Smack Attack Provides One Cure for Traffic Jams

by Joe McGonegal on May 24, 2013

in Alumni Life, Design, In the News, Learning, Modern Geekhood, Space, Transportation

Like any engineer who has sat in traffic, Gregor Hanuschak MBA ’08 has dreamt of ways to ease the car-commuter’s diurnal ordeal in major cities.

While earning his degree at Sloan, another master’s at Stanford, or in his work for Lockheed Martin and NASA in California and Washington, DC, Hanuschak has sat in plenty of traffic jams.

Even though studying traffic patterns and public transportation solutions are worthy pursuits, Hanuschak wants to relieve drivers’ stress with song—percussion, to be exact.

Smack Attack

The Smack Attack steering wheel drum set. Photo: Gregor Hanuschak.

Launched in April, Hanuschak’s Smack Attack project Reinventing the Wheel aims to do even more for drivers than just cure boredom. A “drum set for your steering wheel,” Smack Attack claims to be a remedy for zoned-out drivers.

The device is easy to use: wrap the flexible drum pad around your steering wheel, plug into your phone’s music library (or use a wireless FM transmitter) and start drumming along.

“Experiencing highway hypnosis firsthand while driving across the US inspired me to design something to fight it and keep drivers alert,” writes Hanuschak on his Kickstarter page. “Sleep researchers are finding the best way to fight highway hypnosis is through auditory or tactile stimulation… and this product provides both!”

The project has drawn the attention of the Discovery Channel, Wired, and dozens of other media outlets. Hanuschak has already raised more than $10,000 for the combination device/app concept.

Hanuschak will put his studies in music, computer engineering, and business to practice as he develops and markets the product this year. He has produced the code for the Smack Attack’s smartphone app, produced music and videos to promote the device, and created a community portal on his website for users to share drum sounds and songs.

“Right now I’m trying to bring my costs down,” Hanuschak said earlier this week, “so I’m now learning from the experts. I’m working with the MIT Venture Mentoring Service for advice on this and entrepreneurial advice in general.”

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Mobile Gaming Jam Captures Network Data

by Maddy Myers on May 23, 2013

in Campus Culture, Classroom, Engineering, Events, Research, Student Life, Uncategorized

Ravi and Tiffany at the Stata Center.

Tiffany Chen and Ravi Netravali at the Stata Center.

What did MIT students do last weekend? Some of them hosted a game jam.

Research students in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) Networks and Mobile Systems group extended an open invitation to local mobile game developers to come to the Stata Center and participate in a weekend-long challenge: create a game that encourages its players to go forth and explore new places.

The event resulted in a new mobile game made by a small group of developers; the team hopes to officially release it in the next two weeks. Game design teams who missed last weekend’s game jam can find the NetMap Game Client on Github.com should they wish to aid these researchers in their quest.

The hosts of the game jam have already been collecting data on their own about wireless and cellular networks via a tool called NetMap, as a class project for 6.829 Computer Networks. Three PhD students in the class–Tiffany Chen, Ravi Netravali, and Victor Costan ’07 MNG ’08—believed that their research project could extend beyond just a class assignment. They wanted to collect more data to analyze from mobile users all over the world.

How could the team get users everywhere to find out about NetMap, install it, and provide more data for the researchers to analyze? Make a game, of course.

The Teaching Assistant of the students’ Computer Networks class, PhD student Jonathan Perry SM ’12, took this idea one step further. He suggested the team host a game jam, a hackathon-like event for game developers to meet up and make a game in a single weekend.

“We needed an easy way to collect a large volume of measurements,” Perry explains. “If you’re going to go big-scale, why have one game when you can have many?”

Although the game jam event produced only one game so far, the team hopes for further development with NetMap in the future.

“Our wildest dream would be to have these collections everywhere where there are wireless device users,” says Netravali. “The problems of a poor connection can plague you anywhere.”

“You could find out if AT&T works better in this area or T-Mobile works better in this area,” Tiffany Chen explains. “You could know which service you should choose. Everybody can use that information.”

Perry hopes the data collected via NetMap and the team’s subsequent research and analysis will help network researchers. “When you make new network equipment or when you design new standards—later versions of 4G, for example or the next version of Wi-Fi—you can take into account data.”

The game jam focused on development for Android devices so that the games and the entire NetMap project can remain open source and freely available for future researchers and developers.

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In the Name of Art, Umbrellas Light Up the Sky

by Jay London on May 22, 2013

in Campus Culture, Design, Events, Modern Geekhood

Photo: Emily Muldoon Kathan

Photo: Emily Muldoon Kathan

More than 200 MIT community members armed with LED-enhanced umbrellas took to MIT’s Jack Barry Field on Sunday, May 19, 2013, for “UP: The Umbrella Project,” a collaboration between the MIT CSAIL Lab and the Pilobolus dance troupe.

Photo: Emily Muldoon Kathan

Photo: Emily Muldoon Kathan

During the UP live performance, each participant was provided with an umbrella equipped with red, green, and blue lights. Each participant used a CSAIL-designed controller to manually change the umbrella’s color throughout the performance and—guided by Pilobolus—walked throughout the field and created what CSAIL called “an ever-changing display of live art.”

Photo: Emily Muldoon Kathan

Photo: Emily Muldoon Kathan

Photo: Emily Muldoon Kathan

A roving camera was located above the participants and images from the camera were projected onto a large inflatable screen. (Check out the Boston Globe’s video coverage of UP.)

Photo: Emily Muldoon Kathan

Photo: Emily Muldoon Kathan

Kyle Gilpen '06, MNG '06, PhD '12, a CSAIL post-doctoral associate, says that lab’s research goal is to monitor the "human-robot dance" and match the umbrellas’ robotic algorithms with the behavior of the attendees.

From CSAIL:

"Our work deals with developing algorithms that allow robots to operate independently within a large decentralized network so that the robots can coordinate and work together to accomplish a common task. Through UP, we can study the behaviors of large groups, which can be applied to our research in robotics."

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Photo: Emily Muldoon Kathan

UP marked CSAIL's second collaboration with Pilobolus, a renowned dance collaborative that has performed on the Academy Awards, Oprah Winfrey, and Late Night with Conan O'Brien. In 2012, the groups created Seraph, a performance piece involving human dancers and live robots.

Photo: Emily Muldoon Kathan

Photo: Emily Muldoon Kathan

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IkeaBot Assembles Furniture Using “Common Sense”

by Nancy DuVergne Smith on May 21, 2013

in Engineering

Assembling popular Swedish furniture may help the masses, but it’s only a hint of what goes on in MIT’s Distributed Robotics Laboratory. How the bots do it is the breakthrough. According to a recent IEEE Spectrum article, the bots are fully autonomous and need no human help to whip together a Lack table in 10 minutes. The magic is in the software and the grippers—and that magic can be applied to industrial-scale problems in manufacturing.

Ross A. Knepper, a postdoctoral associate, is leading the effort to teach a team of commercially available KUKA youBots to assemble the furniture. In an earlier life, he created motion planners that drive Mars rovers, unmanned military vehicles, and a personal home-assistant robot called HERB.

With the Ikeabot, Knepper is tackling a key problem in robotics with savvy algorithms.

“A lot of problems in factory automation are similar to the problem in Ikea furniture assembly,” says Knepper. “There are many robots in factories but they perform very simple functions. In the future, we want robots that can move around in the factory and interact with people…so they can be treated as teammates, not just tools.”

Knepper is writing code that creates the kind of common sense that allows humans to work side by side intuitively. “If you imagine two people assembling furniture together, they can infer what the other is doing—they don’t have to explain it. [The IKeabots] are trying to infer how parts fit together and the logical order of assembly.”

Using a natural language feature, the robots can ask for help. If they can’t reach a part, for example, they find a human and ask that the part be handed to them, and then they continue to work.

Space requirements have guided much of robot research in the past few decades, Knepper says. In space, robots need a higher order of intelligence to solve problems and work independently. The payoff may be closer to home though—on the factory floor. Using intelligent robots could help rebuild manufacturing and create jobs in the US. “We will need highly skilled people to operate the robots and robots and humans can trade off jobs,” he says. “You can have a much more efficient process.”

What’s next for the Ikeabot? The team is working on an Allen Wrench glove that the robot can put on and off as needed, and the future is about groups of robots working collaboratively with one another—and with people. And all that fits neatly into the Distributed Robotics Laboratory, which is headed by Daniela Rus, director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). DRL is known for research in programmable matter and distributed robotics. In fact, the lab’s robots have many talents: they can end a garden, bake cookies from scratch, fly in swarms to perform surveillance functions, and dance with humans.

Want the details? Download “The IkeaBot: An Autonomous Multi-Robot Coordinated Furniture Assembly System,” which was nominated for Best Automation Paper at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)in Karlsruhe, Germany, May 2013.

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Fore! Giving Green for DAPER

by Joe McGonegal on May 20, 2013

in Alumni Life, Athletics, Campus Culture, Economics, Public Service, Travel

Your favorite search engine will tell you that there are about 225,000 instances of the term “MIT golf”out there. Not overwhelming, but it’s more sizable than a search for “CalTech Golf,” which yields a mere 2,000 results.

Source: Pound Ridge Golf Club.

Pound Ridge Golf Club.

Somewhere deep in that query is Ken Wang ’71, who owns Pound Ridge Golf Club and who is hosting the first annual MIT Golf Outing on May 20 in Westchester County, New York. The tournament will benefit MIT’s Department of Athletics, Physical Education, and Recreation.

Offering his course to MIT for a day caps years of service to the Institute.  Currently a member of the corporation, Wang is also a former Alumni Association board president, MIT Club of New York president, and member of over a dozen visiting committees and advisory boards over the years.

But Wang is always eager to advance MIT’s brand into the world of athletics.

“I really believe that as MIT evolves, and the people involved with it evolve, it’s important that we start doing more mainstream stuff,” says Wang. “Plus, it’s just good fresh air.”

Pound Ridge has been a favorite among New York celebrities and politicians over the years. Its challenging 146-slope design came from Pete Dye, who also designed TPC Sawgrass and other world-famous courses.  Wang bought the course in 2008; four years later, Pound Ridge was named second among the New York City area’s top courses by Golf Magazine.

At the tournament to support DAPER, MIT golfers will face Pound Ridge’s signature boulder in the middle of the 13th fairway and pray for luck on the backboard headstone behind the 15th green. But Wang won’t be among them.

“I’ll be there, but I won’t be golfing,” he says, adding, “I’d rather not have my game seen in public!”

Asked to name the best golfer in MIT history, Wang replies, “He’s going to kill me for saying it, but I’d say Robert Turner ’74, who’ll be there. He’s a very good golfer.”

Ken Wang '71. Photo: Tanit Sakakini.

Ken Wang ’71. Photo: Tanit Sakakini.

In an interview on the Golf Trips blog, Wang lists the Blue Monster at Doral as a favorite course and says he prefers Jack Nicklaus over Arnold Palmer.

As for Tiger Woods, Wang says, “I don’t necessarily approve of the shenanigans, but I love Tiger. He’s the most important person in the sport.”

When he’s not thinking about golf, Wang serves as president of the U.S. Summit Corporation, founded by his father CC Wang SM ’45 and three of his classmates. Between these two roles, Wang puts his MIT economics degree to good use.

Wang didn’t golf during his years at MIT, though he loved playing intramural hockey. At times, his relationship with DAPER was less than appreciative. “I didn’t pass the swim test, although I’d like you to know that I could have. I just wasn’t a very competent swimmer, so I took swimming because I hoped it would make me better. I was finally able to splash my way through it.”

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Photo of the Week by Owen Franken ’68—May 18, 2013

by Joe McGonegal on May 18, 2013

in Franken Photo of the Week

A row of fruit-flavored syrups at a snow cone stand in Salvador, Brazil (© Owen Franken).

A row of fruit-flavored syrups at a snow cone stand in Salvador, Brazil (© Owen Franken).

Curious about Owen Franken? View more of his work via the Franken Photo of the Week category, learn more in this profile, read a What Matters opinion column he wrote called “Life in Brownian Motion,” or visit his website.

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Robot Bartender: Should You Still Leave a Tip?

by Jay London on May 17, 2013

in Engineering, In the News, Modern Geekhood, Research

Makr-ShakrThe most prolific bartenders have knowledge of thousands of different drink recipes, but a how about a googol? A new robotic bartender developed by MIT’s SENSEable City Lab makes that claim and more.

The Makr Shakr is a three-armed robotic barman created through a partnership with Coca-Cola and Bacardi USA. The robot’s programmable  mixing system claims an infinite number of drinks and users can submit their own through a mobile app.

From dezeen magazine:

“Users will download an app on their handheld devices and mix ingredients as virtual barmen. They can gain inspiration by viewing other users’ recipes and comments before sending in their drink of choice. The cocktail is then crafted by three robotic arms, whose movements reproduce every action of a barman—from the shaking of a Martini to the muddling of a Mojito, and even the thin slicing of a lemon garnish.”

The Makr Shakr was previewed during Milan Design Week in April and made its official debut at the Google I/O annual developer conference in San Francisco on May 15. The machine was created at Google’s request. A year earlier, they asked the inventors to create a device that best exemplifies participatory design.

The robotic arms mimic the movements of a bartender—a very graceful bartender. The designers programmed the robot’s gestures by recording the movements of Italian ballet dancer Roberto Bolle.

Five SENSEable researchers helped develop the Makr Shakr, including project leader and graduate student Yaniv Turgeman. SENSEable’s 35-person team includes associate director Assaf Biderman ’05, Otto Ng ’12, Dietman Offenhuber ’08, Anthony Vanky SM ’11. Bacardi also has MIT ties; Joaquin E. Bacardi III MBA ‘98 is the company’s president and CEO.

Inspired by Coca-Cola’s Freestyle touchscreen beverage dispenser, the Makr Shakr can create alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks. The app’s customization system can monitor alcohol consumption and blood alcohol levels and help users self-monitor their intake. Users can also share their recipes and drink photos.

SENSEable City director Carlo Ratti told Boston Magazine that the Makr Shakr will not replace human bartenders and is “more a research platform aimed at the third industrial revolution, where anyone can design and produce.”

Fear not, barkeeps. There are no plans to make the Makr Shakr commercially available.

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Jeopardy Smackdown: MIT sophomore enters College Championship finals

by Maddy Myers on May 16, 2013

in Campus Culture, Student Life

trevor2

Trevor Walker on the Jeopardy set.

If you’ve been watching this week’s College Championship on Jeopardy, you know that MIT Computer Science and Engineering sophomore Trevor Walker has already won the quarter-final and the semi-final on May 8 and 13. Tonight and tomorrow, Trevor takes the podium once more for the two-day final.

“The communal score from both of those days determines who the winner is,” Walker explains at the Stata Center, while on a quick break from working on an MIT project final.

After all, Walker filmed the show last April. “I already know who the winner is,” he admits with a shy smile. But he won’t spoil it for me.

Whether Walker wins or not, he had a great time getting to know his fellow contestants. “It was great getting to know them. We’re all still friends – we’re friends on Facebook.”

Walker would like to do Jeopardy again someday, or perhaps a different quiz show.

“But Jeopardy was always my favorite,” he says. “When I was a teenager, I would take the teen tournament online test. One year, I got an audition, but I didn’t get any further than that, that time.”

Walker’s voice brightens as he describes his passion for fact-finding. “If I see something interesting, I’ll look it up on Wikipedia, and then I’ll find more links and read about that, so I’ll end up reading something completely unrelated to whatever I was originally looking for.”

Many people enjoy similar Wikipedia binges, but Walker has a gift for remembering the results of his information trawls. “I tend to remember a lot of little things,” he says. “My memory’s not incredible – it’s just good.”

Tapping his memory on Jeopardy is more fun than a final exam at MIT. “[Jeopardy] was a lot less stressful. I didn’t feel like I had to cram or anything. I knew what I knew and I was going to do the best I could.”

Does he feel that confident about his final exams, though? “Not necessarily,” Walker admits.

Walker’s appearance on the show has earned him other perks besides new friends. “People here all seem to know about it now,” Walker tells me. “I got recognized in UBurger the other day! That was unexpected.”

Check out Trevor Walker’s final push for a Jeopardy win tonight and tomorrow. Use Jeopardy.com’s When to Watch guide to find the channel and show time for your location.

Update: Trevor Walker did not take first prize in the Jeopardy finals, but he did take home $50,000 as the first runner-up.

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Karen Kinnaman ’06: A Hero Among Us

by Jay London on May 15, 2013

in Alumni Life, Athletics, Events, In the News

Karen Kinnaman '06 (left) honored alongside colleague Heather Studley at the April 26 Celtics game.

Karen Kinnaman ’06 (left) honored alongside colleague Heather Studley by the Celtics. (Photo: Boston Celtics)

For eleven months per year, Karen Kinnaman ’06—a soon-to-be chief resident of the Harvard Affiliated Emergency Medicine Residency Program—is based out of Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. For the other month, she can be found at Mount Auburn Hospital, a community hospital located in a quiet part of Cambridge, which is where she was on Friday, April 19, 2013.

The early morning of April 19 lives in infamy—the date suspected Boston Marathon bombers engaged in a violent standoff with local police officers in Watertown, MA, a Boston suburb less than one mile from Mount Auburn.

While working in the ER, Kinnaman helped save the life of an individual who was wounded in the shootout. For her efforts, she was part of a group of first responders honored by the Boston Celtics as “Heroes Among Us” during their playoff game with the New York Knicks on Friday, April 26. (The Knicks won, 90-76.)

Karen Kinnaman '06

Karen Kinnaman ’06

“It was a great honor—so overwhelming,” she says. “The emotions from April 19 were still very, very raw. Receiving that fan support was an experience I’ll never forget.”

A teaching hospital, Mount Auburn’s emergency room is not often home to large-scale trauma.

“We weren’t given much heads up, which was a benefit because we had no time to worry, only to react,” she says. “What happened in the emergency room that night was a positive story of hope. It was a testament to the hospital and the people who work there.”

A four-year athlete at MIT, Kinnaman captained the women’s basketball team and earned varsity letters in soccer, track, and cross country. During her senior year, she was named the Malcolm G. Kispert MIT Scholar Athlete of the Year. A course 7 (biology) major at MIT, Kinnaman says her undergraduate education and athletic background provided a strong foundation for her medical career. She attributes much of her professional success to lessons learned at MIT.

Kinnaman_2

“Being able to stay calm under pressure is something I learned from to playing sports at MIT,” she says. “Working in an ER parallels the experience on an athletic field: following your instincts and working together towards a common goal. The emotional highs and lows that take place in an emergency room are similar to the types of emotions you feel in sports.”

At MGH, she has a constant reminder of her time at MIT. Her former basketball assistant coach, Kelly Stubbs, is a nurse in MGH’s emergency department.

“My coaches at MIT always believed in me,” she says. “They instilled in me how to be a good leader in chaotic situations.”

For most Celtics fans, a blowout loss to the Knicks would leave little to cheer about. But the ceremony was a compelling moment that New York and Boston fans shared together.

“I’m actually a huge Knicks fan,” she says. “But on that night I was all in for Boston. It was a perfect night.”

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“I’m A Nuke”: MIT’s Rising Generation of Nuclear Engineers

by Nancy DuVergne Smith on May 14, 2013

in Energy, Engineering

Guest blogger: Peter Dunn

The phrase “young nuclear engineer” has been something of an oxymoron in recent decades, with the nuclear energy industry offering few openings for newcomers. Yet a new crop of nuclear engineers are coming out of MIT and videos themed, “I’m A Nuke,” tell some of their stories.

MIT students host the American Nuclear Society 2013 Student Conference.

MIT students host the American Nuclear Society 2013 Student Conference in April.

Newly educated engineers are vital because the engineers who entered the field in the 1960s and 1970s are retiring, and climate change concerns are sparking renewed interest in the ability to generate continuous carbon-free energy. MIT’s Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE) has seen a surge in applications from a diverse, dynamic group of students, many of them with strong environmental orientations.

Last month, MIT hosted the recent American Nuclear Society 2013 Student Conference, with the theme, Public Image of the Nuclear Engineer. About 630 US and international students attended the event, which was co-chaired by NSE students Nathan Gibson, Ekaterina Paranomova ‘13, and Samuel Brinton. Publicity coordinator Jake Jurewicz ’14 said the timing, about two years after the Fukushima disaster, was opportune.

“People have had time to digest Fukushima and the lessons learned; we all sat in on talks about what went wrong and what can be done to improve plants and remedy what happened,” said Jurewicz.

More broadly, he added, the conference focused on innovation, new ideas, and cultivation of the new workforce. In addition to talks and technical sessions, activities included a large poster session showcasing attendee research, career and political workshops, a job fair, tours of MIT’s fission and fusion reactors, and a three-minute pitch contest.

Brinton, who is studying nuclear waste policy, captured some of the complexity faced by his generation, saying, “my mother was raised near Three Mile Island, and my dad was an anti-nuclear weapons activist, so I wanted to address the big problems that nuclear was facing….I want to apply a scientific solution to a political problem.”

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