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Last week, at the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, MIT researchers unveiled an oval-shaped submersible robot, a little smaller than a football, with a flattened panel on...
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Objects in space tend to spin — and spin in a way that’s totally different from the way they spin on earth. Understanding how objects are spinning, where their centers of mass are, and how their mass...
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Twisting a screwdriver, removing a bottle cap, and peeling a banana are just a few simple tasks that are tricky to pull off single-handedly. Now a new wrist-mounted robot can provide a helping hand...
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Alberto Rodriguez, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering, and incoming graduate student Nikhil Chavan-Dafle presented their work on robotic extrinsic dexterity — which they began at...
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Explosions caused by leaking gas pipes under city streets have frequently made headlines in recent years, including one that leveled an apartment building in New York this spring. But while the...
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This year’s arena for the annual robotics competition that caps the mechanical engineering class called 2.007 (Learning by Design) was based on a Winter Olympics theme, with dauntingly steep slopes...
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Suppose you’re trying to navigate an unfamiliar section of a big city, and you’re using a particular cluster of skyscrapers as a reference point. Traffic and one-way streets force you to take some...
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2.678 students present their final projects, autonomous robotics cars, which have to follow an obstacle course. Photo credit: Tony Pulsone
If you had to pick one word to describe the Department of...
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For most healthy bipeds, the act of walking is seldom given a second thought: One foot follows the other, and the rest of the body falls in line, supported by a system of muscle, tendon, and bones....
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Assistant Professors Cullen Buie and Sangbae Kim of the Department of Mechanical Engineering both recently received a DARPA Young Faculty Award (YFA), which was granted to 25 tenure-track faculty...
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by Alissa Mallinson
Innovation and creativity are concepts that imbue everything we do in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. They’re woven into every lab, every experiment, every faculty...
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Assistant Professor Sangbae Kim works on his lab’s current bioinspired project, the robotic cheetah.
Photo Credit: M. Scott Brauer
by Alissa Mallinson
MIT’s Department of Mechanical...
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Engineering Light-Activated Muscles
by Jennifer Chu, MIT News Office
Many robotic designs take nature as their muse: sticking to walls like geckos, swimming through water like tuna, sprinting...
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The Micro Mass Spectrometer
by Alissa Mallinson
Photo credit: Tony Pulsone
Professor Ian W. Hunter sat down with us recently to discuss one of his newest inventions, a miniature (“micro”)...
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Tiny robots may monitor underground pipes for radioactive leaks.
A spherical robot equipped with a camera may navigate underground pipes of a nuclear reactor by propelling itself with an internal...
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Domitilla Del Vecchio works on intelligent transportation systems that communicate to prevent collisions.
What areas does your research focus on?
Broadly speaking, my group works in control...