In this text, we present two stereo-based head tracking techniques along with a fast 3D model acquisition system. The first tracking technique is a robust implementation of stereo-based head tracking designed for ...

One objective of artificial intelligence is to model the behavior of an intelligent agent interacting with its environment. The environment's transformations can be modeled as a Markov chain, whose state is partially ...

The goal of the work reported here is to capture the commonsense knowledge of non-expert human contributors. Achieving this goal will enable more intelligent human-computer interfaces and pave the way for computers to ...

Biological systems exhibit rich and complex behavior through the orchestrated interplay of a large array of components. It is hypothesized that separable subsystems with some degree of functional autonomy exist; deciphering ...

As exploration of our solar system and outerspace move into the future, spacecraft are being developed to venture on increasingly challenging missions with bold objectives. The spacecraft tasked with completing these ...

Humans distinguish materials such as metal, plastic, and paper effortlessly at a glance. Traditional computer vision systems cannot solve this problem at all. Recognizing surface reflectance properties from a single ...

The furious pace of Moore's Law is driving computer architecture into a realm where the the speed of light is the dominant factor in system latencies. The number of clock cycles to span a chip are increasing, while the ...

This paper describes a system for the computer understanding of English. The system answers questions, executes commands, and accepts information in normal English dialog. It uses semantic information and context to ...

A method is presented for the visual analysis of objects by computer. It is particularly well suited for opaque objects with smoothly curved surfaces. The method extracts information about the object's surface properties, ...

We describe an adaptive, mid-level approach to the wireless device power management problem. Our approach is based on reinforcement learning, a machine learning framework for autonomous agents. We describe how our ...

In this thesis, I designed and implemented a virtual machine (VM) for a monomorphic variant of Athena, a type-omega denotational proof language (DPL). This machine attempts to maintain the minimum state required to ...

General-purpose computing devices allow us to (1) customize computation after fabrication and (2) conserve area by reusing expensive active circuitry for different functions in time. We define RP-space, a restricted ...

Concurrent Smalltalk is the primary language used for programming the J- Machine, a MIMD message-passing computer containing thousands of 36-bit processors connected by a very low latency network. This thesis describes ...

We present a general framework for discriminative estimation based on the maximum entropy principle and its extensions. All calculations involve distributions over structures and/or parameters rather than specific ...

As the number of processors in distributed-memory multiprocessors grows, efficiently supporting a shared-memory programming model becomes difficult. We have designed the Protocol for Hierarchical Directories (PHD) to ...

There are many learning problems for which the examples given by the teacher are ambiguously labeled. In this thesis, we will examine one framework of learning from ambiguous examples known as Multiple-Instance learning. ...

This report describes development of micro-fabricated piezoelectric ultrasonic motors and bulk-ceramic piezoelectric ultrasonic motors. Ultrasonic motors offer the advantage of low speed, high torque operation without ...

Linear graph reduction is a simple computational model in which the cost of naming things is explicitly represented. The key idea is the notion of "linearity". A name is linear if it is only used once, so with linear ...

The MIT Prototype Educational Assessment System provides subjects and courses at MIT with the ability to perform online assessment. The system includes polices to handle harassment and electronic "flaming" while ...

Since robots are typically designed with an individual actuator at each joint, the control of these systems is often difficult and non-intuitive. This thesis explains a more intuitive control scheme called Virtual Model ...