An R&D lab for the human condition.

We are a community of philosopher-builders developing technologies that extend human minds, bodies, senses, and relationships.

Engineers, scientists, artists, and thinkers working together to explore how technology can help people live, create, and connect.

Explore our work Join the community

The Augmentation Lab community gathered for a presentation — From our Cambridge gatherings. Now based in San Francisco.

Projects built: 50+
Fellows, 16 countries: 45+
Summit attendees: 600+
Global community: 1200+

Human Augmentation Summit

Exponential Visions

Saturday, August 23, 2025 · MIT Media Lab, Cambridge, MA

A day of keynotes, panels, a startup showcase, the Augmentation Residency showcase and an exhibition, hosted by Augmentation Lab, ekkolápto and Pulse. Watch 35 recordings.

Program and recordings

Selected projects

Ideas you can build, wear, and experience.

From an extra limb to a new way of rehearsing a difficult conversation, our projects ask what becomes possible when we design technology around human experience.

2024

Wearables

Strange Loops II

BCI cyborg fashion

A brain-computer interface that turns emotional states into colorful light, worn as a mask. Built on the original Strange Loops — for which Ninon was named among Dezeen's top wearable designers — and inspired by attractor patterns in mathematics.

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2024

Wearables

Preemie

A speculative artificial womb and wearable incubator

In 2022, 10.4% of US live births were preterm, and most babies born before 34 weeks go straight into a plastic incubator bin. Preemie asks what neonatal care becomes when the incubator is worn and carried — a wearable, speculative artificial womb.

Read entry

2023

Affective Augmentation

Enact

Augmenting relationships through AI-mediated role-play

All problems are interpersonal relationship problems. From social networks to excessive AI chatbots, technology is eroding our courage to speak with each other. Enact uses AI-mediated role-play to help people rehearse hard conversations and relearn how to ask for help.

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2023

Worlds of Imagination

Imagination Engine I

Generating abstract art through EEG

Is mind reading becoming a reality? Building on DreamDiffusion's brain-to-image research, Imagination Engine closes the loop between brainwaves and a generative model: the viewer's neural state steers the image, and the image steers the state back.

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2023

Wearables

Haptic Ring

A sixth sense for magnetic fields

A small, non-invasive sensory-addition ring for sensing magnetic fields — a 15×15 mm fabricated PCB with a magnetometer and a Bluetooth-enabled microcontroller, worn on the finger. A new sense, no surgery required.

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2022

Transhuman Forms

LimbX

An eye-gaze-controlled supernumerary limb

How do you control an arm that doesn't biologically belong to you? LimbX is a custom continuum robotic limb — modular vertebrae, U-joints, a servo-driven tendon system — steered through a HoloLens AR layer using eye gaze and voice, with a machine-learning model mapping intention to motion.

Read entry

Explore the full project archive

A scene from the Augmentation Lab residency archive

The Augmentation Residency

Live together.
Build freely.

Since 2023, more than 45 residents from 16 countries have spent summers in shared Cambridge maker houses, turning unconventional ideas into working prototypes.

Hardware hackers, creative coders, bio-tinkerers, and artists share tools and perspectives. Technical experiments sit alongside conversations about what we should build, and why.

Explore past residencies Ask about future programs

Our approach

The hammer and the pen.

An experimental wearable arm on a lab workbench

Augmenting humans

We develop technology to support human creativity, autonomy, and connection. The human experience is the starting point for each experiment.

Community members gathered around a technology demonstration

Transdisciplinary

We bring engineers, scientists, and creatives into the same room. Different ways of seeing a problem open up different ways to solve it.

A hammer and pen, symbols of the philosopher-builder

Philosopher-builders

We pair technical experimentation with practical wisdom. Making something work also means asking what it will change in people's lives.

Read our mission

The written record

Ideas behind the experiments.

Paper · 2024

Augmentation Residency: An Immersive Live-Work HCI R&D Model

A peer-reviewed account of the lab's residential R&D model — what happens when researchers live inside the lab, and the lab inside a home. Published at CHI.

A Human Augmentation Summit poster taped to a glass window, with a chrome humanoid bust, ribbons of text and a row of sponsor logos

Essay · 2024

Open-Source Wearable AI — Wikipedia 2044

A fictional Wikipedia article from twenty years in the future, chronicling open-source wearable AI. Awarded an honorable mention in MIT's Envisioning the Future of Computing competition — and overtaken by reality within months.

Browse ideas and publications

Gatherings

Meet, share, and build.

Stay close to the next gathering.

No upcoming dates are currently listed. Join the community on Discord to follow announcements, meet other builders, and share what you are working on.

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Explore the event archive