The pace at which emerging technologies enter the marketplace is insignificant compared to the pace at which skilled researchers discover innovative methods to utilize them, educate others, and even transform them into essentials. One such researcher is MIT MAD Fellow Alexander Htet Kyaw, a graduate student working towards dual master’s degrees in architectural computation and electrical engineering and computer science.
Kyaw merges technologies such as artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and robotics with gesture, voice, and object recognition to establish human-AI workflows capable of interacting with our constructed environment, revolutionizing how we shop, design intricate structures, and fabricate tangible items.
One of his recent breakthroughs is Curator AI, for which he and his MIT graduate peers secured first place—$26,000 in OpenAI products and cash—at the MIT AI Conference’s AI Build: Generative Voice AI Solutions, a weeklong hackathon hosted at MIT, with final presentations held last fall in New York City. Collaborating with Kyaw were Richa Gupta (architecture) and Bradley Bunch, Nidhish Sagar, and Michael Won—all from the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS).
Curator AI aims to enhance online furniture shopping by offering context-aware product suggestions utilizing AI and AR. The platform employs AR to capture the measurements of a room, including the locations of windows, doors, and existing furnishings. Users can then verbally communicate what new items they desire, and the system will deploy a vision-language AI model to search for and showcase various options that align with both the user’s requests and the room’s visual attributes.
“Shoppers can select from the recommended options, visualize products in AR, and utilize natural language for adjustments to their search, making the furniture selection process more intuitive, efficient, and tailored,” Kyaw explains. “The challenge we’re addressing is that many individuals feel lost when furnishing a room, so we created Curator AI to deliver intelligent, contextual recommendations based on the appearance of your space.” Although Curator AI was developed for furniture shopping, its application could extend to other sectors.
Another illustration of Kyaw’s initiatives is Estimate, a product he and three fellow graduate students developed during the MIT Sloan Product Tech Conference’s hackathon in March 2024. The emphasis of that competition was to assist small enterprises; Kyaw and his team chose to base their project on a painting company in Cambridge with 10 employees. Estimate incorporates AR and object-recognition AI technology to take precise measurements of a room and produce a comprehensive cost estimate for renovation and/or painting. It also utilizes generative AI to render images of the space as it could appear post-painting or renovation, and generates an invoice upon project completion.
The team emerged victorious at that hackathon, winning $5,000 in cash. Kyaw’s collaborators were Guillaume Allegre, May Khine, and Anna Mathy, all of whom graduated from MIT in 2024 with master’s degrees in business analytics.
In April, Kyaw will deliver a TedX talk at his alma mater, Cornell University, where he’ll discuss Curator AI, Estimate, and other initiatives that leverage AI, AR, and robotics in the design and construction process.
One of these initiatives is Unlog, where Kyaw integrated AR with gesture recognition to develop software that captures input from a fingertip touch on the surface of a material or even in the air, facilitating the mapping of building component dimensions. This led to the creation of Unlog—a monumental art sculpture crafted from ash logs standing on the Cornell campus.
Unlog symbolizes the potential for structures to be constructed directly from an entire log, instead of having the log transported to a sawmill to be transformed into planks or two-by-fours, followed by delivery to a wholesaler or retailer. It effectively illustrates Kyaw’s aspiration to utilize building materials sustainably. A paper on this project, “Gestural Recognition for Feedback-Based Mixed Reality Fabrication: A Case Study of the UnLog Tower,” was authored by Kyaw, Leslie Lok, Lawson Spencer, and Sasa Zivkovic in the Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Computational Design and Robotic Fabrication, January 2024.
Another system Kyaw devised integrates physics simulation, gesture recognition, and AR to design actively bending structures using bamboo poles. Gesture recognition enables users to manipulate digital bamboo units in AR, while the physics simulation visualizes how the bamboo bends and determines where to attach the poles to create a stable formation. This work was presented in the Proceedings of the 41st Education and Research in Computer Aided Architectural Design in Europe, August 2023, titled “Active Bending in Physics-Based Mixed Reality: The Design and Fabrication of a Reconfigurable Modular Bamboo System.”
Kyaw also proposed a similar concept utilizing bamboo modules to construct deployable structures last year at MITdesignX, a program that identifies promising startups and offers mentoring and funding for their launch. He has since initiated BendShelters to create prefabricated, modular bamboo shelters and community spaces for refugees and displaced individuals in Myanmar, his home nation.
“In Myanmar, the impacts of climate change and severe poverty are evident in daily life,” Kyaw shares. “There’s a significant refugee crisis in the country, and I want to contribute positively to my community.”
His efforts with BendShelters have garnered recognition from MIT Sandbox, PKG Social Innovation Challenge, and the Amazon Robotics’ Prize for Social Good.
At MIT, Kyaw is collaborating with Professor Neil Gershenfeld, director of the Center for Bits and Atoms, and PhD student Miana Smith to employ speech recognition, 3D generative AI, and robotic arms to create a workflow that can construct objects in an accessible, demand-driven, and sustainable manner. Kyaw holds bachelor’s degrees in architecture and computer science from Cornell. Last year, he received an SJA Fellowship from the Steve Jobs Archive, which funds projects at the convergence of technology and the arts.
“I enjoy investigating various technologies to design and fabricate objects,” Kyaw states. “Being part of MAD has prompted me to reflect on how all my efforts interconnect and helped clarify my goals. My research vision is to design and create systems and products that facilitate natural interactions among humans, machines, and the surrounding environment.”