Robotics

Chronicle highlights MIT startup Spyce, a restaurant with a robotic kitchen. At Spyce, the flames used to heat a wok “are replaced with induction metal,” explains Erika Tarantal. “The robot-controlled rotation ensures cooking on all sides.”

This Quartz video highlights how MIT researchers are developing a self-driving boat system that can navigate waterways and can transform into different structures to move cargo, trash or build a temporary bridge. “The boats find the best path between preprogrammed locations, while using GPS, laser sensors, and cameras to avoid hitting anything,” explains Michael Tabb.

Boston Globe reporter Katie Johnston speaks with several MIT researchers about their work developing technology that is aimed at improving collaboration between humans and robots. Prof. Julie Shah notes that offloading easier decisions onto a machine “would allow people to focus on the parts of job that truly require human judgment and experience.”

Boston Herald reporter Jordan Graham writes that MIT researchers have developed an autonomous system that allows fleets of drones to navigate without GPS and could be used to help find missing hikers. “What we’re trying to do is automate the search part of the search-and-rescue problem with a fleet of drones,” explains graduate student Yulun Tian.

Researchers from MIT are using the brittle nature of graphene to mass produce cell-sized robots, writes David Grossman of Popular Mechanics. Called “syncells” or synthetic cells, the researchers hope they can be used in biomedical testing. “Inject hundreds into the bloodstreams and let the data fly back into sensors,” explains Grossman.

Fortune reporter Aaron Pressman highlights how Prof. Julie Shah is working on making human-robot collaboration on the assembly line more effective through the use of collaborative robots, dubbed cobots. Pressman writes that Shah “is working on software algorithms developed with machine learning that will teach cobots how and when to communicate by reading signals from the humans around them.”

BBC Click spotlights a new semi-autonomous, wearable robot developed by MIT researchers that takes different types of measurements from the skin to identify conditions such as skin cancer. “The doctor can see your whole body, but the doctor doesn’t pick up the small changes in your skin conditions, which the robot can do,” says graduate student Artem Dementyev.

A new video from MIT spinout Boston Dynamics shows their Atlas robot effortlessly jumping over logs and leaping onto ascending boxes, writes Andy McDonald for HuffPost. “From heavy lifting in factories or warehouses to search and rescue operations to missions on the battlefield, these robots can potentially do things that humans can’t or shouldn’t do,” writes McDonald.

CBS News reporter Kate Gibson writes that Atlas, the robot developed by MIT spinoff Boston Dynamics, can now tackle a parkour-style obstacle course. “The robot's control software uses its whole body -- legs, arms and torso -- to jump over a log and then leap up steps more than a foot high each, all without breaking pace,” Gibson explains.

In an article for Forbes, Charles Towers-Clark spotlights how MIT researchers developed a surgical technique that allows amputees to receive feedback from prosthetic limbs. The technique, Towers-Clark writes, “uses a muscle graft from another part of the body to complete the muscle pair, avoiding rejection which currently occurs in around 20% of cases, and allowing the patient to communicate naturally with the new limb.”

MIT’s Mediated Matter Group has developed small robots that can turn fiberglass filament into large 3-D structures, writes Jesus Diaz of Fast Company. The Fiberbots could eventually be used to build structures “in extreme situations, such as after natural disasters,” suggests Diaz.  

Robotic furniture produced by MIT spinout Ori, which created a furniture system that reconfigures itself with the push of a button or voice commands, could be the solution to living in small spaces, writes Candace Jackson for The New York Times.

Boston Globe reporter Dugan Arnett spotlights MechE senior Alex Hattori, a six-time national yo-yo champion. Hattori, who was originally inspired to attend MIT so that he could take a course where students design and build yo-yos, explains that he doesn’t think he’ll ever stop competing. “I love yo-yoing as much as I did the first day,” he says.

CSAIL researchers have created a system that allows robots to see and pick up objects they have never encountered without assistance from humans, writes Jason Murdock for Newsweek. The researchers are now working on teaching the system to “move objects with a specific goal in mind, such as cleaning a desk,” reports Murdock.

In an article for Quartz about how robots are being used to help care for the elderly, Corinne Purtill highlights Prof. Sherry Turkle’s work on the impact of using machines to satisfy the human need for emotional connection. Putrill cites Turkle’s argument that using machines creates a new relationship where we “feel connected although we are alone.”