Project Research

Designing social robots for older adults

Most countries are projected to see the number of people ages 65 and older surpass the population under the age of 15 by 2050. The limita...
Project Research

PopBots: An early childhood AI curriculum

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

Machine Behavior

Machines powered by artificial intelligence (AI) increasingly mediate our social, cultural, economic, and ...
Research
Biomechatronics

Enhancing human physical capability
Research
ML Learning

ML Learning
Article Research

It's time to study machines the way we study humans

A paper introduces machine behavior: the interdisciplinary study of AI systems as a new class of actors with unique behavioral patterns.
Project Research

[BIKE] SWARM

Demo video coming soon.  As bikes navigate city streets in the darkness of evening, they are often equipped with lights. The li...
Research
Social Machines

Promoting deeper learning and understanding in human networks
Research
Civic Media

Creating technology for social change
Project Research

Personalized Emotional Wellness Coach

The diagnosis and tracking of mood disorders still rely on clinical assessments, originating more than 50 years ago, of self-reported dep...
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...
Research
Affective Computing

Advance human wellbeing by developing new ways to communicate, understand, and respond to emotion
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...
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

Artificial listener with social intelligence

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

Announcing the 2019 LEGO Papert Fellows

The LEGO Papert Fellowships support three graduate students working at the intersection of creativity, play, learning, and new technology.
Research
Lifelong Kindergarten

Engaging people in creative learning experiences
Research
Human Dynamics

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

Why we should show machines some respect

Kate Darling explores the human implications of the ways we treat robots and other machines.
Project Research

Dormio: Interfacing with Dreams

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 ...
Thesis Research

Talking Machines: Democratizing the Design of Voice-Based Agents for the Home
Research
Synthetic Neurobiology

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

Can you murder a robot?

Rosalind Picard and Kate Darling join other experts to discuss how and why humans empathize with machines.
Article Research

Robots are becoming classroom tutors. But will they make the grade?

Mechanical mentors try to find their place as teacher’s helpers.
Article Research

Designing social robots for older adults

Researchers present a user-centered design approach to creating intelligent social technologies to empower and help older adults at home.
Post Research

EngageME chosen as an EU Research success story

The technology being developed can enable personalized interactions with an autistic child, helping therapists to engage their attention.
Archived
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...
Archived
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...
Article Research

Teaching AI to preschoolers with Randi Williams

In the inaugural episode of the TWiML & AI Podcast’s Black in AI series, PhD student Randi Williams discusses her work with PopBots.
Research
Scalable Cooperation

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

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.
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

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!
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. ...
Article Research

Can artificial intelligence create art?

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

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

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

RoboChain Project Figures
Publication 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...