Writing for Forbes, Joseph Coughlin, director of the MIT AgeLab, highlights the safety concerns associated with shrinking airlines seats. “Tightening seating is argued to be a threat to a speedy emergency evacuation and even the cause of dangerous health conditions such as blood clots,” writes Coughlin.
Forbes reporter Ed Garsten spotlights Sampriti Bhattacharyya PhD ’17, founder of Navier, and her work in developing the N30, the first commercially available electric hydrofoiling boat in the United States. Bhattacharyya, a former aerospace engineer, “turned to waterborne transportation during her doctorate work at MIT where she worked on underwater drones and had a key realization,” writes Garsten.
Wired reporter Matt Simon spotlights a study by researchers from MIT and other institutions that finds smartphones in cars could be used to track the structural integrity of bridges. The findings “could pave the way (sorry) for a future in which thousands of phones going back and forth across a bridge could collectively measure the span’s health, alerting inspectors to problems before they’re visible to the human eye,” writes Simon.
Researchers from MIT and the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions have been developing an electric autonomous trash boat, reports Sarah Holder for Bloomberg. The boats “could reduce noise, pollution, and congestion, thus improving the quality of Amsterdam’s historic cityscape.”
Prof. Hari Balakrishnan speaks with Forbes contributor Stuart Anderson about his decision to leave India to pursue a PhD in computer science in the U.S., his love for teaching students as a professor at MIT and his work co-founding Cambridge Mobile Telematics, a software company that utilizes technology to make roads safer. “Immigration and immigrants make the United States stronger,” said Balakrishnan. “Immigration is the biggest strength that we have. We need to be able to attract and retain talent, no matter where people come from.”
Lecturer Malia Lazu writes for Banker & Tradesman about how the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority needs to reestablish its relationship with the state and its citizens. “Making a major investment in transportation should not be seen as social service and a waste of tax dollars, but as economy building,” writes Lazu.
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.”
Prof. Karilyn Crockett speaks with Boston Globe reporter Miles Howard about how transportation planning in the Greater Boston area needs to be centered around improving connectivity. “As Boston’s population grows, our public transportation infrastructure continues to crumble, and our transit planning can’t just be about new cars on one line and new tracks on another,” says Crockett. “It has to be a discussion about the system and the economic impacts of that system on Black and brown communities that are struggling to get to doctors’ appointments, to schools, to jobs that don’t allow working from home.”
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.
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.”
Writing for the Financial Times, Prof. Carlo Ratti explores how coordination between ride-hailing services can benefit cities by reducing traffic and carbon emissions. “Imagine a world in which, instead of wavering between Uber, Lyft or a regular taxi, we could open a single app that figures out which service is closest and most affordable,” writes Ratti.
Writing for The Hill, Prof. Jinhua Zhao explores how many people, when provided the opportunity to work remotely, work from a location other than their home. “If employers provide the necessary flexibility to their staff, and policymakers engage in smart land use and transportation planning for third-place trips,” writes Zhao, “the result could be a rare win-win-win for workers, businesses, and the public good.”
Assaf Biderman ‘05, associate director of the MIT SENSEable City Lab, discusses his startup Superpedestrian, a transportation robotics company that has developed electric scooters available in over 60 cities across the world. “I think we hit the holy grail of micromobility, which is detecting when you’re on the sidewalk every time and stopping or slowing the vehicle,” said Biderman.
Politico reporter Alex Daugherty spotlights a study from MIT and the International Council on Clean Transportation which found “that the use of alternative jet fuels like e-kerosene in supersonic transport aircraft would still lead to an increased worsening of climate change because these faster gets burn more fuel per passenger.”
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.”