Researchers at MIT have developed a way for a computer to essentially design its own robotic body, based on the available parts and the local terrain. Dubbed RoboGrammar, the system knows what obstacles it’ll need to cover and what equipment is available, and work everything else out from there. The paper’s lead author, Allan Zhao, told MIT News said that despite the variety of tasks robots are used for, their designs tend to be “all very similar in their shape or design.”

Robots are frequently designed to mimic people, animals (with four legs) or vehicles, with wheels and tracks to move

Algorithms can be used to perpetuate biases. But in the hands of socially aware, conscientious mathematicians like Wendy Tam Cho, they can also be used to uncover biases. Cho claims to have built an algorithm that will reliably find partisan gerrymandering and provide fairer alternatives, even in the most complex situations.

Cho says she has always been fascinated by power. Her mathematical work is driven by the troubling question of, “How is it that in a human society, we can organize ourselves into governance structures so that . . . some people have power and other people do not have power?”