- Date: April 4, 2019
Where: Nashua Public Library, Nashua, NH
MERL Contact: Petros T. Boufounos
Research Areas: Computational Sensing, Signal Processing
Brief 
MERL's Petros Boufounos gave a lecture for the IEEE-NH ComSig chapter at the Nashua Public Library as part of the IEEE Signal Processing Society Distinguished Lecturer series.
Title: "An Inverse Problem Framework for Array Processing Systems."
Abstract: Array-based sensing systems, such as ultrasonic, radar and optical (LIDAR) are becoming increasingly important in a variety of applications, including robotics, autonomous driving, medical imaging, and virtual reality, among others. This has led to continuous improvements in sensing hardware, but also to increasing demand for theory and methods to inform the system design and improve the processing. In this talk we will discuss how recent advances in formulating and solving inverse problems, such as compressed sensing, blind deconvolution, and sparse signal modeling can be applied to significantly reduce the cost and improve the capabilities of array-based and multichannel sensing systems. We show that these systems share a common mathematical framework, which allows us to describe both the acquisition hardware and the scene being acquired. Under this framework we can exploit prior knowledge on the scene, the system, and a variety of errors that might occur, allowing for significant improvements in the reconstruction accuracy. Furthermore, we can consider the design of the system itself in the context of the inverse problem, leading to designs that are more efficient, more accurate, or less expensive, depending on the application. In the talk we will explore applications of this model to LIDAR and depth sensing, radar and distributed radar, and ultrasonic sensing. In the context of these applications, we will describe how different models can lead to improved specifications in ultrasonic systems, robustness to position and timing errors in distributed array systems, and cost reduction and new capabilities in LIDAR systems.
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- Date: May 12, 2019 - May 17, 2019
Where: Brighton, UK
MERL Contacts: Petros T. Boufounos; Anoop Cherian; Chiori Hori; Toshiaki Koike-Akino; Jonathan Le Roux; Dehong Liu; Hassan Mansour; Tim K. Marks; Philip V. Orlik; Anthony Vetro; Pu (Perry) Wang; Gordon Wichern
Research Areas: Computational Sensing, Computer Vision, Machine Learning, Signal Processing, Speech & Audio
Brief - MERL researchers will be presenting 16 papers at the IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech & Signal Processing (ICASSP), which is being held in Brighton, UK from May 12-17, 2019. Topics to be presented include recent advances in speech recognition, audio processing, scene understanding, computational sensing, and parameter estimation. MERL is also a sponsor of the conference and will be participating in the student career luncheon; please join us at the lunch to learn about our internship program and career opportunities.
ICASSP is the flagship conference of the IEEE Signal Processing Society, and the world's largest and most comprehensive technical conference focused on the research advances and latest technological development in signal and information processing. The event attracts more than 2000 participants each year.
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- Date: February 4, 2019
Where: Scientific Reports, open-access journal from Nature Research
MERL Contacts: Devesh K. Jha; Toshiaki Koike-Akino; Chungwei Lin; Kieran Parsons; Bingnan Wang
Research Areas: Artificial Intelligence, Electronic and Photonic Devices, Machine Learning
Brief - MERL researchers developed a novel design method enhanced by modern deep learning techniques for optimizing photonic integrated circuits (PIC). The developed technique employs residual deep neural networks (DNNs) to understand physics underlaying complicated lightwave propagations through nano-structured photonic devices. It was demonstrated that the trained DNN achieves excellent prediction to design power splitting nanostructures having various target power ratios. The work was published in Scientific Reports, which is an online open access journal from Nature Research, having high-impact articles in the research community.
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- Date: March 20, 2019
Where: Hsinchu, Taiwan
MERL Contact: Anthony Vetro
Research Area: Artificial Intelligence
Brief - Anthony Vetro gave a keynote at the inaugural IEEE Conference on Artificial Intelligence Circuits and Systems (AICAS), which was held in Hsinchu, Taiwan from March 18-20, 2019. The talk focused on edge intelligence for optimized systems and high-performance devices.
Abstract: The combination of IoT sensing, edge computing and AI algorithms is creating new opportunities to use real-time data to optimize system capabilities and increase device performance. In the manufacturing domain, edge intelligence allows us to realize various forms of anomaly detection, predict the lifetime or maintenance schedule of components, and adaptive learn improved control policies. Connected cars will benefit from edge intelligence to improve safety and optimize traffic flows. Additionally, the parameters of a circuit can be automatically tuned using data-driven machine learning techniques to increase efficiency and performance. This presentation highlights the numerous benefits of the edge intelligence framework, and identifies several open challenges and issues.
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- Date: March 3, 2019 - March 7, 2019
Where: San Diego, CA
MERL Contacts: Devesh K. Jha; Toshiaki Koike-Akino; Chungwei Lin; Kieran Parsons; Bingnan Wang; Ye Wang
Research Areas: Communications, Machine Learning, Optimization, Signal Processing
Brief - MERL researchers are presenting 4 papers at the OSA Optical Fiber Conference (OFC), which is being held in San Diego from March 3-7, 2019. Topics to be presented include recent advances in nonbinary polar codes, joint polar-coded shaping, and deep learning-based photonics circuit design. Additionally, recent work on multiset-partition distribution matching is presented as an invited talk.
OFC is the flagship conference of the OSA, and the world's most comprehensive technical conference focused on the research advances and latest technological development in optics and photonics. The event attracts more than 10000 participants each year.
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- Date: February 13, 2019
Where: Tokyo, Japan
MERL Contacts: Jonathan Le Roux; Gordon Wichern
Research Area: Speech & Audio
Brief - Mitsubishi Electric Corporation announced that it has developed the world's first technology capable of highly accurate multilingual speech recognition without being informed which language is being spoken. The novel technology, Seamless Speech Recognition, incorporates Mitsubishi Electric's proprietary Maisart compact AI technology and is built on a single system that can simultaneously identify and understand spoken languages. In tests involving 5 languages, the system achieved recognition with over 90 percent accuracy, without being informed which language was being spoken. When incorporating 5 more languages with lower resources, accuracy remained above 80 percent. The technology can also understand multiple people speaking either the same or different languages simultaneously. A live demonstration involving a multilingual airport guidance system took place on February 13 in Tokyo, Japan. It was widely covered by the Japanese media, with reports by all six main Japanese TV stations and multiple articles in print and online newspapers, including in Japan's top newspaper, Asahi Shimbun. The technology is based on recent research by MERL's Speech and Audio team.
Link:
Mitsubishi Electric Corporation Press Release
Media Coverage:
NHK, News (Japanese)
NHK World, News (English), video report (starting at 4'38")
TV Asahi, ANN news (Japanese)
Nippon TV, News24 (Japanese)
Fuji TV, Prime News Alpha (Japanese)
TV Tokyo, World Business Satellite (Japanese)
TV Tokyo, Morning Satellite (Japanese)
TBS, News, N Studio (Japanese)
The Asahi Shimbun (Japanese)
The Nikkei Shimbun (Japanese)
Nikkei xTech (Japanese)
Response (Japanese).
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- Date: February 12, 2019
Where: Michigan State University
MERL Contacts: Scott A. Bortoff; Stefano Di Cairano; Abraham Goldsmith
Research Areas: Control, Dynamical Systems
Brief - Uros Kalabic, of MERL's Control and Dynamical Systems group, gave a talk at the Michigan State University Mechanical Engineering Seminar. The talk, entitled "Reference governors: Industrial applications and theoretical advances," covered some of the exciting research being done at MERL on reference governors and briefly described MERL's other research areas. The abstract of the talk can be found via the link below.
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- Date & Time: Thursday, February 14, 2019; 1:30 -3:00 PM
Speaker: Avishai Weiss, MERL
MERL Hosts: Stefano Di Cairano; Avishai Weiss
Research Area: Control
Abstract - Avishai Weiss from MERL's Control and Dynamical Systems group will give a talk at Stanford's Aeronautics and Astronautics department titled: "Low-Thrust GEO Satellite Station Keeping, Attitude Control, and Momentum Management via Model Predictive Control". Electric propulsion for satellites is much more fuel efficient than conventional methods. The talk will describe MERL's solution to the satellite control problems deriving from the low thrust provided by electric propulsion.
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- Date: February 4, 2019
MERL Contact: Mouhacine Benosman
Research Areas: Control, Data Analytics, Dynamical Systems
Brief - Mouhacine Benosman is a guest editor of a special issue on Learning-based Adaptive Control: Theory and Application, recently published by the International Journal of Adaptive Control and Signal Processing. Other guest editors included Professor F.L. Lewis (University of Texas at Arlington Research Institute), Professor M. Guay (Queen's University), and Professor D. Owens (The University of Sheffield).
The special issue presents results of current research on learning-based adaptive methods, merging together model-based and data-driven machine learning approaches.
More information on the content of this special issue can be found at:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/10991115/2019/33/2.
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- Date: January 11, 2019
Where: PHYSICAL REVIEW FLUIDS, 4, 013801 – Published 11 January 2019
Research Areas: Control, Dynamical Systems
Brief - The journal Physical Review Fluids has recently instituted "...a service to our readers, we are formally marking a small number of papers published in Physical Review Fluids that the editors and referees find of particular interest, importance, or clarity." The following paper with MERL authors Saleh Nabi and Piyush Grover was so honored in the January 2019 issue: "Reduced-order modeling of fully turbulent buoyancy-driven flows using the Green's function method.".
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- Date: January 16, 2019
Awarded to: Daniel Dinis
Research Areas: Communications, Signal Processing
Brief - Former MERL intern Daniel Dinis from University of Aveiro (UA), Portugal has received the 2018 IBM Scientific Award with Honorable Mention referring to the contributions on "Real-time Tunable Delta-sigma modulators for All-Digital RF Transmitters" in his Ph.D. study.
The award-winning work includes research conducted under the supervision of Arnaldo Oliveira and José Neto Vieira, professors from the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DETI) of the UA, as well as contributions made during Daniel's 7 month internship in 2017 at MERL.
The ceremony for the presentation of the 28th IBM Scientific Prize took on January 16th, at the Noble Hall of the Superior Technical Institute. It was chaired by Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, President of the Portuguese Republic.
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- Date: February 1, 2019
Where: WPI
MERL Contact: Mouhacine Benosman
Research Areas: Control, Dynamical Systems
Brief - Mouhacine Benosman has been invited to give a talk at the Aerospace Engineering Department of Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) on Lyapunov-based model reduction and stabilization of PDEs, with application to the Boussinesq equation. Further details of the talk can be found in the below link.
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- Date: January 10, 2019
Where: Tokyo, Japan
MERL Contacts: Mouhacine Benosman; Philip V. Orlik; Koon Hoo Teo
Research Areas: Communications, Electronic and Photonic Devices, Machine Learning, Signal Processing
Brief - Mitsubishi Electric Corporation announced today its development of the world's first ultra-wideband digitally controlled gallium nitride (GaN) amplifier, which is compatible with a world-leading range of sub-6GHz bands focused on fifth-generation (5G) mobile communication systems. With a power efficiency rating of above 40%, the amplifier is expected to contribute to large-capacity communication and reduce the power consumption of mobile base stations.
MERL and Mitsubishi Electric researchers collaborated to develop digital control methods for amplifiers achieving high-efficiency of 40% and above, with 110% of the fractional bandwidth over frequency range 1.4-4.8 GHz. The digital control signals are designed using a learning-function based on Maisart®.
Please see the link below for the full Mitsubishi Electric press release text.
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- Date: December 12, 2018
MERL Contact: Petros T. Boufounos
Research Areas: Computational Sensing, Signal Processing
Brief - MERL's Petros Boufounos has been appointed as a member of the 2019 class of the IEEE Signal Processing Society Class of Distinguished Lecturers for the term of 1 January 2019 to 31 December 2020.
The IEEE SPS Distinguished Lecturer (DL) Program provides a means for Chapters to have access to well-known educators and authors in the fields of signal processing to lecture at Chapter meetings. Each year, five DLs are appointed by the society. In addition to Dr. Boufounos, his year's class includes Israel Cohen (Technion - Israel Institute of Technology), Janusz Konrad (Boston University), Anna Scaglione (Arizona State University), and Rui Zhang (National University of Singapore).
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- Date: November 16, 2018
Awarded to: Ziming Zhang, Alan Sullivan, Hideaki Maehara, Kenji Taira, Kazuo Sugimoto
Research Areas: Artificial Intelligence, Computer Vision, Machine Learning
Brief - Researchers and developers from MERL, Mitsubishi Electric and Mitsubishi Electric Engineering (MEE) have been recognized with an R&D100 award for the development of a deep learning-based water detector. Automatic detection of water levels in rivers and streams is critical for early warning of flash flooding. Existing systems require a height gauge be placed in the river or stream, something that is costly and sometimes impossible. The new deep learning-based water detector uses only images from a video camera along with 3D measurements of the river valley to determine water levels and warn of potential flooding. The system is robust to lighting and weather conditions working well during the night as well as during fog or rain. Deep learning is a relatively new technique that uses neural networks and AI that are trained from real data to perform human-level recognition tasks. This work is powered by Mitsubishi Electric's Maisart AI technology.
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- Date: August 19, 2018 - August 22, 2018
Where: IFAC NMPC, Madison, WI
MERL Contact: Stefano Di Cairano
Research Area: Control
Brief - The 6th IFAC Conference on Nonlinear Model Predictive Control (NMPC), http://www.nmpc2018.org/, is a highly focused conference that attracts experts in this area from around the world. Members of the Control and Dynamical Systems group presented 8 papers (out of the 149 at the conference!) Stefano Di Cairano delivered one of the 7 plenary lectures entitled "Contract-Based Design of Control Architectures by Model Predictive Control.".
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- Date: December 5, 2018 - December 6, 2018
Where: Boston Convention Center
MERL Contact: Elizabeth Phillips Brief - Elizabeth Philips, CPC, has been selected by the International Coach Federation of New England, to provide career coaching at the MA Conference for Women. This conference brings together thousands of active professionals to connect and harness the collective wisdom, experience and energy of inspirational women and men of all ages and backgrounds to help amplify the influence of women in the workplace and beyond.
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- Date: November 1, 2018
MERL Contact: Mouhacine Benosman
Research Areas: Control, Data Analytics, Dynamical Systems
Brief - Wiley has recently launched the Journal of Advanced Control for Applications: Engineering and Industrial Systems, which seeks original and high-quality contributions on the design of advanced control for applications. The aim is to stimulate the adoption of new and improved control design methods and provide a forum for the discussion of control application problems. Papers for the journal must include sufficient novelty in either the control design methods, the modelling and simulation techniques used, or the applications studied. MERL researcher, Mouhacine Benosman, has been invited to join the Editorial Board of this new journal.
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- Date: October 15, 2018 - October 19, 2018
Where: CEATEC'18, Makuhari Messe, Tokyo
MERL Contacts: Devesh K. Jha; Daniel N. Nikovski; Diego Romeres; William S. Yerazunis
Research Areas: Artificial Intelligence, Computer Vision, Data Analytics, Robotics
Brief - MERL's work on robot learning algorithms was demonstrated at CEATEC'18, Japan's largest IT and electronics exhibition and conference held annually at Makuhari Messe near Tokyo. A team of researchers from the Data Analytics Group at MERL and the Artificial Intelligence Department of the Information Technology Center (ITC) of MELCO presented an interactive demonstration of a model-based artificial intelligence algorithm that learns how to control equipment autonomously. The algorithm developed at MERL constructs models of mechanical equipment through repeated trial and error, and then learns control policies based on these models. The demonstration used a circular maze, where the objective is to drive a ball to the center of the maze by tipping and tilting the maze, a task that is difficult even for humans; approximately half of the CEATEC'18 visitors who tried to steer the ball by means of a joystick could not bring it to the center of the maze within one minute. In contrast, MERL's algorithm successfully learned how to drive the ball to the goal within ten seconds without the need for human programming. The demo was at the entrance of MELCO's booth at CEATEC'18, inviting visitors to learn more about MELCO's many other AI technologies on display, and was seen by an estimated more than 50,000 visitors over the five days of the expo.
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- Date: Wednesday, September 26, 2018 - Friday, September 28, 2018
Location: Houston, Texas
MERL Contacts: Chiori Hori; Elizabeth Phillips
Research Areas: Artificial Intelligence, Computer Vision, Machine Learning
Brief - "MERL, in partnership with Mitsubishi Electric was a Gold Sponsor of the Grace Hopper Celebration 2018 (GHC18) held in Houston, TX on September 26-28th. Presented by AnitaB.org and the Association for Computing Machinery, this is world's largest gathering of women technologists. Chiori Hori and Elizabeth Phillips from MERL, and Yoshiyuki Umei, Jared Baker and Lien Randle from MEUS, proudly represented Mitsubishi Electric at the recruiting expo, that drew over 20,000 female technologists this year.
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- Date: Sunday, October 28, 2018 - Friday, November 2, 2018
Location: Banff International Research Station (BIRS), Alberta, Canada
MERL Contact: Petros T. Boufounos
Research Areas: Computational Sensing, Signal Processing
Brief - Dr. Petros Boufounos, Prof. Stark Draper (U. of Toronto) and Prof. Yonina Eldar (Technion) are co-organizing a workshop on the intersection of Information Theory and Signal Processing. The 5-day workshop will take place Oct. 28 - Nov. 2 at the Banff International Research Station (BIRS) in Alberta, Canada. The workshop schedule includes invited talks from prominent researchers in the two fields, coming together from all over the world. Parts of the workshop will be streamed live through the BIRS website.
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- Date & Time: Thursday, November 29, 2018; 4-6pm
Location: 201 Broadway, 8th floor, Cambridge, MA
MERL Contacts: Elizabeth Phillips; Anthony Vetro
Research Areas: Applied Physics, Artificial Intelligence, Communications, Computational Sensing, Computer Vision, Control, Data Analytics, Dynamical Systems, Electric Systems, Electronic and Photonic Devices, Machine Learning, Multi-Physical Modeling, Optimization, Robotics, Signal Processing, Speech & Audio
Brief - Snacks, demos, science: On Thursday 11/29, Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs (MERL) will host an open house for graduate+ students interested in internships, post-docs, and research scientist positions. The event will be held from 4-6pm and will feature demos & short presentations in our main areas of research including artificial intelligence, robotics, computer vision, speech processing, optimization, machine learning, data analytics, signal processing, communications, sensing, control and dynamical systems, as well as multi-physyical modeling and electronic devices. MERL is a high impact publication-oriented research lab with very extensive internship and university collaboration programs. Most internships lead to publication; many of our interns and staff have gone on to notable careers at MERL and in academia. Come mix with our researchers, see our state of the art technologies, and learn about our research opportunities. Dress code: casual, with resumes.
Pre-registration for the event is strongly encouraged:
merlopenhouse.eventbrite.com
Current internship and employment openings:
www.merl.com/internship/openings
www.merl.com/employment/employment
Information about working at MERL:
www.merl.com/employment.
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- Date: October 11, 2018
MERL Contact: Christopher R. Laughman
Research Area: Multi-Physical Modeling
Brief - A new approach to heat management in compact fusion reactors that emerged from a class at MIT, developed by graduate student Adam Kuang and 14 other MIT students, engineers from Commonwealth Fusion Systems as well as Piyush Grover and Chris Laughman from MERL, and Professor Dennis Whyte, was recently published in Fusion Engineering and Design. This solution was made possible by an innovative approach to compact fusion reactors, using high-temperature superconducting magnets. This method formed the basis for a massive new research program launched this year at MIT and the creation of an independent startup company to develop the concept. The new design, unlike that of typical fusion plants, would make it possible to open the device's internal chamber and replace critical components; this capability is essential for the newly proposed heat-draining mechanism.
In the one-semester graduate class 22.63 (Principles of Fusion Engineering), students were divided into teams to address different aspects of the heat rejection challenge. These teams evaluated alternate concepts and subjected candidate designs to detailed calculations and simulations based, in part, on data from decades of research on research fusion devices such as MIT's Alcator C-Mod, which was retired two years ago. C-Mod scientist Brian LaBombard also shared insights on new kinds of divertors, and two engineers from MERL worked with the team as well. Several of the students continued working on the project after the class ended, ultimately leading to the solution described in this new paper.
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- Date & Time: Monday, October 8, 2018 - Thursday, October 11, 2018; 8am-5pm
Location: MIT Samberg Conference Center, Cambridge, MA
MERL Contact: Christopher R. Laughman
Research Areas: Control, Multi-Physical Modeling
Brief - The 2018 American Modelica Conference, the first North American conference focused on the Modelica multiphysics modeling language, will be held on Tuesday and Wednesday, October 9-10, 2018 at the Samberg Conference Center at MIT in Cambridge, MA. Chris Laughman, a team leader in the Multiphysical Systems and Devices group, is the local chair for the conference.
This conference will feature over 40 papers and user presentations on the Modelica language and its application to a wide variety of problem domains, including thermofluid, aerospace, automotive, and energy systems. There will also be 2 keynote addresses by John McKibben (Proctor & Gamble) and Hilding Elmqvist (Mogram AB). Nearly 100 attendees from 11 different countries have already registered for the conference, and it promises to be a very educational experience.
MERL is also hosting two free workshops on October 8 to provide opportunities to engineers looking to increase their familiarity with the language and its applications. An introductory workshop will be led by engineers from Modelon during that morning, and then a second workshop on the application of Modelica to building systems will be led by Michael Wetter from Lawrence Berkeley National Labs in the afternoon. MERL will also host a Modelica user meeting on October 11 that will provide more details and discussion about trends in the use and development of Modelica in the larger engineering community.
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- Date: September 19, 2018
Where: MIT Lincoln Laboratory
MERL Contact: Toshiaki Koike-Akino
Research Area: Communications
Brief - Toshiaki Koike-Akino gave an invited talk on new trends of forward error correction codes based on polar coding at seminar series of IEEE Boston Photonics Society at MIT Lincoln Laboratory. The talk covered recent advancement of polar code design for ultra-high-throughput decoding, suited for future Tera-bit optical interconnects.
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