedge

In New Scientist:  An AI that is apparently equivalent to a 4 year old in a verbal test.   A big part of intelligence is our ability to manage our knowledge of the world and apply it to decisions. " ... Step forward ConceptNet. Developed by Catherine Havasi and her team at the MIT Media Lab ConceptNet draws upon a crowdsourced database of millions of statements describing simple relationships between everyday objects, such as "a fawn is a deer" or "ice cream is capable of melting".  Havasi describes the system as containing "the kind of information that everybody knows about the world but that nobody ever writes down because we learn it too early". ... "