Most of us know optical lenses as curved, transparent pieces of plastic or glass, designed to focus light for microscopes, spectacles, cameras, and more. For the most part, a lens’ curved shape has not changed much since it was invented many centuries ago. In the last decade, however, engineers have created flat, ultrathin materials called…
How Slippery Surfaces Allow Sticky Pastes and Gels To Slide
An MIT research team that has already conquered the problem of getting ketchup out of its bottle has now tackled a new category of consumer and manufacturing woe: how to get much thicker materials to slide without sticking or deforming. The slippery coatings the team has developed, called liquid-impregnated surfaces, could have numerous advantages, including…
Shrinking Objects to the Nanoscale
MIT researchers have invented a way to fabricate nanoscale 3-D objects of nearly any shape. They can also pattern the objects with a variety of useful materials, including metals, quantum dots, and DNA. “It’s a way of putting nearly any kind of material into a 3-D pattern with nanoscale precision,” says Edward Boyden, an associate…
Wireless Communication Breaks Through Water-Air Barrier
Let It Rain! New Coatings Make Natural Fabrics Waterproof
Fabrics that resist water are essential for everything from rainwear to military tents, but conventional water-repellent coatings have been shown to persist in the environment and accumulate in our bodies, and so are likely to be phased out for safety reasons. That leaves a big gap to be filled if researchers can find safe substitutes.…
A New Way To Find Better Battery Materials
A new approach to analyzing and designing new ion conductors — a key component of rechargeable batteries — could accelerate the development of high-energy lithium batteries, and possibly other energy storage and delivery devices such as fuel cells, researchers say. The new approach relies on understanding the way vibrations move through the crystal lattice of…
Video of the Day: Robot Assisted Carpentry Lets You Build Custom Furniture Without Risking Saw-Related Injuries
Every year thousands of carpenters injure their hands and fingers running power saws and other dangerous tasks. In an effort to minimize injury and let carpenters focus on design and other bigger-picture tasks, a team from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) has created AutoSaw, a system that lets you customize different items…
Changing the Color of 3-D Printed Objects
3-D printing has come a long way since the first “rapid prototyping” patent was rejected in 1980. We’ve evolved from basic designs to a wide range of highly-customizable objects. Still, there’s a big issue: once objects are printed, they’re final. If you need a change, you’ll need a reprint. But imagine if that weren’t the…
Technique Could Produce Strong, Resilient Nanofibers For Many Applications
Can Computers Help Us Synthesize New Materials?
Last month, three MIT materials scientists and their colleagues published a paper describing a new artificial-intelligence system that can pore through scientific papers and extract “recipes” for producing particular types of materials. That work was envisioned as the first step toward a system that can originate recipes for materials that have been described only theoretically.…
Study Shows How to Get Sprayed Metal Coatings to Stick
When bonding two pieces of metal, either the metals must melt a bit where they meet or some molten metal must be introduced between the pieces. A solid bond then forms when the metal solidifies again. But researchers at MIT have found that in some situations, melting can actually inhibit metal bonding rather than promote…
MIT Students Fortify Concrete by Adding Recycled Plastic
Discarded plastic bottles could one day be used to build stronger, more flexible concrete structures, from sidewalks and street barriers, to buildings and bridges, according to a new study. MIT undergraduate students have found that, by exposing plastic flakes to small, harmless doses of gamma radiation, then pulverizing the flakes into a fine powder, they…
Why Lab Researchers Should Talk With Industry Counterparts
When Shreya Dave was an MIT doctoral student working on a new kind of filter for desalination plants, she paid a visit to a working reverse-osmosis desalination plant in Spain. She quickly learned an important lesson that she now said she would likely have missed if she’d stayed in the lab. While much of her…
Teleoperating Robots With Virtual Reality
Many manufacturing jobs require a physical presence to operate machinery. But what if such jobs could be done remotely? This week researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) presented a virtual-reality (VR) system that lets you teleoperate a robot using an Oculus Rift headset. The system embeds the user in a VR…
Reshaping Computer-Aided Design
Almost every object we use is developed with computer-aided design (CAD). Ironically, while CAD programs are good for creating designs, using them is actually very difficult and time-consuming if you’re trying to improve an existing design to make the most optimal product. Researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and Columbia University…
System Of Quadcopters That Fly And Drive Suggest Another Approach To Developing Flying Cars
Being able to both walk and take flight is typical in nature — many birds, insects, and other animals can do both. If we could program robots with similar versatility, it would open up many possibilities: Imagine machines that could fly into construction areas or disaster zones that aren’t near roads and then squeeze through…
Tactile Sensor Gives Robots New Capabilities
Eight years ago, Ted Adelson’s research group at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) unveiled a new sensor technology, called GelSight, that uses physical contact with an object to provide a remarkably detailed 3-D map of its surface. Now, by mounting GelSight sensors on the grippers of robotic arms, two MIT teams have…
Camera-Equipped Drones Preserve Framing When Shooting Video
In recent years, a host of Hollywood blockbusters — including “The Fast and the Furious 7,” “Jurassic World,” and “The Wolf of Wall Street” — have included aerial tracking shots provided by drone helicopters outfitted with cameras. Those shots required separate operators for the drones and the cameras, and careful planning to avoid collisions. But…
System Can 3-D Print an Entire Building
The list of materials that can be produced by 3-D printing has grown to include not just plastics but also metal, glass, and even food. Now, MIT researchers are expanding the list further, with the design of a system that can 3-D print the basic structure of an entire building. Structures built with this system…
System Can 3-D Print An Entire Building
The list of materials that can be produced by 3-D printing has grown to include not just plastics but also metal, glass, and even food. Now, MIT researchers are expanding the list further, with the design of a system that can 3-D print the basic structure of an entire building. Structures built with this system…
MIT Engineers Manipulate Water Using Only Light
A new system developed by engineers at MIT could make it possible to control the way water moves over a surface, using only light. This advance may open the door to technologies such as microfluidic diagnostic devices whose channels and valves could be reprogrammed on the fly, or field systems that could separate water from…
Researchers Design Coatings to Prevent Pipeline Cogging
When the Deepwater Horizon oil rig suffered a catastrophic explosion and blowout on April 21, 2010, leading to the worst oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry, the well’s operators thought they would be able to block the leak within a few weeks. On May 9 they succeeded in lowering a 125-ton containment…
Researchers Add Human Intuition to Planning Algorithms
Every other year, the International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling hosts a competition in which computer systems designed by conference participants try to find the best solution to a planning problem, such as scheduling flights or coordinating tasks for teams of autonomous satellites. On all but the most straightforward problems, however, even the best…
Model Sheds Light on Inhibitory Neurons’ Computational Role
Researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory have developed a new computational model of a neural circuit in the brain, which could shed light on the biological role of inhibitory neurons — neurons that keep other neurons from firing. The model describes a neural circuit consisting of an array of input neurons and…
Researchers Design One of Strongest, Lightest Materials Known
A team of researchers at MIT has designed one of the strongest lightweight materials known, by compressing and fusing flakes of graphene, a two-dimensional form of carbon. The new material, a sponge-like configuration with a density of just 5 percent, can have a strength 10 times that of steel. In its two-dimensional form, graphene is…