Ruihan Gao - 2026 Three Minute Thesis (3MT) Championship Presentation at CMU — Transcript

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1. 0:01Our sixth presenter is Ruihan Gao from
2. 0:03the School of Computer Science. Ruihan's
3. 0:06title is Teaching AI the Sense of Touch.
4. 0:11Raise your hand if you ever bought
5. 0:12something online that looked great on
6. 0:14the screen, but feels still totally
7. 0:16different in your hands.
8. 0:19Now, keep your hands up if that was the
9. 0:21reason you sent it back.
10. 0:23Exactly. Thank you. That happens because
11. 0:26screens only show us how things look,
12. 0:28but not how they feel like.
13. 0:31Today, generative AI can create images,
14. 0:34videos, 3D worlds in games, but they are
15. 0:37missing something fundamental. Touch.
16. 0:40As humans, we not only see the world, we
17. 0:44feel the softness of fabric, the
18. 0:46friction, the roughness of the wood, and
19. 0:48also the coolness of glass.
20. 0:51Touch can tell us something vision
21. 0:53cannot.
22. 0:55But, modern AI normally ignores it for
23. 0:58two hard reasons.
24. 1:00First, the scale gap. The camera sees
25. 1:03the whole sweater, but the fingertip
26. 1:05feels it thread by thread, almost 100
27. 1:08times smaller.
28. 1:10Second, unlike language, touch doesn't
29. 1:13have a vocabulary. How do you quantify
30. 1:15how a velvet feels like?
31. 1:18My research solves both.
32. 1:20We use a digital fingertip, a
33. 1:22high-resolution sensor, and press it
34. 1:24against object surface, and record the
35. 1:27invisible heels and valleys into a
36. 1:30texture map, and train the AI model to
37. 1:33binds the big picture we see and the
38. 1:35macroscopic details we feel
39. 1:38into an integrated shared
40. 1:40representation.
41. 1:42The results, when you type smooth marble
42. 1:45or rough linen, with the AI model can
43. 1:48generate both it feels like and how it
44. 1:51looks like.
45. 1:53For you, that means an immersive life.
46. 1:56Imagine feeling the weave of a sweater
47. 1:58on your phone when you buy it.
48. 2:00Or run your fingers across the stone
49. 2:03wall in a video game.
50. 2:05Beyond convenience, that's about
51. 2:07accessibility.
52. 2:09For blind and low vision individuals,
53. 2:11touch isn't just a feature.
54. 2:14It's their primary way of understanding
55. 2:17the world.
56. 2:18My work allows AI to generate tactile
57. 2:21graphics, the 3D printed surfaces that
58. 2:24translate images into the objects people
59. 2:27can explore with their hands.
60. 2:30Blind students, for the very first time,
61. 2:32can see how a biological cell structured
62. 2:35or touch a painting in the museum.
63. 2:39We have demonstrated for rigid surfaces
64. 2:41and fabric, and next we're modeling
65. 2:43softness, so that medical medical
66. 2:45students can play with the simulators of
67. 2:48the soft skin without a
68. 2:51you know, a simulator that finally feels
69. 2:53real.
70. 2:55The future of AI should not be limited
71. 2:58to a flat glass screen. With us teaching
72. 3:02the AI the sense of touch, we want the
73. 3:04technology to be more sensory, more
74. 3:07inclusive, and ultimately more human.
75. 3:10Thank you.
76. 3:11>> [applause]
77. 3:13>> Thank you.