Every time you buckle up, there’s a very good probability Michigan State University analysis is serving to preserve you protected. With greater than 50 school throughout MSU Mobility and the College of Engineering, Spartan researchers are tackling transportation challenges from each angle, together with safer roads, stronger automobiles, smarter infrastructure and safe autonomous programs.
Using our campus as a dwelling mobility laboratory, MSU researchers accomplice with federal companies and trade to ship real-world options that shield drivers in Michigan, throughout the nation and world wide.
Designing safer roads
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, velocity was a consider 29% of all street deaths within the U.S. for 2023. Peter Savolainen, MSU Research Foundation Professor within the College of Engineering, has been main efforts to scale back site visitors crashes, accidents and fatalities by learning methods to encourage drivers to decelerate with help from the Federal Highway Administration, in addition to subsequent initiatives from the Michigan, Minnesota and Washington Departments of Transportation.
“We have had a number of projects focused on what factors impact travel speeds,” says Savolainen, “because speeds have the biggest impact on safety both in terms of the average speeds and the variability in speeds. Speeds are a particular concern in urban environments, where we have seen major increases in fatalities, especially those involving pedestrians and bicyclists.”
Savolainen and his workforce’s area analysis particularly seems at how a driver’s conduct is influenced by roadway or site visitors traits. For instance, does a raised median in the course of the street or on-street parking gradual extra drivers down? And how do these results range throughout completely different contextual environments similar to completely different velocity limits or city versus rural communities?
“Ultimately, this research is about creating a better, safer Michigan,” says Savolainen, a local of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. “With the significant advances we have seen in terms of vehicular safety features, including automation technologies, we would expect to see marked decreases in traffic fatalities. However, the opposite has occurred, especially post-pandemic. Our role at MSU is to better understand why this has occurred and to design our road systems to help address this important public health issue.”
As a results of Savolainen’s analysis, the state has carried out the usage of dynamic velocity suggestions indicators all through Michigan that measure a driver’s velocity utilizing radar and show that velocity in actual time.
Protecting transportation infrastructure
The American Society of Civil Engineers 2025 Report Card not too long ago confirmed that modernizing America’s transportation infrastructure is not simply a possibility — it is a nationwide crucial. Following high-profile failures just like the 2024 Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse, the demand for steady, high-precision monitoring of our growing old transportation lifelines has by no means been extra important.
In an important, modern use of expertise, Surya Congress, an assistant professor within the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, is utilizing drones and synthetic intelligence–powered pc imaginative and prescient to safeguard transportation infrastructure belongings throughout the nation.
His work addresses various structural and geotechnical challenges like landslides. Congress led initiatives with the Federal Railroad Administration utilizing drones to enhance security and inspection throughout railroad corridors. Congress guided a collaboration with the Minnesota Department of Transportation or MnDOT monitoring the vulnerability of important soil embankments and slopes.
“This project with MSU ensures that maintenance decisions are data-driven, using advanced technologies to create a high-precision understanding of risk, improving safety for both travelers and the surrounding communities,” says Raul Velasquez, knowledgeable engineer with MnDOT.
Another challenge Congress piloted is with the Alaska Department of Transportation conducting 360-degree bridge monitoring.
“Dr. Congress’ research with the Alaska DOT and Public Facilities Bridge Section has fundamentally changed how we inspect and manage our structures,” says Jesse Escamilla III, knowledgeable engineer with the Alaska DOT Bridge Design Squad. “What once felt like a glimpse of the future — drones, 3D models and digital twins — is now standard practice and part of our everyday workflow.”
This multifaceted analysis, funded by federal and state companies, supplies a complete strategy to monitoring and monitoring adjustments in infrastructure well being circumstances over time.
“These novel technologies give us the unparalleled advantage of examining entire transportation corridors safely, quickly and efficiently, whether it’s a remote bridge in Alaska or a high-traffic urban embankment in Michigan,” says Congress. “This interdisciplinary research is vital because it moves us from reactive repairs to proactive, data-driven management, protecting not just our structures, but the commuters and communities that rely on them.”
By enabling sooner, safer inspections throughout varied belongings, MSU’s work helps companies establish issues — from vulnerability of slopes to misery in infrastructure belongings — earlier than they change into disasters, safeguarding important infrastructure and communities.
Engineering stronger automobiles
While lighter automobiles provide higher gasoline mileage, engineers proceed to make sure these automobiles are robust sufficient to guard the driving force and passengers inside within the occasion of an accident.
Striking the proper stability is on the coronary heart of analysis being spearheaded by Mahmood Haq, a professor within the College of Engineering and director of the Composite Vehicle Research Center, and Satish Udpa, a University Distinguished Professor emeritus. Their workforce collaborates by way of federal funding from the U.S. Department of Defense by way of the U.S. Army Ground Vehicle Systems Center in Detroit.
“The key aspect of this project is a systems-level approach to accelerate innovation by integrating the latest advancements in battery technologies, communication antennas, composite materials, and advanced manufacturing and integrating them onto a prototype vehicle,” says Haq. “The bigger goal is to serve the nation and the state to maintain competitiveness of the automotive and defense industries and to create a trained workforce in these emerging areas.”
Udpa’s curiosity within the area extends past army functions to handle two of probably the most urgent challenges for electrical automobiles: vary anxiousness, or the concern of operating out of battery cost earlier than reaching the specified vacation spot, and the soundness points related to light-weighting.
“We are looking for ways to help people by eliminating range anxiety for EV users,” says Udpa. “We are used to seeing vehicles with traditional internal combustion engines being able to travel 500 miles between gas tank refills. Electric vehicles have to offer a similar range to stay competitive, and light-weighting is one of the better strategies to accomplish this. Since lighter vehicles also require less fuel, they are, environmentally speaking, a greener alternative.”
As automobiles change into lighter, the soundness of the automobile is affected and small adjustments within the load may influence the dynamics of the automobile. The researchers wish to make sure the drivability of the automobile stays the identical regardless of the passenger and baggage weight. This requires the event of latest sensors and management programs that guarantee the soundness of the automobile irrespective of the load or terrain circumstances.
Federal and state funding are critically essential since expertise might be made broadly accessible to corporations within the state with out having to restrict it to a single firm supporting the analysis. The funding is additionally essential as a result of it helps expertise growth.
Preventing motor failure
Electrical machines can’t let you know when or which part is about to interrupt. Shanelle Foster, an affiliate professor within the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, is creating on-line motor fault prognosis and prognosis strategies to rapidly establish when a part is more likely to fail by monitoring its present efficiency and forecasting its future efficiency with help from the National Science Foundation.
“Failures can be mechanical or electrical,” says Foster. “We want to detect and diagnose what is happening before it becomes catastrophic.”
Electrical motors convert electrical power into mechanical movement. If the motor powering an EV experiences {an electrical} failure or one of many elements that make up the motor breaks, it may be harmful for the automobile’s occupants.
“We want to be ready before something happens,” says Foster. “The electrical motor needs to be able to continue to operate until the driver can move the vehicle safely to the side of the road.”
Keeping autonomous automobiles protected from hackers
While researchers are searching for methods to maintain autonomous, or self-driving, automobiles protected and safe on the roads, management and robotics professional Shaunak Bopardikar, an affiliate professor within the College of Engineering, is conducting federally funded analysis utilizing sport principle to manage and function automobiles and make them resilient to assaults on their sensors, communications or management alerts.
“Hackers can attack a car’s computer system and stealthily corrupt sensors or control signals at various levels and make it unsafe for driving,” says Bopardikar, whose analysis on this space is funded by the National Science Foundation. “Maybe you can’t get into your car or maybe you are unable to distinguish how fast you are traveling from 65, 75 or 80 miles an hour.”
Bopardikar and his workforce use robots to check completely different eventualities on a small scale. And MSU’s campus supplies a dwelling transportation laboratory to do that, with passenger automobiles, buses, e-scooters and bicycles, and police and emergency automobiles touring the roads throughout campus on daily basis. Bopardikar’s workforce hopes this analysis is not going to solely make autonomous automobiles safer, but in addition construct extra client confidence in the way forward for mobility.
With federal help, Spartans are advancing mobility analysis that touches each side of recent transportation. And with continued funding, they’ll proceed their momentum to make our roads, infrastructure and automobiles safer at this time and tomorrow.
Read more tales about MSU analysis making transportation safer for all.
For generations, Spartans have been altering the world by way of analysis. Federal funding helps energy most of the discoveries that enhance lives and preserve America on the forefront of innovation and competitiveness. From lifesaving most cancers remedies to options that advance expertise, agriculture, power and extra, MSU researchers work on daily basis to form a greater future for the folks of Michigan and past. Learn more about MSU’s research impact powered by partnership with the federal authorities.