'Cheetah' robot's first run
'Cheetah' robot's first run
A “cheetah” robot designed at MIT may soon outpace its animal counterparts in running efficiency: In treadmill tests, the researchers have found that it wastes very little energy as it trots continuously for up to an hour and a half.
24 Hours in the Stata Center
24 Hours in the Stata Center
A timelapse video of 24 hours in the lobby of the Stata Center, the home of CSAIL. MIT students never stop working!
3-D printing
3-D printing with variable densities
MIT Media Lab researchers Steven Keating and Neri Oxman demonstrate some of their work around 3-D printing.
A labelmaker for the blind
A labelmaker for the blind
A device that started out as a class project last fall is moving rapidly toward becoming a commercial product that could make the lives of millions of visually impaired people a bit easier. Karina Pikhart '09 and classmates designed a machine to make braille labels.
A look inside the MIT Hobby Shop
A look inside the MIT Hobby Shop
Now in its 75th year, we take a look back how the Hobby Shop began, and how it evolved to what it is today.
A new approach to water desalination
A new approach to water desalination
MIT researchers are using graphene, a one-atom-thick form of the element carbon, in the quest to make the earth's oceans a viable source of potable water.
A new hearing mechanism
A new hearing mechanism
Using a stroboscopic imaging system developed in MIT Professor Dennis Freeman's lab, Freeman's team obtained this video of wave motion along the ear's tectorial membrane (at top, the actual video showing nanometer-scale displacements, and at bottom, the same video, motion magnified (Liu et ...
A new type of electric vehicle
A new type of electric vehicle
A team of MIT students has been working on testing a rapid-recharging system that could help to change public perceptions about electric vehicles and their practicality. They have already done extensive testing of the system with an individual battery cell and with a motorcycle they converted ...
A peek into MIT's new Media Lab complex
A peek into MIT's new Media Lab complex
New Media Lab building, which opened in March 2010, is designed to foster collaboration, sharing, communication and experimentation.
A Plane That Perches Like a Bird
A Plane That Perches Like a Bird
For more info: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2010/perching-plane-0720.html http://groups.csail.mit.edu/locomotion/perching.html
A Robot Recruit that Can Do It All
A Robot Recruit that Can Do It All
Strong enough to tow a car, Warrior is designed to be a jack-of-all-trades for military, police, and rescue services.
A Sleep-Monitoring Shirt
A Sleep-Monitoring Shirt
Carson Darling and Thomas Lipoma, who cofounded Nyx Devices with Pablo Bello, and neurologist Matt Bianchi, demonstrate the Somnus sleep shirt. The nightshirt is embedded with fabric electronics to monitor the wearer's breathing patterns. A small chip worn in a pocket of the shirt processes ...
A Social-Media Decoder
A Social-Media Decoder
New technology deciphers-- and empowers--the millions who talk back to their televisions through the Web.
Abbas Maleki on improving Iran-U.S. relations
Abbas Maleki on improving Iran-U.S. relations
Abbas Maleki "Audits the Conventional Wisdom" of Iran-U.S. relations.
AI History: Minsky Tentacle Arm
AI History: Minsky Tentacle Arm
This film from 1968 shows Marvin Minsky's tentacle arm, developed at the MIT AI Lab (one of CSAIL's forerunner labs). The arm had twelve joints and could be controlled by a PDP-6 computer or via a joystick. This video demonstrates that the arm was strong enough to lift a person, yet gentle ...
An Underground Cellist
An Underground Cellist
By Wojciech Mikoluszko, a science reporter from Poland. Mikoluszko is currently a Knight Science Journalism fellow at MIT.You could hardly find a bigger contrast: the clean voice of a cello breaking through the dirty noise of a subway. And this is what people hear in Cambridge subway stations. ...
Apparent Ridges for Line Drawing
Apparent Ridges for Line Drawing
Apparent ridges are a new way to represent 3D models as non-photorealistic line drawings. They produce results that are more accurate and visually pleasing than currently existing methods. Published in SIGGRAPH 2007. More info (PDF): http://people.csail.mit.edu/tjudd/apparentLines.pdf
Artificial muscles at MIT
Artificial muscles at MIT
MIT researchers at the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research have developed a new material that changes its shape after absorbing water vapor.
Mapping a building, automatically
Automatic building mapping could help emergency responders
MIT researchers describe a wearable sensor system that automatically creates a digital map of the environment through which the wearer is moving.
Autonomous Parking
Autonomous Parking - MIT AgeLab
Bryan Reimer discusses the MIT AgeLab's work on a car that can park itself.