Lego Mindstorms is a hardware and software structure which is produced by Lego for the development of programmable robots based on Lego building blocks. Each version of the system includes a computer Lego brick that controls the system, a set of modular sensors and motors, and Lego parts from the Technic line to create the mechanical systems.
William Daniel "Danny" Hillis Jr. is an American inventor, entrepreneur, and scientist, who pioneered parallel computers and their use in artificial intelligence. He founded Thinking Machines Corporation, a parallel supercomputer manufacturer, and subsequently was a fellow at Walt Disney Imagineering.
The MIT Media Lab is a research laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, growing out of MIT's Architecture Machine Group in the School of Architecture. Its research does not restrict to fixed academic disciplines, but draws from technology, media, science, art, and design. As of 2014, Media Lab's research groups include neurobiology, biologically inspired fabrication, socially engaging robots, emotive computing, bionics, and hyperinstruments.
Cynthia Breazeal is an American roboticist and entrepreneur. She is a former chief scientist and chief experience officer of Jibo, a company she co-founded in 2012 for creating social robots in the home.
iRobot Corporation is an American technology company that designs and builds consumer robots. It was founded in 1990 by three members of MIT's Artificial Intelligence Lab, who designed robots for space exploration and military defense. The company's products include a range of autonomous home vacuum cleaners (Roomba), floor moppers (Braava), and other autonomous cleaning devices.
Shrinky Dinks is a toy and activity kit consisting of sheets of polystyrene which can be cut with standard household scissors. When heated, the cut shapes become about nine times thicker while their horizontal and vertical dimensions reduce to about one-third the original size, resulting in hard, flat forms which retain their initial color and shape. They reached the height of their popularity in the 1980s. Most sets are pre-printed with outline images of popular children's characters or other subjects, which are then colored in before baking.
An entertainment robot is, as the name indicates, a robot that is not made for utilitarian use, as in production or domestic services, but for the sole subjective pleasure of the human. It serves, usually the owner or his housemates, guests or clients. Robotics technologies are applied in many areas of culture and entertainment.
Victor David Scheinman was an American pioneer in the field of robotics. He was born in Augusta, Georgia, where his father Leonard was stationed with the US Army. At the end of the war the family moved to Brooklyn and his father returned to work as a professor of psychiatry. His mother taught at a Hebrew school.
Mitchel Resnick is Lego Papert Professor of Learning Research, Director of the Okawa Center, and Director of the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab. As of 2019, Resnick serves as head of the Media Arts and Sciences academic program, which program grants master's degrees and Ph.D.s at the MIT Media Lab.
The Clubhouse Network, often shortened to the Clubhouse, is an American nonprofit organization that operates a free out-of-school learning program where young people from underserved communities work with adult mentors to explore their own ideas, develop new skills, and build confidence in themselves through the use of technology. Its motto is "Where Technology Meets Imagination".
Carlo Ratti is an Italian architect, engineer, inventor, educator and activist. He is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he directs the MIT Senseable City Lab, a research group that explores how new technologies are changing the way we understand, design and ultimately live in cities. Ratti is also a founding partner of the international design and innovation office CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati, which he established in 2004 in Torino, Italy, and now has a branch in New York City, United States. Ratti was named one of the "50 most influential designers in America" by Fast Company and highlighted in Wired magazine's "Smart List: 50 people who will change the world".
Squid Labs was an American independent research and development company founded by a group of four MIT graduates. In 2004, Colin Bulthaup, Dan Goldwater, Saul Griffith, and Eric Wilhelm moved from the East Coast to California to found the company known as Squid Labs. During its years of existence from 2004 to 2007, Squid Labs added three more members to its team: Geo Homsy, Corwin Hardham and Ryan McKinley. Working out of a warehouse in Emeryville, the group adopted the slogan "We're not a think tank, we're a do tank." and created a handful of patents and inventions including an electronically sensed rope, portable pull-cord generators, and a machine that could manufacture eyeglasses of any prescriptions at extremely low cost. Squid Labs was also the birthplace for many companies still running today, such as Makani Power and Howtoons. Although the company no longer exists, Squid Lab's co-founder, Saul Griffith created a similar company in San Francisco named Otherlab.
Brian Silverman is a Canadian computer scientist, the creator of many programming environments for children, and a researcher in cellular automata.
Makey Makey: An Invention Kit for Everyone is an invention kit designed to connect everyday objects to computer keys. Using a circuit board, alligator clips, and a USB cable, the toy uses closed loop electrical signals to send the computer either a keyboard stroke or mouse click signal. This function allows the Makey Makey to work with any computer program or webpage that accepts keyboard or mouse click.
Addie Wagenknecht is an American artist and researcher living in New York City and Austria. Her work deals primarily with pop culture, feminist theory, new media and open source software and hardware. She frequently works in collectives, which have included Nortd Labs, F.A.T. lab, and Deep Lab. She has received fellowships and residencies from Eyebeam, Mozilla, and The Studio for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University.
Christopher Csíkszentmihályi is an American artist and technologist. He is an Associate Professor of Information Science at Cornell University.
Primo Toys is a London-based educational toy company founded by Filippo Yacob and Matteo Loglio, best known for creating the Cubetto Playset, an award-winning wooden robot that has been used by more than 10 million children to date, designed to teach children how to code using a tangible programming language that doesn't use screens or literacy. In April 2016, Cubetto became the most crowd-funded ed-tech invention in history, when 6,553 backers pledged a total of $1,596,457 to support their Kickstarter campaign. Primo Toys are backed by Randi Zuckerberg, Arduino co-founder Massimo Banzi, and Liam Casey's PCH International.
Dhairya Dand is an Indian-born, American inventor and artist based in New York City.
Paula Bonta is an Argentinian-Canadian computer scientist and educational software designer. She is known for developing programming environments for children, most notably contributing to the design of the Scratch programming language before it was even called Scratch. She co-founded the Playful Invention Company, a spin-off from the MIT Media Lab noted for developing the Programmable Cricket, with Mitchel Resnick and Brian Silverman and serves as Lead Designer. She was also the design director for several award-winning software products for children, including MicroWorlds and the "My Make Believe" series of products from Logo Computer Systems, Inc. She has a degree in computer science and a graduate degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
