MIT’s entry has won the DARPA Network Challenge, which had teams using the Internet to find 10 red balloons placed around the country, from Portland Ore., to Katy, Texas, to Christiana, Del.
The MIT team cleverly outsourced the search to … everyone, more or less, in a convoluted pyramid scheme that paid cash to the finder of a balloon, the person that invited the finder to the competition, the person that invited that person and a charity.
Researchers on the team used the scheme to learn about how social networks spread information.
If you thought the BigDog video was disturbing, iRobot’s “chembot” video is flat-out revolting: From the title: “Jamming Skin Enabled Locomotion” (JSEL, with the much more pleasant-sounding pronunciation, “Giselle”), to the animation of the green, shrimp-looking robot rendering, to the use of the term “jammable slurry,” — mmm … jammable slurry — to the pulsating, throbbing, ball of pasty colored I-don’t-know-what straight out of Nine Inch Nails’ “Closer” video.
60 Minutes took a look at New Hampshire Inventor Dean Kamen’s latest invention, a prosthetic arm developed by his company, DEKA Research & Development, with a four-fingered hand with an opposable thumb.
MHT first wrote about the arm in 2007. DEKA created the prosthetic with help from Holliston-based Liberating Technologies Inc., and funding from DARPA’s $100 million Revolutionizing Prosthetics project.
The robotic arm is powered by a lithium battery and equipped with multiple microprocessors, sensors and haptics technology. The prosthetic is designed to move and function similar to a real arm and hand that can grasp bottles and lighter objects.
Users control the arm — which is designed to be able to curl weights of up to 20 pounds — with sensors in their shoes and a joystick they can either move with their shoulder muscles or remaining portions of their natural arm.
Last month, MIT researcher Hugh Herr — who lost both of his legs below the knee to frostbite at age 17 — landed $20 million for from General Catalyst and WFD Ventures for his startup iWalk, which is developing robotic ankle and foot prosthetics.
The Waltham-based company is working under a DARPA-funded grant from the Sandia National Laboratories., which developed the robot. The Hopper platform is designed to navigate autonomously on its four wheels and use its one leg to jump up to 25 feet in the air, according to Sandia.
As flying robots start to pop up with increasing frequency, Sandia says hopping is a more fuel-efficient means of getting over obstacles up to about 33 feet high.
Connecticut newspaper the Day reports General Dynamics Electric Boat is working on a submarine that could travel submerged at about 100 knots, or about four times faster than the current fastest sub.
Electric Boat plans to test a version of the DARPA-funded sub off Rhode Island in early 2010:
The technology, if developed, could revolutionize ocean transportation if it could be adapted to cargo and passenger ships.
The vehicle would travel inside a large gas bubble created in the water, a process known as supercavitation. The bubble reduces drag, since the drag is much lower in air than in water, allowing the vehicle to travel at high speeds.
Supercavitation is not new. The technology has been applied to weapons, but never to transport vehicles, according to DARPA.
The funding from the U.S. Department of Energy is about half of the state’s $38 million in stimulus funds for its State Energy Plan submitted to the federal government last month.
About $8 million will go to expanding fuel cell initiatives through the state Clean Energy fund, with the goal of completing 14 more projects. A rebate program for residential and commercial geothermal systems will receive $5 million. Two plans to support solar thermal and photovoltaic installations will receive $7 million.
Biotherapeutics company Dyax Corp. says it is raising $15 million through a follow-on offering of 7.4 million shares of its common stock at a price of $2.02 per share.
Dyax reports it intends to use the money raised in the offering to fund the development and commercialization of DX-88, the company’s treatment for the rare and often fatal condition hereditary angioedema. In addition, Dyax will use the cash to fund ongoing research and preclinical activities, as well as for general corporate purposes.
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The Waltham-based company is working under a 
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