Cutting Edge

In the future, all business meetings will be conducted by telepresence robots--on-site avatar machines that will take care of the boring business of earning a living while we sit back at home sipping lattes and generally enjoying our 300-year lifespans.

Even if you don't believe telepresence robots are going to eliminate the need to get out of bed in the morning, it's hard to dismiss them as a powerful new communication tool, especially if one is waving at you while perched on someone's shoulder.

MIT doctoral student Sigurdur Orn's MeBot is a mobile telepresence bot with richly expressive gestural abilities. It's part of what he terms "socially embodied communication," which is more immediate than an e-mail or phone call.

The robot--which was displayed this week at the Human-Robot Interaction conference in Osaka, Japan--has a small screen atop a three-axis neck that displays the remote user's face, as well as two moving arms. These moving parts help convey user expressions to the other party as the bot moves around on its wheeled base.

The arms seem to be controlled manually, but the moving screen automatically tracks user head movements like nodding or shaking. … Read more

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--The Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Friday officially opened the doors to its MIT Media Lab Complex, the school's most famous interdisciplinary program.

The new building, designed by architect Fumihiko Maki and his Maki and Associates firm, broke ground in 2007. But the Media Lab's quest for expansion has actually been 12 years in the making, according to Adele Naude Santos, dean of the MIT School of Architecture and Planning.

Fumihiko Maki, a winner of the Pritzker Prize for architecture, was present at the opening event but did not speak publicly. Instead, he left Dean Santos, … Read more

MENLO PARK, Calif.--With America mired in two wars, injured soldiers are constantly returning home with missing limbs. But their path to useful--and attractive--prosthetics could be shorter than ever, thanks to 3D-printing technology.

And it's not just artificial limbs that may be going through a design renaissance: because of the infinite flexibility of digital designs, almost any kind of physical product could find wide new style, aesthetics, and custom models because of the machines, which can quickly, cheaply, and efficiently produce almost anything that can be imagined and crafted in a 3D modeler.

That was the message that industrial … Read more

Roger Ebert's search to recapture his lost voice uncovered a company with a unique technology.

When the famed film critic needed to find a way to communicate after losing his voice to cancer surgery, he turned to text-to-speech (TTS) software that speaks whatever he types. But the TTS software he initially tried sounded too robotic and computerized. He wanted a voice that sounded like him. That's when he discovered CereProc, a Scottish company that builds electronic voices. Using someone's audio recordings, CereProc's technology can stitch together an entire digital voice that sounds like the actual person.… Read more

I, like many others, am looking for science to control the world. Humans have used their instincts for far too long. They have bungled too much. Now it's time for the scientific to become beatific.

I am therefore leaping as if it were February 29 to discover that scientists in Europe have finally come up with the perfect formula for the ultimate human condition: marriage.

Regular sufferers here will know that this subject fascinates me beyond the usual level of engagement. A little while ago, mathematicians came up with a formula for choosing a wife. Essentially, it involved selecting … Read more

This year's Lemelson-MIT Student Prize has gone to a man who has his intellectual fingers in the pots of biotechnology, genetics, sensor technology, applied mathematics, and even evolutionary linguistics.

Erez Lieberman-Aiden, graduate student at the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, has been awarded the 2010 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize. His body of work to date includes inventing a 3D mapping tool and using it to discover new info about the inner workings of the human genome, developing a sensor-laden sneaker to assist the elderly, and co-developing a mathematical method for tracking widespread and complex evolutionary changes in things … Read more

NASA scientists reported Monday night that the space agency has discovered as much as 1.3 trillion pounds of ice on the moon, a finding that indicates future lunar visitors could have a wealth of water waiting for them.

The new data was found using a NASA radar placed on board India's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft. The ice was located in more than 40 craters, which vary in size from one mile to nine miles wide. All are located near the moon's north pole. All told, it is thought that there may be 600 million cubic meters of ice in … Read more

What if your skin could serve as an interactive surface? Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and Microsoft have produced Skinput, an experimental device that turns the body's largest organ into a touch screen.

CMU's Chris Harrison and colleagues at Microsoft rigged up an acoustic bio-sensor to detect sound patterns created when tapping a forearm or palm. Each area has a specific acoustic signature that can be associated with functions like dialing a phone or playing Tetris. Pinching and flicking gestures can also be used for commands.

The video below shows how the system works. A bulky armband array … Read more

For years, people with broken bones have had to suffer through not only the pain of the break, but also the long process of healing, often with the help of titanium screws. Typically, patients must then undergo more surgery to remove the titanium.

When my mom broke her knee in the '90s, they rigged her with so many screws and bars that her X-rays looked more robot than human. She predicted rain with eerie accuracy.

This month, researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Applied Materials Research (IFAM) in Bremen, Germany, are unveiling a new type of screw … Read more