Research — MIT Media Lab

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

human-machine interaction
art
health
learning
artificial intelligence
robotics
architecture
consumer electronics
kids
design
music
networks
politics
technology
wearable computing
entertainment
history
economy
bioengineering
cognition
archives
social science
storytelling
machine learning
data
interfaces
human-computer interaction
sensors
developing countries
space
prosthetics
computer science
social robotics
wellbeing
environment
engineering
social media
ethics
civic media
privacy
civic technology
imaging
synthetic biology
urban planning
neurobiology
affective computing
augmented reality
transportation
communications
virtual reality
energy
data visualization
computer vision
social change
industry
biotechnology
blockchain
biology
3d printing
food
community
agriculture
biomechanics
genetics
gaming
zero gravity
banking and finance
systems
government
behavioral science
manufacturing
open source
crowdsourcing
fashion
cryptocurrency
social networks
prosthetic design
wiesner
public health
collective intelligence
makers
data science
racial justice
ocean
security
medicine
performance
neural interfacing and control
language learning
ecology
perception
women
climate change
autonomous vehicles
internet of things
nonverbal behavior
construction
extended intelligence
bionics
visualization
mapping
human augmentation
gesture interface
physiology
long-term interaction
alumni
civic action
fabrication
interactive
networking
trust
holography
point of care
diversity
orthotic design
electrical engineering
autism research
mechanical engineering
pharmaceuticals
cognitive science
natural language processing
primary healthcare
clinical science
hacking
startup
academia
sports and fitness
rfid
materials
member company
open access
clinical trials
gender studies
member event
marginalized communities
trade
water
mechatronics
soft-tissue biomechanics
voice
chemistry
real estate
randomized experiment
biomedical imaging
microbiology
gis
publishing
event
exhibit
cartography
metamaterials
installation

Cultivating wisdom through evolutionary and ecological engineering

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

Research

Camera Culture

Making the invisible visible–inside our bodies, around us, and beyond–for health, work, and connection

Research

City Science

Looking beyond smart cities

Project Research

City Science Network

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

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...

Research

Social Machines

Promoting deeper learning and understanding in human networks

Project Research

Aalto Campus-as-a-Service Simulations

How can we get more value from the same buildings? Cities contain many different resources and spaces and typically, these resources...

Research

Poetic Justice

Exploring new forms of social justice through art

Project Research

Reversed Urbanism

Predicting Urban Performance through Behavioral Patterns in Temporal Telecom DataThis study explores a novel method to analyze diverse be...

Publication Research

Reversed urbanism: Inferring urban performance through behavioral patterns in temporal telecom data

Noyman, A., Doorley, R., Xiong, Z., Alonso, L., Grignard, A., & Larson, K. (2019). Reversed urbanism: Inferring urban performance through behavioral patterns in temporal telecom data. Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science, 46(8), 1480–1498. https://doi.org/10.1177/2399808319840668

Research

Open Agriculture (OpenAg)

Open Agriculture Initiative (OpenAg)

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 ...

Project Research

Theme | CityScope

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

Archived

Research

Collective Learning

Transforming data into knowledge

Research

Personal Robots

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

Project Research

BASIC: Blockchained Agent-based Simulator for Cities

Autonomous vehicles (AVs), drones, and other types of robots will revolutionize our way of traveling and understanding urban space. In or...

Project Research

MoCho: Mobility choices and societal impacts

MoCho (short for "Mobility Choices") is a CityScope module focused on mobility choices and societal impacts. This tool helps pr...

Publication Research

What's your MoCho? Real-time Mode Choice Prediction Using Discrete Choice Models and a HCI Platform

Doorley, Ronan & Noyman, Ariel & Sakai, Yasushi & Larson, Kent. (2019). What's your MoCho? Real-time Mode Choice Prediction Using Discrete Choice Models and a HCI Platform. UrbComp SIGKDD 2019

Project Research

The Deep Image of the City

How do you image a city that doesn't exist? DeepScope is a novel platform for interactive, real-time, and setup-less urban design vi...

Research

Scalable Cooperation

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

Project Research

City as Classroom, City as Laboratory

Often, we neglect to see the city as living, complex, and dynamic. However, shrouded by its masses of concrete and steel lie unique ecosy...

Project Research

City Science Lab Hamburg

Read more about this project hereMIT City Science is working with HafenCity University to develop CityScope for the neighborhood of Rothe...

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...

Archived

Project Research

Field Experimentation in Boston's Intertidal Zone

The Intertidal Experimentation Workshop will take place September 29 and 30 (9am to 2pm) at the MIT Media Lab, open to students ages 8-14...

Archived

Article Research

Home

How the home will be disrupted and transformed by radical technological change.

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 citie...

Project Research

CityScope PlayGround: MIT East Campus

This project depicts the design, deployment and operation of a Tangible Regulation Platform, a physical-technological apparatus made for ...

Publication Research

Finding Places: HCI Platform for Public Participation in Refugees’ Accommodation Process

Finding Places: HCI Platform for Public Participation in Refugees’ Accommodation Process. Ariel Noyman , Tobias Holtz, Johannes Kröger, Jörg Rainer Noennig, Kent Larson. a Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Media Lab, Changing Places Group, Cambridge MA, b HafenCity University Hamburg, CityScienceLab, c HafenCity University Hamburg, Lab for Geoinformatics & Geovisualization

Project Research

AI, Automation, Labor, and Cities: How to map the future of work

Should workers worry about automation and AI?Many workers, policy makers, and researchers are asking themselves exactly this question. Bu...

Article Research

City Science Lab Taipei

NTUT, MIT sign ‘smart’ development agreement

Publication Research

Toward understanding the impact of artificial intelligence on labor

Frank, Morgan R., David Autor, James E. Bessen, Erik Brynjolfsson, Manuel Cebrian, David J. Deming, Maryann Feldman, et al. “Toward Understanding the Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Labor.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, March 25, 2019, 201900949. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1900949116.

Project Research

The Atlas of Inequality

Segregation is hurting our societies and especially our cities. But economic inequality isn't just limited to neighborhoods. The restaura...

Project Research

Urban Swarms

Modern cities have to respond to the growing demands of more efficient and sustainable urban development, as well as an increased quality...

Post Research

This city is a classroom

Avery Normandin and Devora Najjar are on a mission to build literacy and appreciation for urban ecology.

Project Research

CityScope Volpe

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

Project Research

FindingPlaces

What is FindingPlaces?In reaction to the sudden arrival of tens of thousands of refugees in the city of Hamburg (DE) in 2015, the Lord Ma...

Project Research

Ecology, Evolution, and Engineering for Empowered Brains

EEEeb Spring 2019: Urban OceansMarch 24, April 7 and 21, May 19, June 2 To register, please visit this lin...

Article Research

Give way to droids, bots, and drones: the driverless city will look like this

An NYC exhibit imagines driverless buses and mobile medical units resembling Popemobiles.

Archived

Research

Social Computing

Creating sociotechnical systems that shape our urban environments

Future Storytelling

Archived

Project Research

City Science Lab Toronto

City Science Lab Toronto was established in cooperation with Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada. It started in 2018 and is...

Project Research

Andorra | Energy + Environment

View the main City Science Andorra project profile.

Publication Research

Urban Swarms: A new approach for autonomous waste management

Alfeo, A. L., Ferrer, E. C., Carrillo, Y. L., Grignard, A., Pastor, L. A., Sleeper, D. T., Cimino, M. G. C. A., Lepri, B., Vaglini, G., Laron, K., Dorigo, M., Pentland, A. `Sandy’. (2018). Urban Swarms: A new approach for autonomous waste management. ArXiv:1810.07910 [Cs].

Project Research

cityIO

Cloud-Based Urban Data PlatformcityIO (input/output) is a cloud- and database-driven platform which allows remote participation, database...

Project Research

Managing Travel Demand: Location recommendation for system efficiency

Growth in leisure travel has become increasingly significant economically, socially, and environmentally. However, flexible but uncoordin...

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 c...

Article Research

AR is transforming tech. What can it do for cities?

Cities need to work to ensure that AR makes the leap from “cool experience,” to a technology that improves residents’ lives.

Project Research

Persuasive Electric Vehicle (PEV)

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

Post Research

10+ years of Human 2.0

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

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...

Post Research

The hackable bike and the future of the MamaChari

Rapid urbanization causes a need for new mobility modes which may not be totally dependent on cars.

Project Research

Hackable Bike

To explore future mobility modes, the City Science group is working with Media Lab member company Panasonic to explore the use and potent...

Archived

Project Research

Place Pulse

Mapping the urban perception

Archived

Gallery Research

School and Energy Awareness, City Science Andorra

SCHOOL, ENERGY AWARENESSUsing TerMITes in the Santa Coloma School in Andorra we want to help students understand the relation between the...

Archived

Project Research

Ant-Based Modeling

Ant-Based Modeling explores the possibility of implementing agent-based modeling with living ants and external stimuli such as ...

Archived

Publication Research

CityScopeAR: Urban Design and Crowdsourced Engagement Platform

Noyman, Sakai, Larson 2018. CityScopeAR: Urban Design and Crowdsourced Engagement Platform. CHI 2018, 4,2007

Publication Research

Roadmap for Autonomous Cities: Sustainable Transformation of Urban Spaces

Noyman, Ariel, Agnis Stibe, and Kent Larson. "Roadmap for Autonomous Cities: Sustainable Transformation of Urban Spaces." (2017).

Article Research

Robotic interiors

Smart furniture transforms spaces in tiny apartments into bedrooms, work spaces, or closets.

Thesis Research

POWERSTRUCTURES : the urban form of regulations

POWERSTRUCTURES : the urban form of regulations, Noyman, Ariel, Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Architecture, 2015.; Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.; Includes bibliographical references (pages 232-236).