Tag: MIT

The Incredible Device That’s Revolutionizing How We Get to Work

Posted on by robbie

Embedded within a sleek red disk that resembles a miniature flying saucer, it consists of three computers, 12 sensors, a 350-watt motor and a 48-volt lithium battery and can be attached to the back wheel of any bike with rear brakes. And if the device’s creators are right, this 26-inch wheel could change the future of urban transportation.
The Copenhagen Wheel, as the hack is known, transforms your ordinary two-wheeler into a electric-powered bike that can travel faster (up to 20 miles per hour) and farther (up to 31 miles per charge) than casual pedal-pushing will move you. Assaf Biderman, the wheel’s lead designer, says the add-ons will make bicycle transportation a more attractive option for commuters, unclogging streets, saving gasoline and cutting emissions in the process.
Biderman starts with a disclaimer: “I’m not a bike geek who wanted to put a motor on a bicycle.” His background is in physics, and as an associate director of Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s SENSEable City Lab, which focuses on how digital technology, sensors and handheld devices can transform urban areas, his vision is about changing the way cities function. Along with a team of a dozen MIT undergrads, he found that bikes were a preferred form of urban transit — as long as the trip was under nine miles long. (That distance varies by city: San Francisco, for instance, may deter bikers because of the hilly terrain.) To lengthen that distance, Biderman built the first prototypes of the Copenhagen Wheel, timed with the 2009 United Nations Summit on Climate Change hosted by Denmark — a predecessor to this year’s more successful summit in Paris.
In the years since then, Biderman’s inbox piled up with messages. In late 2012, he discovered that 14,000 emails were sent to the MIT lab from people who wanted to buy a Copenhagen Wheel. Shortly after, Biderman founded Superpedestrian, a robotics company in Cambridge, Mass., that is ramping up production capabilities for the Wheel.

An electric bike, perhaps surprisingly, is a very old idea. Around 1868, a Boston inventor named Sylvester Roper attached a coal-fired steam engine to a frame, a vehicle that could “out speed any horse in the world.” (In 1896, after swiftly pedaling through Charles River Park, Roper died of an apparent heart attack.)
Why did Roper’s bike never take off? When his invention debuted, just after the close of the Civil War, cities were still compact places, essentially big villages that obviated the need for long-distance travel. Around the same time that Roper’s bike coughed into motion, cities started growing skyward and spilled outward into suburbs. At that point, the electric bike may have been useful to those within the city, but the emergence of subways in 1904 and Ford’s Model T in 1908 both usurped the limelight. Cities, for the next century, built their infrastructure to accommodate the car.
Today, rural and suburban areas are declining. The world’s population is once again becoming concentrated in urban pockets. “Cities have been a focal point for centuries, but they are becoming even more so with urbanization of the developing world,” Biderman says. “We are building cities at the fastest rate in history.” That means more and more residents needing to travel daily from a metro area’s outer ring to the city center. Just ask any motorist in Los Angeles or Washington, D.C., if they could imagine dealing with ever-increasing traffic, and you can see why Superpedestrian is readying for tens of thousands of orders.
“You don’t need to be a scientist to realize this is unmanageable,” Biderman says. But he predicts that once people start buying the Copenhagen Wheel, infrastructure for bikes will follow, in the same way that highways were paved once every family had a vehicle.
Biderman adds that the difference in today’s cities, compared to a century ago, is not simply a matter of how congested the streets are. The success of Superpedestrian is also reliant on our technological connectedness. “The relationship between people and the place they live is mediated by machines: creating feedback loops, measuring how things change in real time, and analyzing the data,” he says. The Copenhagen Wheel’s computer system quickly learns how a biker rides, then imitates her pedaling — an experience Biderman has described as “seamless.” “People report that it feels so natural, and they feel so strong,” he says. “The best way to describe it is feeling like Popeye. You pop the spinach, and you’re Superman.”
Today, people live farther away from where they work than ever before. “The car enabled us to do that, but people want to switch out. They want an alternative,” Biderman says. Cities won’t be shrinking, but with Superpedestrian, bikes can take us farther.
MORE: Tomorrow’s Energy-Saving Neighborhood Is Being Built Today in Texas

Correction, 1/11/2016: A previous version of this article said that the Copenhagen Wheel can be attached to the back wheel of any bike; in fact, the device works only on bikes with rear brakes.

How Does One Man Reduce U.S. Dependency on Oil? He Starts with Trucks and Vans

Posted on by robbie

When Clay Siegert is stuck in traffic behind a box truck, he doesn’t groan at the jumbo-sized gas-guzzler: He sees it as an opportunity.
As vice-president and co-founder of XL Hybrids, a Massachusetts-based company that converts commercial fleets to hybrid vehicles, Siegert is out to prove that the business of cargo transport doesn’t have to be a dirty one. XL Hybrids retrofits vans, minibuses and trucks by installing hybrid electric powertrains, so that every time a driver hits the brakes, a bit of kinetic energy is converted into valuable electricity. It’s a winning formula: The vehicles use 25 percent less gasoline, lowering carbon dioxide emissions while also reducing their company’s bottom line.
“When I see a truck going down the road with hybrid technology, I see less emissions, less oil being imported into the country,” Siegert says. “It’s more than just a truck or a van that drives somewhere. It’s those trucks that are going to drive hundreds of miles, maybe just that day. That adds up.”
Siegert spent more than a decade in various positions — at a firm trading energy commodities on the financial markets, a deregulated energy supplier offering a green alternatives to buying from local utilities and a trivia game manufacturer — before returning to school. While earning a master’s degree in supply chain management from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Siegert was introduced to Tod Hynes, a lecturer at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, who’d developed several wind energy projects. The pair hit it off and decided to collaborate on a new venture, though at the time, they weren’t exactly sure what.
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“Tod was looking for what was next in his career, and we both had an interest in clean technology and clean energy,” Siegert recalls. “Just looking at all the different industries, we kept thinking about all the millions of vehicles on the roads. We crystallized the idea that if you come up with a fuel-efficient technology that’s cost-effective, you could have a big impact on the amount of petroleum and gasoline used in North America and, eventually, globally.”
Because the big automakers (Ford, General Motors, Chrysler) already had huge research and development departments with decades of experience improving fuel efficiency, consumer cars were out of the question. Commercial fleets, on the other hand, were a largely untapped market.
XL Hybrids inked their first major deal with Coca-Cola, the world’s largest beverage company. Though Siegert was ecstatic a big brand signed on, he was also nervous about translating an idea that looked good “on whiteboards, spreadsheets and technical designs” into a reality. “Now you’ve gotta go out and deliver the results,” he thought. Luckily, the company did. Retrofits of 175 Coca-Cola vans hit the roads last year, cutting fuel usage by 20 percent, saving 6,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide and at least $15,000 over each vehicle’s 10-year lifespan.
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Coke is buying more, including 70 this year. XL Hybrids has since brought on PepsiCo, FedEx and the City of Boston as customers. Last October, all the vehicles it had retrofitted reached a collective 4 million miles in service. Already, that means the company saved 800 barrels of oil and over 350 metric tons of carbon dioxide exhaust.
Today, Siegert is tasked with brokering those sales and overseeing daily production. In addition to the official titles printed on his business card, his colleagues know him to be a “strategic planner,” a “supply chain optimizer” and a “sales accelerator.” Above all, he prizes efficiency and affordability. That’s why XL Hybrids skips adding any fancy frills during its retrofits; the company’s technology is available for under $10,000 without government subsidies — a first. “We remove costs wherever we can,” he says. “One of the core tenets of our business, for whatever product [Tod and I] came up with, was that we wanted it to be cost-effective and have a good payback.”
While that sounds like pretty standard business advice, it’s missing from a large swath of the clean energy sector, where customers are expected to pay a premium to get something green. At XL Hybrids, Siegert wants to prove that sustainability and profit can be two sides of the same coin. He’s splicing corporate interests and ecological concerns, in a word, into a hybrid. After all, when it comes to miles per gallon, what’s good for the environment is also good for investors.
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These Schools Are Opening Their Doors to Struggling Communities

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College campuses are expanding, and it’s not due to higher acceptance rates. Rather, it’s because, more and more universities are emphasizing service as a core mission and integrating with the communities around them through service.
Here are a few leading the way in neighborhood engagement.
Penn Alexander School, Philadelphia
In the early 2000s, the University of Pennsylvania started a series of programs targeting the rejuvenation of the nearby Spruce Hill neighborhood. Many of UPenn’s faculty and students live in the area, so the school decided to invest in its stabilization through lighting programs, safety patrols and homebuyer incentives.
Their biggest initiative, however, was the formation of the Penn Alexander elementary school, (previously called the Sadie Tanner Mosell Alexander University Penn Partnership School). What started as a simple public school in a struggling neighborhood is now so vibrant with families that school acceptance is determined by lottery.
Creating Community Connections, Boston
Sponsored by MIT, this program started back in 2000 and benefits the residents of Camfield Estates. MIT connects the area with technology through computer training, free laptops and high speed internet connection. Three-quarters of the residents chose to participate in the program when it was first announced. Called “C3,” it has recently been expanded to provide training and equipment to businesses and institutions in the area, as well as a new computer lab available for residents of the Estates and the neighborhood.
Center for Civic Leadership, Rice University, Houston
At Rice University, the administration has created a curriculum dedicated to service through the Center for Civic Leadership. Students and faculty alike participate in community service projects, research and programs benefiting Houston’s Fifth Ward. For students, service isn’t a one- time deal, but a four-year-long commitment. Freshmen start college with a first-year orientation to the surrounding community, and, if passionate, students can even earn an undergrad certificate in civic leadership. Recently, the Washington Center for Internships and Academic Seminars granted up to four $5,000 scholarships to Rice University to participate in the Center’s activities.
To learn more about universities participating in neighborhood engagement, click here.
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The Urban Farm That Is Soil-Free and Uses Virtually No Water

Posted on by robbie

Futuristic farms are not such a fantasy anymore, with dozens of projects cropping up around the country designing solutions to urban farming. The only problem? The costly price tag that comes with those initiatives.
Which is why CityFarm, born out of Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab, is aiming to create a soil-free urban farming system that may be economically feasible for cities — regardless of locale. The 60-square-foot farm grows lettuce, tomatoes and herbs in a windowless room inside MIT’s Media Lab, Fast Company reports.
With no soil and the help of artificial light, the farm produces crops with as much as 90 percent less water than traditional methods.

“It’s essentially like a big, clear plastic box, about 7-feet wide by 30-feet long,” Caleb Harper, a research scientist leading the project, tells Fast Company. “Inside of that box, I have pre-made weather. I monitor everything,”

The system uses both hydroponic (water) and aeroponic (air or mist environment) soil-free processes to grow and has produced crops three to four times more quickly than the normal growth process. Using a 30-day cycle, CityFarm has produced food for 300 people.

“No one has proven an economically viable model for these kind of plant environments,” says Harper. “What I’m trying to do is kind of be the Linux for these environments — the person that creates the common language for this new area of food production.”

Harper believes his methodology could eventually reduce agricultural consumption of water by 98 percent and eliminate the use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers, double nutrient densities and reduce energy use to grow crops.

Harper first became interested in the idea after visiting Japan following the Fukushima disaster in 2011, prompting him to think about how cities could produce food without fear of contamination. Through CityFarm, Harper is developing a “plant operating system software” and looking for ways to make the process economically feasible for more cities.

CityFarm is working with Detroit to open the first off-campus version and continues plans to expand the MIT location vertically.

MORE: No Soil? Or Sun? This Urban Farm is Raising Fresh Food in a Whole New Way

This App From MIT Tells You How Much Solar Energy Your House Can Produce

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As solar energy continues to become more available, more Americans are getting on board with the idea of taking their power off the grid and embracing more sustainable sources like solar panels.
But with that decision comes a lot of research. Individuals must find out just how expensive it might be and how much money installing solar panels actually saves, which can be a costly process if it involves seeking professional consultation.
Enter, Mapdwell.
Mapdwell, born out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), helps individuals determine solar potential of their properties using massive data sets across cities including Washington, D.C., Boston and Cambridge, Mass.
The company taps into LIDAR data from aerial mapping flights to produce one-by-one meter resolution 3D models of landscape including the shape of a roof and surrounding greenery.
With up to 8,600 data points to illustrate, the maps then provide a rating of solar potential based on analysis and historical weather data. Users can also share visual components of the data with a systems installer.
“We had to show you all the information, which can be overwhelming, but you need to have it if you really want to make a decision,” CEO Eduardo Berlin tells Fast Company. “Many times designers want to communicate the minimum amount of information to get you interested. But in this case, it’s different.”

Mapdwell lets users simply enter their address to access the information, as well as helping design custom solar systems based on metrics such as price, energy and environmental impact.

“The challenge is: How can you get people interested? How can you get people informed and excited with all these little things that we can do. If I do it, and you do it, and your neighbor does it, it could really have a huge effect,” Berlin says. “…You can really empower change within a community by people having all this information — if you manage to get it to them.”

The technology is only available for a select few cities right now, but the company is planning to expand, as well as design similar systems for rainwater collection, small wind energy installations and green roofs at a city level.

While solar energy still only accounts for less than 1 percent of the country’s electricity,  the potential of transitioning more people off environmentally harmful fossil fuels is evident. With the help of companies like Mapdwell, the process can move more quickly.

MORE: How Utah Stopped a Power Company’s Ridiculous Bid to Tax the Sun

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What Toxic Chemical Can Be Used to Make Solar Cells?

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How many times have you gone to use your TV remote only to find that its batteries are dead?
Another dead battery is useless, right? Well, not to researchers at MIT, which have found another way to use these lifeless objects: recycling their main ingredient — lead — to create solar cells.
Lead is a toxic substance that not only causes a multitude of medical problems but is also linked to spikes in violent crime. That’s why many governments have outlawed it from being used in paint and gasoline, as well as requiring battery manufacturers to recycle their product.
However, while the recycling process was working, there’s a slight hitch now. With the introduction of non-lead batteries, such as lithium-ion ones, there isn’t going to be as much of a need to recycle the old lead-filled ones, according to Fast Company.
So what’s going to happen to all that lead?
Fortunately, MIT researchers discovered the ability to use lead to produce solar cells from a material called perovskite, a mineral that’s incredibly energy efficient. Not only is it cheaper than the silicon used in today’s cells, but it also converts solar energy to electricity at a little less than 20 percent. To top it off, the mineral is highly flexible — meaning that the cells it makes are 100 times thinner than human hairs and can bend easily, reports Fast Company.
Normally, acquiring the lead would be a problem, but with all of these excess batteries, researchers have found their supply. From each battery, about 30 solar cells could be made.
Unfortunately, there aren’t any plans to commercialize this product. MIT researchers are leaving that to other companies, such as the U.K.’s Oxford PV, while they work on a lead-free perovskite solar cell.
But for the time being, those old batteries are being put to good use and given a second life.
Who would’ve thought something so toxic could be so energy efficient?
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MORE: Millions of Tiny Hairs Might Replace Your Windshield Wipers

Meet 3 Young Innovators Who Could Make The World Cooler — Literally

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Miles Barr wields the power of invisibility and draws energy from the sun. George Ban-Weiss can make the temperature drop in an entire city. And Emily Cole harnesses light to transform matter.
The three 30-somethings aren’t members of Marvel’s latest squad of superheroes. They’re part of a different high-powered team: MIT’s 35 Innovators Under 35.
Every year, MIT Technology Review Magazine picks 35 young problem-solvers to feature on its list, which includes scientists, inventors or entrepreneurs working on groundbreaking tech advancements in fields such as medicine, computers, data mining and robotics.
At least three of the members of this year’s list — Barr, Ban-Weiss and Cole — are working on new ideas that could help fight global climate change.
INVISIBLE MAN
Miles Barr, a 30-year-old entrepreneur, wants to turn every cell-phone screen into a solar panel without anyone noticing the difference.
He’s the cofounder of a company called Ubiquitous Energy, which is developing transparent — effectively invisible — solar panels. The technology’s implications for mobile devices are potentially transformative. No more battery-life worries: Every time you use your phone or tablet outside, it would be drawing power from the sun.
Barr also envisions larger-scale applications, like replacing entire windows with power-generating, transparent solar panels. The technology could mean less reliance on energy from fossil fuels, meaning less pollution overall.
SILVER SURFER
George Ban-Weiss, a 33-year-old professor in the University of Southern California’s school of engineering, came up with a simple idea to cool down Los Angeles: Paint roofs silver.
Black roofs soak up rays from the sun, making buildings hotter and heating up the air. Cool roofs — ones that reflect sunlight rather than absorb it — can make a measurable difference in the temperature in a city.
After Ban-Weiss presented his findings on cool roofs to the mayor of Los Angeles, the city passed a law requiring cool roofs for all new or refurbished roofs on residential buildings. It’s a change that could mean people in L.A. will have to run their air conditioners a little less, and the city will feel even cooler.
WONDER WOMAN
Excess carbon dioxide is making the planet hotter. But the harmful gas could be put to good use: making plastics, so says Emily Cole. The 31-year-old is the chief science officer at a company called Liquid Light, which is working on ways to convert CO2 into more useful chemicals.
Cole has helped develop technology that uses light to trigger reactions converting carbon dioxide into over 30 different chemicals. Liquid Light is focusing on ethylene glycol, which is used in plastics manufacturing, as it’s first commercial product.
Click here to meet the rest of MIT’s 35 Innovators Under 35.
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Millions of Tiny Hairs Might Replace Your Windshield Wipers

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Do your wipers ever seem two swipes behind the storm, leaving you wishing that the rain never even made it to your windshield in the first place? Soon enough, it never will, thanks to an amazing innovation that has the potential to revolutionize glass.
Sounds crazy? Not to a group of scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), whose new technology can control the behavior of glass.
Here’s how it works:
The engineers have created an elastic material that’s covered with tiny hairs that are about one quarter of the width of human hair. Introduce a magnetic pull and these fibers sway accordingly. Coat a windshield (or a window) with this hairy material, and water can be, in effect, redirected off of the glass.
The hair-like structures are most similar, and in fact inspired by, cilia — the tiny hairs in our noses that filter air.
The technology goes far beyond its inspiration, though, according to City Lab. It can even stop a water dead in its tracks on a vertical surface.
MIT’s latest advancement doesn’t just stop with liquids, though. It can also redirect sunlight, which could completely change the nature of windows. Not only can the hairs be manipulated to lighten or darken the glass gradually, they can also completely shut out light. Window shades and blinds may soon be a thing of the past.
“[The technology] could filter how much solar radiation you want coming in, and also shed raindrops. This is an opportunity for the future,”  MIT graduate student Yangying Zhu told MIT News.
If this innovation takes off, everyday life will be improved significantly. Beyond increased convenience, it can also improve safety, especially on the road. By wicking away water and reducing glare, everything from commutes to road trips will undoubtedly become much safer.
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From Fog To Faucet? Read About This Innovative Source For Drinking Water

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Can you imagine turning fog, which is so annoying to drive in, to practical use as drinking water?
That’s just what a group of scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Pontifical Catholic University did, reports the Washington Post — and it just might be a solution to drought in America.
While fog collection has been around for thousands of years in various ways, shapes, and forms, this team’s design is the most efficient and practical method out there. Using an innovative mesh that contains very tightly spaced strands of stainless steel, the system traps water as fog passes through it.
This is no ordinary window screen, though. MIT tapped mechanical engineering professor Gareth McKinley to create a coating that would make the water droplets stick while also making sure they could slide down and be collected.
The result: A technology that can harvest 10 percent of fog into potable water, which is five times the amount of any predecessors. Although this quantity may sound modest, with scale and over time, the collection adds up. With this team’s continuing research, fog can become a legitimate water source used by millions of people.
The MIT and Pontifical Catholic group did their testing in the Chilean desert, though the fog nets can be used anywhere — including drought-stricken California.
With the water shortage on America’s west coast being a hot topic in recent years, fog catching could be one simple fix to the enormous problem. Constructed from stainless steel (substance already widely used), this technology is practical and applicable. And, with residents being asked to cut back water consumption by 20 percent, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, any help to the problem should be welcome.
McKinley envisions fog-heavy areas such as the San Francisco Bay to benefit most from the nets, with other dry areas also making use of this remarkable innovation.
While fog was once at best, a natural beauty and at worst, a safety hazard – now it is showing its worth as a valuable resource.

These Works of Art Were Impossible to Create 20 Years Ago

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Imagine a world where science and art merge; where Da Vinci and Einstein work together on the same project.
It may seem strange, but the concept has come to fruition with the emergence of tech-art. Combining artistic creativity and scientific innovation, tech-art has redefined what can be viewed and considered art.
It all began in 2013 when Portrait of America and Rain Room burst into the art and tech worlds. Rain Room was featured in New York City’s Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) and allowed visitors to experience a rain shower in the rain forest without ever actually getting wet. The Portrait of America exhibit at the Smithsonian (which was on display this past February), was an American flag covered in pieces of glass that, when viewed through Google Glass, showcased different events in the history of the United States.
Now, in 2014, artists are continuing to innovate and excite. Below are three new exhibits taking the tech-art world by storm.
First up is Jim Campbell’s Rhythms of Perception located in the Museum of Moving Image in Queens, New York. A graduate of MIT with an electrical engineering and math degree, Campbell is not the stereotypical artist. However, he was actually a fine arts major at first, and, after he made the switch, has been able to integrate both areas of interest. His work includes sculptural LED works that are formed from the union of video and light and custom electronics. Currently, over 20 of his works are displayed in the exhibit.
Next is 5000 Moving Parts at the MIT Museum. The Cambridge, Massachusetts exhibit features six “kinetic” artists whose work focuses on the movement of the human body. One example is that of Arthur Ganson and Christina Campanella’s Machine with Breath — a lung that imitates the regular, rhythmic pace of breathing.
Finally, Dr. James Chung has brought sculptor Auguste Rodin into the twenty-first century with the introduction of Inside Rodin’s Hands: Art, Technology, and Surgery at the Cantor Arts Center at California’s Stanford University. Rodin’s famous hands sculpture is now a classroom tool in diagnosing medical conditions. The sculpture has been updated to a three-dimensional level that shows bones, nerves, and muscles — allowing it to be used for simulated surgeries.
With technology continuing to advance, it is only natural for it to expand into different arenas — and art is simply the newest area to be enriched by technology. We can’t wait to see what masterpieces will be created by the union of these two seemingly contradictory industries.
 
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