When robots come across unfamiliar objects, they struggle to account for a simple truth: Appearances aren’t everything. They may attempt to grasp a block, only to find out it’s a literal…

“I'll have you eating out of the palm of my hand” is an unlikely utterance you'll hear from a robot. Why? Most of them don't have palms. If you have…

Our muscles are nature’s perfect actuators — devices that turn energy into motion. For their size, muscle fibers are more powerful and precise than most synthetic actuators. They can even…

Before a robot can grab dishes off a shelf to set the table, it must ensure its gripper and arm won’t crash into anything and potentially shatter the fine china.…

The MIT-Takeda Program, a collaboration between MIT’s School of Engineering and Takeda Pharmaceuticals Company, fuels the development and application of artificial intelligence capabilities to benefit human health and drug development.…

Since its founding in 1998, Vecna Technologies has developed a number of ways to help hospitals care for patients. The company has produced intake systems to respond to Covid-19 patient…

Bumblebees are clumsy fliers. It is estimated that a foraging bee bumps into a flower about once per second, which damages its wings over time. Yet despite having many tiny…

In 2018, MIT convened its Task Force on the Work of the Future, which concluded in a 2020 report that while new technologies were not necessarily going to massively wipe…

If you've ever played soccer with a robot, it's a familiar feeling. Sun glistens down on your face as the smell of grass permeates the air. You look around. A…

Inspired by the human finger, MIT researchers have developed a robotic hand that uses high-resolution touch sensing to accurately identify an object after grasping it just one time. Many robotic…