Maestro – Tufts Magazine

A new artificial intelligence system designed at Tufts has made it faster and easier to learn to play the piano. Is it the future of education? 

Illustration by Gaby D’Allesandro

In a fourth-floor Tufts lab, a computer program was in the process of convincing a student that she was actually interacting with a human. It was spring 2015, and the student had come to the lab for a study involving a new way of teaching people to play the piano.

Yuksel and Oleson call their AI system Brain Automated Chorales, or BACh. It’s the first AI system to collect brain data and use that information to adapt a task for learners in real time. “It’s a huge deal,” said H. Chad Lane, an educational psychologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who studies intelligent technologies for learning. “No one has really successfully integrated neuroscience into interactive digital learning very well yet.”

With BACh’s flexibility, it becomes possible to envision brain-based AI tutoring systems that students could use in daily life—while doing homework, for example.

Read the full story in Tufts Magazine.

From autism to Chinese, a headset to help you with your language – New Scientist

Adrian Weinbrecht/plain picture

Learning a tonal language like Chinese is notoriously difficult–it’s easy to end up calling your mother a horse. But soon there could be a wearable headset that can help. The system was created for people with autism who want help with social interactions, but it could be adapted to help with speech or anxiety problems–or even language learning, says LouAnne Boyd at the University of California at Irvine, part of the team that designed it.

Head tracker knows what you’re doing and helps you multitask

If your phone buzzed right now, would it distract you from reading this? Of course, it would, because switching between tasks takes mental energy. Julien Epps at the University of New South Wales, Australia, wants to help us handle those distractions.

Epps is building a wearable system that tracks human movements to understand what task you’re doing, how difficult it is, and when you switch to something else. His goal is to help us control our multitasking lives.

Read the full story in New Scientist.

Hands full? Shoe computer lets you kick to answer your phone

Petra Herbert/Plainpicture

EVER tried to answer a smartphone with your hands full? Try your foot instead. KickSoul is an insole that you can slip inside shoes to control digital devices with a flick of your foot.

Xavier Benavides and his team at the MIT Media Lab sewed a gyroscope and accelerometer between two layers of spongy insole.

Read the full story in New Scientist.

Soft robotic suit gently guides stroke patients’ stride

Image: selimaksan/Getty

It’s enough to put a spring in your step. A soft robotic suit has helped three people recovering from a stroke to walk better.

The suit, developed by a team led by Conor Walsh at Harvard’s Wyss Institute, is made of flexible fabric that attaches to the waist, thigh, calf and shoe. Cables fastened to the outside of the suit can contract in the same directions as muscles, helping to move the legs.

Read the full article in New Scientist.

Soft Robotic Glove Could Put Daily Life Within Patients’ Grasp

This robotic glove is softer and more lightweight than available assistive technology for the hands.

The latest in assistive technology is a lightweight glove that helps patients with limited mobility grab and pick up objects.

The motor hummed like a belt sander, and without any help from me, my fingers and thumb curled together in a grasping motion. It felt as if someone else’s hand were underneath mine—someone stronger, moving my fingers for me.

Read the full article in MIT Technology Review.