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MMI RESEARCH PROJECTS
 

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Collective Sensing as an Enabler for Cyber-resilient Connected Mobility

Sanjay Sarma

Dajiang Suo

  1. How can infrastructure-assisted collective sensing V2X systems enhance both safety and traffic efficiency?
     

  2. How can cyber threats to infrastructure sensors be mitigated in connected vehicle deployment?
     

  3. What is the optimal allocation of sensors to balance resolution, latency and cost?
     

  4. Read the report here.

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Safety as a Performance Metric in Autonomous Mobility

Cathy Wu

Ao Qu

  1. What is the trade-off between safety and system performance for human-driven vehicles? How would this differ for autonomous vehicles?
     

  2. To what extent can large-scale traffic reconstruction contribute to the question ”how safe is safe enough” for autonomous vehicles?
     

  3. Read the report here.

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EV Charging Infrastructure Reliability in the United States

David Keith

Jim Womack

  1. Why is the reliability of US public charging infrastructure so poor?
     

  2. What could be done to improve the situation?
     

  3. Published Research Brief - Click Here

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Replacing Declining Gas Tax Revenue
with EV Adoption

Jim Aloisi

Jinhua Zhao

Bhuvan Atluri

Yunhan Zheng

Seamus Joyce-Johnson

  1. What will be the impact of rising EV adoption on gas tax revenue?
     

  2. How fast will it fall under various scenarios?
     

  3. What are the alternatives to replace lost revenue and how effective, efficient and easily implementable are they?
     

  4. Read the report here.

Night Train

Transit Research Consortium

Jim Aloisi

Bhuvan Atluri

Jinhua Zhao

Anson Stewart

Haris Koutspoulis

  1. What are the implications of changes in work commuting patterns for transit ridership return, growth and financial stability? Read our report on the impact of remote work on travel in the US here.
     

  2. Read our report on the Value of Transit in the Chicago region here. 
     

  3. Conduct cross-disciplinary research into the strategic, policy, planning & operational problems of an integrated transportation system centered around transit.

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Autonomous Mobility Computing Energy Consumption

Sertac Karaman

Vivienne Sze

The compute cost of autonomous driving systems, while still significant, can be reduced by at least two orders of magnitude using custom chips designed for the purpose. Two methods presented in the report include:

  1.  A new Gaussian splatting-based SLAM system that is able to reduce memory overhead of the system by 94x

  2.  A new way to train a monocular depth DNN on the fly, which will allow one to reduce the compute cost while still maintaining accuracy

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Software Defined Vehicles - MMI Research Briefing

Gauri Tike

Bhuvan Atluri

John Moavenzadeh

  1. What is a Software Defined Vehicle? What is the impact on vehicle architecture? How much of the SDV vision depends on software & code versus chips & hardware?

  2. How transformative are SDVs to the automobile and to the automotive industry? What does the SDV ecosystem look like? Who are the key stakeholders?How can Tier-1 suppliers’ best partner/collaborate with OEMs?

  3. How can SDVs deliver real customer value with a sustainable business model? What are the challenges? 

  4. Read the report here.

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Electric Vehicle Charging Urban Optimization

Alex Jacquillat

Dan Freund

  1. Where to locate public electric vehicle chargers in an urban setting?
     

  2. How many and what type (power) of chargers should be used in which locations?
     

  3. How to optimize charging infrastructure for access, utilization, equity, etc.?

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Carbon Footprint of Commuting vs WFH vs WF3P  (3rd Place)

Bhuvan Atluri

Tulio Silvera-Santos

  1. What are the current trends in work location (both day of week and longer term) in the US?
     

  2. What is the CO2 impact of working from home versus working at the office?
     

  3. What are possible levers or policies to minimize growth in CO2 emissions driven by work location options?
     

  4. Read Nick Caros' PhD dissertation on preparing urban mobility for the future of work here.

Car Leasing

Vehicle Performance Trends & Implications for Safety

Bhuvan Atluri

Aaron Zhu

  1. This report takes a data-driven look at the performance characteristics of vehicles across key parameters such as acceleration in seconds (0 - 60 mph), braking in feet (70 mph - 0) of various powertrains, body types, sizes, MSRP, and Curb Weights.
     

  2. The dashboards and report provide insights that can be used by consumers in making more informed decisions and by policy-makers in designing a transport funding and regulatory framework that takes current vehicle trends and road safety into account.

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Enabling Equitable Access to AAM Service

Hamsa Balakrishnan

  1. How do we ensure that certain communities are not disproportionately impacted by the adverse effects of Advanced Aerial Mobility (AAM) operations and also ensure equitable access to the benefits of AAM services?
     

  2. How do we ensure equitable airspace access to a range of users (fleet operators) who might vary in scale of operations, business models, and missions?

Researchers at MIT are at the forefront of today's profound changes in mobility and transportation. From helping cities shape sustainable travel behavior to harnessing artificial intelligence to improving network performance to designing automated and electric vehicles, MIT researchers are pushing the boundaries of technology and system development and leading analytical and computational innovation--while simultaneously driving emerging conversations about changing objectives and institutions. Explore more via the themes below that exhibit the wide-ranging research underway at the Institute. 
 

Systems & Operations

Public Transport

Freight and Logistics

Air Transportation

Networks and Systems

Emerging Mobility

Vehicles and Energy

Analytics & Computation

Operations Research and Statistics

Automation, Control and Artificial Intelligence

Behavior and Demand Modeling

Big Data, Visualization and Media

Planning, Policy & Institutions

Sustainability and Environment

Urban Planning, Design and Policy

Economics and Finance

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