Latest Daniela Rus Stories

Relying on origami techniques, researchers show programmable matter folding into a boat- or plane-shape"More than meets the eye" may soon become more than just a tagline for a line of popular robotic toys.Researchers at Harvard and MIT have reshaped the landscape of programmable matter by devising self-folding sheets that rely on the ancient art of origami.Called programmable matter by folding, the team demonstrated how a single thin sheet composed of interconnected triangular...

Agriculture, one of the oldest tasks known to mankind and a hallmark of every civilized society, may be standing on the brink of a yet another revolution.  First there was irrigation.  Much later came the cotton gin and the tractor.  Now there is the robot.As part of a two-semester course on robotics, a group of undergraduates students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was charged with developing a set of robots capable of watering, pollinating and even harvesting cherry...

Early in the fall of 2008, students began gathering before a raised platform of fake grass. The artificial turf was adorned with evenly spaced tomato plants, nestled in sensible terra cotta pots. And while the small cluster of plants and grow lamps might have seemed incongruous under other circumstances, this was a garden with a twist: instead of being horticulturalists, the humans were there only to program and supervise. The caretakers of the plants would be entirely robotic.The idea for...