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In November 2018, Professor Sangbae Kim brought the mini cheetah robot onto The Tonight Show’s “Tonight Show-botics” segment. Much to the delight of host Jimmy Fallon, the mini cheetah did some yoga...
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Last year, Charlene Xia ’17, SM ’20 found herself at a crossroads. She was finishing up her master’s degree in media arts and science from the MIT Media Lab and had just submitted applications to...
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There are few environments as unforgiving as the ocean. Its unpredictable weather patterns and limitations in terms of communications have left large swaths of the ocean unexplored and shrouded in...
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Machine learning algorithms are often referred to as a “black box.” Once data are put into an algorithm, it’s not always known exactly how the algorithm arrives at its prediction. This can be...
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Much of Anuradha Annaswamy’s research hinges on uncertainty. How does cloudy weather affect a grid powered by solar energy? How do we ensure that electricity is delivered to the consumer if a grid is...
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In the 1960s, the advent of computeraided design (CAD) sparked a revolution in design. For his PhD thesis in 1963, MIT professor Ivan Sutherland developed Sketchpad, a game-changing software program...
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On his first day of classes at the Technical University of Athens’ School of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering, Themistoklis Sapsis had a very satisfying realization.
“I realized that ships...
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Aviation became a reality in the early 20th century, but it took 20 years before the proper safety precautions enabled widespread adoption of air travel. Today, the future of fully autonomous...
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MIT.nano has added the Nanoscribe Photonic Professional GT2, a high-speed, three-dimensional microfabrication instrument, to its fabrication capabilities. The GT2 will provide MIT.nano users with the...
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With the addition of computers, laser cutters have rapidly become a relatively simple and powerful tool, with software controlling shiny machinery that can chop metals, woods, papers, and plastics....
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For the more than 5 million people in the world who have undergone an upper-limb amputation, prosthetics have come a long way. Beyond traditional mannequin-like appendages, there is a growing number...
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After three years of hard work, the MIT Solar Electric Vehicle Team took first place at the 2021 American Solar Challenge (ASC) on August 7 in the Single Occupancy Vehicle (SOV) category. During the...
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For the past 50 years, mechanical engineering students at MIT have convened on campus for a boisterous robot competition. Since the 1970s, when the late Professor Emeritus Woodie Flowers first...
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When you pick up a balloon, the pressure to keep hold of it is different from what you would exert to grasp a jar. And now engineers at MIT and elsewhere have a way to precisely measure and map such...
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As a not-so-distant future that includes space tourism and people living off-planet approaches, the MIT Media Lab Space Exploration Initiative is designing and researching the activities humans will...
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As the Chemistry-Kayak (affectionately known as the ChemYak) swept over the Arctic estuary waters, Victoria Preston was glued to a monitor in a boat nearby, watching as the robot’s sensors captured...
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To create high-resolution, 3D images of tissues such as the brain, researchers often use two-photon microscopy, which involves aiming a high-intensity laser at the specimen to induce fluorescence...
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For most people, the task of identifying an object, picking it up, and placing it somewhere else is trivial. For robots, it requires the latest in machine intelligence and robotic manipulation.
That...
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Hovering 100 meters above a densely populated urban residential area, the drone takes a quiet breath. Its goal is singular: to systematically measure air quality across the metropolitan landscape,...
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Whether it’s computer chips, smartphone components, or camera parts, the hardware in many products is constantly getting smaller. The trend is pushing companies to come up with new ways to make the...