Project Research

Design Justice Project at MIT

​We take as a starting point for our work the recent scholarship by Sasha Costanza-Chock, Design Justice, in which she described design jus…
Project Research

Autonomous micro-mobility simulation study

What will be the impact of shared autonomous micro-mobility systems? Will autonomy make the micro-mobility systems even more attractive?&nb…
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Art Installation: NeuraFutures

Website of the project: https://www.neurafutures.com The installation is currently open to public starting September 25, 2023 at …
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Peristaltic Suit

​Prolonged exposure to microgravity is known to cause various acute health risks, including muscle atrophy, bone loss, cardiovascular decon…
Article Research

Robots are already with us—how we treat them tells us a lot about ourselves, here's why

For BBC Science Focus, Media Lab research scientist Dr. Kate Darling considers the potential harms of mistreating robots.
Thesis Research

Resting State Neurophysiology of Agonist-Antagonist Myoneural Interface in Persons with Transtibial Amputation

L. Chicos, D. Rangaprakash, R. Barry, H. Herr, Resting State Neurophysiology of Agonist-Antagonist Myoneural Interface in Persons with Transtibial Amputation. under review at Nature Communications Medicine. (2023).
Article Research

A guided tour of the new MIT Museum

David Nuñez, an alum of the Media Lab’s Personal Robots research group, takes MIT Technology Review on a tour of the re-imagined Museum.
Article Research

Making life friendlier with personal robots

Sharifa Alghowinem, a research scientist at the Media Lab, explores personal robot technology that explains emotions in English and Arabic.
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Project Research

The EBIFA robot (Everything Beautiful Is Far Away)

EBIFA (Everything Beautiful Is Far Away) is a crystalline robotic device that carried a tooth to outer space. EBIFA's form and fu…
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Project Research

Public Library Innovation Exchange

Public libraries are one of most trusted public institutions in the U.S. and increasingly provide a broad range of education services, rang…
Project Research

Detecting and Mapping Transparent or Mirror-like Surfaces with Lidar

Although lidar is widely used for mapping the 3D geometry of surfaces, the technology has historically been challenged by specular, or mirr…
Project Research

A Counting

A Counting is an ongoing series of software-generated live-streamed sound and video works composed of an evolving neverending count fr…
Project Research

Zero Robotics

Zero Robotics is an educational program that hosts tournaments to teach middle and high school students to write code and program with robo…
Project Research

Understanding Molecular Evolution

Humanity has harnessed evolution to sculpt domesticated animals, crops, and molecules, but the process remains a black box. Which combinati…
Project Research

TESSERAE: Self-Assembling Space Architecture

Overview: How will we build the coming generations of Space Architecture—the modules, space ships, and space stations that will enscon…
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AstroAnt

"Autonomous operations are critical for the success, safety, and crew survival of NASA deep space missions beyond low Earth orbit, includin…
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Project Research

Bounce-Flash Lidar

In photography, illuminating a subject directly using an on-camera flash can result in unflattering photos. To avoid this, photographers o…
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3 Voices: A Soft-Robotic Opera Transposing Singing Experience Across the Audience

3 Voices is an artistic research project that looks beyond conventional approaches of listening to music, and instead probes at the deeper …
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Archived
Project Research

Envirome Monitoring with CRISPR Biosensors

In recent years, there has been an increase in low-cost and open-source electronic and chemical sensors that hobbyists, concerned citizens,…
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Project Research

H0TP0T

By Larissa Zhou and Adam ZacharFood is crucial to maintaining the physical and psychological health of humans in space. Eating food pr…
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Archived
Project Research

Reconfigurable space structures

Rapid prototyping platforms such as 3D printers used for digital fabrication are today able to manufacture custom objects for specific task…
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Archived
Project Research

Zenolith - An Interplanetary Time Device

On Earth, morning, noon, and night have their own specific meanings. The feeling of a second or a minute passing by, the shortening of the …
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Archived
Project Research

Self Assembling Space Frames

Ever wish you could toss your folded up tent and have it self-assemble mid-air?  Well...you can. In a zero gravity environment.Self As…
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Archived
Project Research

Harmony in Precarity

By Po-Hao ChiHow could microgravity/hypergravity shape our perceptual experience of listening with weightlessness? How can we seek to explo…
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Archived
Project Research

Miniature Optical Steered Antenna for Intersatellite Communication (MOSAIC)

The Miniature Optical Steered Antenna for Intersatellite Communications (MOSAIC)By Shreeyam KackerThe Miniature Optical Steered Antenn…
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Project Research

Moving Liquids With No Moving Parts

Solid-state microfrabricated devices are in development to replace contemporary heavy mechanical components for use in spacecraft propellan…
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Project Research

Ø-scillation: oscillating chemistry in zero gravity and beyond

How did life originate? Nobody knows. Life might not even be native to our Earth - it might have come from asteroids or the interstellar me…
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Archived
Project Research

AgriFuge

By Somayajulu Dhulipala and Manwei ChanAs humanity explores deeper into space, long-duration missions will require horticulture activities …
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Archived
Project Research

Panspermia

By Nancy Valladares and Rae Yuping HsuThis project is an art performance that seeks to rethink imaginaries of multispecies surviv…
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Archived
Project Research

SpaceHuman 2.0

SpaceHuman is a soft robotics device designed to facilitate the exploration of environments with reduced gravity in a view of democratizati…
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Archived
Project Research

ELI: Electronic Life-detection Instrument

Life on Mars, if it exists, could have been transferred between Earth and Mars due to meteorite impacts. The Search for Extra-Terrestrial G…
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Project Research

The Telemetron

Today, the environments that humans occupy in space are designed for survival. Humans are carefully shuttled to and from space, and during …
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Project Research

Battery-free wireless underwater camera

More than 95% of the ocean has never been observed by humans, even though the ocean plays the largest role in the world's climate system, h…
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Deep Reinforcement Learning for Autonomous UAVs (AUAVs)

Many tasks are not easily defined and/or too complex for supervised machine learning approaches. For these reasons, a technique known as&nb…
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Domain Randomization & Synthetic Data Generation for AUAVs - Reducing Perceptual Uncertainty of Sim2Real Navigation

Navigation for autonomous UAVS (unmanned aerial vehicles) is a complex problem and physical field testing of associated tasks introduces a …
Project Research

Fiducial Marker-Based Navigation for Autonomous UAVs (AUAVs)

Depending on the operational environment of an autonomous system, a great deal of perceptual uncertainty may be introduced to an object det…
Project Research

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Pilot Simulator

With the advent of real-time photorealism (RTPR), virtual environments are now able to achieve higher degrees of engagement than ever befor…
Project Research

What can we learn from predicting shadows?

By predicting sparse shadow cues, our physics-inspired machine learning algorithm can reconstruct the underlying 3D scene. Abstract. W…
Article Research

Feet on Earth, head in the stars

These five women at the MIT Media Lab are advancing aerospace science and research, driven by a love of our home planet.
Post Research

Castrol joins the Media Lab to support research on lunar landings

Castrol membership supports the AstroAnt Payload Program.
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Project Research

Prismo - Transformable floor lamp based on prismatic structure

Prismo lamp is designed and constructed based on a classical example of the prismatic structure. It takes advantage of the periodic and spa…
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Publication Research

Gaka-chu: a self-employed autonomous robot artist

E. C. Ferrer, I. Berman, A. Kapitonov, V. Manaenko, M. Chernyaev and P. Tarasov, "Gaka-Chu: A Self-Employed Autonomous Robot Artist," 2023 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), London, United Kingdom, 2023, pp. 11583-11589, doi: 10.1109/ICRA48891.2023.10160866.
Project Research

Objects as Cameras

Press: - MIT News:  Using reflections to see the world from new points of view- TechXplore, EuropaPress, La Nacion …
Project Research

Co-Design of Social Robots with Older Adults

Social robots equipped with AI and designed with users’ social, emotional, and relational interactions in mind are increasingly being highl…
Project Research

Tools to investigate societal impacts of robots and AI

Artificial intelligence (AI) agents in an embodied form, such as Jibo, Amazon Alexa, and Google Home, are increasingly becoming part of our…
Article Research

Kate Darling, robot expert: "We shouldn’t laugh at people who fall in love with a machine. It’s going to be all of us"

Dr. Kate Darling, a research scientist with the Media Lab’s Personal Robots group, talks to El País about human relationships to tech.
Article Research

AVID Open Access: Day of AI, with Randi Williams

On an episode of the Unpacking Education podcast, Randi Williams (a PhD student in the Personal Robots research group) talks Day of AI.
Post Research

Cynthia Breazeal named to 2023 Forbes 50 Over 50 list

Cynthia Breazeal, head of the Personal Robots research group, makes the 2023 Forbes 50 Over 50 list in the Innovation category
Article Research

Do scientists have superpowers?

Randi Williams, who is a PhD student in the Media Lab’s Personal Robots group, joins other talented scientists to talk about their careers.
Article Research

Kate Darling on the In Her Ellement podcast

Kate Darling discusses the work she's done to be seen as an expert within human-robot interaction and how to pass that power onto others.
Article Research

Could self-driving bikes change how we use cities?

Kent Larson, head of the Media Lab’s City Science group, and PhD student Naroa Coretti Sánchez talk about the group's work and philosophy.
Article Research

Inside two MIT students’ historic BattleBots runs

PhD students Lucy Du and Ginger Schmidt are crushing the competition — and gender barriers — in the world of televised robot combat.
Post Research

City Science Lab @ Shanghai to continue cooperation with MIT City Science and the City Science Network

Representatives from the City Science Lab @ Shanghai (Tongji University) visited the MIT Media Lab to sign a continuation of their cooperat…
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Project Research

Microgravity Extrusion

Traditional additive manufacturing processes, especially those that make use of liquid resin as the feedstock, are constrained by the gravi…
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Publication Research

Children's Fundamental Rights in Human-Robot Interaction Research: A Systematic Review

DiPaola, D., Charisi, V., Breazeal, C., & Sabanovic, S. (2023, March). Children's Fundamental Rights in Human-Robot Interaction Research: A Systematic Review. In Companion of the 2023 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (pp. 561-566).
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Research
Digital Learning + Collaboration Studio

Digital Learning + Collaboration Studio
Article Research

Bionics Researchers Develop Technologies to Ease Pain and Transcend Human Limitations

Professor Hugh Herr and graduate student Christopher Shallal are working on next-generation biomimetic limbs.
Publication Research

If blockchain is the solution, robot security is the problem

E. C. Ferrer, If blockchain is the solution, robot security is the problem, Frontiers In Blockchain, Vol 6, 2023
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Project Research

ScratchJr

ScratchJr makes coding accessible to younger children (ages 5-7), enabling them to program their own interactive stories, games, and animat…
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Article Research

Using robotics to supercharge health care

Spinoff Vecna Technologies uses a wide range of robotic and digital technologies to help solve a variety of issues in healthcare.
Article Research

How soon will M3gan become reality? Robot ethicists weigh in

Kate Darling talks about the film M3gan and the future of artificial intelligence systems designed to have human relationships.
Article Research

Program teaches US Air Force personnel the fundamentals of AI

Cynthia Breazeal led an MIT Open Learning pilot program to deliver a customized AI training program for users with varied backgrounds.
Article Research

Sensing with purpose

Fadel Adib uses wireless technologies to sense the world in new ways, addressing sweeping problems such as food insecurity + climate change
Article Research

A global lab for teaching and practicing synthetic biology

A pandemic-fueled transformation of the MIT course "How to Grow (Almost) Anything" leads to next steps in democratizing synthetic biology
Article Research

The Pacemaker: Magnetomicrometry for Prosthetic Control

Magnetomicrometry has exciting prospects for the control of wearable robotics, including prostheses and exoskeletons.
Inventing the future of digitally augmented objects and environments.
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Article Research

The weird and wonderful art created when AI and humans unite

Alum Alexander Reben describes his experience making art with algorithms and considers what the future of the field may bring.
Article Research

Robot companions are on their way, but don’t worry, they won’t replace humans

Media Lab researcher Kate Darling looks at the current state of household robots and considers how we may interact with them in the future.