Research — MIT Media Lab

We are an interdisciplinary research lab working to invent the future of

human-machine interaction
health
art
learning
artificial intelligence
robotics
architecture
consumer electronics
kids
design
music
technology
networks
politics
wearable computing
entertainment
history
economy
bioengineering
cognition
archives
social science
storytelling
machine learning
data
interfaces
sensors
human-computer interaction
space
developing countries
prosthetics
computer science
environment
social robotics
wellbeing
engineering
social media
ethics
privacy
civic technology
civic media
imaging
synthetic biology
urban planning
neurobiology
augmented reality
affective computing
transportation
communications
virtual reality
industry
energy
data visualization
social change
computer vision
food
biotechnology
3d printing
biology
blockchain
community
agriculture
biomechanics
genetics
gaming
manufacturing
zero gravity
government
banking and finance
systems
behavioral science
open source
fashion
crowdsourcing
cryptocurrency
social networks
prosthetic design
wiesner
public health
collective intelligence
makers
data science
alumni
ocean
racial justice
security
medicine
performance
neural interfacing and control
language learning
ecology
internet of things
perception
women
climate change
nonverbal behavior
autonomous vehicles
construction
extended intelligence
bionics
visualization
mapping
human augmentation
fabrication
gesture interface
physiology
long-term interaction
civic action
interactive
startup
networking
holography
point of care
diversity
trust
orthotic design
electrical engineering
mechanical engineering
autism research
sports and fitness
pharmaceuticals
cognitive science
materials
member company
natural language processing
primary healthcare
trade
clinical science
hacking
academia
rfid
water
open access
clinical trials
gender studies
member event
marginalized communities
mechatronics
soft-tissue biomechanics
voice
chemistry
real estate
randomized experiment
biomedical imaging
microbiology
gis
physics
publishing
event
exhibit
cartography
metamaterials
installation

Research

Beyond the Cradle

Research

Poetic Justice

Exploring new forms of social justice through art

Project Research

Aguahoja

Programmable Water-Based Biocomposites for Digital Design and Fabrication across ScalesAguahoja is an exploration of nature’s design spac...

Project Research

Totems

Biodiversity on planet Earth is under momentous threat, with extinction rates estimated between 100 and 1,000 times their pre-human level...

Project Research

Glass II

Optically transparent and structurally sound, glass has played a significant role in the evolution of product and architectural design ac...

Research

City Science

Looking beyond smart cities

Research

Space Exploration Initiative

Research

Mediated Matter

Designing for, with, and by nature

Project Research

CityScope Volpe

CityScope Volpe is demonstrating most of the urban planning, analysis, and prediction features developed for the CityScope project. The s...

Project Research

Theme | CityScope

City Science researchers are developing a slew of tangible and digital platforms dedicated to solving spatial design and urban planning c...

Research

Social Machines

Promoting deeper learning and understanding in human networks

Research

Conformable Decoders

Converting the patterns of nature and the human body into beneficial signals and energy

Research

Responsive Environments

Augmenting and mediating human experience, interaction, and perception with sensor networks

Research

Object-Based Media

Changing storytelling, communication, and everyday life through sensing, understanding, and new interface technologies

Article Research

MITdesignX selects 2020 cohort

Ten multi-disciplinary teams join MIT’s design entrepreneurship accelerator.

Project Research

Moon Village

In 2015, the director general of the European Space Agency (ESA), Jan Wörner, introduced the concept of the “Moon Village.” Inspired by t...

Post Research

Zero Gravity Flight 2019

This mission included participation from several departments at MIT and outside collaborators from across the globe.

Project Research

AR Enhanced Wall Plants: Escape Pod

An environment of plants and mirrors that extends beyond the terrarium walls.

Project Research

Persian Domes for Human Space Exploration on Mars

The Lut Desert of Iran is one of the most similar regions to Mars. Close to that area, there are vernacular adobe architectures that are ...

Project Research

[bike] swarm

As bikes navigate city streets after dark, they are often equipped with lights. The lights make the bikes visible to cars or other bikers...

Article Research

Dezeen Awards names Aguahoja I design project of the year

Aguahoja I shows how nature can help us to design new materials, highlighting the relationship between nature and technology.

Project Research

Proxymix: Influence of spatial configuration on human collaboration

Proxymix is a visualization tool to understand the influence of spatial configuration on human collaboration. This agent-based model at t...

Project Research

City Science Lab Andorra

Andorra and the City Science research group at the MIT Media Lab are taking on the challenge of turning Andorra into an “Internationally ...

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 ensc...

Archived

Research

CE 2.0

Publication Research

CityScope: A Data-Driven Interactive Simulation Tool for Urban Design. Use Case Volpe

Alonso, L., Zhang, Y. R., Grignard, A., Noyman, A., Sakai, Y., ElKatsha, M., ... & Larson, K. (2018, July). Cityscope: a data-driven interactive simulation tool for urban design. Use case volpe. In International Conference on Complex Systems (pp. 253-261). Springer, Cham.

Research

Personal Robots

Building socially engaging robots and interactive technologies to help people live healthier lives, connect with others, and learn better

Archived

Research

Advancing Wellbeing

Archived

Research

Music, Mind and Machine

How to build intelligent music systems out of interacting audio-processing agents.

Article Research

Neri Oxman has all the answers

Mediated Matter head Neri Oxman talks to ELLE about her work.

Project Research

MoCho: Mobility choices and societal impacts

MoCho (short for "Mobility Choices") is a CityScope module focused on mobility choices and societal impacts. This tool helps pr...

Project Research

Gemini

Gemini—an acoustical “twin chaise"—spans multiple scales of the human existence extending from the warmth of the womb to the stretches ...

Project Research

DCP: Digital Construction Environment

The Digital Construction Environment is the first architectural-scale structure fabricated with the Digital Construction Platform (DCP). ...

Project Research

The Deep Image of the City

How do you image a city that doesn't exist? DeepScope is a novel platform for interactive, real-time, and setup-less urban design vi...

Article Research

Dezeen Awards 2019 design longlist announced

The Dezeen Awards 2019 design longlist includes two projects from the Mediated Matter group.

Research

Scalable Cooperation

Reimagining human cooperation in the age of social media and artificial intelligence

Project Research

Water-Based Additive Manufacturing

This research presents water-based robotic fabrication as a design approach and enabling technology for additive manufacturing (AM) of bi...

Project Research

Living Distance

Living Distance is a mission and a fantasy realized, in which a wisdom tooth is sent to outer space and back down to Earth again. Carried...

Project Research

Maiden Flight

Maiden Flight is an autonomous biological laboratory environment designed for studying the impact of space flight on the sole reproductiv...

Project Research

City Science Lab Aalto

Aalto University, Finland, and the MIT Media Lab’s City Science group are co-developing a version of the MIT CityScope platform for urban...

Project Research

Telepresent Drawings in Space

This project asks, how can we transmit experiences across space and time? The launching point of the project is to create a drawing that ...

Article Research

Six suborbital research payloads from MIT fly to space and back

Space Exploration Initiative research aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard experiment capsule crossed the Karman line for three minutes

Post Research

Six suborbital research payloads fly on Blue Origin New Shepard

The projects on board the Media Lab's first suborbital rocket flight

Post Research

TESSERAE: Suborbital launch test

On May 2nd, 2019 we launched three TESSERAE v2 hardware tiles into space and back! They rode to just over 100km (past the Karman line) on...

Project Research

Spatial Flux: Body and architecture in space

Structurally, zero gravity means that we do not have to contend with architecture's greatest arch-nemesis, gravity. This opens up a new w...

Project Research

CityScope PlayGround: MIT East Campus

This project depicts the design, deployment and operation of a Tangible Regulation Platform, a physical-technological apparatus made for ...

Article Research

Space is poised for explosive growth. Let’s get it right.

Before low-earth orbit is clogged with hotels, satellite traffic, and debris, we should plan for the extra-planetary community we want.

Project Research

Escape Pod

The esc-Pod (or Escape Pod) is an exploratory platform for researchers investigating moments of refuge within our bustling work liv...

Publication Research

Self-Assembling Space Habitats: TESSERAE design and mission architecture

Ekblaw, Ariel, and Joseph Paradiso. “ Self-Assembling Space Habitats:TESSERAE Technology and Mission Architecture for Zero-g Construction ” To appear in the Proceedings of the IEEE Aerospace Conference (2019).

Project Research

Orbit Weaver

Gravity anchors all existence on Earth.It pulls a chaotic world to one single point in every moment of life. Even though gravity is every...

Project Research

FIBERBOTS: Design of a multi-agent, fiber composite digital fabrication system

FIBERBOTS is a digital fabrication platform fusing cooperative robotic manufacturing with abilities to generate highly sophisticated mate...

Project Research

FindingPlaces

What is FindingPlaces?In reaction to the sudden arrival of tens of thousands of refugees in the city of Hamburg (DE) in 2015, the Lord Ma...

Archived

Project Research

Amoetecture

Amoeba Wall: a context aware wall system. Amoetecture is a set of amoeba-like dynamic spatial elements, including transformable floors, c...

Archived

Project Research

Amoeba Wall: A context-aware wall system

Amoeba Wall: A context aware wall system: Amoetecture is a set of amoeba-like dynamic spatial elements, including transformable floo...

Archived

Project Research

Silk Pavilion

The Silk Pavilion explores the relationship between digital and biological fabrication on product and architectural scales.The primary ...

Project Research

Spaces that Perform Themselves

As we generally experience on earth, there is no space without sound and there is no sound without space. Building on the understanding o...

Communications Futures Program

Archived

Publication Research

Self-Assembling Space Architecture: tessellated shell structures for space habitats

Ekblaw, A. and Paradiso, J.A., "Self-assembling Space Architecture: tessellated shell structures for space habitats," In AIAA Scitech 2019 Forum, Smart/Adaptable Deployable Structures (p. 0481).

Article Research

Give way to droids, bots, and drones: the driverless city will look like this

An NYC exhibit imagines driverless buses and mobile medical units resembling Popemobiles.

Publication Research

TESSERAE: Self-Assembling Shell Structures for Space Exploration

Ekblaw, Ariel and Joseph Paradiso. "TESSERAE: self-assembling shell structures for space exploration." In Proceedings of the Annual Symposium of the International Association of Shell and Spatial Structures: Extra Planetary Architecture, p. 317 (2018).