Laney Ruckstuhl of The Boston Globe writes about “Calculated Imagination,” the Course 2.007 Willy Wonka-themed robot competition based on “creativity and innovation.” Students are graded on their work leading up to the competition. “You can earn an ‘A’ with a robot that scores zero points but that demonstrates good engineering and design skills,” Prof. Amos Winter explains.
MIT’s Course 2.007 Design and Manufacturing I hosted its annual robotic competition with a Willy Wonka-themed course. The event, which involves five “sudden death” rounds, is about “more than just taking home first place,” says WBZ’s Lisa Hughes. “I cannot even explain…how much opportunity this class has given us,” a student shares.
Devra First, food writer for The Boston Globe, visits Spyce, the robot kitchen restaurant created by four MIT alumni. “When it comes to matters of taste, we (still) need people,” says First. “The Spyce inventors enlisted famed chef Daniel Boulud, who is culinary director of and an investor in the company.”
CSAIL researchers have developed a system that uses LIDAR and GPS to allow self-driving cars to navigate rural roads without detailed maps, writes Tracey Lindeman of Motherboard. Autonomous ride-hailing or car-sharing is important in rural communities because “the carless in these areas have few transportation options; many small communities don’t even have public buses,” notes Lindeman.
Eric Mack writes for Forbes about a new system from MIT researchers that uses GPS in conjunction with LIDAR and IMU sensors to power self-driving vehicle navigation. Graduate student Teddy Ort says the system “shows the potential of self-driving cars being able to actually handle roads beyond the small number that tech companies have mapped.”
MapLite, a new system developed by CSAIL, aims to help autonomous vehicles navigate uncharted areas, writes Jesus Diaz for Co.Design. “[I]f autonomous cars can reach the millions of people who live beyond the city and are unable to pilot their own vehicles,” said graduate student Teddy Ort, “they will be uniquely capable of providing mobility to those who have very few alternatives.”
NBC Boston’s Brian Shactman reports from Spyce, a new Boston restaurant established by four alumni that uses a robotic kitchen to deliver healthy food fast. As students at MIT, the group was “sick of paying so much money for decent food,” says Schactman. “Doing what MIT students do best, they decided to invent something to solve the problem.”
Andy Rosen writes for The Boston Globe about a new restaurant established by MIT alumni that uses a robotic kitchen to deliver affordable, healthy food that’s “ready in just a few minutes.” Rosen notes that “the company started with the help of a couple of grants from MIT in 2015, the year it built its first prototype.”
Spyce, a robotic kitchen created by four alumni, will open in Boston’s Downtown Crossing this May. The group “built their first prototype in [an MIT] fraternity basement in 2015; now they have patent-pending technology and backing from acclaimed chef Daniel Boulud,” writes Jenna Pelletier of Boston Magazine.
Prof. Hugh Herr and his team in the Biomechatronics Group are developing prosthetics that “respond to neural commands with the flexibility and speed of regular limbs,” writes Eillie Anzilotti for Fast Company. In a process pioneered by the group, “doctors leave the tendons and nerve endings intact so they can continue to feed sensations down past where the human leg ends,” Anzilotti says.
Four MIT alumni have teamed up with chef Daniel Boulud and will soon open Spyce, a fast-casual restaurant in downtown Boston. The restaurant will complete orders using a device the group first created as students, known as the Spyce Kitchen, “a self-cleaning robotic kitchen, designed to prepare an entire meal in less than three minutes,” writes Jay Cheshes for The New Yorker.
Prof. Carlo Ratti led the development of a robot, known as Scribit, that can “draw, erase, and re-draw content on any vertical plane surface,” Maria Dermentzi reports for Mashable. Scribit, which is “a vertical plotter that connects to the internet,” will make its debut at Milan Design Week 2018.
Media Lab spinout “Ori” has developed what its founder Hasier Larrea SM ’15 calls a “Swiss Army knife for studio apartments,” writes Andy Rosen for The Boston Globe. A “robotic furniture system,” the compact 8 by 5 foot design can equip even the smallest rooms with a bed, multiple desks, closet, and entertainment system.
Sarah Toy of The Wall Street Journal writes that CSAIL researchers have developed a soft robotic fish that can capture images and video of aquatic life. “The key here is that the robot is very quiet as it moves in the water and the undulating motion of the tail does not create too much water disturbance,” says Prof. Daniela Rus.
SoFi, or “soft robot fish”, was developed by researchers in CSAIL to better observe marine life without disturbance. “…it's specially designed to look realistic and move super-quietly through the waves,” writes BBC News, whose brief also features a video of the fish in action.