RoboticsResearch brief
A robot needs more than a destination. It needs a safe way there.
MIT's SANDO planner tackles moving obstacles in unmapped spaces. The interesting part is the boundary of its safety guarantee.
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AIAnalysis
AI's next useful question: what can experts verify?
Google Research's October update points beyond chat interfaces. A useful way to read it is through the evidence behind each application.
ComputingResearch brief
What if a chip could bend—and let you see through it?
A silicon-photonics fabrication process brings flexibility and transparency together, opening a different design space for optical devices.
EnergyResearch brief
The tiny boundaries behind a big battery problem.
Research on solid electrolytes links electrical imbalances at crystal boundaries to a stubborn cause of battery failure.
SpaceResearch brief
Why NASA plans to connect Orion through Starlink lasers.
Two planned laser terminals would connect Orion to a commercial relay network. The useful question is how much data gets home during a usable link.
BiotechResearch brief
This swimming robot moves with muscle, guided by light.
MIT’s thin gel-and-muscle swimmer turns flashes of light into movement. Here is what the laboratory demonstration shows—and who supplies the steering.
AIExplainer
How RAG gives an AI something to look up.
Understand retrieval-augmented generation, embeddings and citations with a worked example—and see why finding a source is not the same as proving an answer.
RoboticsExplainer
How a robot turns sensor readings into movement.
Follow the loop from sensing and localization to planning and control, and learn why timing and coordinate frames matter as much as a good-looking route.
EnergyExplainer
Battery capacity, energy and power are three different questions.
Learn what happens inside a rechargeable cell, how amp-hours differ from watt-hours, and how to read a battery headline without mixing material and pack results.
ComputingExplainer
What changes when a chip carries information with light?
A clear guide to silicon photonics: light sources, modulators, waveguides and detectors, and why an optical link is not the same as an all-optical computer.
SpaceExplainer
Space laser communications: more data, the same speed of light.
Learn how optical communications encode and receive data, why precise pointing and weather matter, and how data rate differs from communication delay.
BiotechExplainer
Biohybrid robots: how living muscle moves a machine.
Understand biohybrid actuators, the role of a mechanical skeleton, and the difference between a light-controlled laboratory swimmer and an autonomous robot.
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