What it is
Octopus is MIT Senseable City Lab’s open-source sensor kit for street-level heat, humidity and fine particles, the step after City Scanner (2017, on garbage trucks in Cambridge, Massachusetts) and Flatburn (2023). An Arduino board, a fine-particle sensor and a GPS receiver sit in a 3D-printed case. It assembles in about 20 minutes and writes one line of data every 5 seconds to a microSD card, first on vehicles, then anywhere.
Credits
Octopus is led by Simone Mora and Fabio Duarte, with Carlo Ratti; electronics by FAE Technology.
What I do
In the Rio lab I work on its projects and deployment, take part in the research meetings, and present the hardware (Casa Firjan summer school, October 2026). I am helping shape the new research line that links its measurements to urban form in Maré.