Tue, 11/28/2023 - 12:02
A quick scan of recent headlines makes it seem as if generative artificial intelligence is everywhere these days. In fact, some of those headlines may actually have been written by generative AI such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, a chatbot that has…
Thu, 10/26/2023 - 12:02
Imagine grasping a heavy object, like a pipe wrench, with one hand. You would likely grab the wrench using your entire fingers, not just your fingertips. Sensory receptors in your skin, which run along the entire length of each finger, would send…
Mon, 08/21/2023 - 12:02
Engineers are constantly searching for materials with novel, desirable property combinations. For example, an ultrastrong, lightweight material could be used to make airplanes and cars more fuel-efficient, or a material that is porous and…
Thu, 08/17/2023 - 12:02
Imagine purchasing a robot to perform household tasks. This robot was built and trained in a factory on a certain set of tasks and has never seen the items in your home. When you ask it to pick up a mug from your kitchen table, it might not…
Tue, 06/20/2023 - 12:02
When machine-learning models are deployed in real-world situations, perhaps to flag potential disease in X-rays for a radiologist to review, human users need to know when to trust the model’s predictions.
But machine-learning models are so large…
Mon, 05/15/2023 - 12:02
Mass spectrometers are extremely precise chemical analyzers that have many applications, from evaluating the safety of drinking water to detecting toxins in a patient’s blood. But building an inexpensive, portable mass spectrometer that could be…
Mon, 04/17/2023 - 12:02
Inspired by the human finger, MIT researchers have developed a robotic hand that uses high-resolution touch sensing to accurately identify an object after grasping it just one time.
Many robotic hands pack all their powerful sensors into the…
