robotics / artificial intelligence

in depth

Beaver-like robots face off in annual MIT contest

Robots designed to toss pool-noodle trees into a river of ping-pong balls ruled over competitors focused on rescuing fuzzy toy beavers in this year's 2.007 contest, "Da (yes) MIT, or Save the Baby Beavers," held on Thursday, May 8, at MIT. May 9, 2008

Meet Nexi, the Media Lab's latest robot star

A new experimental robot from the MIT Media Lab can slant its eyebrows in anger, or raise them in surprise, and show a wide assortment of facial expressions to communicate with people in human-centric terms. April 9, 2008

MIT students design graduate student development program

An MIT PhD candidate in electrical engineering and computer science will describe a novel professional development program for graduate students and its impact at MIT at the annual meeting of the AAAS in Boston. February 16, 2008

Brains informing computers, and vice versa

After many years, Tomaso Poggio's two parallel lines of research--one aimed at using computers to understand how the brain works, the other at improving the abilities of computers to "think"--have begun to converge. February 16, 2008

MIT finishes fourth in DARPA Grand Challenge

MIT's automated Land Rover, packed with computers and electronic sensors, finished fourth in the DARPA Grand Challenge. The MIT vehicle, competing for the first time, was one of only six to complete the challenging 55-mile course. November 5, 2007

MIT's 'robocar' named finalist

Team MIT has made it to the finals of the DARPA Urban Challenge, a competition for cars and trucks that run without human help. The goal of the contest is to develop vehicles that can operate on their own in battle and keep humans out of harm's way. November 1, 2007

Cask from the past

For the first time, researchers have identified DNA from inside ceramic containers in an ancient shipwreck on the seafloor, making it possible to determine what the ship's cargo was even though there was no visible trace of it. October 29, 2007