Cameron Cogburn can ride his bike way faster than you can.  The MIT Cycling team member spends his weekends winning races, and his weekdays in the lab at MIT, with his spare time spent training and figuring out ways to optimize results.  Last weekend, MIT Cycling hosted a race weekend, where Cameron and many other teammates worked together for a total of SEVEN first place finishes. 

The Columbia Criterium race was held at Grants Tomb this past weekend, pitting some of the top collegiate cyclists against each other.  The guys you see in front of the pack?  That’s the MIT cycling team.  When they aren’t winning cycling races, they’re innovating their respective fields and conducting groundbreaking research.

The velodrome in Frisco, TX is banked at 45 degrees, making it daunting at first, but incredibly fun to ride and race on.  In late September, MIT Cycling sent seven students to represent the team at Frisco, TX for the Track National Championship.  Thanks to tons of training, fantastic teamwork, and financial support from FXDD, MIT was able to take home the gold medal for the overall team award in Division II.

These days, it seems like the terms “MIT technology” and “groundbreaking development” are synonymous.  A new iPhone app developed by MIT called Cardiio accomplishes a very basic medical task in a very unconventional way…using your phone’s camera.  The technology measures when you’re face is reflecting more light and when it’s not, with the result being a completely wireless measure of your heart rate.

This is Security Camera two-point-oh. MIT has developed technology that would make the dozing-off security guy a non-issue. The computer system automatically identifies the optimal method for scanning incoming information and how quickly each method would take. It’s a dynamic system that can decide whether it should initially utilize skin detection algorithms to ID an individual or leverage background detection technology to spot unusual objects, making the whole process more accurate and efficient. Bank-robbers, beware. 

When the kids at MIT aren’t solving problems for the US military, or NASA, they solve problems for you and me.  The newest innovation from the MIT labs makes summer BBQs easier for everyone, and involves the most popular condiment in America: ketchup.

(Source: CNN)

Almost all airplanes that can fly autonomously rely on GPS to figure out where they are and which way they’re heading, but that means they can’t do cool things like play slalom in a parking garage. Not so with this guy. Using an inertial measurement unit and a laser range scanner in combination with some cutting edge artificial intelligence algorithms, the plane is capable of localizing and navigating through dense environments with all computation done onboard in realtime.

The MIT cycling team is now using sets of Zipp 404s and 808s, some of the most aerodynamic wheels on the market, with excellent performance in hard crosswinds like those blasting the course during the Team Time Trial on Friday. Both the women’s and men’s TTT teams were able to shave critical seconds off of their times, taking home 1st and 2nd place, respectively, at Nationals.

MIT has been developing technology to make commercial aircraft wings out of carbon fiber, which would greatly reduce gust loads and fuel usage. With carbon fiber’s very high strength- and stiffness-to-weight ratios, they can couple the bending of a carbon fiber beam to its torsion. When an airplane flies into a gust and its wings are bent upward, the bend-twist coupling of carbon fiber laminates will reduce the otherwise very high structural loads by more than 25%—a stunning figure appealing to any innovative airline.

Many of us never thought we’d live to see cars fly. Well, think again. Terrafugia, a company founded by pilots and engineers at MIT, debuted their Transition Roadable Aircraft at this year’s New York International Auto Show. It is a 2-seater aircraft that flies on unleaded automotive fuel and also drives on roads. Quite a two-fer. 

(Source: siliconrepublic.com)