Research — MIT Media Lab

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

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

Exploring how social networks can influence our lives in business, health, governance, and technology adoption and diffusion

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Space Exploration Initiative

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Civic Media

Creating technology for social change

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Social Machines

Promoting deeper learning and understanding in human networks

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City Science

Looking beyond smart cities

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Collective Learning

Transforming data into knowledge

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Personal Robots

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

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Responsive Environments

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

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Signal Kinetics

Extending human and computer abilities in sensing, communication, and actuation through signals and networks

Project Research

Battery-Free Subsea Internet-of-Things

We present Piezo-Acoustic Backscatter (PAB), the first technology that enables backscatter networking in underwater environments. PAB rel...

Archived

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Music, Mind and Machine

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

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Scalable Cooperation

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

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...

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Project Research

Black Rock Atlas

Burning Man is a magical place that gets the best of human creativity and collaboration to flourish. To further understand what makes thi...

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Digital Currency Initiative (DCI)

Digital Currency Initiative

Project Research

RoboChain: A secure data-sharing framework for human-robot interaction

A learning framework for secure, decentralized, computationally efficient data and model sharing among multiple robot units installed at...

Project Research

Blockchain: A new framework for robotic swarm systems

Swarms of robots will revolutionize many applications, from targeted material delivery to farming. However, the characteristics that make...

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Low-power wireless environmental sensor network

Tidmarsh is a 600-acre former cranberry farm near Plymouth, MA that has undergone a restoration to wetland. We have instrumented the site...

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News Graph

This project aims to show a different picture of the data behind the news, looking at how we analyze, represent, and interact with it.&nb...

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Viral Communications

Creating scalable technologies that evolve with user inventiveness

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Dynamic Traffic Prediction in Andorra: a Bayesian network approach

Data Fusion for Dynamic Traffic PredictionTraffic congestion has huge negative impacts on the productivity, health and personal live...

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Wireless communication from underwater to the air

Did you know that submarines today still cannot wirelessly communicate with airplanes? For decades, communicating between underwater and ...

Project Research

Pathways

Our social networks influence our sense of what's possible: we can't aspire to be cancer researchers, activists, or artificial intelligen...

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Urban Swarms

Modern cities have to respond to the growing demands of more efficient and sustainable urban development, as well as an increased quality...

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Reversed Urbanism

Predicting Urban Performance through Behavioral Patterns in Temporal Telecom DataThis study explores a novel method to analyze diverse be...

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Ultimate Media

Communications Futures Program

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Article Research

The next great (digital) extinction

We’re in a modern Cambrian era, sorting through an explosion of technologies enabled by the Internet.

Article Research

What tech will look like in 2039

We asked futurists, tech execs, academics, researchers, and a sci-fi writer to imagine our tech-driven society in 20 years.

Post Research

Fadel Adib receives the Young Investigator Award from the Office of Naval Research

Fadel Adib is one of 25 recipients of the Office of Naval Research's 2019 Young Investigator Awards, and the only awardee from MIT.

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Consumer Electronics Laboratory

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Hundred Dollar Laptop

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Publication Research

Urban Swarms: A new approach for autonomous waste management

Alfeo, A. L., Ferrer, E. C., Carrillo, Y. L., Grignard, A., Pastor, L. A., Sleeper, D. T., Cimino, M. G. C. A., Lepri, B., Vaglini, G., Laron, K., Dorigo, M., Pentland, A. `Sandy’. (2018). Urban Swarms: A new approach for autonomous waste management. ArXiv:1810.07910 [Cs].

Project Research

RFind: Extreme localization for billions of items

Presenting RFind, a new technology that allows us to locate almost any object with extreme accuracy by transforming low-cost, battery-fre...

Publication Research

The Networked Sensory Landscape: Capturing and Experiencing Ecological Change Across Scales

Mayton, Brian, et al. "The networked sensory landscape: Capturing and experiencing ecological change across scales." PRESENCE: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments 26.2 (2017): 182-209.

Inventing the future of digitally augmented objects and environments.

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Project Research

Quantizer: Sonification Platform for High-Energy Physics Data

Inspired by previous work in the field of data sonification, we built a data-driven composition platform that enables users to map collis...

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Living Mobile

Enhancing mobile life through improved user interactions

Article Research

Structural and temporal patterns of the first global trading market

We investigate the structure and dynamics of a network representative of the global trading market that emerged during the 16th century.

How software can act as an assistant to the user rather than a tool, by learning from interaction and by proactively anticipating the user's

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PubPub

PubPub reinvents publication to align with the way the web was designed: collaborative, evolving, and open. PubPub uses a graphical forma...

Gallery Research

RoboChain Project Figures

Center for Civic Media

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Electronic Publishing

How to distill meaning from complex everyday experiences.

Publication Research

Shooting Low or High: Do Countries Benefit from Entering Unrelated Activities?

Pinheiro, Flávio L., et al. "Shooting Low or High: Do Countries Benefit from Entering Unrelated Activities?" arXiv preprint arXiv:1801.05352 (2018).

Publication Research

Local Wealth Redistribution Promotes Cooperation in Multiagent Systems

Pinheiro, F. L., Santos, F. (2018). Local Wealth Redistribution Promotes Cooperation in Multiagent Systems, forthcoming Proc. of the 17th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS 2018)

Publication Research

The International Affiliation Network of YouTube Trends

Platt, E. L., Bhargava, R., & Zuckerman, E. (2015). The International Affiliation Network of YouTube Trends.

Project Research

Global Cooperation

Measuring Cooperation at Scale

Publication Research

Detecting reciprocity at a global scale

Frank, M. R., Obradovich, N., Sun, L., Woon, W. L., LeVeck, B. L., & Rahwan, I. (2018). Detecting reciprocity at a global scale. Science Advances, 4(1), eaao5348.