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Amos Winter may be an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, but he describes one of the most important aspects of his job as “detective work.” That’s what he, MIT PhD candidate ...
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From gene mapping to space exploration, humanity continues to generate ever-larger sets of data — far more information than people can actually process, manage, or understand.
Machine learning...
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A Mechanical Engineer’s Obsession with Self-Driving Cars
John J. Leonard is the Samuel C. Collins Professor of Mechanical and Ocean Engineering and Associate Department Head for Research in the MIT...
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A joyride. A cruise. A flight to your next vacation or a drive to see your family. Or just simply getting from point A to point B. Whatever the reason, there are few people who don’t appreciate a...
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The Society of Engineering Science (SES) announced on Dec. 7 that Pedro Reis, the Gilbert W. Winslow Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Mechanical Engineering, and Markus...
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Nature has developed innovative ways to solve a sticky challenge: Mussels and barnacles stubbornly glue themselves to cliff faces, ship hulls, and even the skin of whales. Likewise, tendons and...
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Boiling water, with its commotion of bubbles that rise from a surface as water comes to a boil, is central to most electric power plants, heating and cooling systems, and desalination plants. Now,...
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Senior Carrington Motley spends a lot of his time at MIT surrounded by sand.
“Yeah, sand is everywhere,” he admits with a laugh. “It was already in all of my clothes, and now it’s in my backpack.”...
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Got rope? Then try this experiment: Cross both ends, left over right, then bring the left end under and out, as if tying a pair of shoelaces. If you repeat this sequence, you get what’s called a “...
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Deep in the basement of MIT’s Building 3, a two-legged robot named HERMES is wreaking controlled havoc: punching through drywall, smashing soda cans, kicking over trash buckets, and karate-chopping...
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Albert Wang has had robots on his mind for a long time.
“When I was about four years old,” he recalls, “I dreamt about building a robot vacuum. I remember wandering around the house, while my parents...
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The image that comes to mind when you hear Professor John Leonard describe his dream of developing a robot that is what he calls “a lifelong learner” is so cinematic it’s almost hard to believe:
“...
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Acoustic-gravity waves — a special type of sound wave that can cut through the deep ocean at the speed of sound — can be generated by underwater earthquakes, explosions, and landslides, as well as by...
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Alumna Megan Smith, CTO of the United States. Courtesy of White House.
Megan Smith received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering from MIT in 1986 and 1988, respectively....
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When an aspiring mechanical engineer on a budget wants a top-of-the-line guitar, what does he do? He makes it himself, of course.
At age 13, Nathan Spielberg — now an MIT senior — began building his...
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An MIT-Olin team took home the grand prize this October from the 2014 Maritime RobotX Challenge in Marina Bay, Singapore. The team was comprised of students from MIT’s Department of Mechanical...
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This week a team featuring multiple Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) researchers took home the grand prize in an international competition centered on autonomous...
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The world’s fiber-optic network spans more than 550,000 miles of undersea cable that transmits e-mail, websites, and other packets of data between continents, all at the speed of light. A rip or...
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Last week, at the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, MIT researchers unveiled an oval-shaped submersible robot, a little smaller than a football, with a flattened panel on...
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Cephalopods, which include octopuses, squid, and cuttlefish, are among nature’s most skillful camouflage artists, able to change both the color and texture of their skin within seconds to blend into...