Can robots be effective tools in combating the COVID-19 pandemic? A group of leaders in the field of robotics say yes, and outline a number of examples. They say robots can be used for clinical care such as telemedicine and decontamination; logistics such as delivery and handling of contaminated waste; and reconnaissance such as monitoring compliance with voluntary quarantines. More details

A new consortium of top scientists will be able to use some of the world’s most advanced supercomputers to look for solutions. More details

When searching through theoretical lists of possible new materials for particular applications, such as batteries or other energy-related devices, there are often millions of potential materials that could be considered, and multiple criteria that need to be met and optimized at once. Now, researchers at MIT have found a way to dramatically streamline the discovery process, using a machine learning system. As a demonstration, the team arrived at a set of the eight most promising materials, out of nearly 3 million candidates, for an energy storage system called a flow battery. This culling process would have taken 50 years by conventional analytical methods, they say, but they accomplished it in five weeks. The findings are reported in the journal ACS Central Science, in a paper by MIT professor of chemical engineering Heather Kulik, Jon Paul Janet PhD ’19, Sahasrajit Ramesh, and graduate student Chenru Duan. The study looked at a Continue reading Neural networks facilitate optimization in the search for new materials→

A new project is an effort to combat the rise of coordinated social media campaigns to incite violence, sew discord and threaten the integrity of democratic elections. More details

Scientists have demonstrated fully-autonomous SPM operation, applying artificial intelligence and deep learning to remove the need for constant human supervision. The new system, dubbed DeepSPM, bridges the gap between nanoscience, automation and artificial intelligence (AI), and firmly establishes the use of machine learning for experimental scientific research using Scanning Probe Microscopy (SPM). More details

Technology from Amazon, Apple, Google, IBM and Microsoft misidentified 35 percent of words from people who were black. White people fared much better. More details

A simulation system invented at MIT to train driverless cars creates a photorealistic world with infinite steering possibilities, helping the cars learn to navigate a host of worse-case scenarios before cruising down real streets.   Control systems, or “controllers,” for autonomous vehicles largely rely on real-world datasets of driving trajectories from human drivers. From these data, they learn how to emulate safe steering controls in a variety of situations. But real-world data from hazardous “edge cases,” such as nearly crashing or being forced off the road or into other lanes, are — fortunately — rare. Some computer programs, called “simulation engines,” aim to imitate these situations by rendering detailed virtual roads to help train the controllers to recover. But the learned control from simulation has never been shown to transfer to reality on a full-scale vehicle. The MIT researchers tackle the problem with their photorealistic simulator, called Virtual Image Synthesis Continue reading System trains driverless cars in simulation before they hit the road→