This process can generate small amounts of electricity.
Last year, MIT researchers discovered that when water droplets spontaneously jump away from superhydrophobic (water-repelling) surfaces during condensation, the droplets can gain electric charge in the process.
Continue reading… “Generating electricity from jumping water droplets”
MIT’s FingerReader
Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientists are developing an audio reading device to be worn on the index finger of people whose vision is impaired, giving them affordable and immediate access to printed words.
Continue reading… “FingerReader reads to the blind in real time”
Printable robotic components that, when baked, automatically fold into prescribed three-dimensional configurations.
MIT researchers have developed some printable robotic components that fold into a specific 3D shape when they are ‘baked’ under heat. The team, led by Professor Daniela Rus, has introduced the “bakeable robots” in the hope that they lead to a variety of self-assembling designs that function on their own and fold together like origami.
Continue reading… “Robots that self-assemble when heated up”
Supernumerary Robotic Limbs
MIT creates robotic limbs that, when worn, give you more limbs than you’d normally have. The Supernumerary Robotic Limbs (SRLs) are not designed to replace biological limbs that you might be missing, but rather robotic limbs designed to augment the number of limbs that you have already. (Videos)
Continue reading… “MIT creates wearable set of robotic arms to give a helping hand”
Neural interfaces and prosthetics will do away with human disabilities.
The best way to predict the future is to invent it and that is exactly what Hugh Herr has done. At the age of 17, Herr was an accomplished mountaineer, but during an ice-climbing expedition he lost his way in a blizzard and was stranded on a mountainside for three days. By the time rescuers found him, both of his legs were frostbitten and had to be amputated below the knee. Once his scars healed, Herr spent months in rehab rooms trying out prosthetic legs, but he found them unacceptable: How could he climb with such clunky things? Surely, he thought, medical technologists could build replacement parts that wouldn’t slow him down.
Continue reading… “Cyborg technology could end human disability by 2064”
FingerReader
Louis Braille, in 1829, developed a tactile system that would allow those with vision impairment to read books. Braille uses a series of raised dots and the finger trails over a line of braille text and the reader interprets it, much like we do with standard letters of the alphabet that form words. Braille, however, does require some training to understand, and even now, most books, magazines, and newspapers are unavailable in braille format. MIT researchers have changed that problem with a new piece of wearable technology that reads books out loud to those with vision problems. (Video)
Continue reading… “FingerReader enables visually impaired to read any printed or digital book”
The inFORM
The inFORM–a shapeshifting display that you can reach through and touch–was meant to be a sort of digital scrying pool through which MIT could imagine the user interfaces of the future. Currently on display at Milan’s Design Week, the inFORM’s successor (called, appropriately enough,the Transform) is a scrying pool too, but instead of helping us imagine the interfaces of the future, it’s here to teach us what the polymorphous furniture of tomorrow will be like instead. (Videos)
Continue reading… “Shapeshifting furniture of the future”
Printed robot
MIT lead researcher, Ankur Mehta is working on a project that quite literally enables people to print robots on a standard piece of paper at home. It might sound crazy, but there’s a lot of complicated math to back up the fact that you can create nearly any shape you like by folding paper. Once you’ve created the proper shape, Mehta demonstrates that you can combine it with about $20 worth of electronics to create a fully functioning robot.
Continue reading… “MIT building robots out of paper”
Academics at MIT have dreamed up something straight out of the pages of science fiction: a “wearable” book, which uses temperature controls and lighting to mimic the experiences of a story’s protagonist.
Continue reading… “MIT researchers develop a book that lets you feel the protagonist’s pain”
A new wrinkle in the control of waves.
Flexible, layered materials textured with nanoscale wrinkles could provide a new way of controlling the wavelengths and distribution of waves, whether of sound or light. The new method, developed by researchers at MIT, could eventually find applications from nondestructive testing of materials to sound suppression, and could also provide new insights into soft biological systems and possibly lead to new diagnostic tools.
Continue reading… “Flexible materials could provide new ways to control sound and light”
MOOCs can make a meaningful difference even if we don’t yet know what that will look like.
Harvard and MIT have made a compelling case for the potential benefits of massively open online courses, or MOOCs despite low completion rates. They released a draft of a working paper that is rich on data about their respective HarvardX and MITx courses and focuses on what has always been a faulty focal point of many MOOC criticisms. In a free, online environment, completion rates are vastly overrated.
Continue reading… “Harvard and MIT make a strong case for MOOCs”
A sample of the cellular composite material is prepared for testing of its strength properties.
Researchers at MIT have developed a lightweight structure whose tiny blocks can be snapped together much like the bricks of a child’s construction toy. The new material could revolutionize the assembly of airplanes, spacecraft, and even larger structures, such as dikes and levees, according to the researchers.
Continue reading… “Making big things out of small 3D printed pieces”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.