Mitsubishi Breaks Up Famous Computer Science Lab

Andrew Koyfman writes "Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories is falling apart. Top researchers and scientists are being poached by the competitors, including BAE, Adobe, and others. The lab was responsible for much breakthrough research in the areas of computer vision, computer graphics, AI, and machine learning. They were the first group to develop the Diamond Touch table, an early precursor to Microsoft's Surface Computing. Now it looks like the famous lab will be no more, at least not in their original glory."

Early precursor

suggests the Microsoft table is a vast step forward. Hardly!

Keep in mind

that a number of char. system said that the new fangled gui system was a passing fad. And then a guy from silicon valley got a free pass to see it at Xerox. Later,these guys passed it on to a small company who was doing compilers for them. From redmond. There, the small company was given ALL sorts of insider info. And what was not given, was flat out stolen. And it all became a vast step forward.
Ms said that the table was a vast step forward. They did not say that they developed it. Just that they are going to build them.

Re:Keep in mind

Ms said that the table was a vast step forward. They did not say that they developed it. Just that they are going to build them.

This is basically true, however the idea behind an "innovative" product is nothing without an implementation. There was nothing especially amazing about the first iPod that Apple released - it was just another MP3 player - except for the software. The iPod's user interface was what set the device apart. In the same manner, Microsoft's implementation of the Surface UI (written completely in C# and WPF - Microsoft's own products) is, from what I've seen, very impressive. And yes, as with any UI concept the basic idea has long been discussed and long been in development by a lot of different people.

Once these tables are more readily available I anticipate seeing some cool new ways to interact with them using F/OSS software. Regardless of how much you might dislike Microsoft, they are one of the few entities that have the capital to bring a device like this to the market. However, once it's out, there is nothing stopping people from digging in and finding other great things you can do with it (see the original Xbox and all the great software now available for it).

And just to preempt the comment I'm sure is coming: I'm sure the tables will have some form of DRM or hardware locking in place. Unfortunately Microsoft will see this as the only way to protect their investment; however, there are a lot of very smart people out there, and if the tables do become popular and more of a commodity item the preventative measures Microsoft puts in place will be blown away - just like every other artificial restriction to date has.

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They explicitly said that they designed Surface, in 2001, at MS R&D labs. Quoting http://microsoft.com/surface/ [microsoft.com] :

In 2001, Stevie Bathiche of Microsoft Hardware and Andy Wilson of Microsoft Research began brainstorming concepts for an interactive table. Their vision was to mix the physical and virtual worlds to provide a rich, interactive experience.

So are they exaggerating their creative role, or are you exaggerating how much insider info was "stolen"?

Re:Keep in mind

Tablet's would have done better if the price for them where lower.. i know many people that would like one but to get one that is worth a shit you have to pay way to damn much

Media Center isn't that bad.. my complaint is that they didnt' spend enough time with support for capture devices and the the genral dvr stuff.. but as a "Media center PC" it isn't that bad.. then again not alot of home users have their computer connected to their TV....

Only Monopolies can Afford Pure Research

Only monopolies can afford pure-research laboratories. Examples include the pre-breakup AT&T and pre-Lou-Gerstner IBM. AT&T had Bell Laboratory, and IBM had Thomas J. Watson Research Center. Bell Laboratory is basically dead. IBM still has the

Re:Only Monopolies can Afford Pure Research

There's a decent economic argument to made that it is in society's best interest to use public monies to fund pure research, and then allow the fruits of such research to be released into the public domain for any entrepreneurs to take it to a usable form. It spreads the large and long-term financial risks of such research over the entire society, but lets capitalistic forces figure out the most efficient way to make practical uses of the research available to the society.

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wtf is "pure" research?

you must be on crack, plenty of companys do shitloads of research in different fields in an effort to invent the next big thing.

Re:Only Monopolies can Afford Pure Research

I think what he meant is basic research. This is research that has no immediate products, but might help future research that CAN produce new products. The idea is that research that isn't constrained by the need to be profitable is more free, more pure.

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Basic research is probably what is meant here. Without this sort of research, many bits of technology we take for granted today might never have been invented. The laser, to give one simple example (yes, from AT&T Bell Labs no less), was in the begin

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Only monopolies can afford pure-research laboratories.

What about the blue LEDs and violet solid-state lasers invented by Shuji Nakamura of Nichia, a company that was hardly a monopoly colossus astride the world?

Plenty of folks in industry do basic r

Evolve or die...

There's really no surprise here... if a lab doesn't spin off something valuable or at least has something big in the pipes that could be marketable in a a few years - cut your losses and shut them down.

Coming up with a table computer is really not cutting edge - even before Microsoft stole the idea.

Re:Evolve or die...

There's really no surprise here... if a lab doesn't spin off something valuable or at least has something big in the pipes that could be marketable in a a few years - cut your losses and shut them down.

The real problem (as I understand TFA) wasn't that the lab wasn't creating marketable product - but that the lab's director (amazingly!) believed it wasn't really his responsibility to conduct research that would lead a marketable product.
 
And before anyone brings up Bell Labs... Don't. A great deal of mythology has grown up over the years about the basic research performed there. The fact that the majority of the basic research was intended as a prelude to applied research and eventually technology or products that Ma Bell could use or sell has been obscured by this mythology.

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Ma Bell had no competitors (a monopoly) so research costs were not an issue for them.

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Ma Bell had no competitors (a monopoly) so research costs were not an issue for them.

Which has precisely nothing to do with anything, besides being wrong. Of course research costs mattered - even Ma Bell's budget was not infinite.

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Of course it does matter, since only monopolies can make basic research profitable.
Any other company investing in non-patentable research might as well just hand over the cash to their competitors which would steal the discoveries in any case.

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This is the lab that invented "Iglasswear", the beer mugs that tell the bartender how much beer is left in the glass via RFID. They also own some of the MPEG patents. Amusingly, their website has been stripped from the old format listing lots of interestin

Many MERL projects have appeared on Slashdot

Including this [slashdot.org].
And this [slashdot.org] and this [slashdot.org].
And this [slashdot.org].

All of your examples show why they were shut down

None of the examples you list were ever brought to market as or part of a Mitsubishi product. Moreover, they seem to be doing a lot of deep computer work for a company that is little known today for computers, but rather their automotive and consumer electronics divisions.

In an era when Nintindo has passed Sony in market cap, it pays to focus your research efforts on areas relevant to your core competencies rather than blue-sky research into market segments where your presence is negligable.

Hell, even the classic example of Xerox PARC is one of a brilliant organization whose parent company was woefully unable to commoditize the ideas there (their GUI licensing deal in exchange for Apple stock is among their few commercial successes).

Publically held corporations exist to make stockholders money, not to do research "because it's cool." Period.

Re:All of your examples show why they were shut do

I am sure that Mitsubishi Bank, Mitsubishi Agricultural Machinery, Mitsubishi Estate Co., Mitsubishi Plastics, Mitsubishi Electric, &ct. would disagree with your "Core Competencies" analysis. The core product in the Mitsubishi brand is not cars or electronics. Their core product has always been venture research. Be the first and best in new fields. If anything, I am surprised they don't have a Mitsubishi Pharmaceutical yet.

Re:All of your examples show why they were shut do

Japan is different than America - there, even though they share the same name, the affiliation is much looser than you might think. Thus the core product of the Mitsubishi brand is Mitsubishi brand itself - and each of the affiliated companies has it's *own* core competency.

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even though they share the same name, the affiliation is much looser than you might think.

Even though the US forceably broke up the Zaibutsu after the war, the affiliations are still strong (Keiretsu). The reason Mitsubishi Bank (now Bank of Tokyo-Mitsub

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The reason Mitsubishi Bank (now Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi after they merged with Tokyo Citybank) is one of the worlds largest banks is that all the Mitsubishi companies still do all their banking there.

Note that it's now "Mitsubishi-Tokyo UFJ Bank" because

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Which is the largest bank in the world depends a lot on how you measure size [wikipedia.org], but MUFJ doesn't do any better than 5th by any measure. The top 10 used to be dominated by Japanese banks until the property bubble in Tokyo burst in the early 1990's followed by

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I am surprised they don't have a Mitsubishi Pharmaceutical yet.

They do [m-pharma.co.jp].

Automotive Core Competencies

Moreover, they seem to be doing a lot of deep computer work for a company that is little known today for computers, but rather their automotive and consumer electronics divisions.

There is a huge problem in the automotive embedded software industry having t

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Oh, just off the top of my head, uses for the first one: computer vision; second one, fluid sensors. And those are just the mundane ones I can pull outta my ass. The third one, UI, but I don't know where. But that's the point of research labs - they're

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"Publically held corporations exist to make stockholders money, not to do research "because it's cool." Period."

Yah, like Microsoft, right?

Cool company versus Microsoft:

I'm not sure what your point is. Microsoft does far, far more "because it's cool"

Trusting Corporations for Research

This article is a CLASSIC example of why we need academic institutions and government funded research into the great unknown.

A significant number of these types of labs, doing pioneering work under the name of a parent company, have been gutted with the intent of making them more "product focused" with the intent of converting brain power straight into $$$.

Well, here's a news flash - that's not how real research (as opposed to product development) works. With research into new stuff, you DON'T KNOW what you will find or what it will be worth. NO ONE does, BY DEFINITION.

A corporation can only do this type of work when a) they have a decades long focus and b) have sufficient profit margins to soak up the cost of research without immediate returns. That's a rare situation, and it's becoming rarer in a more competitive world economy.

Rather than bemoan this behavior (after all, money making is at the heart of commerce) we should be funding basic research at universities at much higher levels. Funding at universities has gotten tough enough that they will undertake a wide variety of investigations for commercial companies just to pay the bills. This makes them de-facto corporate research labs, and takes away time from their exploration into the unknown. Grad students become extremely cheap labor for companies, just indirectly.

Right now, it won't matter commercially. Product cycles don't get impacted by long term research for years or decades, so for a while we won't see this problem. But it's going to hurt us in the end. As products stagnate, foreign plants will catch up and learn how to produce at higher quality. They will begin to match or even exceed the performance of existing outputs domestically, and we will not be able to compete because there will be nothing in the long term pipeline that might convince people to stay with us.

Pure Research HAS A POINT. Even if the profound social and philosophical questions surrounding the pursuit of knowledge for its own stake don't register, it can also be viewed as a long term investment in our future. Balance sheets and profit statements do not define the whole of human existence, nor do the look far enough ahead to see long term consequences.

Again, it is unrealistic to expect this of businesses - that is not how the system is encouraged to behave. However, the government SHOULD be thinking about these issues. They need to be funding a LOT of basic research into all manner of alternative energy science, and the more basic science behind it - and thats actually a more practically centered goal. Truly BASIC research into the unknown, with no end game in mind, seems to be a tough sell nowadays.

Corporate research works ONLY when the long term is viewed as Very Important. It's dangerous to trust to that in an uncertain amd extremely competitive market.

Re:Trusting Corporations for Research

There have always been really interesting pure research labs in the corporate world, and plenty of that work belongs in the corporate world. It is true that eventually they get shut down because some narrow-minded bureaucrat takes over or because financial hardships follow, however there are always new labs popping up (or revived). This is all part of the process, most corporate researchers know this and have come to accept it.

Pure research is not only academia's burden (at least in CS). Young faculty care about getting tenure, so they don't do a lot of research with a long term vision. This is something they get to do after they get tenure (when they are often past their prime, burned-out and effectively retire). Also, reputable CS depts will not risk hiring a quirky new person but instead try to get the student of a well-known professor in an established field. This results into placing some really exciting researchers in the corporate world where they do just fine because labs like MERL have (or had) a 10-20 year horizon. Given the long horizon and the fact that corporate researchers don't have to constantly look for funding, take care of students, teach, participate in career-building meetings, etc; corporate labs can provide an excellent place for basic research.

Re:Trusting Corporations for Research

You suggest that the government should be the primary source of funding for pure research, presumably though our collective and compulsory tax dollars, but I must confess that I did not find your argument to be very compelling, even though I personally support such research, for the following basic reasons.

First, the government derives its resources (i.e. funds) from compulsory payments backed up by threat of coercion (i.e. taxes). There are some countries which run businesses or have national resources to sell, but unless your country is swimming in oil then it is hard for the government, being inefficient at running such concerns, to earn a substantial portion of money from those activities which means that taxes are the rule of the day. Taxes are a good thing when they are used to fund those narrowly defined and specific activities delegated to them by most democratic governments which includes keeping the peace, enforcing the laws, and protecting everyone from coercion and threat thereof in their everyday lives (to the extent that such protection is possible anyway, it is never absolute). What is wrong with using compulsory contributions to fund basic research you ask? Well that leads me into my second point.

Everyone disposes of their money in such a way as to derive the maximum amount of gain, whether that is saving and investing for gain of wealth or spending the money in the ways that make us the most happy (i.e. maximizing one's marginal utility). Now obviously not everyone is happiest with the same things so people, left to their own devices, tend to spend, save, or invest their money in a wide variety of ways and that is good.

You might really enjoy donating time or money or resources to open source projects or other organizations which do things that you feel are important enough to warrant your money and that is fine and good. However, one cannot force another to spend *his* money, or more precisely to spend it for him, in ways that you and everyone else might think is better for him without trampling the notions of self determination, pursuit of happiness, and freedom from tyranny as set down in the Constitution of the United States. I may not like the fact that some people spend money on cigarettes for example, but I would not begrudge them their right to spend their money on them if that is what makes them happy.

There are other ways to fund research besides government grants backed up by taxes. Universities have long been the beneficiaries of grants from the estates of deceased alumni, corporate grants, and other tax deductible and charitable giving. There are probably non-profit organizations out there that engage or fund, through grants, pure research or "interesting" projects which advance the human condition or have the potential to do so despite the fact that they are not immediately profitable or concrete in their applications.

I agree with you that pure and basic research are worthy activities, but I do not support spending the public money (i.e. taxes) on these activities, however noble they may be, because they do not fall within the strict responsibilities of limited government.

NOTE: By way of fairness I should probably say that I am not in favor of the government doing or funding much of anything besides legislation in support of applying and maintaining the powers and responsibilities defined in the Constitution (i.e. legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government), law enforcement and national defense (i.e. protection against coercion through violent force at personal and national levels).

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However, one cannot force another to spend *his* money, or more precisely to spend it for him, in ways that you and everyone else might think is better for him without trampling the notions of self determination, pursuit of happiness, and freedom

One can, a

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I'm not defending everything the GP said, not by a long shot. However...

i have got news for you: you have no inherent rights at all. [..] all rights you have are the rights the society is willing to rent you. taxes you pay are the rental fees for [rights]

That's a very dubious line. While I accept that no-one has inherent rights, to tie legal rights to the payment of taxes is the thin end of a very large and dangerous wedge.

(Also, be

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people have no choice ini where they are born, true enough. but then again in any halwfay free country they can do the choice someday, and this is exactly the day when they have their full capacity [wikipedia.org]. until then they have less rights and less duties anyway (

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The whole point of research is that you're discovering something unknown; the outcomes cannot be known at the start.

Without pure research, you're condemned to copying -- and following -- the research results of others. How can you possibly get ahead w

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Short sighted. Short sighted companies. Glaaah, need caffiene. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming/ [wikipedia.org]

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Sir Tim created the WWW at CERN, but was it a CERN research project? They're a subatomic particle physics outfit. He was a computer contractor. He'd already developed one hypertext system for them during an earlier contract, and when he returned he melded

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You're right of course, but he did make a difference, by being an innovator, and that kind of put him in a different category after that. I'd rather we had a few of these type of people looking outward, research fellows -- we might get some unplanned adva

Goddamit, I'm old

What was the name of that old Dig-it-all labs site that Compaq and later, HP disappeared?

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What was the name of that old Dig-it-all labs site that Compaq and later, HP disappeared?

Where? Cambridge, Palo Alto, or Paris?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Equipment_Cor poration#Research [wikipedia.org]

This is a _good_ thing

When old groups of individuals breaks apart, it shows the strength of the individual in society. Too often we think of "big bad corporations" who "control" their employees -- but in reality the employee is always allowed to leave. In some situations, emp

so what?

MERL published a lot of papers, but that doesn't mean that they were doing research what was actually useful for anybody. The state of academic computer science is actually rather depressing, with lots of stuff being reinvented, meaningless variations of

A serving of bias, anyone?

> according to Marks, who spoke with Xconomy at length Monday night.

So, TFA was written on the basis of a lengthy evening tirade by a disgruntled former employee. To their credit, they also interviewed the current CEO, who presented the alternate point of view -- that there was a gradual reorg in pursuit of a better ROI for the parent company.

I fail to see how this equates to "Mitsubishi breaks up MERL." MERL continues to exist. In fact it's a disservice to the newly hired researchers to assume that the "new" MERL can only be a shadow of its former self. Sometimes new people and fresh ideas are a good thing.

There is also a snide element of bias in the article against the "Japanese-style management" -- assumed to be something so horrible that researchers need to be "shielded" from it. While frustrating for some folks who can't bridge the cultural gap, this maligned "Japanese management style" is the same one that brought us innovations we take for granted today, in areas like automotive quality, 3G/4G cellular, the Wii user interface, CCDs and LCDs, and of course hentai anime.

In any case the news itself is interesting, but I'm not sure there is any need to portray it as the end of the world or something...

MERL made some neat toys.

Back in the late '90s, I had a friend who worked for MERL. Can't even remember who it was, or how I knew him, now. Anyway, he was involved with the "Artificial Retina Skunkworks" there (Google Cache [72.14.253.104]) and I had a Nec Versa 2000C running Linux (Red Had 6-i

Scientific Research is Dead

Labs are out of date. Press releases that pump up the stock price before the next shareholders meeting are what really matters. Science takes too long, and gets bogged down in details. So Ladies and Gentlemen, let me welcome you to the wonderful new world

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Blasphemy and lies!

One cannot simply close their eyes, open them, and announce the problem is gone; one must close their eyes, recite the appropriate ritual no less than four times, then open their eyes and announce that the problem is no more.

If everyone

Meh

Bell Labs 1127 breaking up was a bigger deal IMHO.

Hope you like your current product lines, 'cause you'll be stuck with them for a while. Corporate R and D cuts are great for eliminating product migration roadmaps.

not to its former glory?

depends on who they hire to replace the detectors, doesn't it?

nostalgia is always fun but not always realistic

Nothing stays in its "original glory", otherwise we couldn't use those words now to describe it. People like to have a sense of nostalgia and this is no different. We tend to remember the good, not the bad. Right now there are other labs making history exc

Another R&D lab down

So Mitsubishi goes the way of the once-great Bell Labs. Sad.