Fast Company reporter Elissaveta Brandon writes that a team of scientists from MIT and elsewhere have developed an amphibious artificial vision system inspired by the fiddler crab’s compound eye, which has an almost 360-degree field of view and can see on both land and water. “When translated into a machine,” writes Brandon, “this could mean more versatile cameras for self-driving cars and drones, both of which can become untrustworthy in the rain.”
Research scientist Bryan Reimer and his colleagues have been collecting data from vehicles with driver-assist technology for the last seven years, writes Pete Bigelow for Automotive News. “We desperately need to understand the denominators, the frequency of events and the behaviors underlying them to understand the benefits and limitations of automated and assisted driving,” says Reimer. “We need to understand which aspects are working well and which ones need refining.”
A study by MIT AgeLab research scientist Bryan Reimer found that drivers using autopilot were “more likely to look away from the road once the system was on,” reports Aarian Marshall for Wired. “With automation comes an inherent new level of complexities. There are lots of risks and lots of rewards,” says Reimer.
TechCrunch reporters Kyle Wiggers and Devin Coldewey spotlight how MIT researchers developed a new technique for simulating an overall system of independent agents: self-driving cars. “The idea is that if you have a good amount of cars on the road, you can have them work together not just to avoid collisions but to prevent idling and unnecessary stops at lights,” write Wiggers and Coldewey.
Financial Times reporter William D. Cohan profiles Robert Joseph Scaringe SM ’07, PhD ’09 and his personal and professional career in developing Rivian, an electric vehicle technology company dedicated to building vehicles that change the way we consume fossil fuels. “Scaringe has been pining to run his own car company since he was a 17-year-old growing up on the Atlantic coast of Florida, just south of Cape Canaveral. ‘If you were to go in my bedroom as a kid, you’d find [car] hoods under the bed and windshields in the closet,’ he says.”
The driverless car industry lacks a clear business model in comparison to its competitors, reports Patrick McGee for Financial Times. “Driverless does not mean humanless,” says research scientist Ashley Nunes. “Robotaxis replace one set of human costs, the human driver, with another, inefficiency.”
National Geographic reporter Sadie Dingfelder writes that MIT scientists are using piezoelectric materials to develop a battery-free, underwater navigation system. “There are a lot of potential applications,” says Prof. Fadel Adib. “For instance, a scuba diver could use these sensors to figure out the exact place they took a particular picture.”
MIT researchers have proposed a conceptual hovering rover that would use the moon’s static charge to stay airborne, reports Elizabeth Howell for Forbes. “We think a future [moon] mission could send out small hovering rovers to explore the surface of the moon and other asteroids,” says graduate student Oliver Jia-Richards.
MIT researchers have tested the concept for a hovering rover, a spacecraft that could use the moon’s electric field to levitate over its surface, reports Tatyana Woodall for Popular Science. Graduate student Oliver Jia-Richards explains that the team’s idea for a disc-like rover “potentially provides a much more precise and easier way of maneuvering on these rough terrain and low gravity environments.”
MIT researchers have proposed testing a concept for a levitating rover that could operate by using the moon’s electric field, reports Andrew Liszewski for Gizmodo. Liszewski writes that “the researchers believe a levitating rover powered this way could potentially float even higher, or potentially be built heavier with additional scientific instrumentation on board.”
Mashable video producer Jules Suzdaltsev shares that MIT scientists and a team of researchers have successfully created full-scale, self-navigating robotic boats ready to wade through the Amsterdam canals. “The boats use GPS, lidar, cameras and control algorithms to reach their full self-navigating capabilities,” writes Suzdaltsev.
Fast Company reporter Kristin Toussaint spotlights how researchers from CSAIL and the Senseable City Lab have worked with the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions on developing a robotic boat now ready to be used in the canals of Amsterdam . “It’s a kind of dynamic infrastructure that can adapt to the needs of a city as they change, and help Amsterdam decongest its street and better use its waterways,” says Toussaint.
Reuters reporter Toby Sterling spotlights how MIT researchers have been working with Amsterdam’s Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions to develop a self-driving watercraft for transporting passengers, goods and trash through the canals. “We have a lot of open water available in the canals,” says Stephan van Dijk, Amsterdam’s Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions Innovation Director. “So, we developed a self-driving, autonomous ship to help with logistics in the city and also bringing people around.”
Bloomberg reporter Kyle Stock spotlights the origin and future of Rivian, an MIT startup that has developed an electric pickup truck.
Mashable reporter Meera Navlakha writes that researchers from the MIT AgeLab have found that when using partially automated driving systems drivers may become less attentive. The researchers found that when using the Autopilot system in Tesla vehicles, “visual behaviour amongst drivers is altered before and after Autopilot is disengaged. That means before the feature is switched on/off, drivers look less on the road and pay more attention to ‘non-driving related areas.’”