Faculty & Staff Ryan Chin
Ryan Chin
Ryan Chin is a Research Specialist and PhD Candidate at the MIT Media Lab. His research in urban mobility systems addresses the energy and mobility problems of 21st century cities such as energy efficiency, congestion, urban land-use, and carbon emissions leading to global warming. He has led and managed the conceptual and design development of a series of Lightweight Electric Vehicles (LEVs) within the Smart Cities group including the CityCar, RoboScooter, and GreenWheel Smart Bicycle.
Each LEV has been built upon “Robot Wheel” technology – in-wheel electric drive motors with embedded steering, electronically actuated braking, and suspension that can be controlled independently through By-Wire control systems. These projects were developed in collaboration with MIT Media Lab sponsors General Motors (GM), Sanyang Motors (SYM), and Schneider Electric.
Currently, he is building the CityCar – a foldable, sharable, modular, electric two-passenger vehicle that utilizes four Robot Wheels – in collaboration with Denokinn, a Spanish based economic incubator that has created a consortium of automotive suppliers to industrialize the CityCar within 3 years. In 2007, Smart Cities unveiled the RoboScooter – A folding electric motor scooter – at the Milan Motorcycle and Bicycle show. The RoboScooter also utilizes modular Robot Wheels that enable the Scooter to fold and minimizes the total parts to one tenth of a traditional motor scooter. The 3rd vehicle based on in-wheel motor technology is the GreenWheel – an electrically assisted bicycle that utilizes an integrated in-wheel motor and battery hub. The GreenWheel provides electrical assist so that users can easily overcome hills and travel longer distances (20 miles on a 25 minute rapid charge), thus enabling greater accessibly to bicycling for all demographics.
Chin has also led in the development of “Mobility-on-Demand” (MoD) Systems – a network of one-way shared-use LEVs enabled by electric rapid charging infrastructure and smart fleet management systems. Users of MoD simply walk to the closest charging station, swipe a credit card, pick-up a CityCar, RoboScooter, or GreenWheel, and then drop-off at another charging station. Chin’s research contribution on sustainable urban mobility in the Smart Cities group led to the group’s first major publication, Reinventing the Automobile: Personal Urban Mobility for the 21st Century, by William J. Mitchell, Christopher Borroni-Bird, and Lawrence Burns, (MIT Press, January 2010). Professor William J. Mitchell was the director of the Smart Cities group from its founding in 2003 until his passing in 2010.
Chin in 2007 co-founded the MIT Smart Customization group (SCG) with Professors William J. Mitchell, Marvin Minsky, and Frank T. Piller with the task of improving the ability of companies to efficiently customize products and services across a diverse set of industries and customer groups. Chin’s research in SCG currently focuses on the environmental, energy, and material benefits of smart customization in products.
Chin has been a keynote speaker and panelist at conferences like MIT’s Emerging Technologies Conference (EmTech), SIGGRAPH, TEDx , Convergence, China Planning Network (CPN), MIT World, and Gridweek. Chin at MIT earned a Master of Science in Media Arts and Sciences (2004) and a Master of Architecture (2000); and Bachelor’s degrees in Civil Engineering and Architecture from the Catholic University of America (1997).
