“Blind” Cheetah 3 robot can climb stairs littered with obstacles

Improved design may be used for exploring disaster zones and other dangerous or inaccessible environments.

Let it rain! New coatings make natural fabrics waterproof

MIT-developed process could offer nontoxic alternative to environmentally harmful chemicals.

The value of late-in-life health care spending

Study debunks notion that large chunks of Medicare go to futile end-of-life care.

Taming fusion with machine learning

Postdoc Cristina Rea's detour into banking provides a new route back to plasma research.

Study shows where brain transforms seeing into doing

MIT neuroscientists find posterior parietal cortex region is crucial to connecting perception to action.

MIT researchers have unveiled the latest iteration of their robotic cheetah that can navigate without the use of cameras or sensors and could be used for disaster response, reports Jordan Graham for The Boston Herald. “We’re mostly thinking about sending robots instead of humans where potential hazards like toxicity or radiation or dangers can be,” explains Prof. Sangbae Kim.

BBC Click reporter Gareth Mitchell speaks with postdoc Oggi Rudovic about his work developing a system that allows autism therapy robots to help teach children how to decipher different emotions. Rudovic explains that the technology can “assist the therapist and also to make the whole therapy process engaging for the child.”

MIT researchers have developed a new waterproof coating method that is safer for both the environment and humans, reports Brooks Hays for UPI. Lab tests showed the coating, “works to waterproof a variety of fabrics and materials against a variety of liquids,” Hays explains.

Discovering hidden stories in the Flint water crisis

Graduate student Elena Sobrino looks beyond the headlines to study interactions between the city’s people and institutions.

Alumni-founded robotic kitchen cooks up tasty meals

Spyce, a robot-assisted restaurant located in Boston, was invented to respond to a common MIT student desire: good, low-cost food.

3 Questions: Historian Caley Horan on the rise of private insurance in the U.S.

Assistant professor explores how risk sharing and mutual aid shifted to individual forms of protection.