Research
Conformable Decoders

Converting the patterns of nature and the human body into beneficial signals and energy
Research
Tangible Media

Seamlessly coupling the worlds of bits and atoms by giving dynamic physical form to digital information and computation
Research
Social Machines

Promoting deeper learning and understanding in human networks
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City Science

Looking beyond smart cities
Project Research

Wearable Sanitizer: Open-source, On-body Sanitizer for a Post-Pandemic

Regular disinfection of hands and frequently touched surfaces is a critical factor in preventing the spread of infectious diseases and di...
Research
Fluid Interfaces

Designing systems for cognitive enhancement
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...
Publication Research

Urban Mobility Swarms: A Scalable Implementation

Berke A., Nawyn J., Lengeling T.S., Larson K. (2020) Urban Mobility Swarms: A Scalable Implementation. In: Arai K., Kapoor S., Bhatia R. (eds) Intelligent Computing. SAI 2020. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 1229. Springer, Cham
Archived
Research
New Media Medicine

How radical new collaborations will catalyze a revolution in health.
Article Research

A new way to control experimentation with dreams

Device not only helps record dream reports, but also guides dreams toward particular themes.
Project Research

Targeted Dream Incubation

The Targeted Dream Incubation (TDI) method is a technique for guiding dreams towards specific themes. Before sleeping, you choose a theme...
Project Research

AlterEgo

AlterEgo is a  non-invasive, wearable, peripheral neural interface that allows humans to converse in natural language with mach...
Project Research

Cocoon: Speculative Dream Engineering

Cocoon is our vision of a programmable dream machine from the future. This device would be enabled by the synthesis of many devices under...
Project Research

Wearable and Biometric Olfactory Interfaces for Day and Night

Human-computer interaction (HCI) has traditionally focused on designing and investigating interfaces that provide explicit visual, audito...
Research
Affective Computing

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

Material Functionalization

When materials sciences meet HCI and e-textiles, for custom sensors and actuatorsIn this project we explore the process of polymerization...
Project Research

Dormio: Interfacing with Dreams

InspirationSleep is a forgotten country of the mind. A vast majority of our technologies are built for our waking state, even though a th...
Project Research

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

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

Multi-SPRING

OverviewWe have created a new customizable, multi-user research-through-play platform designed to facilitate social skill development for...
Project Research

Theme | Assistive Technology

Today’s assistive communication devices are far from perfect. Using state of the art small, wearable sensors and powerful machine learnin...
Research
Human Dynamics

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

AttentivU

AttentivU is  a  device, in the  form factor of a pair of glasses,  which senses brain activity (electroencephal...
Project Research

KnittedKeyboard

Knitting is an established textile manufacturing technique that has been pervasive in the garment and technical fabrics industry. In comp...
Project Research

SensorNets

SensorNets: Towards Reconfigurable Multifunctional Fine-grained  Soft and Stretchable Electronic Skins.SensorNets is a bio...
Research
Responsive Environments

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

Behavioral Indications of Depression Severity

In collaboration with Massachusetts General Hospital, we are conducting a clinical trial exploring objective methods for assessing depres...
Research
ML Learning

ML Learning
Research
Center for Extreme Bionics

Center for Extreme Bionics
Project Research

Thinking Cap

Peoples' mindsets, meaning their beliefs about their own intellectual abilities, affect their effort and thereby their performance on tas...
Project Research

Theme | Engineering Dreams

We are working to build technology that interfaces with the sleeping mind. As the dreamer descends into sleep, we track different sl...
Archived
Project Research

SensorKnits: Architecting textile sensors with machine knitting

Digital machine knitting is a highly programmable manufacturing process that has been utilized to produce apparel, accessories, and footw...
Archived
Project Research

Mediated Atmosphere

The Mediated Atmosphere project envisions a smart office that is capable of dynamically transforming itself to enhance occupants' work ex...
Project Research

Wearable Wisdom

Wearable Wisdom: An Intelligent Audio-Based System for Mediating Wisdom and AdviceHaving good mentors and role models is important for pe...
How to build characters that have the everyday common sense, the ability to learn, and the sense of empathy that one finds in animals such a
Archived
Digital Life
Archived
Article Research

An MIT lab is building devices to hack your dreams

From improving your mood to focusing your creativity, scientists at MIT’s Dream Lab want to prove the power of dreams.
Project Research

BioEssence

A wearable olfactory display that monitors cardio-respiratory information with the aspiration to support mental wellbeing.BioEssence is a...
Article Research

AttentivU biosignals help re-focus attention

Fluid Interfaces postdoc Nataliya Kosmyna discussed her AttentivU research for MIT xTalks.
Archived
Project Research

DermalAbyss: Possibilities of Biosensors as a Tattooed Interface

Can tattoos embrace technology in order to make the skin interactive?The DermalAbyss project was the result of a collaboration between MI...
Archived
Project Research

Social Capital Accounting

To better understand and improve the quality of our lives, there has been a need for measuring non-economic capital such as social capita...
Post Research

Rosalind Picard elected to the National Academy of Engineering

Rosalind Picard elected to the NAE for her contributions to affective and wearable computing.
Article Research

A pioneer of wearable technology explains how it can connect instead of divide us

Human Dynamics head Alex ‘Sandy’ Pentland discusses the necessity of social connections.
Publication Research

Wearable Lab on Body: Combining Sensing of Biochemical and Digital Markers in a Wearable Device

P. Pataranutaporn, A. Jain, C. M. Johnson, P. Shah and P. Maes, "Wearable Lab on Body: Combining Sensing of Biochemical and Digital Markers in a Wearable Device," 2019 41st Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC), Berlin, Germany, 2019, pp. 3327-3332. doi: 10.1109/EMBC.2019.8857479
Project Research

Wearable Lab on Body

Wearables are being widely researched for monitoring individual's health and wellbeing. Current generation wearable devices sense an indi...
Publication Research

BioEssence: A Wearable Olfactory Display that Monitors Cardio-Respiratory Information to Support Mental Wellbeing

Amores, J., Hernandez, J., Dementyev, A., Wang, X., Maes, P. "BioEssence: A Wearable Olfactory Display that Monitors Cardio-respiratory Information to Support Mental Wellbeing," Proceedings of the International Conference of IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC), Honolulu, Hawaii, July 2018
Project Research

Theme | Wearable Biotech Enhancement

Lab on Body, Synthetic Biology, and Bio-Digital Systems for Health and Human Enhancement
Project Research

AttentivU: Towards Improved Wellbeing in the Car

Several research projects have recently explored the use of physiological sensors such as electroencephalography (EEG - brain activity) o...
Archived
Research
CE 2.0

CE 2.0
Research
Personal Robots

Building socially engaging robots and interactive technologies to help people live healthier lives, connect with others, and learn better
Archived
Research
Music, Mind and Machine

How to build intelligent music systems out of interacting audio-processing agents.
Article Research

Designing medical devices to bend with the body

Canan Dagdeviren creates flexible ultrathin systems to decode the patterns of disease.
Project Research

Conformal Piezoelectric Mechanical Energy Harvesters: Mechanically Invisible Human Dynamos

Nearly all classes of wearable and implantable biomedical devices depend on battery power for continuous operation. However, the life spa...
Article Research

Watch this device translate silent thoughts into speech

For people who can’t speak out loud due to illness or injury, AlterEgo might return their ability to communicate in real time.
Project Research

Social Physics of Unemployment

Earlier studies proved that behavior is highly shaped and constrained by one's social networks, and demonstrated ways in which individual...
Project Research

SNAPSHOT Study

The SNAPSHOT study seeks to measure Sleep, Networks, Affect, Performance, Stress, and Health using Objective Techniques. It is an NIH-fun...
Article Research

Computing Careers: Advice from Rosalind Picard on succeeding in the fast-growing field of "affective computing"

Affective Computing head Rosalind Picard talks to IEEE Computer Society for their series on careers in computing.
Article Research

A breakthrough device that combines mind and machine

In the first live public demo of his new technology, TED Fellow Arnav Kapur introduces AlterEgo.
Article Research

How wearable AI will amplify human intelligence

Pattie Maes and other experts talk to the Harvard Business Review about applications for wearable artificial intelligence agents.
Post Research

Space Health Wearables

Designing Wearables for Space Exploration
Archived
Project Research

Living Observatory Installation: A Transductive Encounter with Ecology

In the Living Observatory installation at the Other Festival, we invite participants into a transductive encounter with a wetland environ...
Archived
Project Research

Identi-Wheez: A device for in-home diagnosis of asthma

Asthma is the most common chronic illness among children. The skills required to diagnose it make it an even greater concern. Our solutio...
Project Research

BrightBeat: Effortlessly influencing breathing for cultivating calmness and focus

The relationship between breathing and self-reported stress is bidirectional. Respiration pattern is an indicator of stress, but it can a...
Project Research

SkinBot: A wearable, skin-climbing robot

We introduce SkinBot: a lightweight robot that moves over the skin's surface with a two-legged suction-based locomotion mechanism and cap...
Project Research

Living Observatory: Sensor networks for documenting and experiencing ecology

Living Observatory is an initiative for documenting and interpreting ecological change that will allow people, individually and collectiv...
Project Research

HeartBit

HeartBit is an interface designed for haptic heart rate biofeedback. A handheld heart beats alongside your own, mirroring the size, weigh...