Carnegie Mellon has joined The Boeing Company to establish the Boeing/Carnegie Mellon Aerospace Data Analytics Lab, a new initiative that aims to capitalize on the enormous amount of data generated by the aircraft industry to create safer, more reliable and more efficient aircraft operations.

The new lab will leverage the university's strengths in machine learning, language technologies and data analytics to find ways to use artificial intelligence and big data to take advantage of the voluminous information gathered during the manufacture and maintenance of thousands of individual aircraft.

Boeing will provide $7.5 million for the lab over the next three years. Jaime Carbonell, the Allen Newell University Professor of Computer Science and director of the Language Technologies Institute, will lead the new research endeavor. John Vu, a former Boeing chief software engineer who now is a professor in language technologies and computational biology, also is playing a key role.

"We're aiming to push the technology envelope. We have the best and the brightest faculty at a leading institution focused on how we can innovate and solve business challenges for today and into the future," said Ted Colbert, Boeing's chief information officer.

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Researchers are using optical sensors to give robotic hands greater dexterity and an increased sense of touch.

Led by Young-Lae Park, the scientists have developed a three-fingered soft robotic hand with multiple embedded fiber optic sensors that enable it to determine where its fingertips are in contact with an object and to detect forces of less than a tenth of a newton. They also have created a new type of stretchable optical sensor that could be used to provide even more feedback.

"If you want robots to work autonomously and to react safely to unexpected forces in everyday environments, you need robotic hands that have more sensors than is typical today," said Park, an assistant professor of robotics.

The researchers presented their work this week at the IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, IROS 2015, in Hamburg, Germany.

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The School of Drama will raise the curtain on its 2015 season at 8 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 8, with Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing." The show, directed by Anthony McKay, will run through Oct. 17.

In this Shakespearean comedy, two lovers play cupid the week before their wedding as they try to convince their bickering friends to forget their differences and fall in love with one another.

"If you want to discard your skinny jeans for a night and don some bell bottoms, or if you want to time travel to the soundtrack of the turbulent '60s with the feminist movement in its first bloom, then CMU's production of Shakespeare's 'Much Ado About Nothing' is for you," said McKay, associate professor of acting.