Aeronautical and astronautical engineering

PBS NewsHour correspondent Miles O’Brien visits MIT to see the Hyperloop team in action as they work on building a prototype pod that would travel on a high-speed transportation system. O’Brien explains that the MIT team is “testing arrays of common magnets that would levitate the pod over an aluminum track.”

Popular Science reporter Mary Beth Griggs writes that in an MIT course students developed a fleet of duckie-adorned self-driving taxis for a village called “Duckietown.” “Each of the robot taxis is equipped with only a single camera, and makes its way around the roads without any preprogrammed maps." 

Prof. Emilio Frazzoli speaks with Nicole Dungca of The Boston Globe about his new startup nuTonomy, which is developing a fleet of driverless taxis for Singapore. Frazzoli explains that he feels the biggest impact of autonomous vehicles is in “really changing the way we think of personal mobility, or mobility, in general.”

MIT startup nuTonomy is developing driverless taxis to serve as a form of public transit in Singapore, reports Nyshka Chandran for CNBC. “The driverless taxis will follow optimal paths for picking up and dropping off passengers to reduce traffic congestion,” Chandran explains. 

Fortune reporter Robert Hackett writes that MIT spinoff nuTonomy is developing a fleet of driverless taxis for Singapore. Hackett writes that the company “could become the first to operate fully self-driving cars, known as ‘level four,’ in a city commercially.”

Wendy Koch of National Geographic spoke with members of the MIT Hyperloop team about their work transforming their design for a levitating pod that could transport people at hundreds of miles an hour into an operational prototype. “It’s a great opportunity to learn and possibly to change the future of transportation,” says project manager and graduate student John Mayo. 

Wired reporter Emily Reynolds writes that researchers from MIT CSAIL have developed a new communication system that is designed to help humans and robots work together in emergency situations. The new system reduces the needs for communication by 60 percent, reducing the potential for information overload. 

MIT Hyperloop team members Philippe Kirschen and Sabrina Ball speak with Mike Nikitas of NECN about the team’s approach to the SpaceX competition. “We wanted to design a pod that was safe, scalable and feasible,” explains Kirschen.” We really focused on the technology that we thought we could develop… that could possibly be applied to a full-scale hyperloop.”

Wired reporter Alex Davies speaks with graduate student Phillipe Kirschen, team captain of the MIT Hyperloop team, about the team’s strategy. Kirschen explains that the team is focused on developing a “pod that is gonna go really fast, that is gonna levitate, that can have good attitude control, and that can brake well.”

Graduate student Chris Merian, chief engineer for MIT's Hyperloop team, speaks with Radio Boston’s Meghna Chakrabarti about the team’s success in the Hyperloop contest. Merian says the team saw the competition as a, “really cool engineering challenge that we are really passionate about, and seeing our hundreds of hours of work rewarded like that was really, really nice.” 

Popular Science’s Priscilla Mosqueda writes about the team of MIT students that won the first round of the SpaceX competition.  “We had a clear message: our pod was about making something safe, stable and feasible,” explains team captain and graduate student Philippe Kirschen.

A team of MIT students won the first round of the SpaceX Hyperloop competition for their design of a pod that could transport passengers on a conceptual high-speed transportation system.  MIT and other top teams will build and test their designs at the Hyperloop Test Track in California, reports the Associated Press.

Boston Herald reporter Laurel Sweet writes that a team of MIT students has won the first round of the SpaceX Hyperloop contest. “Powered by renewable energy, Hyperloop aims to rocket floating passenger pods through elevated tubes at nearly the speed of sound,” writes Sweet. 

MIT students captured the top spot in the first round of the SpaceX Hyperloop competition for their design for passenger pods that could travel on a high-speed transportation system, reports David Morris for Fortune. 

A team of MIT students took first place in the first round of the SpaceX Hyperloop competition, reports Steve Annear for The Boston Globe.  Team members told Annear that, “It’s great to see our hard work recognized, and we are excited to have the opportunity to continue to push this technology one step closer to reality.”