The Instant Future Talks series, hosted by IFT, continues to be a valuable platform for fostering connections between French higher education and leading institutions like MIT. By bringing together researchers and practitioners such as Doğa Doğan, these events facilitate the exchange of knowledge and ideas, contributing to the development of groundbreaking technologies that address the needs of society and the economy.
Organized by the Institute for Future Technologies to fulfil this mission is the ‘Instant Future talks,’ a monthly series that invites researchers and practitioners, primarily alumni of the MIT Media Lab and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), to share their experiences and insights.
Sharing and visualizing technology in everyday life
In an era where technology integration into daily life is becoming increasingly prevalent, the need to seamlessly connect real-world objects with their digital counterparts has never been more significant.
The Institute for Future Technologies (IFT) is at the forefront of addressing this challenge, with a mission encompasses establishing a complete value chain for developing new technologies and responding to technological and environmental challenges.
The audience at Instant Future talks is quite diverse, consisting of a blend of students, professors, and members of the public. IFT promotes these engaging discussions through various internal channels and on social media platforms. While most attendees are students pursuing their master’s degrees in Creative Technology, the IFT also welcomes students of ESILV and esteemed professors from various fields.
Notably, IFT introduced live-streaming as a part of the initiative starting in October, and shares the streaming links via their social media profiles. This decision has broadened IFT’s reach, allowing people from the public to tune in remotely and join our conversations.
A testament to the success of this approach was evident during Doğa’s talk, where questions were received from the remote audience, demonstrating their active engagement with our content.
We believe it is essential to expose our students to cutting-edge research and researchers. As the Creative Technology major at IFT is mainly project-based, these talks can give students ideas for their projects and sprout potential collaborations. The Q&A and discussions afterwards allow students to get to know world-class researchers and better understand their path and thinking. It is also a way for students to expand their network, – Dr. Xiao Xiao, Principal Investigator, Head of Human Learning Group, Institute for Future Technologies.
Distinguished presenters participating in the Instant Future discussions at IFT
A recent Instant Future talk in early November, held at the DVIC’s Learning Center and livestreamed, featured a distinguished speaker, Doğa Doğan.
Doğa is a student researcher at Google Zurich and a PhD candidate at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), working under the guidance of Prof. Stefanie Mueller in the HCI Engineering Group.
With a remarkable research background that includes stints at Adobe Research, UCLA Laboratory for Embedded Machines and Ubiquitous Robots, TU Delft, and the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Doğa’s expertise is grounded in innovation at the intersection of the physical and digital worlds.
Connecting Real-World Objects to Digital Worlds: Embedded Machine-Readable Tags
Doğa’s talk, “Connecting Real-World Objects to Digital Worlds: Embedded Machine-Readable Tags,” explored the fascinating realm of merging physical and digital domains to create immersive experiences and seamless interactions.
With the lines between the real and virtual blurring, efficient methods for linking physical objects to their digital counterparts are essential. Doğa shared innovative approaches for achieving this goal, mainly focusing on the creation and detection of embedded machine-readable tags.
During his presentation, Doğa introduced three tagging approaches that extract objects’ integrated features and utilize them as machine-detectable tags. These approaches represent a significant leap in bridging the gap between the physical and digital worlds:
- Natural Tags: These tags leverage the unique biological fingerprints of objects as identification markers. An example that Doğa mentioned is SensiCut, which allows objects to be identified based on their intrinsic characteristics. This approach offers a non-invasive and seamless method for connecting physical objects to the digital realm.
- Internal Tags: In this approach, users can embed custom markers within objects. Doğa highlighted examples such as infrared tags and BrightMarkers, which provide users with the flexibility to designate specific identifiers for their objects. Internal tags offer a high degree of personalization and control over the connection between physical and digital entities.
- Structural Tags: This approach capitalizes on the inadvertent artefacts that arise during the fabrication process. An example Doğa presented is G-ID, which uses structural irregularities to identify objects. By using these naturally occurring imperfections, structural tags provide a creative and cost-effective means of bridging the physical-digital divide.
The insights shared during Doğa talk shed light on the evolving landscape of embedded machine-readable tags and their role in connecting the tangible and digital worlds.
These innovations can revolutionize various industries, from supply chain management to augmented reality experiences, by enabling efficient, seamless, and immersive interactions between the physical and digital realms.
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