October 2, 2019
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October 1 – 2, 2019

The Smart Belt Coalition convened a two day meeting on CMU’s campus to discuss the coalition’s strategic plan current and future status. The Smart Belt Coalition is a regional effort between Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania to establish a dynamic and proactive collaboration between this region for the development of connected and automated vehicles.

October 2, 2019
Posted in What's Happening

October 2, 2019

Carnegie Mellon team, Lijun Yu, Dawei Zhang, Xiaojun Chang, Xiangqun Chen, and Alexander G. Hauptmann had a paper accepted to ICCV 2019 Demo Program at the International Conference on Computer Vision in Seoul, Korea entitled “Traffic Danger Recognition With Surveillance Cameras Without Training Data.”  More information about this project is available here.

September 27, 2019
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September 27, 2019

Today’s Smart Mobility Connection seminar featured Pei Zhang sharing his research on “Incentivizing Vehicle Mobility to Optimize Sensing Distribution in Smart City Applications.”  He examined the utilization of existing taxi fleets to optimize both mobility and passenger pickup as well as smart city sensing. Pei showed his teams work through 50,000 collected taxi traces with 230 actuated routes in the city of Beijing, China. Watch this seminar here.

September 23, 2019
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September 23, 2019

Christoph Mertz, UTC Faculty, sat down with NPR station WESA to discuss his latest work using deep learning to develop an early-warning system to predict landslides. Using the same technology Mertz developed under the UTC, he is able to use computer algorithms to analyze, identify and calculate where a landslide is more likely to occur. Learn more and listen here.

September 23, 2019
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September 23, 2019

Mobility21 UTC Faculty member Ding Zhao, welcomed Mobility21 UTC Executive Director Stan Caldwell, Program Manager Lisa Kay Schweyer, Senior Administrative Coordinator Chelsea Cavlovic and Metro21 Executive Director Karen Lightman for a tour of his Safe AI Lab.  Zhao, along with 4 of his students, provided an overview of their research, demonstrated how their autonomous vehicles “see and react” to pedestrians and vehicles and more.

September 22, 2019
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September 22, 2019

The Federal Highway Administration established the Center for Accelerating Innovation to serve as the focal point for internal and external coordination for identifying and prioritizing innovations. The team held their Center of Accelerated Innovation Meeting in Pittsburgh on September 18, focusing on Pittsburgh’s innovation. For their agenda they teamed up with Mobility21 to tour the National Robotics Engineering Center to learn more about technology and initiatives being led at CMU.

September 19, 2019
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September 19, 2019

Gernot Wagner and Mobility21 UTC Faculty member Costa Samaras published an opinion piece entitled “Do We Really Have Only 12 Years to Avoid Climate Disaster?”   The article reminds readers that the children and grandchildren of today will be managing the impacts of climate change for decades and centuries to come. Read the full article here.

September 18, 2019
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September 18, 2019

UTC Researcher, Ding Zhao introduced the Safe AI Lab lab to Mr. Thapana Sirivadhanabhakdi, president and CEO of ThaiBev, which is a founding industry sponsor for the CMU-Thailand program.

September 18, 2019
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September 18, 2019

PennDOT’s submission to the Automated Divine System Demonstration Grant was awarded 7.5 million to develop a consistent approach to allow for automated vehicles to safely operate in work zones. The core team is made up of PennDOT, CMU, and PSU. Mobility21 Director, Raj Rajkumar will be leading the Carnegie Mellon effort on the grant. To learn more about the research, team and proposal, read on>>

September 18, 2019
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Today, Mobility21 UTC released its latest “Research Recap.” The recaps are one-page overviews of the UTC funded research that describe the research project’s purpose, approach, key findings, conclusions, contact information for the research team and a link to the final research report.

Check out the one page recap to learn more about this project: The Intelligent Mobility Meter.

September 16, 2019
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September 16, 2019

Mobility21 UTC Faculty, Sean Qian, is developing a cyber-physical-social system that lets cities leverage the platform of ride-hailing companies in order to provide benefits for everyone in the transportation system. Qian will partner with the University of Pittsburgh and the City of Pittsburgh on this research, which is being funded by the National Science Foundation. Learn more here.

September 15, 2019
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September 15, 2019

Mobility21  Executive Director, Stan Caldwell, presented background information on Traffic21 and the Mobility21 University Transportation Center research to the the National Association of College and University Business Officers who are attending the 2019 Budget and Planning conference in Pittsburgh.

September 13, 2019
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September 13, 2019

Today, the first fall 2019 Smart Mobility Connection Series featured Mobility21 UTC faculty, Sean Qian. Qian discussed his work with helping Cranberry Township predict traffic delays in real time for 30 minutes in advance. The SMC was attended by Cranberry Township partners who presented to the CMU community why this work is so important and the positive impact it has had on congestion in Cranberry Township. Watch the video here.

September 11, 2019
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September 11, 2019

Traffic21 Director, Chris Hendrickson attended Public Works Expo in Seattle where he was a featured speaker, presenting his research entitled “Past and Future of the US Interstate Highway System.” The PWX Expo draws thousands of public works professionals from all over the world.

September 7, 2019
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September 7, 2019

Mobility21 UTC Faculty, Ding Zhao discusses how his lab is developing better AI for safer autonomous vehicles. He discusses how he’s partnering with industry and government to save time and lives with AI. Watch the full video here.

September 4, 2019
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September 4, 2019

Costa Samaras, UTC Faculty in Civil and Environmental Engineering/Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University, discusses Tesla’s newly-unveiled solar rental option with Marketplace’s Jack Stewart.  Read the article and/or listen to the conversation here:  https://www.marketplace.org/2019/08/20/teslas-plan-for-solar-could-increase-competition/. 

September 1, 2019
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September 1, 2019

Mobility21 UTC Researcher, Sean Qian, is leading an interdisciplinary team from Carnegie Mellon University as they attempt to address rural transportation in Southwestern Pennsylvania’s Greene County.  The team includes Traffic21 Director, Chris Hendrickson, UTC Researcher, Costa Samaras and Metro21: Smart Cities Institute Director Karen Lightman.

Working in collaboration with Greene County and Waynesburg University, the team from Carnegie Mellon University will test an innovative rural county mobility platform, with the ultimate goal that it can be replicated in other rural counties.

Sean Qian says this project has “the potential to advance the fundamental knowledge of how energy-efficient, affordable mobility services can work in rural America.”

September 1, 2019
Posted in What's Happening

September 1, 2o19

Mobility21 UTC Researcher, Christoph Mertz presented his UTC research at Smart Monitoring, Assessment and Rehabilitation of Civil Structures (SMAR) 2019 in Germany. His talk entitled “Moving Beyond the Romans: Deep Learning and Road Maintenance” highlighted his research using machine learning to predict and prevent potholes and road repairs.

August 28, 2019
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August 28, 2019

Mobilty21 UTC researchers Sean Qian and Stan Caldwell visited Butler County to meet with Commissioners Leslie Osche, Kim Geyer and county transportation officials to discuss transportation research and technology and explore potential collaboration.

August 22, 2019
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August 22, 2019

In the DARPA Subterranean Challenge, Team Explorer, whose members come from Carnegie Mellon University and Oregon State University, deployed robots to autonomously map and search underground mines. Team explorer won the event by detecting and pinpointing the most artifacts. Further, In addition to being named champions of the DARPA Subterranean Challenge event, the team also was cited for “Most Accurate Artifact.”  Sebastian Scherer, UTC Faculty and an associate research professor in the Robotics Institute said that “Mobility was a big advantage” for the team. Read more and watch videos of the robots during the challenge here.

August 19, 2019
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Mobility21 UTC Researcher Ding Zhao discusses his research in new CMU College of Engineering video on Making AI Safe for Autonomous Vehicles.   Learn more about his research here.

August 15, 2019
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August 15, 2019

Mobility21 Executive Director, Stan Caldwell, led a class entitled “Smart Transportation: Issues of Equity” for the The Public Policy and International Affairs Program (PPIA) students during Summer 2019. The classes featured UTC researchers who presented on different topics of intelligent transportation systems (ITS).  The class was able to develop hands on experience of ITS concepts by applying them to a group project with the Port Authority of Allegheny County.

August 15, 2019
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August 2019

Integral to the Harvard Business School case study on Testing Autonomy in Pittsburgh, was information shared by Traffic21 & Mobility21 UTC Executive Director, Stan Caldwell. The case study provided an overview of the introduction, evolution and lessons learned testing autonomous vehicles in Pittsburgh, presented in a way allowing fellow academics and city leaders access to this unique knowledge on autonomous vehicle testing.

August 8, 2019
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August 8, 2019

This week “Save the Date” announcements were sent out for the Traffic21 Institute Ten Year Anniversary.  This celebration held November 7 & 8 on CMU’s campus, is expected to include 300+ participants, creating a forum for connecting community, foundation, government and industry partners to increase collaboration and kick-off Traffic21’s (including Mobility21 and Metro21) next decade.  At this Ten Year Anniversary, Traffic21 is also embracing a formidable new challenge: Innovating Mobility for All.  If you did not get a “save the date” and want to attend the symposium, please email Mobility21 UTC Program Manager, Lisa Kay Schweyer (LKSchweyer@cmu.edu).

August 7, 2019
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August 7, 2019

Today at the Association of Commuter Transportation’s Annual Conference, Mobility21 UTC Program Manager, Lisa Kay Schweyer, received a President’s Award for Extraordinary Service.  The Association for Commuter Transportation mission is to “… create an efficient multimodal transportation system by empowering the people, places, and organizations working to advance TDM [transportation demand management] in order to improve the quality of life of commuters, enhance the livability of communities, and stimulate economic activity.”  Lisa Kay has been actively involved in this association since 2003, served on state-wide chapter leadership roles, and led the international Vanpool Council for 2 years.