Researchers taught robots to run. Now they’re teaching them to walk
We’ve all seen videos over the past few years demonstrating how agile humanoid robots have become, running and jumping with ease. We’re no longer surprised by this kind of agility—in fact, we’ve grown to expect it. The problem is, these shiny demos lack real-world applications. When it comes to creating robots that are useful and safe around humans, the fundamentals of movement are more important. As a result, researchers are using the same techniques to train humanoid robots to achieve much more modest goals. Alan Fern, a professor of computer science at Oregon State University, and a team of researchers […]
The Download: commercializing space, and China’s chip self-sufficiency efforts
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology The great commercial takeover of low-Earth orbit NASA designed the International Space Station to fly for 20 years. It has lasted six years longer than that, though it is showing its age, and NASA is currently studying how to safely destroy the space laboratory by around 2030. The ISS never really became what some had hoped: a launching point for an expanding human presence in the solar system. But it did enable fundamental research on materials and medicine, […]
Why it’s so hard for China’s chip industry to become self-sufficient
This story first appeared in China Report, MIT Technology Review’s newsletter about technology in China. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday. I don’t know about you, but I only learned last week that there’s something connecting MSG and computer chips. Inside most laptop and data center chips today, there’s a tiny component called ABF. It’s a thin insulating layer around the wires that conduct electricity. And over 90% of the materials around the world used to make this insulator are produced by a single Japanese company named Ajinomoto, more commonly known for commercializing the seasoning powder MSG in […]
The great commercial takeover of low Earth orbit
Washington, DC, was hot and humid on June 23, 1993, but no one was sweating more than Daniel Goldin, the administrator of NASA. Standing outside the House chamber, he watched nervously as votes registered on the electronic tally board. The space station wasn’t going to make it. The United States had spent more than $11 billion on it by then, with thousands of pounds of paperwork to show for it—but zero pounds of flight hardware. Whether there would ever be a station came down, now, to a cancellation vote on the House floor. Politically, the space station was something of […]
Crossword answers revealed
Give up? Here’s the solution to the May/June 2024 crossword puzzle “Not that MIT.” Give up? Here’s the solution to the May/June 2024 crossword puzzle “Not that MIT.”
The Download: the problem with police bodycams, and how to make useful robots
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology AI was supposed to make police bodycams better. What happened? When police departments first started buying and deploying bodycams in the wake of the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, a decade ago, activists hoped it would bring about real change. Years later, despite what’s become a multibillion-dollar market for these devices, the tech is far from a panacea. Most of the vast reams of footage they generate go unwatched. Officers often don’t use them properly. […]
Three reasons robots are about to become more way useful
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. The holy grail of robotics since the field’s beginning has been to build a robot that can do our housework. But for a long time, that has just been a dream. While roboticists have been able to get robots to do impressive things in the lab, such as parkour, this usually requires meticulous planning in a tightly-controlled setting. This makes it hard for robots to work reliably in homes around children and pets, homes have wildly […]
AI was supposed to make police bodycams better. What happened?
On July 25 last year, in circuit court in Dane County, Wisconsin, a motion was filed to dismiss a criminal case as a result of what defense attorneys described as “institutional bad-faith actions” by a local police department. The evidence was unearthed, in part, because of artificial intelligence. Attorney Jessa Nicholson Goetz had been preparing to defend her client against a sexual assault charge that arose from a 2021 Tinder date. During pretrial motions, Nicholson Goetz’s co-counsel noticed discrepancies around how the lead police investigator was discussing and documenting his use of a body camera, which department policy required him […]
How to stop a state from sinking
There is more than one way to raise a house. Many of the mobile homes, Creole cottages, and other dwellings that have been flagged for flood risk along Louisiana’s low-lying coastline can be separated from their foundations and slowly raised into the sky on hydraulic jacks. While a home is held aloft by temporary support beams, a new, elevated floor is built underneath or the foundation extended upward—think of the pilings you might see supporting a beach house. But for homes like Christa and Alex Bell’s, which consists of two stories and a two-car garage sitting on a concrete slab, […]
How thermal batteries are heating up energy storage
We need heat to make everything from steel bars to ketchup packets. Today, a whopping 20% of global energy demand goes to producing heat used in industry, and most of that heat is generated by burning fossil fuels. In an effort to clean up industry, a growing number of companies are working to supply that heat with a technology called thermal batteries. It’s such an exciting idea that MIT Technology Review readers have officially selected thermal batteries as the reader’s choice addition to our 2024 list of 10 Breakthrough Technologies. So here’s a closer look at what all the excitement […]