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Posts Tagged ‘Senseable City’

MIT Media Lab develops robotic back-seat driver

Thursday, October 29th, 2009


Update 10/30/2009, 9:34 a.m.: Video added

Researchers at the MIT Media Lab have developed a robot — the Affective Intelligent Driving Agent (AIDA) — to offer “the same kind of guidance as an informed and friendly companion.”

MITCarRobot

The system features an expressive robotic head, pictured above, that would protrude from the dashboard. Nothing creepy there. Media Lab researcher Cynthia Breazeal, Carlo Ratti, and Assaf Biderman are working with the Media Lab’s SENSEable City Lab and automaker Audi on the product.

The robot would analyze your driving patterns, your route, traffic, the weather and other information to guide you. It would also interact with you via expressions, like a smile or the Jesus-Mary-and-Joseph-we’re-going-to-die exclamation point.

New MIT project is garbage

Wednesday, July 15th, 2009

MIT’s Sensable City lab plans to attach wireless sensors to pieces of garbage to track them through New York, Seattle and London’s trash disposal systems. The project is intended to show the effects of throwing something out and highlight inefficiencies in garbage systems using impressive graphics requiring a better explanation than I could give you.

Somehow, organized crime never comes up:

The project could be considered the urban equivalent of nuclear medicine – when a tracer is injected and followed through the human body.

The project has a also has a blog full of multimedia, including photos of the sensor prototypes over time. 

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