Research — MIT Media Lab

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

artificial intelligence
art
health
design
robotics
human-machine interaction
technology
learning + teaching
human-computer interaction
architecture
consumer electronics
music
wearable computing
kids
bioengineering
data
sensors
environment
machine learning
politics
space
networks
cognition
wellbeing
social science
entertainment
economy
computer science
creativity
history
storytelling
alumni
interfaces
covid19
civic technology
ethics
engineering
prosthetics
developing countries
community
privacy
communications
biology
computer vision
virtual reality
augmented reality
social robotics
imaging
neurobiology
social media
urban planning
public health
industry
biotechnology
climate change
synthetic biology
social networks
energy
affective computing
food
medicine
transportation
biomechanics
data visualization
fabrication
government
behavioral science
social change
materials
cognitive science
women
ocean
sustainability
data science
startup
zero gravity
agriculture
manufacturing
blockchain
gaming
healthcare
human augmentation
genetics
diversity
banking and finance
prosthetic design
ecology
electrical engineering
racial justice
neural interfacing and control
3d printing
cryptocurrency
mental health
fashion
civic action
sleep
bionics
security
microfabrication
member company
natural language processing
construction
language learning
performance
autonomous vehicles
open source
social justice
systems
visualization
interactive
mechanical engineering
microbiology
marginalized communities
perception
nanoscience
internet of things
cities
water
textiles
collective intelligence
womens health
chemistry
code
mapping
clinical science
physiology
physics
nonverbal behavior
voice
algorithms
assistive technology
culture
biomedical imaging
law
sports and fitness
rfid
wireless
long-term interaction
hacking
trust
gender studies
orthotic design
networking
cells
pharmaceuticals
digital currency
mechatronics
soft-tissue biomechanics
open access
autism research
business
science
exhibit
news
real estate
internet
decision-making
misinformation
journalism
asl

Research

Space Enabled

Advancing justice in Earth's complex systems using designs enabled by space

Research

City Science

Looking beyond smart cities

Project Research

City Science Lab @ Andorra

Andorra and the City Science research group at the MIT Media Lab are taking on the challenge of turning Andorra into an “Internationally Re…

Architecture Machine Group

Archived

Research

Future Sketches

Exploring the essence of code as a creative medium

Project Research

Can autonomy make bike-sharing more sustainable?

Autonomous bicycles have recently been proposed as a new and more efficient approach to bicycle-sharing systems, but how do they compare fr…

Project Research

Autonomous micro-mobility for food deliveries

Could we substitute cars by shared autonomous lightweight vehicles for food delivery? We have developed an agent-based simulation model tha…

Research

Tangible Media

Invent new tangible and embodied interactions that inspire and engage people

Project Research

City Science Network

MIT City Science has developed an international network of cooperative City Science LabsWe are developing concepts and key technology that …

Research

Human Dynamics

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

Research

Media Lab Research Theme: Life with AI

Life with AI | Designing the future of smart systems to improve the human experience

Research

Media Lab Research Theme: Future Worlds

Future Worlds | Design and action for the future we want to live in

Research

Media Lab Research Theme: Decentralized Society

Decentralized Society | Architecting the new internet for the good of the people

Research

Media Lab Research Theme: Cultivating Creativity

Cultivating Creativity | Catalyzing a global movement enabling everyone to unlock and unleash their individual and collective creativity

Research

Media Lab Research Theme: Connected Mind + Body

Connected Mind + Body | Revolutionizing the future of mental and physical wellbeing

Project Research

Theme | CityScope

City Science researchers are developing a slew of tangible and digital platforms dedicated to solving spatial design and urban planning cha…

Research

Space Exploration Initiative

Designing, prototyping, and building the artifacts of our sci-fi space future

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

Archived

Post Research

The Media Lab at the 2024 Core77 Design Awards

Congratulations to the winners and honorees of the 2024 Core77 Design Awards!

Project Research

FibeRobo: Fabricating 4D Fiber Interfaces by Continuous Drawing of Temperature Tunable Fibers

FibeRobo is a novel body-temperature shape-changing fiber based on liquid crystal elastomers. The development of a new fabrication techniqu…

Project Research

Theme | Mobility On-Demand

Urban populations around the world are rapidly growing. To improve livability, urban residents must reduce dependency on fossil fuels and p…

Project Research

Illuminate

What would it be like if we could see our movement? Illuminate (2023, Chelsi Alise Cocking) is an interactive art installation in whic…

Project Research

The MIT Autonomous Bicycle Project

A lightweight research platform to develop autonomous technology Designed to transform bicycle-sharing systems into an on-demand mobil…

Project Research

Persuasive Electric Vehicle (PEV)

An Alternative Autonomous Revolution System design for emerging urban contexts and societal aspirationsThe Persuasive Electric Vehicle…

Project Research

Andorra | Energy + Environment

Article Research

NTUT, MIT sign ‘smart’ development agreement

Project Research

Income, Race, Bikes

Is the placement of bike-share docks equitable?This interactive map explores the question visually.The map shows the addition of bike-share…

Publication Research

Is Access to Public Bike-share Networks Equitable? A Multiyear Spatial Analysis Across 5 U.S. Cities

Berke, A., Truitt, W., Larson, K. (2023). Is access to public bike-share networks equitable? A multiyear spatial analysis across 5 U.S. Cities. Journal of Transport Geography, Volume 114, 2024, 103759, ISSN 0966-6923. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2023.103759.

Project Research

Drone package delivery and consumer privacy

Door-to-door drone package deliveries are taking off across the US. In this work we expose and study a newly emerging privacy is…

Publication Research

Drone delivery and the value of customer privacy: A discrete choice experiment with U.S. consumers

Alex Berke, Geoffrey Ding, Christopher Chin, Karthik Gopalakrishnan, Kent Larson, Hamsa Balakrishnan, Max Z. Li, Drone delivery and the value of customer privacy: A discrete choice experiment with U.S. consumers, Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies, Volume 157, 2023, 104391, ISSN 0968-090X, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trc.2023.104391.

Project Research

The Power of Without

The Power of WITHOUT is a research theme in the City Science group. The theme proposes that heavy infrastructure solutions are not financia…

Project Research

Autonomous micro-mobility simulation study

What will be the impact of shared autonomous micro-mobility systems? Will autonomy make the micro-mobility systems even more attractive?&nb…

Article Research

Study shows how pandemic decreased income diversity of urban encounters, even after lockdowns

GeekWire reports on research that people were less likely to visit socioeconomically different areas while returning to pre-pandemic habits.

Article Research

Americans have become less willing to explore their own cities

In a new study, researchers from MIT and other universities show that personal mobility during the Covid-19 pandemic hasn't fully recovered.

Article Research

Could self-driving bikes change how we use cities?

Kent Larson, head of the Media Lab’s City Science group, and PhD student Naroa Coretti Sánchez talk about the group's work and philosophy.

Post Research

City Science Lab @ Shanghai to continue cooperation with MIT City Science and the City Science Network

Representatives from the City Science Lab @ Shanghai (Tongji University) visited the MIT Media Lab to sign a continuation of their cooperat…

Article Research

Study: Covid-19 has reduced diverse urban interactions

Mobility-related data show the pandemic has had a lasting effect, limiting the breadth of places people visit in cities.

Project Research

Measuring and reducing social segregation in cities

We use high-resolution geospatial data collected from mobile phones to measure social segregation at an unprecedented resolution in cities …

Inventing the future of digitally augmented objects and environments.

Archived

Project Research

City Science Lab @ Aalto

Aalto University, Finland, and the MIT Media Lab’s City Science group are co-developing a version of the MIT CityScope platform for urban a…

Archived

Article Research

Autonomous shared micro-mobility systems could be the next revolution in urban mobility

City Science researchers Naroa Coretti, Iñigo Martinez, Luis Alonso, and Kent Larson discuss their research on autonomous shared bicycles.

Publication Research

Can autonomy make bicycle-sharing systems more sustainable? An environmental impact analysis

Naroa Coretti Sanchez, Luis Alonso Pastor, Kent Larson, Can autonomy make bicycle-sharing systems more sustainable? An environmental impact analysis, Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment, Volume 113, 2022, 103489, ISSN 1361-9209, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trd.2022.103489

Archived

Research

Scalable Cooperation

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

Center for Civic Media

Archived

Research

Object-Based Media

Changing storytelling, communication, and everyday life through sensing, understanding, and new interface technologies

Article Research

Best New Ideas in Money: The road ahead for public transit

A discussion of the future of public transportation, with a highlight of the Autonomous Bicycle project led by PhD student Naroa Coretti.

Article Research

2021 was the year space tourism opened up. But for whom?

Space Exploration Initiative director Ariel Ekblaw speaks with WIRED’s Ramin Skibba about the beginning and future of space tourism.

How buildings and cities can become more intelligently responsive to the needs and desires of their inhabitants.

Archived

Article Research

A dispatch and routing platform to improve deliveries

Wise Systems has grown from an MIT class project to a company helping multinationals improve last-mile logistics.

Article Research

Driving commuters toward sustainable options

How data from Access MIT informs flexible, sustainable commutes as staff returns to campus.

Publication Research

Autonomous Bicycles: A New Approach To Bicycle-Sharing Systems

Sanchez, Naroa Coretti, Luis Alonso Pastor, and Kent Larson. "Autonomous Bicycles: A New Approach To Bicycle-Sharing Systems." 2020 IEEE 23rd International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSC). IEEE, 2020.

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, …

Post Research

City Science team wins Best Student Paper Award at Computing Conference 2020

Congratulations to City Science researchers Alex Berke, Jason Nawyn, Thomas Sanchez Lengeling, and group head Kent Larson!

Archived

Research

New Media Medicine

How radical new collaborations will catalyze a revolution in health.

Archived

Project Research

Moral Machine

The Moral Machine is a platform for gathering a human perspective on moral decisions made by machine intelligence, such as self-driving car…

Archived

Project Research

ChampScope

Virtual CityScope Champs-Élysées is an interactive and immersive platform that explores the future of Paris’ most important street.

Digital Life

Archived

Project Research

CityScope Volpe

CityScope Volpe is demonstrating most of the urban planning, analysis, and prediction features developed for the CityScope project. The sit…

Article Research

How private companies are changing the future of space exploration

Ariel Ekblaw and Charles Bolden consider the future of human spaceflight.

Publication Research

Bike Swarm

Berke, A., Sanchez Lengeling, T., Nawyn, J., & Larson, K. (2019, November). Bike Swarm. In Conference Companion Publication of the 2019 on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (pp. 1-4). ACM.

Archived

Research

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