Getting drones to fly around without hitting things is no small task. Obstacle-detection and motion-planning are two of computer science’s trickiest challenges, because of the complexity involved in creating real-time flight plans that avoid obstacles and handle surprises like wind and weather. In a pair of projects announced this week, researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and…
‘MultiFab’ 3D Prints a Record 10 Materials at Once
3D printing is great, assuming you’re printing one material for one purpose, and that you’re fine with a few do-overs. But the technology is still far behind in reliably producing a variety of useful objects, with no assembly required, at a moderate cost. In recent years, companies have been working to tackle some of these…
Michael Stonebraker Wins $1 Million Turing Award
CSAIL researcher invented core database concepts, turned many into companies. Michael Stonebraker, a researcher at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) who has revolutionized the field of database management systems (DBMSs) and founded multiple successful database companies, has won the Association for Computing Machinery’s (ACM) A.M. Turing Award, often referred to as “the Nobel…
8 of the Coolest Things that Happened at MIT’s CSAIL in 2014
It’s been a busy year for MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). Researchers celebrated the lab’s 50th anniversary, created groundbreaking algorithms to magnify video and predict Bitcoin prices, and developed exciting new robots that can walk, talk, fly and swim. As 2014 comes to a close, we thought we’d look back on a…
International RobotX Autonomous Boat Competition
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 underwater vehicles (AUVs). Members of CSAIL’s Marine Robotics Group joined forces with more than 20 other researchers from MIT and Olin College as one of 15 teams competing in…
Project Wing: Google’s Delivery-Drone Service
Friends and colleagues were aware, at some level, that Nick Roy, a researcher in MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), had been using his sabbatical to take on some sort of robotics-related role at Google. But few people knew the full scope of his work until this past week, when Google X — the…