In the Media

A record number of Fellow selections from any single institution marks the election by the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) of five CSAIL researchers and members of the MIT Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department to ACM 2014 Fellow. The ACM has cited Srini Devadas, Eric Grimson, Robert Morris, Ronitt Rubinfeld and Daniela Rus for "providing key knowledge" to computing.

Light is everything to good photography. Knowing this fact well, EECS professor Fredo Durand, also an experienced photographer, has begun to create a new system that uses drones (light-equipped autonomous robots) to create accurate lighting while communicating with the camera-mounted interface. Durand and several other researchers will report on their work at an upcoming international symposium in August.

Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS) research scientist Andrea Censi has paired a neuromorphic sensor with lightening speed camera data intake with a new algorithm to give robots a new enhanced sensory system. Read more.

Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab's Leslie Kaelbling, the Panasonic Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in collaboration with members of her research group the Learning and Intelligent Systems Group have developed a new way to use "multiagent systems" to allow for teams of robots to accomplish tasks requiring flexibility and communication in uncertain environments. Read more.

Self-assembling robots were dismissed even by Daniela Rus, professor of computer science and engineering and director of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), until she worked again with former MIT EECS senior John Romanishin, now a research scientist in CSAIL and the one who was convinced (since his undergraduate days) that it could be done. They will present their work on the new self-propelled robots at the IEEE RSJ International conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems. Read more.

Three CSAIL roboticists have been named to IEEE Intelligent Systems' 2013 list of "AI's 10 to Watch", which celebrates 10 rising stars in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). The CSAIL members named to the list are: Nora Ayanian, Finale Doshi-Velez and Stefanie Tellex.

Building tomorrow's robots that can handle changing environments and unknowns will require designing a system that constantly calculates these uncertainties. EECS professors and principal investigators with the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) Leslie Kaelbling and Tomas Lozano Perez have recently submitted their work on this area of artificial intelligence for publication in the International Journal of Robotics Research.

At this year’s IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, students in the Learning and Intelligent Systems Group at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory will present a pair of papers showing how household robots could use a little lateral thinking to compensate for their physical shortcomings. EECS senior and SuperUROP student Annie Holladay has designed an algorithm that allows a robot to use both hands to avoid the bad, error-prone track so that it can successfully place an object in what might be up to a 16-dimensional space.

In celebration of its 40th anniversary, the EE Times is recognizing the innovators who made the electronics industry what it is today and particularly the visionaries who are creating new paths. Several members of the MIT Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department are among the ten visionaries selected including Rodney Brooks and Wireless@MIT. Read more.

The MIT News Office has featured Russ Tedrake, the X Consortium Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT. From his beginnings -- not in computer science -- to his discovery, as an undergraduate, of computer programming as a means to achieve his passion to build things, Russ Tedrake has carved a path as a unique roboticist.

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department PhD candidate Alec Rivers, working with EECS Associate Professor Fredo Durand and MIT Mechanical Engineering Department PhD candidate Ilan Moyer will be presenting a new digitally driven method for creating precise shapes with minimal human guidance at this week's Siggraph conference in Los Angeles.

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