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How do OLED TVs from Sony and LG work? MIT professor Vladimir Bulovic explains using a glowing pickle and an accent to die for. Essentially, electrons pass through the pickle (or any other active organic matter) and charge the substance. When positive and negative charges collide, they release a photon (light).

This pickle represents just one of millions of OLEDs in a potential display. It also means that Vlassic stock will skyrocket if they can only cut those Bread and Butter chips a little bit smaller.

This story originally appeared on Gizmodo.

MIT's prototype retinal implant consists of a flexible substrate, power and data receiving coils, an electrode array, and a stimulator microchip.

(Credit: Shawn Kelly/MIT)

Electronic retinal implants that can help certain visually impaired people see better are getting closer to reality with a new MIT prototype (PDF).

Engineered eyes a la Blade Runner remain a long way off. But by replacing the function of retinal cells, the implants could help provide a degree of basic vision to those afflicted with retinitis pigmentosa or age-related macular degeneration, major causes of blindness.

Users would wear special glasses fitted with a small camera that relays image data to a titanium-encased chip mounted on the outside surface of the eyeball. The chip would then fire an electrode array under the retina to stimulate the optic nerve. The glasses would also wirelessly transmit power to coils surrounding the eyeball.

In this illustration, the glasses transmit data and power to the prosthesis.

(Credit: Boston Retinal Implant Project)

MIT has been working on retinal implants for 20 years as part of the Boston Retinal Implant Project. About 10 years ago, researchers tested the electrodes on six blind patients, who reported seeing cloud-like images when stimulated.

MIT scientists led by John Wyatt, an electrical engineering professor, want to test their new prototype on patients within three years.

The implants have been successfully placed in pigs for as long as 10 months without damage to the electronics, according to MIT.

About 20 teams worldwide are working to realize the dream of eye implants that could work as well as cochlear implants for the hearing-impaired. But the delicate structures of the eye, as well as engineering challenges, have made for slow progress.

"To create a bionic eye is equivalent to trying to create a television as compared with a radio," Nigel Lovell, a professor at the University of New South Wales collaborating with Australian groups to create a bionic eye, says in this video. "It's orders of magnitude more complex."

One issue researchers must tackle is where to place the electrodes. The Australian group would place them on top of the retina, while MIT's approach is to place them beneath the retina. MIT says that reduces the risk of retinal tearing and requires less invasive surgery.

What might early bionic vision look like? Very low-res. ... Read more

(Credit: Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

A group of engineering students has developed a portable, low-cost Braille printer that lets the blind and visually impaired easily label objects that feel similar to the touch, like DVDs.

The 6dot Braille Labelmaker is cheaper and easier to use than other label makers, according to the students from MIT, the University of Toronto, and Stanford University. Still in development, it might cost as little as $200 when released, less than half the cost of some other Braille label makers.

Users push six keys on the ergonomic device--one for each of the dots that make up a Braille character--to emboss any character, including contractions, on a roll of adhesive tape. An internal microprocessor can store up to 16 characters.

The input method is similar to standard Braille typewriters, but since the 6dot runs on two AA batteries, the print quality is high, the team says.

Visually impaired people often print Braille labels to identify objects like cans, medicine bottles, and AC adapters. The developers say 6dot will meet a need for labeling things on the go, and can also be used to help blind children learn Braille.

(Credit: MIT)

On the heels of a scientific report last month saying 63 percent of world fish stocks require rebuilding, scientists at MIT have unveiled a new robot fish that's cheap to make and ripe for mass production.

Actually, MIT engineers Kamal Youcef-Toumi and Pablo Valdivia Y Alvarado aren't aiming to replenish fisheries. They want their robot swimmers to be used for underwater monitoring of pipelines, sunken ships, and pollution. Since the fish are less than a foot long, they can maneuver into spaces that are too tight for most underwater autonomous vehicles (UAVs).

The fish--while not as pretty as these toxin-sniffing robot carp patrolling Spanish waters--are notable for their novel design. They have fewer than 10 parts, making them low-cost, and are housed in a continuous flexible polymer casing that prevents water damage.

Lacking different segments, the fish can swim more naturally, according to MIT (watch the video after the jump). A single motor in the middle initiates a wave that moves along the body and propels it forward. Real fish move in a similar fashion by contracting muscles on either side of their bodies.

Youcef-Toumi noted that the polymers allow for stiffness to be specified in different sections, adding that another application would be robotic prosthetic limbs.

The early versions of the fish, about 5 inches long, swam like bass and trout, with movement concentrated in the tail. ... Read more

This quadrocopter can find its way around interiors.

(Credit: Ascending Technologies)

Just when you were getting used to the idea of unmanned aerial vehicles patrolling the skies over your city, they're beginning to enter buildings.

This flying robot designed by a U.S.-German team recently won a contest in which the goal was to autonomously navigate inside a simulated nuclear power plant and find and image a control panel without the aid of a GPS.

The Pelican, based on hardware designed by German start-up Ascending Technologies with programming by a team at MIT, accomplished the mission on its fourth attempt, but with only a few minutes to spare. It netted a $10,000 prize at the International Aerial Robotics Competition.

The Pelican is a micro air vehicle (MAV) with a quadrotor design, using four propellers on a carbon-fiber frame for lift and control. It maps hallways and rooms with a 32-yard-range laser scanner and stereo cameras while wirelessly reporting its progress to offboard computers. The location and mapping algorithm was implemented by the MIT team.

Entering its 20th year, the small but venerable IARC proposes challenges that cannot be met with current technology, military or otherwise. In its next mission, the sixth, MAVs will have to penetrate a simulated security compound, steal a flash drive and replace it with a dud before exiting safely and undetected.

It's a good thing MAVs still sound like a thousand mosquitoes due to rotor noise. Otherwise they might start putting spies out of business.

Each robot in MIT's garden is outfitted with a robotic arm and a watering pump, while the tomato plants themselves are equipped with local soil sensing, networking, and computation.

(Credit: Jason Dorfman, CSAIL/MIT)

I'm allergic to tomatoes. Also black olives and mushrooms. That means I'm about the worst guy in the world to order a pizza with. But tomatoes are in about everything. Tacos, spaghetti--you name it, it's got tomatoes.

MIT's Luke Johnson and Sam Dyar program an autonomous robotic arm. Why do these guys want to kill me?

(Credit: Jason Dorfman, CSAIL/MIT)

That is why I can't fully get behind these robotic, automated tomato-farming machines being developed by MIT. Clearly, they're Terminators sent from the future to try to kill me. Or Sarah Connor, though I'm not sure what she's allergic to.

I mean where else would something so high-tech come from? The robots are just part of a system that monitors each individual tomato plant in an urban garden at the school, thereby watering it and dispensing food exactly when it needs it. This creates superior and more economically friendly crops, again clearly designed to kill me more efficiently.

The machines are networked and communicate in real time. The project was put together by Nikolaus Correll, a postdoctoral assistant working in MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, with the aim of getting a similar system to someday work on a large, economically viable scale.

The researchers, in fact, envision a fully autonomous greenhouse, complete with robots, pots, and plants connected via computation, sensing, and communication.

Of course, in the near future, all farming in America might be done by semi-intelligent robots controlled by Skynet. Just think of what might happen if we let these things achieve self-awareness. I'm scared now. And hungry.

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MIT Media Lab graduate student Pranav Mistry demonstrates the Wear Ur World device, which would free data from the confines of paper or screen.

(Credit: MIT)

Step aside, Apple and Microsoft. If MIT's little Sixth Sense gadget sees the commercial light of day, we can toss our multitouch devices out the window. Who needs a Surface or an iPhone when the very idea of being able to access information by turning any flat surface into a touch-screen display sounds far more appealing? No surface available? Simply project a screen onto your hand, and voila. Shades of Minority Report?

In Minority Report, Tom Cruise draws information from a glove-controlled interactive wall.

(Credit: 20th Century Fox)

The folks at MIT have christened their wearable prototype Wear Ur World (WUW), a device cobbled together using everyday gizmos like a mobile projector, Webcam, and mobile phone. Hopefully, when the final product does ship, it'll reveal a sleeker, less clunky rendition without the colored finger bands, and one that has a discreet mode for when you need to access information privately.

As a demonstration of its capabilities, the wearer can draw a circle on his wrist, prompting the gadget to project a digital clock face, especially great for the myopic.

In the near future, WUW could become an indispensible digital wrist companion to enhance your lifestyle. It could provide product and price comparison information when shopping, retrieve flight information to let the wearer know about delays, automatically pull up related information from the Web when requested, and even snap pictures when you frame a subject with your fingers.

Amit Zoran shows off the Chameleon Guitar, along with a variety of the interchangeable soundboards.

(Credit: Webb Chappell Photography/MIT)

Guitars with electronics built in are hardly new. Most people are familiar with standard electric guitars, but Takamine and other companies started putting in equalizers and other sound-shaping gear in the '80s and '90s.

MIT's Chameleon Guitar, however, goes a few steps further, incorporating a full computer, as well as a small soundboard that can be interchanged with other soundboards made of a different wood or a different material altogether.

The sound generated by the electronic pickups on that board can be manipulated by the computer to produce the effect of a different size or shape of the resonating chamber. By putting extra acoustic modules together, the guitar can mimic any other guitar and practically any other instrument.

It's a neat idea, to be sure, but it might prove too complex for the everyday user. The everyday user, though, isn't who creator Amit Zoran likely had in mind for the unique piece. He envisions a production model for professional musicians that features quick-changing components, allowing the player to change the instrument live during a performance.

It's an ambitious task, but Zoran's a graduate student at MIT's Media Lab, so he's probably up to the challenge. Who knows, we might start seeing the five-pickup-wielding Chameleon onstage soon. And it even looks good. Check a video of the thing in action after the jump.

When you think of MIT, you probably think of math. Maybe some blackjack, thanks to the movie 21. But I'm betting you don't think about cooking. And even if you think about cooking, you certainly aren't thinking trivets.

"Step away from the oven."

(Credit: MIT)

Yeah, trivets. Those little things you slide under hot pots to keep your table from being scorched. Well, it turns out that even if you're not thinking about them, the guys at MIT are, as part of the "Counter Intelligence" project. Looks like these guys are as much into kitchen gadgets as we are!

Ernesto Arroyo, an MIT Ph.D. candidate, came up with an oven mitt that understands the cooking environment. Dubbed the Talking Trivet, the mitt uses a thermoresistor to sense food and container temperature. And then, of course, it talks.

If you've heated something to more than 600 degrees, the trivet yells, "Fire!" Grab the casserole that's been sitting on the counter for 40 minutes, and it will tell you that it "needs rewarming."

The trivet also sets an automatic timer for cooking based on oven temperature. It can tell you when to check the food based on how high the temperature is.

Cool concept. No word on when the Talking Trivet might be chatting away in a kitchen near you.