MIT Professor’s IoT Sensors Make Roads Safer

Again in 2005, earlier than smartphones had been usually obtainable, MIT Professor Hari Balakrishnan was so fed up with commuting delays in Boston that he constructed a cell system to observe highway situations.

He and his analysis group at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory developed CarTel, quick for automotive telematics. Utilizing sign processing and machine studying, their sensing system for automobiles was in a position to infer the presence of potholes and different impediments from adjustments in site visitors stream, which it measured with GPS and an accelerometer. Their analysis gained a number of awards, and the system was lined by The Boston Globe.

In 2010 Balakrishnan and two cofounders commercialized CarTel by launching Cambridge Mobile Telematics. At this time the Massachusetts firm is the biggest telematics service supplier on this planet. Insurance coverage firms, automotive producers, rideshare companies, and public companies use CMT knowledge to evaluate driver conduct, encourage safer driving, dispatch roadside help, and extra.

Balakrishnan, an IEEE Fellow, is that this yr’s Marconi Prize winner for his “elementary discoveries in cell sensing, networking, and distributed techniques.” The award, given by the Marconi Society, is taken into account to be the highest honor in communications.

“On paper this award honors me, however it actually is a recognition of my 30-plus Ph.D. college students, postdocs, collaborators, and the group at CMT who’ve labored extremely onerous in inventive methods to take analysis concepts and have them actually impression the world,” he says. “It honors the sector of cell sensing and networked techniques.”

Hari Balakrishnan talks to the Marconi Society about his profession highlights and his ideas on receiving the prize.Marconi Society

Utilizing knowledge to make driving safer

Balakrishnan got here up with the concept for CarTel whereas speaking with fellow MIT Professor Samuel Madden, a director of the college’s Data Systems and AI Lab and an professional on knowledge administration and sensor computing.

“I advised him we must always begin a analysis challenge that takes sensors that we each know loads about, connect them to vehicles, measure what’s taking place, after which attempt to perceive the information,” Balakrishnan remembers. “This was earlier than iPhones, Androids, and Google Maps.”

They later based CMT, with Madden serving as its chief scientist.

“CarTel was one of many first initiatives in cell sensing,” Balakrishnan says. “We confirmed that it may work at scale.

“I used to be making an attempt to determine methods to commercialize it utilizing the notion of cell sensing for social good.”

Assist got here in 2009 from William V. Powers, a seasoned gross sales govt who grew to become Balakrishnan’s enterprise associate. He’s additionally a CMT cofounder and the corporate’s CEO.

Balakrishnan says that though the startup had the know-how, it didn’t have a enterprise mannequin. After studying articles about how insurance coverage firms had been utilizing costly {hardware} to measure individuals’s driving to set premium costs and uncover fraudulent claims, they discovered their mannequin.

“Our mission is to make the world’s roads and drivers safer.”

“It clicked in my head that we had proven, in precept, how to try this with shopper telephones and cheap Web of Issues [IoT] gadgets that may very well be put right into a automotive with out skilled installers,” he says.

That early system advanced into DriveWell, an AI-driven platform that gathers knowledge from displays together with accelerometers, gyroscopes, and place sensors in smartphones, dashcams, and IoT gadgets such because the DriveWell Tag.

The platform combines the data with contextual knowledge to create an image of how drivers are working their automobiles, measuring components reminiscent of onerous braking, extreme dashing, and cellphone distraction, Balakrishnan says.

“Our mission is to make the world’s roads and drivers safer,” he says.

DriveWell has offered companies to greater than 30 million automobiles thus far. Insurance coverage firms together with Admiral, Discovery, HUK-Coburg, MS&AD, and USAA use CMT’s applications to supply reductions to higher drivers. CMT not too long ago partnered with Hyundai to supply its clients real-time roadside help and restore companies. There are additionally DriveWell, FuelStar, and Openroad cell apps for motorists who need suggestions about their driving.

The primary indoor location system

Balakrishnan has created different techniques that use sensors for sensible functions. Between 1999 and 2004, he oversaw the event of the Cricket indoor location system. It mixed radio frequency and ultrasound applied sciences. Beacons mounted on partitions and ceilings publish data on an RF channel, which sends out a chirping sign. The beacon then sounds out a corresponding ultrasonic pulse. Receivers connected to cell gadgets pay attention for the RF indicators and the ultrasonic pulse. Cricket makes use of the completely different speeds of sound and of RF to calculate the space between the receiver and the beacon.

The system offered house identifiers, place coordinates, and orientation. Cricket offered distance ranging and positioning precision of between 3 and 5 centimeters. It was utilized in areas the place GPS didn’t work properly, reminiscent of hospitals, workplace buildings, and analysis facilities.

“GPS solely works open air,” Balakrishnan says. “Even in the present day, you’ll be able to’t get GPS indicators inside. When your apps present you the situation inside, it’s utilizing different applied sciences.”

The analysis group open-sourced the {hardware} and software program, and greater than 1 million items had been constructed and deployed.

“This strategy didn’t scale to each system on this planet,” Balakrishnan says, “as a result of including ultrasonic {hardware} to each system is just not sensible. Nonetheless, with trendy smartphones able to sending and receiving ultrasonic indicators on their audio system and microphones, the strategy developed in Cricket would possibly turn into helpful sooner or later. Certainly, some current proposals for contact tracing for COVID-19 have used this strategy.”

This yr’s IEEE Medal of Honor recipient Vint Cerf congratulates Marconi Prize winner Hari Balakrishnan on the Marconi Awards Gala, held on 27 October in Washington, D.C.Marconi Society

A love of analysis and academia

Balakrishnan earned a bachelor’s diploma in pc science in 1993 from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. He picked the sector, he says, as a result of he thought it could let him make sensible use of arithmetic.

“I knew nothing about pc science,” he says. “I had by no means programmed a pc earlier than. However I knew I used to be inquisitive about issues that had been mathematical in nature, and I loved each math and physics drastically. After a couple of yr and a half, I felt like I understood what the sector was about. By the point I completed my undergraduate diploma, I completely beloved it.”

Whereas pursuing a Ph.D. in pc science on the University of California, Berkeley, he grew to become captivated with conducting analysis, he says. He loved it a lot, he says, that he needed to make a profession of it.

He’s additionally recognized for his early research on methods to enhance wi-fi networks—which will be discovered within the IEEE Xplore Digital Library and which gained the 1998 Affiliation for Computing Equipment’s Doctoral Dissertation Award.

Within the remaining yr of his Ph.D., in 1998, he determined to pursue a tutorial profession. He interviewed for a college place at MIT and knew instantly it was the place he needed to work, he says. The college employed him that yr, and he has labored there ever since.

“I felt like this was the place the place individuals had been on the identical wavelength as me,” he says. “It’s at all times good to go to a spot the place individuals admire what you do.”

Regardless of his entrepreneurial success, Balakrishnan continues to show.

“I simply actually get pleasure from working with college students and simply love analysis,” he says. “I get pleasure from educating college students and, frankly, they educate me as a lot as I educate them.”

The IEEE group

Balakrishnan says he intially joined IEEE as a pupil to get the discounted price for membership and convention registrations. However after he started working, he realized that it’s vital to be a part of a “skilled group that has like-minded individuals who care concerning the fields that I care about,” he says. “IEEE has benefited my profession as a result of I’ve been at conferences and occasions the place I’ve made skilled connections that may final a lifetime.”

He’s additionally a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

IEEE acknowledged him in 2021 with its Koji Kobayashi Computers and Communications Award for “broad contributions to pc networking and cell and wi-fi techniques.”