Transportation Research News from MIT

• Transportation@MIT Rethinks Everything

  Transportation@MIT is a vast undertaking that brings together multiple disciplines and schools. What better place to take on a problem so inextricably linked to data and technology? Where else to analyze the world’s urban infrastructure and how it can best facilitate the efficient and ecologically sound movement of people and goods?

• Can Networks & Real-Time Data Fix Urban Transit? Ask Singapore
  Five years from now, Singapore may have a model of urban transportation that’s smart, green, and full of lessons for cities around the world. That’s the goal of a new project from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the National Research Foundation of Singapore called the Future of Urban Mobility.
• MIT team finishes fifth overall in solar electric vehicle race
  Places second in the Silicon category — comprising cars that raced with off-the-shelf, terrestrial-grade silicon solar cells.
• A Global Collaboration to Chart the Future of Urban Mobility
  MIT teams up with three universities in Singapore to develop smart, sustainable urban transportation solutions.
• Fuel cells get a boost
  An MIT team led by Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering Yang Shao-Horn has found a method that promises to dramatically increase the efficiency of the electrodes in one type of fuel cell, which uses methanol instead of hydrogen as its fuel and is considered promising as a replacement for batteries in portable electronic devices.
• How Aviation Can Come Clean
  Last week the global aviation industry called on the United Nations to establish a single, worldwide policy for reducing aviation greenhouse-gas emissions, in an attempt to avoid a costly network of regional regulations. The industry proposed two primary goals–that by 2020 it should stop increasing its greenhouse emissions, and that by 2050 it should cut its emissions by 50 percent compared to 2005 levels.
• Goal of M.I.T. Electric Car Is 10-Minute Charge Time
  A team of six undergraduates at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has converted a 2010 Mercury Milan hybrid into a pure battery electric car. It’s part of a larger program with the goal of building an electric car that can travel 200 miles between charges and have a charging time of 10 minutes.
• CSAIL Researchers Win First Prize at Aerial Robotics Competition
  A team of students working under PI Nicholas Roy has taken top honors at the International Aerial Robotics Competition. Now in its 19th year, the challenges given at each competition become successively more complex. They are organized into a series of missions; this year’s competition was the fifth.
• System at a Crossroads: Rethinking Infrastructure and Mobility
  Overall, the infrastructure system – actually a collection of interdependent though not always integrated systems – is simply not consistently and efficiently delivering the services, primarily mobility, that society and the economy demand from it.