By Larry Hardesty | Sep 16, 2017 @ 14:13 | MIT News | Expanding polymer enables self-folding without heating or immersion in water. As 3-D printing has become a mainstream technology, industry and academic researchers have been investigating printable structures that will fold themselves into useful three-dimensional shapes when heated or immersed in water. In […]
By Adam Conner-Simons | Rachel Gordon| Sep 1, 2017 @ 13:25 | CSAIL/ MIT News| ComText, from the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, allows robots to understand contextual commands. Despite what you might see in movies, today’s robots are still very limited in what they can do. They can be great for many repetitive tasks, […]
By Jennifer Chu | Sep 1, 2017 @ 13:11 | MIT News| Approach may enable robots to move around hospitals, malls, and other areas with heavy foot traffic. Just as drivers observe the rules of the road, most pedestrians follow certain social codes when navigating a hallway or a crowded thoroughfare: Keep to the right, pass […]
By Larry Hardesty | Aug 26, 2017 @ 15:48 | MIT News | MIT researchers have developed a system that could save retailers billions lost through faulty inventory records. Radio frequency ID tags were supposed to revolutionize supply chain management. The dirt-cheap, battery-free tags, which receive power wirelessly from scanners and then broadcast identifying numbers, enable warehouse managers […]
By Adam Conner-Simons | Rachel Gordon | Aug 23, 2017 @ 17:46 | CSAIL / MIT News | CSAIL’s “Interactive Robogami” lets you design and 3-D print origami-inspired custom robots from 2-D designs. Even as robots become increasingly common, they remain incredibly difficult to make. From designing and modeling to fabricating and testing, the process is […]
By Kate Repantis | Aug 6, 2017 @ 08:35 | MIT Alumni Association | Co-founded by Amir Hirsch ’06, SM ’07, Flybrix LEGO drones offers people of all ages the ability to fly their ideas. Like many kids, Amir Hirsch ’06, SM ’07 grew up playing with LEGOs. But unlike many adults, is still playing with […]
By Rob Matheson | Aug 6, 2017 @ 08:26 | MIT News | Startup’s gas-electric engines may pave way for package delivery and human flight. New hybrid gas-to-electric drones from MIT spinout Top Flight Technologies offer an order-of-magnitude increase in range, payload size, and power over battery-powered counterparts MIT alumnus Long Phan SM ’99, PhD ’12 is […]
By Larry Hardesty | Aug 6, 2017 @ 08:11 | MIT News | Software lets designers exploit the extremely high resolution of 3-D printers. MIT researchers have developed a new design system that catalogues the physical properties of a huge number of tiny cube clusters. Today’s 3-D printers have a resolution of 600 dots per inch, […]