The velocity with which new applied sciences hit the market is nothing in comparison with the velocity with which proficient researchers discover inventive methods to make use of them, practice them, even flip them into issues we are able to’t reside with out. One such researcher is MIT MAD Fellow Alexander Htet Kyaw, a graduate pupil pursuing twin grasp’s levels in architectural research in computation and in electrical engineering and pc science.
Kyaw takes applied sciences like synthetic intelligence, augmented actuality, and robotics, and combines them with gesture, speech, and object recognition to create human-AI workflows which have the potential to work together with our constructed setting, change how we store, design complicated buildings, and make bodily issues.
One in every of his newest improvements is Curator AI, for which he and his MIT graduate pupil companions took first prize — $26,000 in OpenAI merchandise and money — on the MIT AI Convention’s AI Construct: Generative Voice AI Options, a weeklong hackathon at MIT with ultimate shows held final fall in New York Metropolis. Working with Kyaw had been Richa Gupta (structure) and Bradley Bunch, Nidhish Sagar, and Michael Gained — all from the MIT Division of Electrical Engineering and Pc Science (EECS).
Curator AI is designed to streamline on-line furnishings buying by offering context-aware product suggestions utilizing AI and AR. The platform makes use of AR to take the scale of a room with areas of home windows, doorways, and present furnishings. Customers can then converse to the software program to explain what new furnishings they need, and the system will use a vision-language AI mannequin to seek for and show varied choices that match each the person’s prompts and the room’s visible traits.
“Customers can select from the prompt choices, visualize merchandise in AR, and use pure language to ask for modifications to the search, making the furnishings choice course of extra intuitive, environment friendly, and personalised,” Kyaw says. “The issue we’re making an attempt to resolve is that most individuals don’t know the place to start out when furnishing a room, so we developed Curator AI to supply sensible, contextual suggestions primarily based on what your room seems like.” Though Curator AI was developed for furnishings buying, it might be expanded to be used in different markets.
One other instance of Kyaw’s work is Estimate, a product that he and three different graduate college students created in the course of the MIT Sloan Product Tech Convention’s hackathon in March 2024. The main focus of that competitors was to assist small companies; Kyaw and staff determined to base their work on a portray firm in Cambridge that employs 10 individuals. Estimate makes use of AR and an object-recognition AI know-how to take the precise measurements of a room and generate an in depth value estimate for a renovation and/or paint job. It additionally leverages generative AI to show photos of the room or rooms as they may seem like after portray or renovating, and generates an bill as soon as the mission is full.
The staff gained that hackathon and $5,000 in money. Kyaw’s teammates had been Guillaume Allegre, Could Khine, and Anna Mathy, all of whom graduated from MIT in 2024 with grasp’s levels in enterprise analytics.
In April, Kyaw will give a TedX speak at his alma mater, Cornell College, wherein he’ll describe Curator AI, Estimate, and different initiatives that use AI, AR, and robotics to design and construct issues.
One in every of these initiatives is Unlog, for which Kyaw related AR with gesture recognition to construct a software program that takes enter from the contact of a fingertip on the floor of a cloth, and even within the air, to map the scale of constructing parts. That’s how Unlog — a towering artwork sculpture produced from ash logs that stands on the Cornell campus — happened.
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Gesture Recognition for Suggestions-Primarily based Combined Actuality and Robotic Fabrication of the Unlog Tower
Video: Alexander Htet Kyaw
Unlog represents the chance that buildings may be constructed straight from a complete log, relatively than having the log journey to a lumber mill to be became planks or two-by-fours, then shipped to a wholesaler or retailer. It’s a great illustration of Kyaw’s need to make use of constructing supplies in a extra sustainable approach. A paper on this work, “Gestural Recognition for Suggestions-Primarily based Combined Actuality Fabrication a Case Research of the UnLog Tower,” was revealed by Kyaw, Leslie Lok, Lawson Spencer, and Sasa Zivkovic within the Proceedings of the fifth Worldwide Convention on Computational Design and Robotic Fabrication, January 2024.
One other system Kyaw developed integrates physics simulation, gesture recognition, and AR to design lively bending buildings constructed with bamboo poles. Gesture recognition permits customers to govern digital bamboo modules in AR, and the physics simulation is built-in to visualise how the bamboo bends and the place to connect the bamboo poles in ways in which create a steady construction. This work appeared within the Proceedings of the forty first Schooling and Analysis in Pc Aided Architectural Design in Europe, August 2023, as “Energetic Bending in Physics-Primarily based Combined Actuality: The Design and Fabrication of a Reconfigurable Modular Bamboo System.”
Kyaw pitched the same thought utilizing bamboo modules to create deployable buildings final 12 months to MITdesignX, an MIT MAD program that selects promising startups and gives teaching and funding to launch them. Kyaw has since based BendShelters to construct the prefabricated, modular bamboo shelters and neighborhood areas for refugees and displaced individuals in Myanmar, his residence nation.
“The place I grew up, in Myanmar, I’ve seen a variety of day-to-day results of local weather change and excessive poverty,” Kyaw says. “There’s an enormous refugee disaster within the nation, and I wish to take into consideration how I can contribute again to my neighborhood.”
His work with BendShelters has been acknowledged by MIT Sandbox, PKG Social Innovation Problem, and the Amazon Robotics’ Prize for Social Good.
At MIT, Kyaw is collaborating with Professor Neil Gershenfeld, director of the Heart for Bits and Atoms, and PhD pupil Miana Smith to make use of speech recognition, 3D generative AI, and robotic arms to create a workflow that may construct objects in an accessible, on-demand, and sustainable approach. Kyaw holds bachelor’s levels in structure and pc science from Cornell. Final 12 months, he was awarded an SJA Fellowship from the Steve Jobs Archive, which gives funding for initiatives on the intersection of know-how and the humanities.
“I get pleasure from exploring completely different sorts of applied sciences to design and make issues,” Kyaw says. “Being a part of MAD has made me take into consideration how all my work connects, and helped make clear my intentions. My analysis imaginative and prescient is to design and develop techniques and merchandise that allow pure interactions between people, machines, and the world round us.”
