On a research cruise around Hawaii in 2018, Yuening Zhang SM ’19, PhD ’24 saw how difficult it was to keep a tight ship. The careful coordination required to map [...]
The phrase “practice makes perfect” is usually reserved for humans, but it’s also a great maxim for robots newly deployed in unfamiliar environments. Picture a robot arriving in a warehouse. [...]
At the top of many automation wish lists is a particularly time-consuming task: chores. The moonshot of many roboticists is cooking up the proper hardware and software combination so that [...]
Neural networks have made a seismic impact on how engineers design controllers for robots, catalyzing more adaptive and efficient machines. Still, these brain-like machine-learning systems are a double-edged sword: Their [...]
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 [...]