MIT Media Lab

On March 6, the IM-2 lunar mission landed on the surface of the moon, near the south pole, carrying three payloads developed by Media Lab researchers and collaborators—a digital 3D camera; a tiny rover we've dubbed the AstroAnt; and a collaborative art project called HUMANS. The lander, named Athena, landed in an off-nominal position (on its side) that prevented it from recharging. Some of the research payloads on board were able to collect and transmit data before the systems ran out of power; we were able to transmit a command for our camera payload and got temperature data for both the camera and the AstroAnt in transit. The mission of the HUMANS project was to get to the lunar surface, which it did. Although we are disappointed that we will be unable to carry out all of the experiments we had planned, we learned a great deal, and are already looking forward to implementing that knowledge the next time we participate in a lunar launch. This cross-MIT collaboration was led by the Media Lab’s Space Exploration Initiative and developed with MIT AeroAstro and MIT.nano. As noted above, it included the first digital 3D camera deployed on the moon’s surface, a collaboration with NASA Ames Research Center; AstroAnt, a collaboration with Media Lab member company Castrol; and Humanity United with MIT Art and Nanotechnology in Space (HUMANS), a nano-etched disc encoded with the voices of people all around the world, sharing their thoughts on the meaning of space for themselves and humanity. To learn more about the mission and the payloads, please visit https://lnkd.in/guHREe_x.

Researchers from the Media Lab’s Fluid Interfaces group and OpenAI have conducted a series of studies to investigate how users’ wellbeing may be affected by uses of AI that involve emotional engagement. Their findings, while preliminary, show that both model and user behaviors can influence social and emotional outcomes. This research provides a starting point for further studies that can increase transparency, and encourage responsible usage and development of AI platforms across the industry. https://lnkd.in/gPJF63dQ

In “The EPOCH of AI: Human-Machine Complementarities at Work,” MIT Professor Roberto Rigobon and Media Lab alum Isabella Loaiza identify key areas in which human expertise in the workplace is likely to be augmented by AI tools. “There tends to be a prevailing narrative that robots are coming for jobs,” says Professor Rigobon, the Society of Sloan Fellows Professor of Management at MIT Sloan School of Management. “We think it’s important to ask different questions—looking more at human capabilities than AI capabilities and shifting toward what technology can give us rather than what it might take away.” Dr. Loaiza, now a postdoctoral associate at Sloan, adds, “A lot of the research done in this area tends to look more generally at detailed work activities—using scores from there and extrapolating it down. We focused specifically on tasks and, most importantly, the structure of tasks within a job or occupation to measure augmentation.”

Congratulations to Jocelyn S., a PhD student in the Media Lab’s Personal Robots research group, on receiving an honorable mention for the 2025 Jane Street Graduate Research Fellowship!

As NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams—whose planned one-week mission unexpectedly lasted nine months—returned to Earth, Media Lab Director Dava Newman talked to Newsbreak about the physical effects of a prolonged stay in space. “Just take it slow, take it safe, we have them home,” she says, “and they’re going to have to readapt to 1 G…Gravity is something when you haven’t been in gravity for over 260 days!” https://lnkd.in/g-GcwEUW

The March 2025 cover story for Science Robotics highlights a recent study conducted by researchers in the Media Lab’s Personal Robots group. The research team deployed social robots in the homes of 70 families with young children; over the course of a few months, the robots participated in parent-child reading as either a passive listener or an active robot with different behavior strategies. The team found that during this process the parent-child reading experience improved, with longer conversation times observed when the robot actively participated. These results indicate potential benefits for early childhood development, where parent-child dialogue plays an important role in literacy and comprehension. https://lnkd.in/eEkNCubA Authors: Huili Chen, Ph.D., Kim Yubin, Kejia Patterson, Cynthia Breazeal, and Hae Won Park Photo credit: Jimmy Day

A paper by Media Lab researchers and collaborators, to appear at CHI 2025, describes a new rapid-prototyping platform called VIK (Voxel Invention Kit) that utilizes reconfigurable building blocks with integrated electronics. The system can be assembled into complex, functional devices, with potential applications in areas ranging from space fabrication to the development of smart buildings and intelligent infrastructure for sustainable cities. Co-lead author Jack Forman, a PhD student in the Tangible Media group and an affiliate of the MIT Center for Bits and Atoms (CBA), says, “This is about democratizing access to functional interactive devices. With VIK, there is no 3D printing or laser cutting required. If you just have the voxel faces, you are able to produce these interactive structures anywhere you want.”

Congratulations to the 2025 LEGO Papert Fellows, Lancelot Blanchard, Karishma Chadha, and Hyejun Y.! Mitch Resnick, LEGO Papert Professor of Learning Research, says, "Ever since the founding of the Media Lab 40 years ago, Seymour Papert’s ideas about learning and education have had a deep influence at the Media Lab—and around the world. This new group of LEGO Papert Fellows follow in Seymour’s tradition, innovating at the intersection of technology, learning, and play.”

This week, the Boston Lyric Opera presents “The Seasons,” a new Baroque opera about the weather featuring the music of Antonio Vivaldi. Following the performance tonight, March 14, Media Lab research engineer Minoo Rathnasabapathy will join a panel discussion, “Arts + Science: Making the Data Make Sense,” to discuss her work in Climate Intelligence.

Watch: “Gaze to the Stars,” by Media Lab Professor Behnaz Farahi and the Critical Matter research group, is an interactive projection mapping project that transforms MIT’s Great Dome into a storytelling vessel. This vessel holds the hopes, dreams, and desires of 200 participants whose stories are displayed as striking close-ups of each person's eyes, projected across the normally austere surface of the MIT Dome. The participants' words, envisioned as sparkling particles that glitter like stars across their irises, were encoded into video of their eyes; the stories can be decoded in real time on the project’s livestream. See “Gaze to the Stars” on the Great Dome from 7:30pm–1am ET tonight and tomorrow, when it will illuminate the Dome during the lunar eclipse! Learn more: https://lnkd.in/gJXSjZME