Visual understanding tasks are typically centered on objects, such as human pose tracking in Microsoft Kinect and obstacle avoidance in autonomous driving. In the deep learning era, these tasks follow a paradigm where bounding boxes are localized in an image, features are extracted within the…
Virtual reality (VR) has continually pushed the boundaries of how we perceive, from its early days of Ivan Sutherland’s Sword of Damocles to today. With the technology emerging from its early stages of bulky equipment tethered to one place out of necessity, researchers now are working with increased possibilities derived from hardware and new input sensors. The result is a unique set of challenges requiring innovative approaches to answering some of…
It’s not uncommon for us to hear that the Z3 theorem prover is magical, but the frequency of such complimentary feedback doesn’t make it any less unexpected—or humbling. When we began work on Z3 in 2006, the design was motivated by two emerging use cases:…
Making sense of the world around us is a skill we as human beings begin to learn from an early age. Though there is still much to know about the process, we can see that people learn a lot, both directly and indirectly, from observing…
One in four of us, at some point in our lives, will be affected by a mental health condition. Good mental health and well-being are fundamental to our general health and quality of life. It enables us to build resilience against everyday stresses, to work…
Don’t limit yourself. If someone else can do it, you can do it, too. Don’t get comfortable. If doing well is easy, it’s time to challenge yourself. Over the years, these two principles have guided Columbia University PhD student Adji Dieng (opens in new tab)…
Dynamical systems theory provides a mathematical framework for studying how complex systems evolve over time, such as the neurons in our brains, the global climate system, or engineered cells. But predicting how these systems will behave in the future or how they might respond to…
With inputs from: Elizabeth Bondi (Harvard University), Bob DeBortoli (Oregon State University), Balinder Malhi (Microsoft) and Jim Piavis (Microsoft) Autonomous systems have the potential to improve safety for people in dangerous jobs, particularly first responders. However, deploying these systems is a difficult task that requires…
Speech is a signal that can enable natural interaction between human and machine. In order to facilitate this exchange, machines have to be able to recognize what a human has spoken, both the words and the context in which those words appear. This is the…
Recent advances in machine learning and signal processing, as well as the availability of massive computing power, have resulted in dramatic and steady improvement in speech recognition accuracy. Voice interfaces to digital devices have become more and more common. Lectures and online conversations can be…
Project Everest is a multiyear collaborative effort focused on building a verified, secure communications stack designed to improve the security of HTTPS, a key internet safeguard. This post—about the proving methodology and verification tools of Project Everest—is the third in a series exploring the groundbreaking…
When we began developing Microsoft MakeCode, a computing education platform, it was all about making programming easier, more engaging, and just plain friendlier. After all, if we were going to inspire the next generation of coders, easier entry into the world of computer science would…
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