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asl
Designing, prototyping, and building the artifacts of our sci-fi space future
Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education: promoting equity in learning, education, + computational action to prepare diverse K-12
When they’re valued as design research partners, older adults feel empowered to contribute to technology design.
Advancing human wellbeing by developing new ways to communicate, understand, and respond to emotion
Exploring how social networks can influence our lives in business, health, governance, and technology adoption and diffusion
An essential element of K-12 AI literacy is educating learners about the ethical and societal implications of AI systems. Previous work in …
In a special edition of Government Technology magazine focused on AI, executive editor Noelle Knell highlights the work of Cynthia Breazeal.
Enhancing human physical capability
Building intelligent personified technologies that collaborate with people to help them learn, thrive, and flourish.
Life with AI | Designing the future of smart systems to improve the human experience
On the Aging Equal Podcast, Dr. Anastasia Ostrowski talks about co-designing social robots and her work collaborating with older adults.
Connected Mind + Body | Revolutionizing the future of mental and physical wellbeing
Future Worlds | Design and action for the future we want to live in
Extending expression, learning, and health through innovations in musical composition, performance, and participation
Cultivating Creativity | Catalyzing a global movement enabling everyone to unlock and unleash their individual and collective creativity
Swarms of robots will revolutionize many applications, from targeted material delivery to farming. However, the characteristics that make t…
How to Train Your Robot is a curriculum for students in 5-8th grade to explore artificial intelligence and ethics. In this course, students…
For BBC Science Focus, Media Lab research scientist Dr. Kate Darling considers the potential harms of mistreating robots.
Sharifa Alghowinem, a research scientist at the Media Lab, explores personal robot technology that explains emotions in English and Arabic.
Social robots equipped with AI and designed with users’ social, emotional, and relational interactions in mind are increasingly being highl…
Artificial intelligence (AI) agents in an embodied form, such as Jibo, Amazon Alexa, and Google Home, are increasingly becoming part of our…
Dr. Kate Darling, a research scientist with the Media Lab’s Personal Robots group, talks to El País about human relationships to tech.
Randi Williams, who is a PhD student in the Media Lab’s Personal Robots group, joins other talented scientists to talk about their careers.
Promoting deeper learning and understanding in human networks
Global participation in MIT RAISE’s free K-12 program more than doubles in its second year.
Kate Darling talks about the film M3gan and the future of artificial intelligence systems designed to have human relationships.
Media Lab researcher Kate Darling looks at the current state of household robots and considers how we may interact with them in the future.
ML Learning
Reimagining human cooperation in the age of social media and artificial intelligence
Creating technology for social change
Enjoy these recent titles from Institute faculty and staff.
Children’s creativity—the ability to come up with novel, surprising, and valuable ideas—has been known to contribute to their learning outc…
Personal Robots group head Cynthia Breazeal speaks with Marwa ElDiwiny on a recent episode of the IEEE RAS Soft Robotics podcast.
Thousands of children participate in MIT-developed artificial intelligence curriculum.
The Huggable is a new type of robotic companion for health care, education, and social communication applications. The Huggable is much mor…
EngageME: Personalized machine learning and humanoid robots for measuring affect and engagement of children with autismEngageME is a projec…
Social robotics pioneer Prof. Cynthia Breazeal discusses artificial intelligence in our lives, digital citizenship, and AI education for all
Increasingly, devices designed with artificial intelligence (AI), such as robots or smart speakers, are entering people’s homes, workspaces…
A new study by researchers from the Personal Robots group and collaborators assesses how families interact with voice-user interfaces.
The more social behaviors a voice-user interface exhibits, the more likely people are to trust it, engage with it, and think it competent.
Tech titans and upstarts alike are working to deepen our relationships with their robots.
A significant number of college students suffer from mental health issues that impact their physical, social, and occupa…
Established in 1999, the Harold Horowitz (1951) Student Research Fund makes awards on an annual basis to students in SA+P.
Voice-user interfaces (VUIs), such as Amazon Echo and Google Home, are increasingly becoming present in domestic environments. Us…
Randi Williams talks about her work. Her advice to girls is never to be afraid to make yourself heard; your ideas are essential.
Anastasia Ostrowski talks to the Digital Future Society about her work in this Q+A.
Nature profiles researchers from a variety of different fields, including the Lab’s own Cynthia Breazeal, who are shaping the future of AI.
As bikes navigate city streets after dark, they are often equipped with lights. The lights make the bikes visible to cars or other bikers, …
Children’s oral language skills in preschool can predict their academic success later in life. Helping children improve their language and …
For the paper: "A Robotic Positive Psychology Coach to Improve College Students’ Wellbeing"
Revealing insights into the human condition and repairing brain disorders via novel tools for mapping and fixing brain computations
Machines powered by artificial intelligence (AI) increasingly mediate our social, cultural, economic, and …
An affective robotic ring which allows users to interact with multiple robots using finger gestures.- Runs on Robotic Operating System (ROS…
The LEGO Papert Fellowship program was officially launched in 2017.
The LEGO Papert Fellowships support three graduate students working at the intersection of creativity, play, learning, and new technology.
Policymakers, practitioners, and researchers are grappling with some herculean questions regarding kids' safety online. Homemade slime…
Young Learner's Companion Developing robots' growth mindset and pro-curious behavior and fostering the same in young learners via long…
How can we add the missing "T" and "E" in preschool STEAM education?
MIT Quest for Intelligence shares AI-focused UROP projects, including senior Nicole Thumma's work with the Personal Robots group.
Could a social robot collaboratively exchange stories with children as a peer and help improve their linguistic and storytelling skills? We…
Can robots help teachers improve classroom learning?
The Jibo Research Platform is an in-the-field deployable Social Robotics experimentation and data collection infrastructure. Built upon the…
"I don’t think that AI will have fulfilled its full potential unless it can help us unlock human potential.”
Tega is a new robot platform designed to support long-term, in-home interactions with children, with applications in early-literacy educati…
MIT researchers and collaborators have developed an open-source curriculum to teach young students about ethics and artificial intelligence.
Labber Hae Won Park talks to NBC News Learn about how social robots can help children develop language skills.
Ali, S., Moroso, T., Breazeal, C. (2019). Can Children Learn Creativity from a Social Robot? In Proceedings of ACM Creativity and Cognition 2019.
Creating long-term interpersonal interaction and shared experiences with social robots Many of our current projects explore the use of…
Machine learning model outperforms human judgementOur computational trust model is capable of predicting—above human accuracy—the degree of…
Emotion recognition modeled as a goal-directed process!
Unconventional mixing of research fields introduces a new method to study human behavior using social robots.