MIT Schwarzman College of Computing

Artists who bring to life heroes and villains in animated movies and video games could have more control over their animations, thanks to a new technique introduced by MIT researchers. Their method generates mathematical functions known as barycentric coordinates, which define how 2D and 3D shapes can bend, stretch, and move through space. For example, an artist using their tool …

Imagine you are scrolling through the photos on your phone and you come across an image that at first you can’t recognize. It looks like maybe something fuzzy on the couch; could it be a pillow or a coat? After a couple of seconds it clicks — of course! That ball of fluff is your friend’s cat, Mocha. While some …

More than 2,000 years ago, the Greek mathematician Euclid, known to many as the father of geometry, changed the way we think about shapes. Building off those ancient foundations and millennia of mathematical progress since, Justin Solomon is using modern geometric techniques to solve thorny problems that often seem to have nothing to do with shapes. For instance, perhaps a …

Open source software — software that is freely distributed, along with its source code, so that copies, additions, or modifications can be readily made — is “everywhere,” to quote the 2023 Open Source Security and Risk Analysis Report. Ninety-six percent of the computer programs used by major industries include open source software, and 76 percent of those programs consist of …

In late November, faculty, staff, and students from across MIT participated in MIT Generative AI Week. The programming included a flagship full-day symposium as well as four subject-specific symposia, all aimed at fostering a dialogue about the opportunities and potential applications of generative artificial intelligence technologies across a diverse range of disciplines. “These events are one expression of our conviction …

This semester, students and postdocs across MIT were invited to submit ideas for the first-ever MIT Ignite: Generative AI Entrepreneurship Competition. Over 100 teams submitted proposals for startups that utilize generative artificial intelligence technologies to develop solutions across a diverse range of disciplines including human health, climate change, education, and workforce dynamics. On Oct. 30, 12 finalists pitched their ideas …

Data is the new soil, and in this fertile new ground, MIT researchers are planting more than just pixels. By using synthetic images to train machine learning models, a team of scientists recently surpassed results obtained from traditional “real-image” training methods. At the core of the approach is a system called StableRep, which doesn't just use any synthetic images; it …

It isn’t easy for a robot to find its way out of a maze. Picture the machines trying to traverse a kid’s playroom to reach the kitchen, with miscellaneous toys scattered across the floor and furniture blocking some potential paths. This messy labyrinth requires the robot to calculate the most optimal journey to its destination, without crashing into any obstacles. …

Speaking at the “Generative AI: Shaping the Future” symposium on Nov. 28, the kickoff event of MIT’s Generative AI Week, keynote speaker and iRobot co-founder Rodney Brooks warned attendees against uncritically overestimating the capabilities of this emerging technology, which underpins increasingly powerful tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard. “Hype leads to hubris, and hubris leads to conceit, and conceit …

To teach an AI agent a new task, like how to open a kitchen cabinet, researchers often use reinforcement learning — a trial-and-error process where the agent is rewarded for taking actions that get it closer to the goal. In many instances, a human expert must carefully design a reward function, which is an incentive mechanism that gives the agent …

A quick scan of the headlines makes it seem like generative artificial intelligence is everywhere these days. In fact, some of those headlines may actually have been written by generative AI, like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, a chatbot that has demonstrated an uncanny ability to produce text that seems to have been written by a human. But what do people really mean …

Connectomics, the ambitious field of study that seeks to map the intricate network of animal brains, is undergoing a growth spurt. Within the span of a decade, it has journeyed from its nascent stages to a discipline that is poised to (hopefully) unlock the enigmas of cognition and the physical underpinning of neuropathologies such as in Alzheimer’s disease. At its …

Imagine you’re visiting a friend abroad, and you look inside their fridge to see what would make for a great breakfast. Many of the items initially appear foreign to you, with each one encased in unfamiliar packaging and containers. Despite these visual distinctions, you begin to understand what each one is used for and pick them up as needed. Inspired …

To get a sense of what StructCode is all about, says Mustafa Doğa Doğan, think of Superman. Not the “faster than a speeding bullet” and “more powerful than a locomotive” version, but a Superman, or Superwoman, who sees the world differently from ordinary mortals — someone who can look around a room and glean all kinds of information about ordinary …

Anyone who has ever tried to pack a family-sized amount of luggage into a sedan-sized trunk knows this is a hard problem. Robots struggle with dense packing tasks, too. For the robot, solving the packing problem involves satisfying many constraints, such as stacking luggage so suitcases don’t topple out of the trunk, heavy objects aren’t placed on top of lighter …

The National Academy of Medicine announced the election of 100 new members to join their esteemed ranks in 2023, among them five MIT faculty members and seven additional affiliates. MIT professors Daniel Anderson, Regina Barzilay, Guoping Feng, Darrell Irvine, and Morgen Sheng were among the new members. Justin Hanes PhD ’96, Said Ibrahim MBA ’16, and Jennifer West ’92, along …

Growing up as a shy kid in Palestine, Joseph Michael didn’t have much exposure to computer science. As a result, he couldn’t see how it applied to his life. But in 2018, at the age of 14, Michael joined the Middle East Entrepreneurs of Tomorrow (MEET), a three-year, Jerusalem-based program that brings together promising young Palestinian and Jewish Israeli students …

The beauty of a nice infographic published alongside a news or magazine story is that it makes numeric data more accessible to the average reader. But for blind and visually impaired users, such graphics often have the opposite effect. For visually impaired users — who frequently rely on screen-reading software that speaks words or numbers aloud as the user moves …

Imagine you're in an airplane with two pilots, one human and one computer. Both have their “hands” on the controllers, but they're always looking out for different things. If they're both paying attention to the same thing, the human gets to steer. But if the human gets distracted or misses something, the computer quickly takes over. Meet the Air-Guardian, a …

Imagine grasping a heavy object, like a pipe wrench, with one hand. You would likely grab the wrench using your entire fingers, not just your fingertips. Sensory receptors in your skin, which run along the entire length of each finger, would send information to your brain about the tool you are grasping. In a robotic hand, tactile sensors that use …