MIT researchers are teaching robots to understand their own limits while still achieving their goals, ensuring the machines move safely and never overextend themselves (Credits: Maximilian Stölzle and Joey Impoza Roberts).
CSAIL article
New control system teaches soft robots the art of staying safe

Imagine having a continuum soft robotic arm bend around a bunch of grapes or broccoli, adjusting its grip in real time as it lifts the object. Unlike traditional rigid robots that generally aim to avoid contact with the environment as much as possible and stay far away from humans for safety reasons, this arm senses subtle forces, stretching and flexing in ways that mimic more of the compliance of a human hand. Its every motion is calculated to avoid excessive force while achieving the task efficiently. In MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and Laboratory for Information and Decisions Systems (LIDS) labs, these seemingly simple movements are the culmination of complex mathematics, careful engineering, and a vision for robots that can safely interact with humans and delicate objects.

Pulkit Agrawal, MIT Associate Professor and CSAIL principal investigator (Credit: Mike Grimmett/MIT CSAIL).
CSAIL article
Pulkit Agrawal receives the IROS Toshio Fukuda Young Professional Award

Pulkit Agrawal, MIT EECS Associate Professor and CSAIL principal investigator, has received the Toshio Fukuda Young Professional Award from the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) for his work in “robot learning, self-supervised and sim-to-real policy learning, agile locomotion, and dexterous manipulation,” according to the organization.

MIT CSAIL & Pegatron (Credit: Alex Gagne & Pegatron).
CSAIL article
MIT CSAIL and Pegatron launch five-year initiative to pioneer physically intelligent robots

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (MIT CSAIL) and Pegatron Corporation today announced a landmark five-year research partnership aimed at developing the next generation of emotionally and physically intelligent robotic systems. The program, led by CSAIL Director and MIT Professor Daniela Rus and Alan Lin, Corporate Partner Lead at Pegatron, will run from 2026 to 2031 and is designed to redefine the capabilities of robots in human-centered environments.

Alliances
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BoltzGen MIT Presentation

BoltzGen, a new open-source tool designed by MIT researchers, officially launched on October 26. It is a new generative model for designing protein and peptides of any modality to bind a wide range of biomolecular targets. The researchers are offering a live, in-person presentation with demos and discussion–register today!

Join the BoltzGen in MIT’s Stata Center, room 32-123, as they share details of the new model BoltzGen and discuss the future of biomolecular design 🧬

External
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2025 MIT Research and Development Conference
[Em]Powering the Future: Transforming Ideas into Reality

This event is organized by MIT Industrial Liaison Program (MIT ILP) with special discounts for friends of MIT CSAIL and complimentary passes for CSAIL Alliances members.

Visit the official event page for full event details.

Save 70% with code ILP70CSAIL at checkout. 
CSAIL Alliances Members, contact your CRC for a fully complimentary pass.

The “Steerable Scene Generation” approach creates digital scenes of things like kitchens, living rooms, and restaurants that engineers can use to simulate lots of real-world robot interactions and scenarios (Credit: Image courtesy of the researchers).
CSAIL article
Using generative AI to diversify virtual training grounds for robots

Chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude have experienced a meteoric rise in usage over the past three years because they can help you with a wide range of tasks. Whether you’re writing Shakespearean sonnets, debugging code, or need an answer to an obscure trivia question, artificial intelligence (AI) systems seem to have you covered. The source of this versatility? Billions or even trillions of textual data points across the Internet.

MIT President Sally Kornbluth said that the world is counting on faculty, researchers, and business leaders like those in MGAIC to tackle the technological and ethical challenges of generative AI as the technology advances (Credit: Gretchen Ertl).
CSAIL article
What does the future hold for generative AI?

When OpenAI introduced ChatGPT to the world in 2022, it brought generative artificial intelligence into the mainstream and started a snowball effect that led to its rapid integration into industry, scientific research, health care, and the everyday lives of people who use the technology.

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