Research
City Science

Looking beyond smart cities
Research
Social Machines

Promoting deeper learning and understanding in human networks
Research
Personal Robots

Building socially engaging robots and interactive technologies to help people live healthier lives, connect with others, and learn better
Research
Opera of the Future

Extending expression, learning, and health through innovations in musical composition, performance, and participation
Research
Affective Computing

Advancing wellbeing by using new ways to communicate, understand, and respond to emotion
Research
Human Dynamics

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

Wearable and immersive systems for cognitive enhancement and personal growth
Project Research

Persuasive Electric Vehicle (PEV)

An Alternative Autonomous Revolution System design for emerging urban contexts and societal aspirationsThe Persuasive Electric Vehic...
Research
Open Ocean

Open Ocean
Project Research

Andorra | Innovation

View the main City Science Andorra project profile.The MIT Media Lab's City Science research group, the University of Andorra, and nation...
Project Research

City Science Andorra

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

Scratch Memories

Scratch Memories is a web-based visualization tool that empowers children to celebrate and reflect on their creative journey with Scratch...
Research
ML Learning

ML Learning
Archived
Project Research

Family Creative Learning

In Family Creative Learning, we engage parents and children in workshops to design and learn together with creative technologies, like th...
Archived
Archived
Project Research

A-pops

A design project done in collaboration with the MIT Media Lab and the Laboratorio para la Ciudad (Laboratory for the City), Mexico City's...
Archived
Project Research

LEGO Wayfinder

The LEGO Wayfinder project combines LEGO, robotics, and seawater into a playground of project-based learning and citizen science for budd...
Future Storytelling
Archived
Research
Lifelong Kindergarten

Engaging people in creative learning experiences
Project Research

Andorra | Energy + Environment

View the main City Science Andorra project profile.
Research
Ethics

Ethics
Project Research

Personalized Robot Storytelling Companion

Could a social robot collaboratively exchange stories with children as a peer and help improve their linguistic and storytelling skills? ...
Project Research

StoryBlocks

Scaffolding storytelling to connect children through self-expressionStoryBlocks is a smart-expressive medium, designed in collaboration w...
Research
Code Next

Code Next : Cultural Resonation
Project Research

SPRING: A Smart Platform for Research, Intervention, & Neurodevelopmental Growth

SPRING is a custom-built hardware and software platform for children with neuro-differences. The system automates data acquisition, optim...
Hundred Dollar Laptop
Archived
Project Research

Realtime Detection of Social Cues

Realtime detection of social cues in children’s voicesIn everyday conversation, people use what are known as backchannels to signal to so...
Project Research

P2PSTORY: Dataset of Children as Storytellers and Listeners in Peer-to-Peer Interactions

Understanding social-emotional behaviors in storytelling interactions plays a critical role in the development of interactive and educati...
Project Research

Assessing Children's Relationships with Social Robots

Social robots are increasingly being developed for long-term interactions with children in domains such as healthcare, education, therapy...
Project Research

Robot Expressiveness Affects Children's Learning

Prior research with preschool children has established that book reading, especially when children are encouraged to actively process the...
Project Research

Artificial Listener with Social Intelligence

A social robot modifies its behavior to change what you think about it!
Project Research

ScratchBit

ScratchBit is an effort to enable children to create more seamlessly in both the physical and digital world by creating a dedicated physi...
Project Research

SpeechBlocks

SpeechBlocks is a smartphone app that allows children to explore spelling principles in an open-ended way. Children rearrange words on th...
Project Research

Play Analytics

Analyzing detailed data from SpeechBlocks to understand how kids engage with constructionist literacy learning technologies, with th...
Center for Civic Media
Publication Research

Measuring Young Children’s Long-Term Relationships with Social Robots

Kory Westlund, J. M., Park, H., Williams, R., & Breazeal, C. (2018). Measuring Young Children’s Long-term Relationships with Social Robots. In Proceedings of the 17th ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference (IDC). ACM: New York, NY.
Project Research

Ecology, Evolution, and Engineering for Empowered Brains

EEEeb Spring 2018: April 15,  29; May 13, 27; June 3. To register, please visit this link.Sponsored and run by members of ...
Post Research

Hands-On Ecology: Fostering Neuroinclusivity in STEM Education

What counts here—first and last—is not so-called knowledge of so-called facts, but vision—seeing. Seeing here implies Schauen [to see] (a...
Research
Advancing Wellbeing

Advancing Wellbeing
Post Research

Making new (robot) friends: Further reading

For the interested reader:If you'd like to learn more about the topics covered in my post,  Making new (robot) friends: Understandin...
Archived
Research
Electronic Publishing

How to distill meaning from complex everyday experiences.
Project Research

Tega: A New Social Robot Platform

Tega is a new robot platform designed to support long-term, in-home interactions with children, with applications in early-literacy educa...
Publication Research

Telling Stories to Robots: The Effect of Backchanneling on a Child's Storytelling

Hae Won Park, Mirko Gelsomini, Jin Joo Lee, and Cynthia Breazeal. 2017. Telling Stories to Robots: The Effect of Backchanneling on a Child's Storytelling. In Proceedings of the 2017 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI '17).
Publication Research

Children use non-verbal cues to learn new words from robots as well as people

Kory Westlund., J. M., Dickens, L., Jeong, S., Harris, P. L., DeSteno, D., & Breazeal, C. L. (2017). Children use non-verbal cues to learn new words from robots as well as people. International Journal of Child-Computer Interaction.
Project Research

Relational AI

Creating long-term interpersonal interaction and shared experiences with social robots. Many of our current projects explore the use of s...
Project Research

Scratch

Scratch is a programming language and online community that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, games, and animations–a...
Project Research

Intentional Inference of Emotions

Emotion recognition modeled as a goal-directed process!
Thesis Research

A Bayesian Theory of Mind Approach to Nonverbal Communication for Human-Robot Interactions

Jin Joo Lee. A Bayesian Theory of Mind Approach to Nonverbal Communication for Human-Robot Interactions. PhD Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2017.
Publication Research

Backchannel Opportunity Prediction for Social Robot Listeners

HW Park, M Gelsomini, JJ Lee, T Zhu, and C Breazeal (2017). Backchannel Opportunity Prediction for Social Robot Listeners. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA).
Publication Research

How to Train Your DragonBot: Socially Assistive Robots for Teaching Children About Nutrition Through Play

E Short, K Swift-Spong, J Greczek, A Ramachandran, A Litoiu, E Grigore, D Feil- Seifer, S Shuster, JJ Lee, et al (2014). "How to Train Your DragonBot: Socially Assistive Robots for Teaching Children About Nutrition Through Play." In Proceedings of the International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (Edinburgh, UK).
Project Research

Networked Playscapes: Dig Deep

Networked Playscapes re-imagines outdoor play by merging the flexibility of the digital world with the tangible, sensorial properties of ...
Thesis Research

Algorithmically Supported Moderation in Children’s Online Communities

Tan, Flora. Algorithmically Supported Moderation in Children’s Online Communities. Thesis. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2017.
Post Research

Human Dynamics team tops Fragile Families Challenge

Media Lab researchers win three of six categories in inaugural contest.
Project Research

1:1 Laptops: Learning with the Hundred-Dollar Laptop

Suppose that one could put a connected, portable computer into the hands of all the children of the world who lack access to the kind of ...
Archived
Research
Sculpting Evolution

Exploring evolutionary and ecological engineering
Post Research

Making new (robot) friends

Understanding children's relationships with social robots
Article Research

Montessori Was the Original Personalized Learning. Now, 100 Years Later, Wildflower Is Reinventing the Model

For a classroom of a dozen 3- through 6-year-olds, things are surprisingly quiet inside Wildflower Montessori. The most audible sounds, t...
Archived
Research
Playful Systems

Designing systems that become experiences to transcend utility and usability
Post Research

The Seeds That Seymour Sowed

Seymour Papert’s ideas about children, computers, and learning inspired many.
Article Research

Code Lab for Anki Cozmo

Anki collaborates with the MIT Scratch Team to bring robotics programming to kids.
Archived
Research
Social Computing

Creating sociotechnical systems that shape our urban environments
Article Research

Projects, passion, peers and play: Seymour Papert’s vision for learning

Mitchel Resnick—on the power of Papert's ideas for learning.
Archived
Project Research

Children Use Nonverbal Cues to Learn from Robots

When learning from human partners, infants and young children will pay attention to nonverbal signals, such as gaze and bodily orientatio...
Archived
Archived
Project Research

Socially Assistive Robotics: An NSF Expedition in Computing

Our mission is to develop the computational techniques that will enable the design, implementation, and evaluation of "relational" robots...
Archived
Archived
Project Research

Storytelling Companion

Children’s oral language skills in preschool can predict their academic success later in life. Helping children improve their language an...
Archived
Archived
Project Research

Robotic Learning Companions

The language and literacy skills of young children entering school are highly predictive of their long-term academic success. Children fr...
Archived
Post Research

Kids, AI devices, and intelligent toys

What do children think about machines that think?
Publication Research

Deception, Secrets, Children, and Robots: What’s Acceptable?

Kory Westlund, J., & Breazeal, C. (2015). Deception, Secrets, Children, and Robots: What’s Acceptable? Workshop on The Emerging Policy and Ethics of Human-Robot Interaction, held in conjunction with the 10th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction.
Publication Research

Effects of Framing a Robot as a Social Agent or as a Machine on Children's Social Behavior

Kory Westlund, J. M., Martinez, M., Archie, M., Das, M., & Breazeal, C. (2016). Effects of Framing a Robot as a Social Agent or as a Machine on Children's Social Behavior. In S. Y. Okita, T. Shibata, & B. Mutlu (Eds.), Proceedings of the 25rd IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN) (pp. 688-693). IEEE: Washington, DC.
Publication Research

Flat versus expressive storytelling: young children's learning and retention of a social robot's narrative

Kory Westlund, J., Jeong, S., Park, H. W., Ronfard, S., Adhikari, A., Harris, P. L., David DeSteno, & Breazeal, C. (2017). Flat versus expressive storytelling: young children's learning and retention of a social robot's narrative. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.