Grouping heavy trucks in the same lane with short following distances—known as platooning—can increase road capacity, improve safety, and save fuel. A team of advanced vehicle technology experts at Volpe conducted a first-of-its-kind study of truck...

For 10 days in late March, Volpe engineers provided hands-on software and hardware expertise to African naval personnel from four nations as part of the U.S. Navy’s Obangame Express. Obangame is an at-sea maritime exercise that focuses on techniques...

Capturing travel data on commercial motor vehicles (CMV) is an essential component of improving and maintaining roadway safety. Through U.S. DOT’s Small Business Innovation Research program, one small business is addressing the limitations of current...

Modern cockpits, also known as flight decks, have hundreds of switches, alerts, and displays, and pilots are trained to know what each one of them does or indicates. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) called on Volpe to develop a single-...

Meet ALIAS, the robot co-pilot that can help fly a plane. ALIAS, which was developed under contract by an agency of the U.S. Department of Defense, was recently tested on Volpe’s Boeing 737 simulator to see how it would react if a human pilot lost...

U.S. DOT Volpe Center Director Anne Aylward recently contributed an article to Seaway Compass, the newsletter of the Saint Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation. In this newsletter, Aylward discusses the decades-long partnership between the Seaway...

Fourteen U.S. small businesses will receive up to $150,000 each through U.S. DOT’s SBIR program to conduct six months of Phase I concept development. Read on for a brief look at the winning proposals and the small businesses that submitted them.

On March 21, the U.S. DOT SBIR program announced 15 recommendations for awards for SBIR’s fiscal year 17.1 solicitation. The awarded small businesses competed in a field that included 106 proposals for 9 research topics. The selected small businesses...

Commercial space vehicle operators are becoming more common in the national airspace, and the number of orbital and sub-orbital passenger space flights is expected to increase significantly over the next decade. Volpe supports the FAA’s NextGen Space...

The rapid evolution of electronic control and connectivity in motor vehicles has multiplied challenges for vehicle safety assurance. NHTSA turned to Volpe’s nationally recognized advanced vehicle technology team to assess the safety and reliability of...