Modern fighter jets contain hundreds or even thousands of sensors. Some of those sensors collect data every second, others every nanosecond. For the engineering teams building and testing those jets, all those data points are hugely valuable — if they can make sense of them. Nominal is an advanced software platform made for engineers building…
Diffusion models like OpenAI’s DALL-E are becoming increasingly useful in helping brainstorm new designs. Humans can prompt these systems to generate an image, create a video, or refine a blueprint, and come back with ideas they hadn’t considered before. But did you know that generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) models are also making headway in creating…
A new imaging technique developed by MIT researchers could enable quality-control robots in a warehouse to peer through a cardboard shipping box and see that the handle of a mug buried under packing peanuts is broken. Their approach leverages millimeter wave (mmWave) signals, the same type of signals used in Wi-Fi, to create accurate 3D…
Scientists are striving to discover new semiconductor materials that could boost the efficiency of solar cells and other electronics. But the pace of innovation is bottlenecked by the speed at which researchers can manually measure important material properties. A fully autonomous robotic system developed by MIT researchers could speed things up. Their system utilizes a…
Marine scientists have long marveled at how animals like fish and seals swim so efficiently despite having different shapes. Their bodies are optimized for efficient, hydrodynamic aquatic navigation so they can exert minimal energy when traveling long distances. Autonomous vehicles can drift through the ocean in a similar way, collecting data about vast underwater environments….
As spaceflight becomes more affordable and accessible, the story of human life in space is just beginning. Aurelia Institute wants to make sure that future benefits all of humanity — whether in space or here on Earth. Founded by Ariel Ekblaw SM ’17, PhD ’20; Danielle DeLatte ’11; and former MIT research scientist Sana Sharma,…
When ChatGPT or Gemini give what seems to be an expert response to your burning questions, you may not realize how much information it relies on to give that reply. Like other popular generative artificial intelligence (AI) models, these chatbots rely on backbone systems called foundation models that train on billions, or even trillions, of…
Teaching a robot new skills used to require coding expertise. But a new generation of robots could potentially learn from just about anyone. Engineers are designing robotic helpers that can “learn from demonstration.” This more natural training strategy enables a person to lead a robot through a task, typically in one of three ways: via…
In an office at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), a soft robotic hand carefully curls its fingers to grasp a small object. The intriguing part isn’t the mechanical design or embedded sensors — in fact, the hand contains none. Instead, the entire system relies on a single camera that watches the robot’s…
Growing up in the suburban town of Spring, Texas, just outside of Houston, Erik Ballesteros couldn’t help but be drawn in by the possibilities for humans in space. It was the early 2000s, and NASA’s space shuttle program was the main transport for astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS). Ballesteros’ hometown was less than…
