Research

Impact Areas

Lead

Wojciech Matusik

Community of Research

Computing & Society Community of Research

This community is interested in understanding and affecting the interaction between computing systems and society through engineering, computer science and public policy research, education, and public engagement.

Daniel Weitzner

Leads

Daniel Weitzner

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Lead

Daniel Weitzner

Research Group

Decentralized Information Group

We are investigating decentralized technologies that affect social change.

Lalana Kagal

Tim Berners-Lee

Leads

Lalana Kagal

Tim Berners-Lee

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Lead

Lalana Kagal

Tim Berners-Lee

Lalana Kagal

Tim Berners-Lee

Research Group

Distributed Robotics Laboratory

We aim to develop the science of autonomy toward a future with robots and AI systems integrated into everyday life, supporting people with cognitive and physical tasks.

+13

Daniela Rus

Leads

Daniela Rus

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Lead

Daniela Rus

+13

Daniela Rus

Research Group

Haystack Group

We are an interdisciplinary group of researchers blending approaches from human-computer interaction, social computing, databases, information management, and databases.

Lea Verou

David Karger

Leads

David Karger

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Big Data

Lead

David Karger

Lea Verou

David Karger

Community of Research

Human-Computer Interaction Community of Research

The focus of the HCI CoR is inventing new systems and technology that lie at the interface between people and computation, and understanding their design, implementation, and societal impact.

Stefanie Mueller

Leads

Stefanie Mueller

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Entertainment

Lead

Stefanie Mueller

Research Group

Interactive Robotics Group

The Interactive Robotics Group aims to imagine the future of work by designing collaborative robot teammates that enhance human capability.

Julie Shah

Leads

Julie Shah

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Lead

Julie Shah

Research Center

Internet Policy Research Initiative

Our mission is to work with policy makers and cybersecurity technologists to increase the trustworthiness and effectiveness of interconnected digital systems.

Leads

Daniel Weitzner

Hal Abelson

David Clark

Lalana Kagal

Karen Sollins

Gerald Sussman

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Lead

Daniel Weitzner

Hal Abelson

David Clark

Lalana Kagal

Karen Sollins

Gerald Sussman

Research Group

Learning and Intelligent Systems

We conduct interdisciplinary research aimed at discovering the principles underlying the design of artificially intelligent robots.

Leslie Kaelbling

Tomas Lozano-Perez

Leads

Leslie Kaelbling

Tomas Lozano-Perez

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Lead

Leslie Kaelbling

Tomas Lozano-Perez

Leslie Kaelbling

Tomas Lozano-Perez

Research Group

Marine Robotics Group

Our projects are centered around the problems of navigation and mapping for autonomous mobile robots operating in underwater and terrestrial environments.

John Leonard

Leads

John Leonard

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Lead

John Leonard

Research Group

MIT App Inventor

MIT App Inventor is an intuitive, visual programming environment that allows everyone – even children – to build fully functional apps for smartphones and tablets.

Hal Abelson

Leads

Hal Abelson

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Lead

Hal Abelson

Research Group

Model-Based Embedded and Robotics Systems Group

We are working to elevate robots from mechanical creations controlled by low-level scripts with a considerable amount of human guidance to truly cognitive robots.

Brian Williams

Leads

Brian Williams

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Lead

Brian Williams

Research Group

Robot Locomotion Group

We research building machines which exploit their natural dynamics to achieve extraordinary agility and efficiency.

Russ Tedrake

Leads

Russ Tedrake

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Lead

Russ Tedrake

Research Group

Robust Robotics Group

We build unmanned vehicles that can fly and drive without maps or GPS.

Nicholas Roy

Leads

Nicholas Roy

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Lead

Nicholas Roy

Research Group

Sensing, Learning and Inference

We develop scalable algorithms for analysis of complex, high-dimensional data.

John Fisher

Leads

John Fisher

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Big Data

Lead

John Fisher

Research Group

Sussman Lab

We focus on understanding the problem-solving strategies used by scientists and engineers, with the goals of automating parts of the process and formalizing educational methods.

Gerald Sussman

Leads

Gerald Sussman

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Lead

Gerald Sussman

Community of Research

Systems Community of Research

The Systems CoR is focused on building and investigating large-scale software systems that power modern computers, phones, data centers, and networks, including operating systems, the Internet, wireless networks, databases, and other software infrastructure.

+21

Sam Madden

Leads

Sam Madden

Research Areas

Computer Architecture

Impact Areas

Lead

Sam Madden

+21

Sam Madden

Community of Research

Vertical AI Community of Research

This CoR takes a unified approach to cover the full range of research areas required for success in artificial intelligence, including hardware, foundations, software systems, and applications.

Martin Rinard

Leads

Martin Rinard

Research Areas

Computational Design and Fabrication Group

Impact Areas

Lead

Martin Rinard

39 Project Results

Project

3D-Printed Organic Solar Cells

Using our inkjet printer system, the goal of this project is to produce a light sensor / solar cell that is composed entirely of 3D printed materials.

James Minor

Leads

James Minor

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Human-Computer Interaction Community of Research

James Minor

Project

Alloy

Software Design Group

Alloy is a language for describing structures and a tool for exploring them. It has been used in a wide range of applications from finding holes in security mechanisms to designing telephone switching networks. Hundreds of projects have used Alloy for design analysis, for verification, for simulation, and as a backend for many other kinds of analysis and synthesis tools, and Alloy is currently being taught in courses worldwide.

Daniel Jackson

Leads

Daniel Jackson

Research Areas

Computer-Aided Programming

Impact Areas

Daniel Jackson

Project

An Interlock for Self Driving Cars

Software Design Group

Vertical AI Community of Research

Human-Computer Interaction Community of Research

Self-driving cars are likely to be safer, on average, than human-driven cars. But they may fail in new and catastrophic ways that a human driver could prevent. This project is designing a new architecture for a highly dependable self-driving car.

Daniel Jackson

Armando Solar-Lezama

Leads

Daniel Jackson

Armando Solar-Lezama

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Daniel Jackson

Armando Solar-Lezama

Project

Apprenticeship Scheduling: Learning to Schedule From Human Experts

Robot scheduling via learning from demonstration for tasks in medicine and more

Leads

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Computation Structures Group

Project

Artificial Social Intelligence for Successful Teams (ASIST)

Computational Cognitive Science Group

Our goal is to develop a socially intelligent team coacher agent that helps humans communicate, strategize, and work together efficiently.

Leads

Howard Shrobe

Brian Williams

Boris Katz

Zhutian Yang

Research Areas

Computer Architecture

Impact Areas

Wireless

Project

Computational Multicopter Design

Computer Graphics Group

A system that can help you to design our own drone!

Tao Du

Leads

Tao Du

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Tao Du

Project

Deterministic Algorithms for Robotic Task and Motion Planning

Our goal is to investigate deterministic algorithms for robotic task and motion planning.

Leads

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Project

Driver-Friendly Bilateral Control for Suppressing Traffic Instabilities

Vision Group

We are studying how best to implement bilateral control and make it acceptable to drivers

Berthold Horn

Leads

Berthold Horn

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Berthold Horn

Project

Drones that Drive

Multi-robot path planning for robot swarms that can both fly and drive

Leads

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Project

Efficient Communication for Human-Machine Teams

Our goal is to develop collaborative agents (software or robots) that can efficiently communicate with their human teammates. Key threads involve designing algorithms for inferring human behavior and for decision-making under uncertainty.

X. Jessie Yang

Julie Shah

Leads

Julie Shah

Research Areas

Impact Areas

X. Jessie Yang

Julie Shah

Project

Geordi: A Driver's Assistant for Risk-bounded Maneuvering

Cognitive AI Community of Research

Our goal is to create an online risk-aware planner for vehicle maneuvers that can make driving safer and less stressful through a “parallel” autonomous system that assists the driver by watching for risky situations, and by helping the driver take proactive, compensating actions before they become crises.

Brian Williams

Leads

Brian Williams

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Brian Williams

Project

Helping robots learn using demonstrations

Help robots learn faster by providing demonstrations when they need help

Joseph DelPreto

Leads

Joseph DelPreto

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Joseph DelPreto

Project

Human-Guided Transfer for Robot Learning

Our goal is to develop computational learning models for agents that intelligently use various types of human feedback to help an agent adapt and transfer knowledge to new situations.

Julie Shah

Leads

Julie Shah

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Julie Shah

Project

Human-Robot Collaboration in Shared Workspace

Models and algorithms to predict in real time the next actions of a human working together with a robot

Leads

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Project

Inferring 3D Shape Distributions for Robot Perception and Planning

Robust Robotics Group

Our goal is to develop methods for a mobile robot to reason about volumetric spatial uncertainty of objects in its environment.

Nicholas Roy

Leads

Nicholas Roy

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Nicholas Roy

Project

Learning complex task structures from demonstrations

Our goal is to learn the structure of complex multi-step tasks from demonstration of human experts.

Ankit Shah

Leads

Ankit Shah

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Ankit Shah

Project

Planning in Congestion for Autonomous Vehicles

Our goal is to develop an autonomous vehicle control strategy that adapts on-line to varying levels of congestion in the environment.

Leads

Alyssa Pierson

Wilko Schwarting

Sertac Karaman

Daniela Rus

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Project

Printable Hydraulics

Printable Hydraulics allows fluid-actuated robots to be automatically fabricated using 3D printers.

Youbin Kim

Leads

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Decentralized Information Group

Youbin Kim

Project

PrivacyML - A Privacy Preserving Framework for Machine Learning

Cognitive AI Community of Research

Computing & Society Community of Research

We are developing a general framework that enforces privacy transparently enabling different kinds of machine learning to be developed that are automatically privacy preserving.

Lalana Kagal

Vaikkunth Mugunthan

Leads

Lalana Kagal

Vaikkunth Mugunthan

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Lalana Kagal

Vaikkunth Mugunthan

Project

Robot Compiler

The Robot Compiler allows non-engineering users to rapidly fabricate customized robots, facilitating the proliferation of robots in everyday life. It thereby marks an important step towards the realization of personal robots that have captured imaginations for decades.

Leads

Joseph DelPreto

Andrew Spielberg

Daniela Rus

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Project

Robotic Planning and Manipulation with Force Information

Our goal is to allow planners to exploit the forces and contacts between objects so as to carry out complex manipulation tasks in the presence of uncertainty.

Leads

Gustavo N. Goretkin

Leslie Kaelbling

Tomas Lozano-Perez

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Project

Robots Adapting to Human Intent

Cognitive AI Community of Research

Our goal is to develop algorithms for allowing robots to adapt intelligently to humans when they are working together as a team.

Brian Williams

Leads

Brian Williams

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Brian Williams

Project

Robots that collaborate with humans to form team plans

People, including doctors, nurses, and military personnel, often learn their roles in complex organizations through a training and apprenticeship process.

Julie Shah

Leads

Julie Shah

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Julie Shah

Project

Robots that Quickly Adjust Team Plans to Disturbance

Once a human-machine team has formed a high-quality, flexible plan for working together, the robot must execute its part of the plan and work with its teammate.

Julie Shah

Leads

Julie Shah

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Robust Learning for Autonomous Vehicles

Julie Shah

34 People Results

Alexander Amini

Graduate Student

PhD Candidate. Deep Learning; Robotics

E Amini@mit.edu

Lead

Member

PhD Candidate. Deep Learning; Robotics

Brandon Araki

Graduate Student

E araki@csail.mit.edu

Noam Buckman

Graduate Student

PhD Candidate. Autonomous vehicles. Multi-robot systems.

E nbuckman@mit.edu

Member

PhD Candidate. Autonomous vehicles. Multi-robot systems.

Richard Camilli

Research Affiliate

E romeo@mit.edu

Member

Sensorized Soft Electric Hands with Handed Shearing Auxetics

Lillian Chin

Graduate Student

E ltchin@mit.edu

Lead

Member

Advanced Network Architecture Group

PI
Core/Dual

David Clark

Senior Research Scientist

Internet architectures, communications policy, security

E ddc@csail.mit.edu

T 253-6003

Lead

Internet Policy Research Initiative

Member

Computing & Society Community of Research

Systems Community of Research

Internet architectures, communications policy, security

Mustafa Doga Dogan

Graduate Student

E doga@mit.edu

Member

HCI Engineering Group

Tao Du

Graduate Student

CS PhD student

E taodu@csail.mit.edu

Lead

Computational Multicopter Design

CS PhD student

PI
Core/Dual

Fredo Durand

Professor

Vision, graphics, computational photography

E fredo@csail.mit.edu

T 253-7223

Lead

Computer Graphics Group

Computational Understanding of Visualizations and Graphic Designs

Vision Group

Member

Computational Bounce Flash for Indoor Portraits

Halide

Visual Computing Community of Research

Vision, graphics, computational photography

R. David Edelman

Director, Project on Technology, Economy & National Security

Machine learning, cybersecurity, governance

E rde@mit.edu

T 258-6389

Machine learning, cybersecurity, governance

Gregory Falco

Research Affiliate

Dr. Falco is a hacker and expert in IoT and IIoT cybersecurity.

E gfalco@mit.edu

Dr. Falco is a hacker and expert in IoT and IIoT cybersecurity.

Michael Foshey

Mechanical Engineer/Project Manager

Additive Manufacturing, Robotics, Digital Fabrication

E mfoshey@mit.edu

Additive Manufacturing, Robotics, Digital Fabrication

Igor Gilitschenski

Research Scientist

E igilitschenski@mit.edu

Member

Computation Structures Group

Ramin Hasani

Postdoctoral Associate

Machine learning Scientist

E rhasani@csail.mit.edu

Machine learning Scientist

Jamey Hicks

Research Affiliate

E jamey.hicks@accelerated.tech

Member

PI
Core/Dual

Berthold Horn

Professor

Vision, computational imaging

E bkph@csail.mit.edu

T 253-5863

Lead

Vision Group

Driver-Friendly Bilateral Control for Suppressing Traffic Instabilities

Member

Visual Computing Community of Research

Vision, computational imaging

PI
Core/Dual

Daniel Jackson

Professor

Software design, programming, systems

E dnj@csail.mit.edu

T 258-8471

Lead

Rethinking Software Design

Software Design Group

Gitless: a simple version control system built on top of Git

Déjà Vu: Constructing Apps from Concepts

Security by Design for Cyberphysical Systems

Poirot: Secure Protocol Implementation by Design

An Interlock for Self Driving Cars

Alloy

Wildcard

Member

Espalier

Human-Computer Interaction Community of Research

Systems Community of Research

Wildcard

Software design, programming, systems

PI
Core/Dual

Leslie Kaelbling

Professor

Robotics, machine learning, motion planning

E lpk@csail.mit.edu

T 258-9695

Lead

Learning and Optimization

Machine Learning

Robotic Planning and Manipulation with Force Information

Reliable Robotic Construction of Multi-object Arrangements

Learning and Planning with Compressed Linear Expectation Models

Active Learning of Models for Planning

Task and Motion Planning for Autonomous Robots

Member

Robotics, machine learning, motion planning

PI
Core/Dual

John Leonard

Professor

Robotics, navigation/mapping, self-driving cars

E jleonard@csail.mit.edu

T 253-5305

Lead

Marine Robotics Group

Member

Safety Standards for Autonomous Vehicles

Robotics, navigation/mapping, self-driving cars

Lucas Liebenwein

Graduate Student

Student and Researcher | Robotics, AI | Advanced Autonomy

E lucasl@mit.edu

RM 32-376C

Lead

Member

Coresets for Machine Learning Algorithms

Student and Researcher | Robotics, AI | Advanced Autonomy

PI
Core/Dual

Tomas Lozano-Perez

Professor

Robotics, artificial intelligence

E tlp@csail.mit.edu

T 253-7889

Lead

Learning and Optimization

Robotic Planning and Manipulation with Force Information

Reliable Robotic Construction of Multi-object Arrangements

Learning and Planning with Compressed Linear Expectation Models

Active Learning of Models for Planning

Task and Motion Planning for Autonomous Robots

Member

Computational Design and Fabrication Group

Robotics, artificial intelligence

PI
Core/Dual

Wojciech Matusik

Professor

Graphics, vision, fabrication, robotics, hci

E wojciech@csail.mit.edu

T 324-8432

Lead

Computer Graphics Group

Member

Computational Multicopter Design

Simit: A Language for Computing on Sparse Systems

InstantCAD: Interactive Design Exploration/Optimization for CAD Models

Visual Computing Community of Research

Planning in Congestion for Autonomous Vehicles

Graphics, vision, fabrication, robotics, hci

Radhen Patel

Postdoctoral Associate

Robotics | Haptics | Vision | Machine Learning

E radhen@csail.mit.edu

Robotics | Haptics | Vision | Machine Learning

Alyssa Pierson

Research Scientist

E apierson@csail.mit.edu

Lead

Socially-Compliant Behavior for Autonomous Driving

Member