Communications of the ACM
A Healthy Dose of AI
Building artificial intelligence into medical devices can speed diagnoses and potentially improve treatments and outcomes.
From ACM NewsAn edited collection of advanced computing news from Communications of the ACM, ACM TechNews, other ACM resources, and news sites around the Web.
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Automatic Building Mapping Could Help Emergency Responders
MIT researchers have built a wearable sensor system that automatically creates a digital map of the environment through which the wearer is moving.
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New Router Enhances the Precision of Woodworking
Anyone who has tried to build a piece of furniture from scratch knows the frustration of painstakingly cutting pieces of wood, only to discover that they won't...
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Researchers Amplify Variations in Video, Making the Invisible Visible
At this summer's Siggraph—the premier computer-graphics conference—researchers from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory will present new...
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The Robot Revolution Is Just Beginning
When industrial robots were first introduced in the early 1960s initially on automobile assembly lines—computers were still in their infancy, so the robots were...
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Simulating Tomorrow's Chips
Most computer chips today have anywhere from four to 10 separate cores, or processing units, which can work in parallel, increasing the chips' efficiency. But the...
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Self-Sculpting Sand
Imagine that you have a big box of sand in which you bury a tiny model of a footstool.
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Guiding Robot Planes with Hand Gestures
Aircraft-carrier crew use a set of standard hand gestures to guide planes on the carrier deck. But as robot planes are increasingly used for routine air missions...
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Tiny 3D Chips
Microelectromechanical systems, or MEMS, are small devices with huge potential. Typically made of components less than 100 microns in size—the diameter of a human...
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Microchips' Optical Future
To keep energy consumption under control, future chips may need to move data using light instead of electricity—and the technical expertise to build them may reside...
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Putting the 'art' in Artificial Intelligence
Like many kids, Antonio Torralba began playing around with computers when he was 13 years old. Unlike many of his friends, though, he was not playing video games...
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Important Step Toward Computing with Light
There has been enormous progress in recent years toward the development of photonic chips—devices that use light beams instead of electrons to carry out their...
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Tiny Stamps for Tiny Sensors
Advances in microchip technology may someday enable clinicians to perform tests for hundreds of diseases—sifting out specific molecules, such as early stage cancer...
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Seeing Through Walls
Researchers at MIT's Lincoln Lab have developed new radar technology that provides real-time video of what’s going on behind solid walls.
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Smarter Robot Arms
A combination of two algorithms developed at MIT allows autonomous robots to execute tasks much more efficiently—and move more predictably.
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Printing Off the Paper
Imagine being able to "print" an entire house. Or a four-course dinner. Or a complete mechanical device such as a cuckoo clock, fully assembled and ready to run...
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In Plane View
An airplane’s digital flight-data recorder, or "black box," holds massive amounts of data, documenting the performance of engines, cockpit controls, hydraulic...
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A New Planning Tool Helps Direct Traffic on Aircraft Carriers
On the deck of an aircraft carrier, where up to 60 aircraft are crammed into 4.5 acres (1.8 hectares), real estate is at a premium. While aircraft directors wave...
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Safer Skies
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has mandated that by 2020, all commercial aircraft—and small aircraft flying near most airports—must be equipped with...
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