By Barbara Morgan, 30 June 2000 12:09
NEWS The MIT Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS) said a group of companies will work with MIT researchers to make computers as pervasive and invisible as oxygen. Oxygen is a five-year, $50m project by MIT's LCS with additional research from MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Six companies last week pledged more than $25m to join the Oxygen Alliance. They include the Acer Group, Delta Electronics, HP, NTT, Nokia and Philips Research. The group will work with MIT researchers to create a new breed of computers that focus on human needs. Specific areas will include the creation of portable and stationary devices that can handle human speech and vision in limited contexts and new networking technologies for mobility and for controlling physical devices. Additional research will target the automation of repetitive tasks and individualised access to knowledge, as well as the new operating systems to support these technologies. The alliance will involve personnel exchanges, joint workshops and joint projects between MIT and each of the participating companies. Michael Dertouzos, director of LCS, explained: "For 40 years makers and users of computers have been catering to what machines need. It's high time we turn our attention to what people want to do." Dertouzos said that he was very anxious to see machines that cater to human needs. As such, speech will be another key area of research. The Spoken Language Systems group at MIT has been working to create speech recognition software that allows users to talk with computers as they do with each other. In addition, the Artificial Intelligence Lab is working on technology to help the computers identify people by their facial features. The MIT Oxygen project was initially launched in the fall of last year with funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
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