Forbes reporter Eric Mack writes about the latest iteration of MIT’s robotic cheetah: A new miniature version that weighs 20 pounds. “The cheetah has heavyweight skills like walking over uneven terrain, picking itself up after a fall or a swift kick and of course, its ability to pull off a 360-degree reverse flip from a standing position,” Mack explains.
Washington Post reporter Peter Holley writes that MIT researchers have created a mini robotic cheetah that can perform a backflip and walk right-side up or upside down. “Legged robots will have a variety of uses where human or animal-like mobility is necessary, but it may be unsafe to send a person,” explains technical associate Benjamin Katz.
Fortune reporter Alyssa Newcomb writes that MIT researchers have developed a 20-pound robotic cheetah that can successfully execute a backflip and nail the landing. “The robotic mini cheetah can also gallop over uneven terrain twice as fast as the average human,” writes Newcomb.
A miniature version of the robotic cheetah developed by MIT researchers provides a testbed for researchers to experiment with new maneuvers like backflips, reports David Freeman for NBC Mach. “Having a platform that's relatively small and safe and cheap makes running experiments very easy,” says technical associate Benjamin Katz, “you don't have to worry about breaking the robot or getting hurt.”
Reporting for Scientific American’s “60-Second Science” podcast, Christopher Intagliata explores how MIT developed a device, called a rectenna, that can capture energy from Wi-Fi signals and convert them into electricity. The scientists “envision a smart city where buildings, bridges and highways are studded with tiny sensors to monitor their structural health, each sensor with its own rectenna,” Intagliata explains.
Scientific American reporter Jeff Hecht writes that MIT researchers developed a new flexible material that can harvest energy from wireless signals. “The future of electronics is bringing intelligence to every single object from our clothes to our desks and to our infrastructure,” explains Prof. Tomás Palacios.
MIT researchers developed a super-thin, bendy material that converts WiFi signals into electricity, reports Ian Sample for The Guardian. “In the future, everything is going to be covered with electronic systems and sensors. The question is going to be how do we power them,” says Prof. Tomás Palacios. “This is the missing building block that we need.”
MIT researchers have developed a remote-controlled ingestible capsule that can be operated by a user’s smartphone, reports the Xinhua news agency. “The researchers envisioned that this type of sensor could be used to diagnose early signs of disease and then respond with the appropriate medication,” Xinhua explains.
HealthDay News reporter E.J. Mundell writes that MIT researchers have developed an ingestible capsule that can be used to monitor health a patient’s health. “The capsule could deliver drugs as well as sense the condition of its surroundings in the gut, including infections or allergic reactions,” Mundell explains.
Researchers from MIT are using the brittle nature of graphene to mass produce cell-sized robots, writes David Grossman of Popular Mechanics. Called “syncells” or synthetic cells, the researchers hope they can be used in biomedical testing. “Inject hundreds into the bloodstreams and let the data fly back into sensors,” explains Grossman.
Financial Times reporter Jemima Kelly reports that MIT researchers have developed a low-power chip that is hardwired to perform public-key encryption. Kelly writes that the chip is “potentially a game-changer for simple, low-powered products such as smart sensors used by industry to gauge things such as temperature and pressure, as well as health monitors.”
CNBC reporter Andrew Zaleski writes that MIT researchers have developed a neuromorphic chip design that could help advance the development of computers that operate like humans. The design could “lead to processors capable of carrying out machine learning tasks with dramatically lower energy demands,” Zaleski explains.
Researchers at the Tangible Media Group have developed “programmable droplets” of water that can be used to communicate words. “One potential application is a mirror that, when steamed, allows someone to display a message from a smartphone” writes Jesus Diaz for Co.Design. “The larger idea is to provoke surprise and delight, the way only the natural world can.”
Researchers at MIT have developed a “kirigami” film, based off of the ancient paper-folding technique of the same name, that can be used for bandaging tricky areas like the knee or elbow, writes David Grossman for Popular Mechanics. “We are the first group to find, with a systematic mechanism study, that a kirigami design can improve a material’s adhesion,” says postdoc and lead researcher Ruike Zhao.
A new paper from graduate students in EECS details a newly-developed chip that allows neural networks to function offline, while drastically reducing power usage. “That means smartphones and even appliances and smaller Internet of Things devices could run neural networks locally” writes Eric Mack for Forbes.