Flying on Mars — or any other world — is an extraordinary challenge. An autonomous spacecraft, operating millions of miles from pilots or engineers who could intervene on Earth, must be able to navigate unfamiliar and changing environments, avoid obstacles, land on uncertain terrain, and make decisions entirely on its own. Every maneuver depends on […]
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Have you ever had an idea for something that looked cool, but wouldn’t work well in practice? When it comes to designing things like decor and personal accessories, generative artificial intelligence (genAI) models can relate. They can produce creative and elaborate 3D designs, but when you try to fabricate such blueprints into real-world objects, they […]
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Volcanoes and wildfires can inject millions of tons of gases and aerosol particles into the air, affecting temperatures on a global scale. But picking out the specific impact of individual events against a background of many contributing factors is like listening for one person’s voice from across a crowded concourse. MIT scientists now have a way to […]
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It happens every day — a motorist heading across town checks a navigation app to see how long the trip will take, but they find no parking spots available when they reach their destination. By the time they finally park and walk to their destination, they’re significantly later than they expected to be. Most popular […]
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Metamaterials — materials whose properties are primarily dictated by their internal microstructure, and not their chemical makeup — have been redefining the engineering materials space for the last decade. To date, however, most metamaterials have been lightweight options designed for stiffness and strength. New research from the MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering introduces a computational design framework to […]
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