Research — MIT Media Lab

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

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exhibit

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

PopBots: An early childhood AI curriculum

How can we add the missing "T" and "E" in preschool STEAM education?

Publication Research

Personalized Machine Learning for Robot Perception of Affect and Engagement in Autism Therapy

Rudovic, O., Lee, J., Dai, M., Schuller, B. , Picard, R. W., " Personalized machine learning for robot perception of affect and engagement in autism therapy," Science Robotics, June 2018.

Research

Human Dynamics

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

Article Research

Hae Won Park, Personal Robots Group: Social robots for long-term interaction

Hae Won develops interactive social machines that deeply personalize to their users through long-term interaction.

Project Research

Dormio: Interfacing with dreams for creativity

Sleep is a forgotten country of the mind. A vast majority of our technologies are built for our waking state, even though a third of our ...

Research

Synthetic Neurobiology

Revealing insights into the human condition and repairing brain disorders via novel tools for mapping and fixing brain computations

Research

Scalable Cooperation

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

Research

Biomechatronics

Enhancing human physical capability

Promoting deeper learning and understanding in human networks

Article Research

An interview with Cynthia Breazeal: IEEE VIC Summit 2018

Cynthia Breazeal sits down for an interview with Glenn Zorpette at the 2018 IEEE Vision, Innovation, and Challenges Summit.

Research

Personal Robots

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

Research

Advancing Wellbeing

Article Research

Intelligent robots could prove to be a boon for autism therapies

Social robots could potentially aid therapists working with autistic children in the future.

Project Research

Designing social robots for older adults

The increasing geographical separation and technological divide between generations have made it more difficult for older adults to inter...

Article Research

Social robots will become family members in the homes of the future

Home robots won’t just be helpers and cleaners—they’ll be teachers and trainers, too.

Project Research

Personalized Machine Learning for Autism Therapy

EngageME: Personalized machine learning and humanoid robots for measuring affect and engagement of children with autismEngageME is a proj...

Research

Affective Computing

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

Project Research

Artificial Listener with Social Intelligence

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

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

Relational AI

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

Project Research

Human-Robot Trust

Unconventional mixing of research fields introduces a new method to study human behavior using social robots.

Project Research

Emotionally Aware Robot Teammates

Emotionally supportive robots improve overall team functioning!

Research

Opera of the Future

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

Project Research

Engagement with Voice-User Interface Agents

Voice-user interfaces (VUIs), such as Amazon Echo and Google Home, are increasingly becoming present in domestic environments. ...

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 o...

Article Research

Can artificial intelligence create art?

Click looks at whether AI could ever create an artistic masterpiece.

Research

Responsive Environments

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

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...

Post Research

10+ years of Human 2.0

Revisit Human 2.0, a 2007 Media Lab symposium focused on the future of human adaptability.

Article Research

Personalized “deep learning” equips robots for autism therapy

Machine learning network offers personalized estimates of children’s behavior.

Article Research

The Robots Are Coming! The Robots Are Coming!

“I’m not worried so much about robots developing their own agenda and taking over the world."

Post Research

Measuring kids’ relationships with robots

Exploring how the relational features of robots impact children’s engagement and learning.

Article Research

Defining the dilemmas of artificial intelligence

Media Lab researchers are part of a growing movement at MIT to explore the regulatory frontiers of AI—in society and in our hearts and minds

Project Research

Robot Mindset and Curiosity

Young Learner's Companion Developing robots' growth mindset and pro-curious behavior and fostering the same in young learners via lo...

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

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

Predicting Trust Between People

Machine learning model outperforms human judgementOur computational trust model is capable of predicting—above human accuracy—the degree ...

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

Personalized Interaction for Language Learning

The process by which children learn native languages is markedly different from the process of learning a second, or non-native, language...

Publication Research

RoboChain: A Secure Data-Sharing Framework for Human-Robot Interaction

Eduardo Castello Ferrer, Ognjen Rudovic, Thomas Hardjono, Alex Pentland, “RoboChain: A Secure Data-Sharing Framework for Human-Robot Interaction” eTELEMED 2018.

Gallery Research

P2PSTORY: Dataset of Children Storytelling and Listening in Peer-to-Peer Interactions

Nikhita Singh, Jin Joo Lee, Ishaan Grover, and Cynthia Breazeal (2018). P2PSTORY: Dataset of Children Storytelling and Listening in Peer-to-Peer Interactions. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.

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.

Article Research

Kids can pick up attitude from robots they play and learn with

“The goal is to have a companion that has all of the behaviors that we want to instill and promote in the child”

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...

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...

Article Research

The new robot in school

Meet Tega—one of the newest creations from the Personal Robots Group (PRG), led at the MIT Media Lab by associate professor of ...

Publication Research

Tega, A Social Robot

Kory Westlund, J. M., Lee, J., Plummer, L., Faridia, F., Gray, J., Berlin, M., Quintus-Bosz, H., Harmann, R., Hess, M., Dyer, S., dos Santos, K., Adalgeirsson, S., Gordon, G., Spaulding, S., Martinez, M., Das, M., Archie, M., Jeong, S., & Breazeal, C. (2016). Tega: A Social Robot. In Proceedings of the 11th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction: Video Presentations.

Publication Research

Detecting the Trustworthiness of Novel Partners in Economic Exchange

D DeSteno, C Breazeal, R Frank, D Pizarro, J Baumann, L Dickens, JJ Lee (2012). Detecting the Trustworthiness of Novel Partners in Economic Exchange. Psychological Science.

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.

Article Research

They’re alive! Are smart toys changing how children interact with humans?

It’s cute when a kid asks, “Alexa, did you farted?,” but as the realm of smart technology quickly evolves from household voice assistants...

Article Research

Should children form emotional bonds with robots?

When I brought the robot home from the Apple Store, I knew I was inviting a new kind of strangeness into our lives. My wife worried ...

Project Research

Social Robots in Space: Initial Explorations

Can we enable social connectivity between astronauts and people on Earth through an embodied agent?Astronauts actively communicate with t...

Project Research

Magic Robot Interaction

Can a magician and a robot collaborate on stage to create a believable, evocative performance?We are studying how th...

Archived

Publication Research

Engaging Robots: Easing Complex Human-Robot Teamwork Using Backchanneling.

MF Jung, JJ Lee, N DePalma, S Adalgeirsson, et al (2013). "Engaging Robots: Easing Complex Human-Robot Teamwork using Backchanneling." In Proceedings of the Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social (San Antonio, Texas).

Project Research

Intentional Inference of Emotions

Emotion recognition modeled as a goal-directed process!

Thesis Research

Modeling the Dynamics of Nonverbal Behavior on Interpersonal Trust for Human-Robot Interactions

Jin Joo Lee. Modeling the Dynamics of Nonverbal Behavior on Interpersonal Trust for Human-Robot Interactions. Masters Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2011.

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).