Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a system that uses dashboard-mounted smartphones to help drivers avoid red lights and reduce fuel consumption.
The app called SignalGuru predicts when a traffic signal is about to change, and the speed that should be driven when approaching an intersection in order to cruise through without stopping.
“The stop-and-go pattern that traffic signals create increases fuel consumption significantly,” said Emmanouil Koukoumidis, the scientist behind the app.
“We wondered how we could help drivers cruise through signal light intersections without stopping, and how much we could save on gas and improve the flow of vehicles,” he added. When approaching an intersection, the camera on a driver’s dashboard-mounted smart phone is activated, which detects when a signal transitions from red to green and vice versa.
Using this information, the app determines the speed that should be driven to avoid stopping at a red light on the cusp of turning green, or a green light just shy of turning red.
“It tells the drivers that ‘if you drive at 30 miles per hour then you’ll be able to cruise through without stopping,’” explained Koukoumidis, adding that the speed recommended is always within legal speed limits.
Information on the traffic signals, such as when they change, is crowdsourced by other users of the app and then sent back to SignalGuru to improve the accuracy of its predictions. Koukoumidis said that while testing their prototype in Cambridge, Massachusetts they saw a 20 percent decrease in fuel consumption, which could have a significant monetary and environmental impact.
“In the USwe’re spending 1/3 of the annual energy consumption for transportation and a big part of that is vehicles,” he explained. The system was also tested in Singapore, where the traffic lights vary depending on the volume of traffic.
“It was less accurate compared to Cambridge where signals were pre-timed and had fixed settings but it would still work reasonably well with predictions accurate within two seconds,” Koukoumidis said.
Crowdsourcing information about signal lights is necessary, he said, because this data is difficult to access from traffic authorities, which are not unified and do not always have the information computerized.
But this could also pose safety concerns, for example, a signal not changing when predicted due to inaccuracies.
“SignalGuru will advise the driver when to arrive at the intersection but the driver should always check for himself that the light indeed turned green,” he said, noting that it’s similar to how a driver does not follow a navigation device blindly.
Currently the group is looking for industrial partners to commercialize the software. They also plan to implement other safety features, such as thresholds on deceleration, before making it accessible to the public.
Koukoumidis said that going forward their patented approach could also be used to capture other information about the real world, such as available parking spaces or real-time gas prices.
” are computer eyes looking out into the street that can capture all sorts of information,” he said.
The research project was launched as part of the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology’s Future Urban Mobility group, in which professors Margaret Mantonosi and Li-Shiuan Peh were advisers.
An app that helps drivers avoid red traffic signals
An app that helps drivers avoid red traffic signals
Book Review: ‘Padma’s All American’ Cookbook
- For her, the true story of American food proves that immigration is not an outside influence but the foundation of the country’s culinary identity
Closing out 2025 is “Padma’s All American: Tales, Travels, and Recipes from Taste the Nation and Beyond: A Cookbook,” a reminder that in these polarizing times within a seemingly un-united US, breaking bread really might be our only human connection left. Each page serves as a heaping — and healing — helping of hope.
“The book you have before you is a personal one, a record of my last seven years of eating, traveling and exploring. Much of this time was spent in cities and towns all over America, eating my way through our country as I filmed the shows ‘Top Chef’ and ‘Taste the Nation’,” the introduction states.
“Top Chef,” the Emmy, James Beard and Critics Choice Award-winning series, which began in 2006, is what really got Padma Lakshmi on the food map.
“Taste the Nation,” of course, is “a show for immigrants to tell their own stories, as they saw fit, and its success owes everything to the people who invited us into their communities, their homes, and their lives,” she writes.
Working with producer David Shadrack Smith, she began developing a television series that explored American immigration through cuisine, revealing how deeply immigrant food traditions shaped what people considered American today.
She was the consistent face and voice of reason — curious and encouraging to those she encountered.
Lakshmi notes that Americans now buy more salsa and sriracha than ketchup, and dishes like pad Thai, sushi, bubble tea, burritos and bagels are as American as apple pie — which, ironically, contains no ingredients indigenous to North America. Even the apples in the apple pie came from immigrants.
For her, the true story of American food proves that immigration is not an outside influence but the foundation of the country’s culinary identity.
“If I think about what’s really American … it’s the Appalachian ramp salt that I now sprinkle on top of my Indian plum chaat,” she writes.
In this book Lakshmi tells the tale of how her mother arrived in the US as an immigrant from India in 1972 to seek “a better life.”
Her mother, a nurse in New York, worked for two years before Lakshmi was brought to the US from India. At 4 years old, Lakshmi journeyed alone on the 19-hour flight.
America became home.
Now, with visibility as a model and with a noticeable scar on her arm (following a horrific car accident), she is using her platform for good once again.
Lakshmi is merging her immigrant advocacy with her long career in food media.
The photo of her on the cover, joined by a large American flag, is loud, proud and intentional.
The book contains pages dedicated to ingredients and their uses, actual recipes and, most deliciously, the stories of how those cooks came to be.
