Mechanical engineering Archives - Page 3 of 3

May 1, 2025

The MIT-Portugal Program enters Phase 4

Since its founding 19 years ago as a pioneering collaboration with Portuguese universities, research institutions and corporations, the MIT-Portugal Program (MPP) has achieved a slew of successes — from enabling 47 entrepreneurial spinoffs and funding over 220 joint projects between MIT and Portuguese researchers to training a generation of exceptional researchers on both sides of the Atlantic.

In March, with nearly two decades of collaboration under their belts, MIT and the Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation (FCT) signed an agreement that officially launches the program’s next chapter. Running through 2030, MPP’s Phase 4 will support continued exploration of innovative ideas and solutions in fields ranging from artificial intelligence and nanotechnology to climate change — both on the MIT campus and with partners throughout Portugal.

“One of the advantages of having a program that has gone on so long is that we are pretty well familiar with each other at this point.

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April 28, 2025

New electronic “skin” could enable lightweight night-vision glasses

MIT engineers have developed a technique to grow and peel ultrathin “skins” of electronic material. The method could pave the way for new classes of electronic devices, such as ultrathin wearable sensors, flexible transistors and computing elements, and highly sensitive and compact imaging devices.

As a demonstration, the team fabricated a thin membrane of pyroelectric material — a class of heat-sensing material that produces an electric current in response to changes in temperature. The thinner the pyroelectric material, the better it is at sensing subtle thermal variations.

With their new method, the team fabricated the thinnest pyroelectric membrane yet, measuring 10 nanometers thick, and demonstrated that the film is highly sensitive to heat and radiation across the far-infrared spectrum.

The newly developed film could enable lighter, more portable, and highly accurate far-infrared (IR) sensing devices, with potential applications for night-vision eyewear and autonomous driving in foggy conditions.

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April 24, 2025

Robotic system zeroes in on objects most relevant for helping humans

For a robot, the real world is a lot to take in. Making sense of every data point in a scene can take a huge amount of computational effort and time. Using that information to then decide how to best help a human is an even thornier exercise.

Now, MIT roboticists have a way to cut through the data noise, to help robots focus on the features in a scene that are most relevant for assisting humans.

Their approach, which they aptly dub “Relevance,” enables a robot to use cues in a scene, such as audio and visual information, to determine a human’s objective and then quickly identify the objects that are most likely to be relevant in fulfilling that objective. The robot then carries out a set of maneuvers to safely offer the relevant objects or actions to the human.

The researchers demonstrated the approach with an experiment that simulated a conference breakfast buffet.

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April 23, 2025

MIT engineers print synthetic “metamaterials” that are both strong and stretchy

In metamaterials design, the name of the game has long been “stronger is better.”

Metamaterials are synthetic materials with microscopic structures that give the overall material exceptional properties. A huge focus has been in designing metamaterials that are stronger and stiffer than their conventional counterparts. But there’s a trade-off: The stiffer a material, the less flexible it is.

MIT engineers have now found a way to fabricate a metamaterial that is both strong and stretchy. The base material is typically highly rigid and brittle, but it is printed in precise, intricate patterns that form a structure that is both strong and flexible.

The key to the new material’s dual properties is a combination of stiff microscopic struts and a softer woven architecture. This microscopic “double network,” which is printed using a plexiglass-like polymer, produced a material that could stretch over four times its size without fully breaking.

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