Hardware Lab

The Microsoft Research Hardware Lab provides electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, design, prototyping, fabrication, and related services to push forward the state of the art across all research domains. The lab operates vertically throughout MSR, under the broad umbrella of the Research Technology Engineering group in the MSR Redmond lab.

The following are a few examples of projects we have contributed to:

3D TeleMedicine

The 3D TeleMedicine project is an implementation of Microsoft’s Holoportation technology to improve the outcomes for healthcare patients in underserved communities by increasing access to specialized medical providers from anywhere in the world. Our team embedded with the project team to design and build both the stationary and mobile camera and compute platforms, the specialized lighting, local and remote networks, and other related systems to support this project.

Analog Optical Computer

The Analog Optical Computer project is building an analog optical computer that has the potential to accelerate AI inference and hard optimization workloads by 100x. Our team has provided mechanical, electrical, and optical engineering and design expertise to help accelerate the success of this research effort.

Project Premonition

Project Premonition aims to detect pathogens before they cause outbreaks. It uses the animal pathogen data from mosquitoes that are captured in autonomous mosquito traps. Our team designed V1 – V3 prototypes for the mosquito traps as well as designed and built the environmental mosquito chamber.

Microsoft Soundscape

Microsoft Soundscape is a research project that explores the use of innovative audio-based technology to enable people, particularly those with blindness or low vision, to build a richer awareness of their surroundings. We helped design and build a remote-control circuit board.

Spatial Audio

Spatial Audio is a project about creating a 3D audio experience using headphones. We designed and manufactured three 64 channel spherical microphone arrays with integrated 360 video cameras and 360-degree audio.