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Looking beyond “technology for technology’s sake” | MIT News
Austen Roberson’s favored course at MIT is 2.S007 (Style and design and Production I-Autonomous Devices), in which learners style, make, and program a completely autonomous robotic to attain jobs laid out on a themed activity board. “The finest detail about that class is all people experienced a distinctive plan,” claims Roberson. “We all experienced the same activity board and the same guidance supplied to us, but the robots that came out of people’s minds were being so distinct.” The video game board was Mars-themed, with a model shuttle that could be lifted to rating factors. Roberson’s robotic, nicknamed Tank Evans after a character from the movie “Surf’s Up,” employed a…
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MIT Policy Hackathon produces new solutions for technology policy challenges | MIT News
Almost three yrs back, the Covid-19 pandemic transformed the planet. Numerous are even now on the lookout to uncover a “new standard.” “Instead of heading back to ordinary, [there’s a new generation that] desires to make again a thing different, anything far better,” suggests Jorge Sandoval, a 2nd-year graduate university student in MIT’s Engineering and Policy Program (TPP) at the Institute for Facts, Devices and Culture (IDSS). “How do we connect this attitude to others, that the environment can not be the identical as ahead of?” This was the inspiration at the rear of “A New (Re)technology,” this year’s concept for the IDSS-university student-run MIT Plan Hackathon, which Sandoval assisted…
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Study: Automation drives income inequality | MIT News
When you use self-checkout machines in supermarkets and drugstores, you are probably not — with all thanks respect — accomplishing a greater career of bagging your buys than checkout clerks when did. Automation just helps make bagging fewer highly-priced for large retail chains. “If you introduce self-checkout kiosks, it is not likely to improve productivity all that a great deal,” suggests MIT economist Daron Acemoglu. However, in phrases of missing wages for workforce, he provides, “It’s likely to have relatively large distributional outcomes, especially for lower-skill assistance employees. It is a labor-shifting system, relatively than a efficiency-rising device.” A newly printed analyze co-authored by Acemoglu quantifies the extent to which…
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Wiggling toward bio-inspired machine intelligence | MIT News
Juncal Arbelaiz Mugica is a indigenous of Spain, where by octopus is a typical menu merchandise. Even so, Arbelaiz appreciates octopus and comparable creatures in a various way, with her exploration into smooth-robotics principle. Much more than fifty percent of an octopus’ nerves are dispersed through its eight arms, every of which has some degree of autonomy. This dispersed sensing and details processing procedure intrigued Arbelaiz, who is studying how to design decentralized intelligence for human-produced techniques with embedded sensing and computation. At MIT, Arbelaiz is an used math college student who is operating on the fundamentals of optimum distributed manage and estimation in the ultimate weeks before finishing her…
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Exploring how new technologies are changing finance | MIT News
MIT Hong Kong Innovation Node held its annual financial technological know-how (fintech) entrepreneurship boot camp this summer time, connecting college learners with company companions to tackle true-planet small business troubles. Making on the belief that impressive, creative remedies supply a lot more price and a better expertise, the MIT Entrepreneurship and Fintech Integrator (MEFTI) application showcased unique trouble statements proposed by Prudential Hong Kong and Openhive. “These difficulties deliver suggestions and expertise alongside one another to deal with opportunities in the locations of electronic engagement, the metaverse, and leveraging different information and synthetic intelligence,” says Charles Sodini, the LeBel Professor of Electrical Engineering at MIT and school director at the…
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A new concept for low-cost batteries | MIT News
As the earth builds out at any time greater installations of wind and solar power techniques, the will need is escalating quickly for affordable, large-scale backup systems to give energy when the sun is down and the air is calm. Today’s lithium-ion batteries are continue to too pricey for most such programs, and other choices these types of as pumped hydro demand distinct topography that’s not usually offered. Now, researchers at MIT and elsewhere have made a new sort of battery, created entirely from considerable and low-cost elements, that could help to fill that gap. The new battery architecture, which uses aluminum and sulfur as its two electrode supplies, with…