Tag: Robotics

Engineering household robots to have a little common sense

From wiping up spills to serving up food, robots are being taught to carry out increasingly complicated household tasks. Many such home-bot trainees are learning through imitation; they are programmed to copy the motions that a human physically guides them through. It turns out that robots are excellent mimics. But unless engineers also program them […]

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Nvidia shows off Project GR00T, a multimodal AI to power humanoids of the future

Join leaders in Boston on March 27 for an exclusive night of networking, insights, and conversation. Request an invite here. Nvidia is pushing the bar on robotics with the introduction of Project GR00T, a multimodal AI to power humanoids of the future with advanced foundation AI. Demonstrated today during the GTC conference at the San […]

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Researchers help robots navigate efficiently in uncertain environments

If a robot traveling to a destination has just two possible paths, it needs only to compare the routes’ travel time and probability of success. But if the robot is traversing a complex environment with many possible paths, choosing the best route amid so much uncertainty can quickly become an intractable problem. MIT researchers developed […]

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“Imagine it, build it” at MIT

MIT class 2.679 (Electronics for Mechanical Systems II) offers a sort of alchemy that transforms students from consumers of knowledge to explorers and innovators, and equips them with a range of important new tools at their disposal, students say. “Topics which could otherwise feel intimidating are well-scoped each week so that students come out knowing […]

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OpenAI powers a robot that can hand people food, pick up trash, put away dishes, and more

Join leaders in Boston on March 27 for an exclusive night of networking, insights, and conversation. Request an invite here. Despite reports of enterprises getting cold feet around embracing generative AI due to cost and accuracy issues, it’s clear that in the world of robotics, the AI age is just starting to take off. Today, […]

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AI Company Defends Robot Amid Groping Allegations

QSS, the AI company responsible for the Saudi humanoid robot accused of groping a female reporter, has defended the robot’s actions, claiming there were “no deviations from expected behavior.” The incident occurred during the DeepFest conference in Riyadh, where attendees were reportedly warned not to stand too close to the robot, known as “Android Muhammad.” […]

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DeepMind and Stanford’s new robot control model follow instructions from sketches

Join leaders in Boston on March 27 for an exclusive night of networking, insights, and conversation. Request an invite here. Recent advances in language and vision models have helped make great progress in creating robotic systems that can follow instructions from text descriptions or images. However, there are limits to what language- and image-based instructions […]

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Is this the future of fashion?

Until recently, bespoke tailoring — clothing made to a customer’s individual specifications — was the only way to have garments that provided the perfect fit for your physique. For most people, the cost of custom tailoring is prohibitive. But the invention of active fibers and innovative knitting processes is changing the textile industry. “We all […]

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Hugging Face is launching an open source robotics project led by former Tesla scientist

Join leaders in Boston on March 27 for an exclusive night of networking, insights, and conversation. Request an invite here. Hugging Face, the New York City-startup that maintains the popular open source repository of machine learning and AI code of the same name and the open source ChatGPT-rival Hugging Chat, is launching a new robotics […]

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Method rapidly verifies that a robot will avoid collisions

Before a robot can grab dishes off a shelf to set the table, it must ensure its gripper and arm won’t crash into anything and potentially shatter the fine china. As part of its motion planning process, a robot typically runs “safety check” algorithms that verify its trajectory is collision-free. However, sometimes these algorithms generate […]

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Study determines the original orientations of rocks drilled on Mars

As it trundles around an ancient lakebed on Mars, NASA’s Perseverance rover is assembling a one-of-a-kind rock collection. The car-sized explorer is methodically drilling into the Red Planet’s surface and pulling out cores of bedrock that it’s storing in sturdy titanium tubes. Scientists hope to one day return the tubes to Earth and analyze their […]

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“We offer another place for knowledge”

In the Dzaleka Refugee Camp in Malawi, Jospin Hassan didn’t have access to the education opportunities he sought. So, he decided to create his own.  Hassan knew the booming fields of data science and artificial intelligence could bring job opportunities to his community and help solve local challenges. After earning a spot in the 2020-21 […]

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Smart glove teaches new physical skills

You’ve likely met someone who identifies as a visual or auditory learner, but others absorb knowledge through a different modality: touch. Being able to understand tactile interactions is especially important for tasks such as learning delicate surgeries and playing musical instruments, but unlike video and audio, touch is difficult to record and transfer. To tap […]

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CERN’s Robodog To Revolutionize Hazardous Terrain Exploration

CERN has introduced an innovative robotic solution, the CERNquadbot, designed to navigate cluttered and hazardous environments, particularly within the intricate facilities of the Laboratory; This four-legged robot recently underwent a successful radiation protection test in CERN’s expansive North Area, showcasing its adaptability and agility in challenging terrains. Developed within Building 937, the CERNquadbot stands out […]

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Six MIT students selected as spring 2024 MIT-Pillar AI Collective Fellows

The MIT-Pillar AI Collective has announced six fellows for the spring 2024 semester. With support from the program, the graduate students, who are in their final year of a master’s or PhD program, will conduct research in the areas of AI, machine learning, and data science with the aim of commercializing their innovations. Launched by […]

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DeepMind’s GenEM uses LLMs to generate expressive behaviors for robots

Humans use expressive behaviors to communicate goals and intents. We nod to acknowledge the presence of a coworker, shake our heads to convey a negative response, or use simple utterances like “excuse me” to ask others to make way. Mobile robots that want to share their environments with humans should be able to show such […]

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Professor Emeritus Igor Paul, an expert in product design and safety, dies at 87

Professor Emeritus Igor Paul ’60, SM ’61, PhD ’64, an influential professor of mechanical engineering, passed away on Dec. 17, 2023 at his home in St. Petersburg, Florida. He was 87.  Paul was a member of the MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering faculty from 1964 until his retirement in 2003, and helped to develop the […]

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Who Were The 3 Black U.S. Army Reserve Soldiers Killed in Jordan Drone Strike?

The Defense Department released the identities of the three U.S. Army Reserve soldiers who were killed in a drone strike near Syria this weekend. What Rev Run Really Thinks About Nicki Minaj, Plus Run DMC Honored In New Docuseries Sgt. William Jerome Rivers, 46, 2 Spc. Kennedy Ladon Sanders, 24, and Spc. Breonna Alexsondria Moffett, […]

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Tiny Aquatic Robot Inspired By Water Strider Is The World’s Smallest Of Its Kind

A team at Washington State University has developed the WaterStrider robot, a tiny aquatic robot inspired by water striders. Measuring just 22 mm in length and weighing 56 milligrams, the robot utilizes a groundbreaking “shape memory actuator” to propel itself across the water’s surface. This actuator, at 7 mm in length, is claimed to be […]

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Meta’s OK-Robot performs zero-shot pick-and-drop in unseen environments

There have been many advances in vision-language models (VLM) that can match natural language queries to objects in a visual scene. And researchers are experimenting with how these models can be applied to robotics systems, which are still lagging in generalizing their abilities. A new paper by researchers at Meta AI and New York University […]

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Baran Mensah: Savoring college life in a new country

MIT senior Baran Mensah recalls taking apart his toys as a child, curious to see how every piece worked. When his mother explained to him what an engineer was, he knew that’s what he wanted to be. Mensah wasn’t particularly familiar with the culture of MIT while growing up in Ghana. But for the last […]

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Reasoning and reliability in AI

In order for natural language to be an effective form of communication, the parties involved need to be able to understand words and their context, assume that the content is largely shared in good faith and is trustworthy, reason about the information being shared, and then apply it to real-world scenarios. MIT PhD students interning with […]

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Ready Robotics uses Nvidia Omniverse for Toyota industrial robotics

Toyota partnered with Ready Robotics to simulate and program industrial robotics using Nvidia’s Omniverse platform. The “sim-to-real” robotic programming aims to advance industrial robotics, using both Ready Robotics’ Ready ForgeOS and Nvidia Isaac Sim on the Omniverse platform. Toyota will use the tech for its aluminum hot forging production lines. The tech is the latest […]

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1X, robotic startup backed by OpenAI, receives $100M in funding

Join leaders in San Francisco on January 10 for an exclusive night of networking, insights, and conversation. Request an invite here. 1X Technologies, a Norwegian startup robotics startup backed by OpenAI, among others, today announced it has raised $100 million in its series B round of funding from a long list of other big names, […]

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Richard Wiesman, professor of the practice in mechanical engineering, dies at age 69

Richard M. Wiesman ’76, SM ’76, PhD ’83, a professor of the practice in the MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering (MechE), died on Sunday, Jan. 7. He was 69.  A technology innovator and leader who saw many complex engineering systems reach the marketplace, Wiesman’s work spanned from laboratory development to field deployment. His broad skills […]

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Multiple AI models help robots execute complex plans more transparently

Your daily to-do list is likely pretty straightforward: wash the dishes, buy groceries, and other minutiae. It’s unlikely you wrote out “pick up the first dirty dish,” or “wash that plate with a sponge,” because each of these miniature steps within the chore feels intuitive. While we can routinely complete each step without much thought, […]

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Stanford’s mobile ALOHA robot learns from humans to cook, clean, do laundry

Join leaders in San Francisco on January 10 for an exclusive night of networking, insights, and conversation. Request an invite here. A new AI system developed by researchers at Stanford University makes impressive breakthroughs in training mobile robots that can perform complex tasks in different environments.  Called Mobile ALOHA (A Low-cost Open-source Hardware System for […]

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UC Berkeley’s transformer-based robot control system generalizes to unseen environments

Are you ready to bring more awareness to your brand? Consider becoming a sponsor for The AI Impact Tour. Learn more about the opportunities here. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have created a versatile control system for humanoid robots to adeptly navigate a variety of terrains and obstacles. Drawing inspiration from the deep […]

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Stanford and Meta inch towards AI that acts human with new ‘CHOIS’ interaction model

Are you ready to bring more awareness to your brand? Consider becoming a sponsor for The AI Impact Tour. Learn more about the opportunities here. Researchers from Stanford University and Meta’s Facebook AI Research (FAIR) lab have developed a breakthrough AI system that can generate natural, synchronized motions between virtual humans and objects based solely […]

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MIT engineers design a robotic replica of the heart’s right chamber

MIT engineers have developed a robotic replica of the heart’s right ventricle, which mimics the beating and blood-pumping action of live hearts. The robo-ventricle combines real heart tissue with synthetic, balloon-like artificial muscles that enable scientists to control the ventricle’s contractions while observing how its natural valves and other intricate structures function. The artificial ventricle […]

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