Research

In 2015, the first of two MIT-Boston University law clinics was formed to provide free legal services to student innovators while giving law students experience working on technology-related legal matters.

For humans, it can be challenging to manipulate thin flexible objects like ropes, wires, or cables. But if these problems are hard for humans, they are nearly impossible for robots. As a cable slides between the fingers, its shape is constantly changing, and the robot’s fingers must be constantly sensing and adjusting the cable’s position and motion.

MIT’s expansive effort to envision, and position itself for, a post-Covid world — Task Force 2021 and Beyond (MIT Beyond) — is now under way.

When schools around the world closed their doors due to the coronavirus pandemic, the team behind MIT App Inventor — a web-based, visual-programming environment that allows children to develop applications for smartphones and tablets — began thinking about how they could not only help keep children engaged and learning, but also empower them to create new tools to address the pandemic.