Tag Archives: MIT

Robotic Wood Shop Has Ambitions To Challenge IKEA

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Many people got their start with 3D printing by downloading designs from Thingiverse, and some of these designs could be modified in the browser using the Thingiverse Customizer. The mechanism behind this powerful feature is OpenSCAD’s parametric design capability, which offers great flexibility but is still limited by 3D printer size. In the interest of going bigger, a team at MIT built a system to adopt parametric design idea to woodworking.

The “AutoSaw” has software and hardware components. The software side is built on web-based CAD software Onshape. First the expert user builds a flexible design with parameters that could …read more

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Feature Labs launches out of MIT to accelerate the development of machine learning algorithms

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 Feature Labs, a startup with roots in research begun at MIT, officially launched today with a set of tools to help data scientists build machine learning algorithms more quickly. Co-founder and CEO Max Kantor says the company has developed a way … Continue reading Feature Labs launches out of MIT to accelerate the development of machine learning algorithms→

MIT Extracts Power from Temperature Fluctuations

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As a civilization, we are proficient with the “boil water, make steam” method of turning various heat sources into power we feed our infrastructure. Away from that, we can use solar panels. But what if direct sunlight is not available either? A team at MIT demonstrated how to extract power from daily temperature swings.

Running on temperature difference between day and night is arguably a very indirect form of solar energy. It could work in shaded areas where solar panels would not. But lacking a time machine, or an equally improbable portal to the other side of the planet, how …read more

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MIT Breaks Autonomous Drone Speed Limits By Not Sweating Obstacles

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How does one go about programming a drone to fly itself through the real world to a location without crashing into something? This is a tough problem, made even tougher if you’re pushing speeds higher and high. But any article with “MIT” implies the problems being engineered are not trivial.

The folks over at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have put their considerable skill set to work in tackling this problem. And what they’ve come up with is (not surprisingly) quite clever: they’re embracing uncertainty.

Why Is Autonomous Navigation So Hard?

Suppose we task ourselves with building …read more

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This Neuroscientist Brings ‘Research to the Runway’ With STEM-Inspired Fashion

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Yuly Fuentes-Medel hopes to communicate the value of science across disciplines, cultures, and peoples. Continue reading This Neuroscientist Brings ‘Research to the Runway’ With STEM-Inspired Fashion→

This Neuroscientist Brings ‘Research to the Runway’ With STEM-Inspired Fashion

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Yuly Fuentes-Medel hopes to communicate the value of science across disciplines, cultures, and peoples. Continue reading This Neuroscientist Brings ‘Research to the Runway’ With STEM-Inspired Fashion→

Living 3D Printer Filament

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This is more than a printing filament hack — closer to bleeding edge bio-engineering — but we can’t help but be fascinated by the prospect of 3D printing with filament that’s alive on a cellular level.

The team from MIT led by [Xuanhe Zhao] and [Timothy Lu] have programmed bacteria cells to respond to specific compounds.  To demonstrate, they printed a temporary tattoo of a tree formed of the sturdy bacteria and a hydrogel ‘ink’ loaded with nutrients, that lights up over a few hours when adhered to skin swabbed with these specific stimuli.

So far, the team has been …read more

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