MIT has been on the innovation end when it comes to development and research of AI and automations tech. Right now, MIT engineers are making moves by designing tiny zinc-air batteries that could help in the robotics industry These small batteries are cell-sized and work as a way to distribute drugs within the human body.
These were designed as a way to improve the efficiency of treatments, especially for diseases that require precise drug delivery like cancer or localised infections.
鈥淲e think this is going to be very enabling for robotics. We鈥檙e building robotic functions onto the battery and starting to put these components together into devices,鈥� Michael Strano, the Carbon P. Dubbs Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT and the senior author of the study.
Batteries That Breathe Life Into Robotics
The key to these micro-robots’ function lies in their innovative power source. The zinc-air batteries designed by MIT are small but powerful enough to activate these different robot functions.
They work by capturing oxygen from the air to oxidise zinc, a process that generates an electric current sufficient to power a robot’s sensors and actuators.
This new discovery in battery technology also means that the robots can operate autonomously without external power sources, when working with the human body’s complex environments.
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MIT鈥檚 New Model And How It Works
And this isn鈥檛 where it ends. On top of the cell-sized batteries, MIT’s Mechanical Engineering Department has introduced an innovative approach to robotics called SimPLE, which simplifies interactions between robots and a range of objects.
This new model focuses on precise pick-and-place operations, which is an important task in different industries such as electronics assembly and packaging. SimPLE stands out by allowing robots to adapt their handling techniques to different objects using only the objects’ computer-aided design models.
鈥淭he promise of SimPLE is that we can solve many different tasks with the same hardware and software using simulation to learn models that adapt to each specific task,鈥� says Alberto Rodriguez, an MIT visiting scientist.
How Else Is MIT Innovating With Robotics?
Lastly, MIT researchers have developed a new algorithm that lets robots practice their skills independently.
This advancement, known as the “Estimate, Extrapolate, and Situate” algorithm, helps robots adapt to new environments such as hospitals, factories, and homes by improving their efficiency in tasks like sweeping or placing objects.
鈥淓nabling robots to learn on their own is both incredibly useful and extremely challenging. In the future, home robots will be sold to all sorts of households and expected to perform a wide range of tasks.
鈥淲e can’t possibly program everything they need to know beforehand, so it鈥檚 essential that they can learn on the job. However, letting robots loose to explore and learn without guidance can be very slow and might lead to unintended consequences.
鈥淭he research by Silver and his colleagues introduces an algorithm that allows robots to practice their skills autonomously in a structured way. This is a big step towards creating home robots that can continuously evolve and improve on their own,鈥� Xu, an assistant professor in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech and a research scientist at NVIDIA AI.
