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Autonomous vehicles: The answer to our traffic woes

08/28/19 Wired — Berkeley Engineering's Alexandre Bayen and Liao-Cho are studying the impact that autonomous vehicles can have on traffic flow. And, their findings suggest that self-driving cars can help alleviate traffic.
Nighttime traffic on U.S. Highway 101 south of San Francisco

Shifting gears

05/01/19 — The integration of self-driving vehicles requires policy decisions that consider how travel behavior will shift with the introduction of new mobility choices.

Going with the Flow

05/01/19 — Researchers have developed a machine-learning tool to manage traffic where autonomous, partially-automated and manual vehicles share the road.
Illustration of MIT

Ion drive flight test points to radically different future for aviation

12/05/18 Forbes — Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have conducted a successful 8-second flight test of an aircraft with an ion drive propulsion system, a larger version of the same cutting-edge technology that Berkeley engineers are using to fly centimeter-scale microrobots.
Traffic on freeway interchange

Watch just a few self-driving cars stop traffic jams

11/19/18 Science — Anyone can start a traffic jam - just by tapping the brakes. Now, scientists at Berkeley have shown that a few self-driving cars can prevent such jams - and in some cases double the average speed of surrounding vehicles.

Turning cars into robot traffic managers

10/29/18 — Berkeley transportation researchers are addressing the emerging era of smart vehicles with a project that uses machine learning to manage traffic where autonomous, semi-autonomous and manned vehicles share the road. They presented their project, called Flow, at the Conference on Robotic Learning.
Roadway image showing bounding boxes over objects of note, like cars and traffic signals

Download the world’s largest self-driving dataset

06/07/18 Interesting Engineering — The Berkeley DeepDrive Industry Consortium has released an open-source dataset of 100,000 self-driving video sequences - largest of its kind - to the public in hopes of helping engineers develop autonomous vehicles.

Solar cruiser

06/01/18 — Berkeley's CalSol team designed a new solar-powered vehicle that can hold four passengers.
Waze navigation app on a cellphone

Why some cities have had enough of Waze

05/07/18 US News & World Report — Start-up-turned-tech-giant Waze solves traffic problems for some users, but creates challenges for others by overwhelming local streets. "There's nothing inherently wrong with routing apps, but the problem is overuse," says Alexandre Bayen, director of Berkeley's Institute of Transportation Studies.
Self-driving car being tested

Where are all the driverless cars?

04/04/18 Car Connection — Firms testing self-driving cars have slowed their programs, and did not beat a path to the door of the California DMV, which on April 2 was to begin issuing permits for testing on the state's roads. Berkeley transportation engineer Steve Shladover says that's because those companies are still trying to work out some challenging wrinkles.
Screenshot from Getaround app

How car sharing is evolving the transportation landscape

03/28/18 — Peer-to-peer car-sharing services have encouraged a small number of their members to ditch car ownership, according to a first-of-its-kind study of from the UC Berkeley Transportation Sustainability Research Center.
Traffic jam on a Los Angeles freeway

The perfect selfishness of mapping apps

03/15/18 The Atlantic — Popular mapping and routing apps may make overall traffic conditions worse in some areas, new research by Alexandre Bayen and the Institute of Transportation Studies suggests.

Why traffic apps make congestion worse

01/30/18 — Has your smartphone traffic app ever led you into a traffic jam? Professor and traffic engineer Alexandre Bayen, director of UC Berkeley's Institute of Transportation Studies, is working on smarter apps that will actually talk to one another to prevent clogged freeways and city streets.
Fisker EMotion car

Radical new battery technology for a $130,000 electric sedan

01/12/18 LA Times — Solid-state automotive batteries, like those being designed for Fisker Inc.'s all-electric EMotion supercar, will eventually exist, says materials science and engineering professor Gerbrand Ceder, but “it's not going to happen as fast as people think.”
Illustration of autonomous vehicle situation on city street

Are we going too fast on driverless cars?

12/15/17 Science — Automakers, high-tech companies and politicians are solidly behind self-driving cars and trucks as a sure path to a better, more mobile society. But research on the social, economic and environmental effects of autonomous vehicles is sparse - something Berkeley transportation engineers are seeking to remedy.
Pieter Abbeel in front of robot image

Case studies in forward thinking

11/01/17 — Nine Berkeley Engineering faculty members share some of their forward-looking work and how it might impact what's to come.
High-speer rail demo outside the Capitol in Sacramento

13.5-mile tunnel will make or break California’s bullet train

10/23/17 LA Times — A critical part of California's high-speed rail project is a 13.5-mile tunnel through the Diablo Range - a landmark project whose costs may greatly exceed initial expectations. "This is not good news for taxpayers of California," says civil engineering professor William Ibbs, who has consulted on similar rail projects around the world.
New École Polytechnique and the Institute of Transportation Studies agreement

École Polytechnique and Berkeley partner for new transportation program

10/11/17 — École Polytechnique and the Institute of Transportation Studies have signed a new partnership agreement for the new École Polytechnique's Executive Master degree program. The new program will train transportation leaders to design, deploy and manage strategies and projects for companies and organizations that have an international focus.