Transportation

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.”

Jin Stedge ’13 cofounded TrueNorth, a trucking company aimed at putting truckers in charge of their own companies, reports Igor Bosilkovski for Forbes. “We give truckers a single place to manage their whole business, and that’s everything from finding and booking loads, sending updates to customers, tracking applications, all in one place and charging one clean fee instead of ten different fees,” says Stedge.

Wise Systems, an AI-based delivery management platform originating from MIT’s Media Lab, has applied machine learning to real-time data to better plan delivery routes and schedules for delivery drivers, reports Susan Galer for Forbes. “The system can more accurately predict service times, taking into account the time it takes to complete a stop, and factoring in the preferences of the retailer, hotel, medical institution, or other type of client,” says Allison Parker of Wise Systems.

Writing for The Hill, Prof. Jinhua Zhao, Prof. Franz-Josef Ulm, Research Scientist Anson Stewart and Principal Research Scientist Randolph Kirchain explore how to maximize the impact and effectiveness of the infrastructure spending bill. “Here’s what we should do," they write. "Modernize planning tools to consider systems holistically, get out of technology ruts, and, most fundamentally, measure performance.”

Joseph Coughlin, director of the MIT AgeLab, and Luke Yoquinto, a research associate at the AgeLab, emphasize the importance of increased investment in aging-related research in an article for The Boston Globe. Coughlin and Yoquinto call for “ramping up age-related disease research across the board: not just in health care and robotics, but also in smart-home tech, user design, transportation, workplace technologies, education and training, and nutrition. R&D in these fields won’t just improve lives; it will also strengthen tomorrow’s economy.”

Lecturer Malia Lazu writes for Banker & Tradesman about the future of the Boston business community as Mayor Michelle Wu takes office. “At the end of the day, Mayor Wu’s priorities are not that different from those of the business community: transportation infrastructure that brings people to job centers, stronger schools that create pathways to jobs, climate resiliency that keeps city infrastructure stable in the future, affordable housing and a diverse workforce, among others,” writes Lazu.

Writing for The Wall Street Journal, Prof. John Sterman details how he reduced his personal carbon footprint, from commuting via bicycle to completing a deep-energy retrofit on his home. “The project was great fun, cost-effective and the house is far more comfortable,” writes Sterman. “But personal action, though essential, isn’t sufficient. Building a prosperous, safe and equitable world requires that we transform our economy and institutions. To do so we must act now. There is no time to waste.”

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.

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.’”