Brian Mastroianni reports for Fox News on the new algorithm developed by Professor Sangbae Kim’s team that gives its robotic cheetah the ability to run and jump over obstacles untethered. “Our goal is to use this kind of robot to save lives in a disaster situation,” said Kim.
For the second year in a row, the QS World University Rankings rated MIT number one on its list of best schools across the globe. “The rankings judge colleges by research, teaching, employability and internationalization,” reports Kate Barnato for CNBC.
Professor Sangbae Kim and his team in MechE have developed an algorithm that allows a four-legged cheetah robot to run up to 10 mph and jump over obstacles untethered. “The Cheetah's new algorithm improvements make it more agile and able to handle real-life terrain,” writes Francie Diep.
MIT researchers have developed a robotic cheetah that can run at 10 miles per hour and jump more than a foot in the air, reports Lily Hay Newman for Slate. “Breakthroughs in the cheetah’s development could be applicable to other autonomous robots or things like prosthetics,” she writes.
Sharon Begley of Reuters writes about Professor Ann Graybiel’s research on the effect of the human FOXP2 gene on mice. “By isolating the effects of one gene, the work sheds light on its function and hints at the evolutionary changes that led to the unique capabilities of the human brain,” writes Begley.
Francie Diep writes for Popular Science about a soft robot designed by MIT’s Distributed Systems Lab, that is able to navigate a maze unaided: “Researchers that build soft robots like this one hope that in the future, soft machines will be safer for humans to work with than hard metal ones.”
“[B]y current robotics standards this MIT creation is a pretty sleek approximation of a cheetah,” writes Rachel Feltman for The Washington Post about Professor Sangbae Kim’s robotic cheetah. A new algorithm could eventually allow the robot to reach speeds of 30 miles per hour.
Research by Professor Ann Graybiel demonstrated that providing mice with the human version of the FOXP2 gene allowed them to learn repetitive patterns more quickly, reports Clare Wilson of The New Scientist. This may demonstrate that the gene plays an important role in how humans learn to speak, says Graybiel.
“Leave it to researchers from MIT to come up with a complex algorithm that’s specific to predatory motions like running, leaping, and bounding that can be programmed into a robot,” writes Steve Annear for Boston Magazine about the robotic cheetah developed by Professor Sangbae Kim’s team.
Nidhi Subbaraman of BetaBoston writes about a soft, tentacle-shaped robot created by the Distributed Systems Lab at MIT that is able to navigate autonomously. “[T]he robot can make its way from one side of a pipe maze to another without humans getting involved,” writes Subbaraman.
Time features this video of the robot cheetah developed by Professor Sangbae Kim’s team. The researchers developed an algorithm that allows the four-legged robot to run untethered up to 10 miles per hour and jump over obstacles.
Irving Wladawsky-Berger writes about research by Professor David Autor on the impact of technology on the workforce presented at this year’s Jackson Hole Federal Reserve Symposium. Autor argues that artificial intelligence still struggles to perform tasks that require flexibility, judgment and common sense.
Kate Levingston of Boston.com interviews mother and MIT Media Lab researcher Catherine D’Ignazio about the upcoming breast-pump hackathon at the Media Lab. As one of the organizers, D’Ignazio hopes the event will help to improve breast pump function and make breast pumping more acceptable in everyday life.
The Boston Globe editorial board weighs in on the MIT Bitcoin Project, a student-led experiment that involves giving each undergraduate $100 of the digital currency: “Surely bitcoin deserves the skepticism with which it’s been greeted, but if it can work anywhere, it’s at MIT."
Stephen Ansolabehere and David Konisky write for The Boston Globe about a survey on public opinion on energy in the U.S. conducted by the MIT Energy Initiative and the Harvard University Center on Environment. The survey found that Americans have better knowledge of the policy debate than might be expected.