Spelling suggestions: "subject:"arts ett sciences"" "subject:"arts eet sciences""
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Collective debateYuan, An,S.M.Massachusetts Institute of Technology. January 2018 (has links)
Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2018 / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 101-102). / Participating in online debate can expose people to diverse viewpoints, and thereby reduce polarization of opinion over controversial issues. However a lot of online debate is hostile and further dividing -we need tools that facilitate meaningful back and forth discussion. For my thesis work I created such a tool in the form of an artificial agent that engages users in debate over controversial issues. By engaging in debates with many users, the agent will start to gain insight into things like: what kinds of arguments do people find persuasive? Or, what can we predict about a person's argumentative behavior from their moral sense? Or, what is the characteristic debate path for someone who becomes persuaded to change his mind completely? The agent will then use what it has learned to help users on either side of an issue better understand each other by exposing them to compelling arguments from both sides. To identify these arguments, the agent develops a model of the user that predicts which arguments the user will like. I measure the agent's performance given different models of the user. I then evaluate the performance of each model against the random agent, which does not attempt to model the user. / by An Yuan. / S.M. / S.M. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences
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Magnetomicrometry : tissue length tracking via implanted magnetic beadsTaylor, Cameron Roy. January 2020 (has links)
Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, May, 2020 / Cataloged from student-submitted PDF of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 111-113). / Target tracking is necessary across a wide range of disciplines and scales, such as in monitoring tissues and cells, beam bending, fluid dynamics, human-computer interaction, and traffic. Due to these widespread applications, advances in target tracking drive cascades of new medical, social, and scientific capabilities. In particular, this dissertation advances magnetomicrometry, a technology that tracks visually-obscured magnetic beads implanted within biological tissue to monitor in-vivo tissue length and speed within freely moving animals and humans. There are many methods to track visually-obscured objects, but magnetic-target tracking has the advantages of being low-cost, portable, and safe. However, current magnet tracking technologies are slow, precluding high-speed real-time magnetic-target tracking. This is due to the mathematics of magnet tracking, whereby magnet positions are traditionally determined via numerical optimization, suffering from instability and significant delays. This dissertation develops the mathematics for an improved method to track one or more magnets with high speed and accuracy and validates this method by demonstrating real-time muscle length tracking. We develop a high-speed, real-time, multiple-magnetic-target tracking method using the analytic gradient of the magnetic field prediction error. We extend this method to compensate for magnetic disturbances in real time using a simpler, more portable strategy than currently-published disturbance compensation methods. Validating our method in a physical system against state-of-the-art motion capture, we demonstrate increased maximum bandwidths of 336%, 525%, 635%, and 773% for the simultaneous tracking of 1, 2, 3, and 4 magnets, respectively, with tracking accuracy comparable to state-of-the-art magnet tracking. / by Cameron Roy Taylor. / Ph. D. / Ph.D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences
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RF-guided exploration for robotic manipulation / Radiofrequency-guided exploration for robotic manipulationLeng, Junshan. January 2020 (has links)
Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, September, 2020 / Cataloged from student-submitted PDF of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages [48]-[53]). / This thesis presents the design, implementation, and evaluation of RVExp, a system that leverages radio perception to design efficient exploration controllers in highly occluded and non-line-of-sight settings. RVExp relies on eye-in-hand vision sensor and battery-less RFID tags attached to the object of interest. Since RF (radio frequency) signals can traverse everyday occlusions, RVExp uses the RFIDs' signals to locate an object through occlusions. At the heart of RVExp's design is a novel radio-visual planner that uses the RFID's location to semantically explore the environment and plan an efficient trajectory toward an occluded target object. The controller can efficiently discover obstacles by biasing a Gaussian belief space planner using the RFID's location. I have built RVExp end-to-end and evaluated its performance in challenging real-world environments. The results show the feasibility of RF-guided exploration and its superiority over standard exploration. / by Junshan Leng. / S.M. / S.M. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences
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Video In PubPub : moving images in context / Moving images in contextShihipar, Thariq January 2016 (has links)
Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2016. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 61-63). / Video has become so easy to make and distribute that it is becoming the most common way to describe many processes and ideas. However, it is often not effective at doing so. Within a context of a larger document, video is rarely a good citizen compared to text or images. It takes over the users attention and rarely points to other parts in the document.The video itself may be poorly made or it may demand too much time and investment on the part of the viewer relative to the content it provides. This thesis attempts to tackle this problem for a specific but useful circumstance: academic publishing. In this thesis, I develop and study two novel methods of using interactive video within an academic document for instruction and peer review. StepByStep explores how we can create a better tool for instruction and documentation of methods. A key property of good documentation is that it is easily skimmable for relevant information. StepByStep breaks down a video into steps and arranges them spatially so that users can skim and scroll through the steps to find what they're looking for. VideoComments is an attempt to create an alternative method of leaving feedback to a document. By pairing a video recording of a user along with their actions on the document, we allow users to reference images and embeds easily, quickly switch between different parts of the document and record their thoughts in real-time. Finally, this thesis creates an infrastructure in which interactive video applications such as StepByStep and VideoComments can be integrated into academic publishing standards and platforms. / by Thariq Shihipar. / S.M.
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Complex systems and a computational social science perspective on the labor market / Computational social science perspective on the labor marketAlmaatouq, Abdullah January 2016 (has links)
Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2016. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 99-109). / Thesis: S.M.. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Computation for Design and Optimization Program, 2016. / Labor market institutions are central for modern economies, and their polices can directly affect unemployment rates and economic growth. At the individual level, unemployment often has a detrimental impact on people's well-being and health. At the national level, high employment is one of the central goals of any economic policy, due to its close association with national prosperity. The main goal of this thesis is to highlight the need for frameworks that take into account the complex structure of labor market interactions. In particular, we explore the benefits of leveraging tools from computational social science, network science, and data-driven theories to measure the flow of opportunities and information in the context of the labor market. First, we investigate our key hypothesis, which is that opportunity/information flow through weak ties, and this is a key determinant of the length of unemployment. We then extend the idea of opportunity/information flow to clusters of other economic activities, where we expect the flow within clusters of related activities to be higher than within isolated activities. This captures the intuition that within related activities there are more "capitals" involved and that such activities require similar "capabilities." Therefore, more extensive clusters of economic activities should generate greater growth through exploiting the greater flow of opportunities and information. We quantify the opportunity/information flow using a complexity measure of two economic activities (i.e. jobs and exports). / by Abdullah Almaatouq. / S.M.
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Design for the modern Prometheus : towards an integrated biodesign workflowSharma, Sunanda,Ph. D.Massachusetts Institute of Technology. January 2016 (has links)
Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2016. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 131-136). / Biodesign is a growing field that harnesses the re-engineering capabilities of synthetic biology and the principles of design to create functional products on a variety of scales. It is now possible to precisely modify and program living organisms to create products useful for medicine, fabrication, and more. These capabilities are today inspiring designers to consider, and design for opportunities associated with, the incorporation of biological and otherwise living matter into the built environment. Standard Computer Aided Design (CAD) software used in design and engineering often does not have resolution required for living systems, whereas many known bioCAD software do not allow for larger scales. In addition, simulations and animations are usually limited to a short timescale, and do not allow for predictive models over days or weeks. For creating environments in which living materials or systems, from bacterial biofilms to functional swarms, can intertwine with synthetically fabricated constructs, rapid prototyping software must be developed that can allow for both design and simulation in different conditions over time. This thesis is an attempt at creating a design methodology and finding a software platform for inclusion of living material systems in manufacturing of products on multiple scales. Existing biological CAD software is surveyed and applied to two case study projects engaging multiple scales (i.e. human scale, and architectural scale) for which the digital fabrication of living materials provides additional functionality and augments the biological or ecological environment. In the process, novel work is presented in the areas of apiary management and 3D printing with biology. Additionally, several computational approaches, including rule based and agent-based techniques, are applied to both projects and evaluated for accuracy and usability. This research took place in Mediated Matters newly constructed BL2 Wet Lab, and serves as a demonstration of research that lies at the intersection of additive manufacturing and synthetic biology. / by Sunanda Sharma. / S.M.
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Reflecting music through movement : a body-syntonic approach to playing [with] the piano / Body-syntonic approach to playing [with] the pianoXiao, Xiao January 2016 (has links)
Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2016. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 149-160). / This thesis introduces and examines methods for the capture and reproduction of music on the piano that maintain a tight coupling between the body, the sound, and the physical instrument. For expert musicians, the body plays an indispensable role in the physical act of playing and the understanding of both musical structure and expressivity. However, many music learning technologies mistakenly assume that playing music is "playing the notes" and neglect the role of the body in the development of the musical mind. Drawing from research in telepresence, tangible interfaces, and augmented reality, I propose to bring the body back into the picture, literally and metaphorically, by augmenting a digital player piano with projection mapping. My platform synchronizes dynamic imagery with the piano's moving keys and acoustic sounds. I here focus on two main projects: MirrorFugue and Andante. Inspired by reflections on the lacquered surfaces of a grand piano, MirrorFugue simulates the presence of a virtual pianist whose reflection is actually playing the physically moving keys. It encourages anyone to take the seat left empty at the piano, to feel in his or her own body how music is expressed through the body of the performer, and to play along. Andante presents music as miniature figures that appear to walk and dance on the piano keyboard, physically striking a key with each stop. It conveys the expressivity in rhythms and phrases as well as musical structures through the bodies and movements of the figures. Both installations are designed as immersive "sandboxes" for the playful exploration of musical ideas. Beyond my projects, this thesis explores the parallels between music learning and learning and large. I discuss the connections between theories of music learning (particularly Dalcroze Eurhythmics) with theories of general mental development (Jean Piaget, Jerome Bruner, Seymour Papert, and Marvin Minsky), as well as how strategies from music learning could inform the art of learning in general. / by Xiao Xiao. / Ph. D.
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Paper electronics : circuits on paper for learning and self-expression / Circuits on paper for learning and self-expressionQi, Jie January 2016 (has links)
Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2016. / This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections. / "September 2016." Cataloged from student-submitted PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 148-156). / In this dissertation, I explore the theme of wonder in technology, learning and self-expression through the lens of paper electronics, which is circuit building on paper using conductive tapes and circuit components as electronic craft materials. This new medium blends the interactive functionality of electronics with the expressive flexibility of the paper medium. I present an overview of the paper electronics medium as well as its extension in the form of electrified books, books with circuitry integrated with its pages and spine. I then described the design of a paper electronics toolkit called circuit stickers and how this toolkit was deployed through a company called Chibitronics. Finally, through the circuit stickers toolkit, I investigate and evaluate the paper electronics medium as a learning tool and approach, expressive medium and method to engage more diverse communities in technology creation. These investigations show that paper electronics has indeed impacted learners, educators and creators across many backgrounds and disciplines. It has enabled educators to teach a broad range of subjects and skills in new ways. Artists have used paper electronics to explore electricity and interactivity for self-expression, demonstrating the aesthetic flexibility and expressive potency of this medium. Finally, it has engaged creators from diverse communities and backgrounds including educators, Makers, and crafters. It enables not only new approaches to learning and creating technology, it also engages new types of creators in inventing surprising technological artifacts--ones that inspire new experiences, objects and opportunities for wonder. / by Jie Qi. / Ph. D.
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New materials for teaching computational thinking in early childhood educationSmith, Kimberly January 2017 (has links)
Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2017. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. Page 104 blank. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 100-103). / The need for computer science education is greater than ever. There are currently over 500,000 unfilled computer science jobs in the United States and many schools do not teach computer science in their classrooms. Computers are powerful tools, and computational thinking-skills of problem-solving, logic, and abstraction that form the foundation of computer science-can be applied across other disciplines. Many current approaches to computer science education use computer screens. Though computer science education is important and effective from a young age, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends we limit screen time in children; and research shows that excessive screen time is detrimental for a child's development. A 2006 research study by Angeline Lillard published in Science showed that Montessori students scored higher on academic, cognitive, social, and behavioral tests than students in a traditional elementary school setting. The Montessori Method is characterized by mixed-age classrooms, child-driven learning, and a series of sensorial, physical materials. Developed nearly 100 years ago by Dr. Maria Montessori, the Montessori curriculum does not explicitly include computer science in its curriculum. This research examines the Montessori Method as a way to teach computer science for early childhood education. Interpreting and extending Dr. Montessori's original pedagogy, I have developed a curriculum with new learning materials for young children that breaks down the fundamentals of computational thinking into a set of discrete concepts that are expressed in tactile, hands-on ways. This research evaluates this approach through direct observation and teacher feedback; and suggests the potential for this Method as an effective approach to teach computational concepts to young children. / by Kimberly Smith. / S.M.
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A Bayesian theory of mind approach to nonverbal communication for human-robot interactions : a computational formulation of intentional inference and belief manipulationLee, Jin Joo January 2017 (has links)
Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2017. / This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections. / Cataloged from student-submitted PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 115-122). / Much of human social communication is channeled through our facial expressions, body language, gaze directions, and many other nonverbal behaviors. A robot's ability to express and recognize the emotional states of people through these nonverbal channels is at the core of artificial social intelligence. The purpose of this thesis is to define a computational framework to nonverbal communication for human-robot interactions. We address both sides to nonverbal communication, the decoding and encoding of social-emotional states through nonverbal behaviors, and also demonstrate their shared underlying representation. We use our computational framework to model engagement/attention in storytelling interactions. Storytelling is an interaction form that is mutually regulated between storytellers and listeners where a key dynamic is the back-and- forth process of speaker cues and listener responses. Listeners convey attentiveness through nonverbal back-channels, while storytellers use nonverbal cues to elicit this feedback. We demonstrate that storytellers employ plans, albeit short, to influence and infer the attentive state of listeners using these speaker cues.We computationally model the intentional inference of storytellers as a planning problem of getting listeners to pay attention. When accounting for this intentional context of storytellers, our attention estimator outperforms current state-of-the-art approaches to emotion recognition. By formulating emotion recognition as a planning problem, we apply a recent artificial intelligence method of inverting planning models to perform belief inference. We computationally model emotion expression as a combined process of estimating a person's beliefs through inference inversion and then producing nonverbal expressions to affect those beliefs.We demonstrate that a robotic agent operating under our belief manipulation paradigm more effectively communicates an attentive state compared to current state-of- the-art approaches that cannot dynamically capture how the robot's expressions are interpreted by the human partner. / Jin Joo Lee. / Ph. D.
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