Principal Investigator Hari Balakrishnan
Co-investigators Mohammadreza Alizadeh , Kristin Bergmann , Samuel Madden , Nicholas Roy , Vinod Vaikuntanathan
The falling cost of consumer drones has allowed scientists to track erupting volcanos, receding glaciers, and other processes too difficult or dangerous to observe in person. To expand these efforts, MIT researchers are developing a platform to allow hundreds of drones to gather information, together, at closer range than satellites or instruments on land and sea can capture. The platform would include incentives for owners to lend their drones to a mission, and tools to coordinate the fleet's work, interpret collected data, and protect privacy rights of people on the ground. Applications include monitoring of air pollution, sea-level rise, wildfires, and bridge and building defects.