By Steve Frandzel Seeking a way to improve the navigational ability of robots, Colin Comard and his Expo team turned to the animal world — specifically the bat’s remarkable ability to maneuver quickly and precisely using sonar.
“Bats have specialized anatomy and biology that allow them to navigate with echolocation,” said Comard, who is getting a degree in electrical and computer engineering. “We’re trying to use that evolutionary advantage for our own robots to help them navigate better.” Continue reading →
By Steve Frandzel Sophia Uchiyama and her Expo team have designed a small, inexpensive radiation detector which will enable anyone with a smart phone to “photograph” radiation and determine in a flash if they’re being exposed to high levels of radiation.
“We wanted something that’s easy to understand for people who are not trained in nuclear science, and which literally presents a picture of the radiation around them,” said Uchiyama, who will graduate next year with a degree in radiation physics after finishing coursework for a math minor.
Congratulations to the award-winning teams and their outstanding work at the 2016 Undergraduate Engineering Expo! Here’s a summary of the winners: Continue reading →
Brian Wood, professor of environmental engineering.
Brian Wood, professor of environmental engineering has been awarded a fellowship by the London Mathematical Society (LMS), the United Kingdom’s leading learned society for mathematics. As part of the fellowship, Wood will reside in Oxford and deliver a series of six lectures at prestigious universities including Oxford University, Cambridge University, Imperial College, and University College.
The fellowship and lectures represent a unique opportunity to bring visibility to Oregon State and help foster potential collaboration. Wood will also conduct collaborative research with Helen Byrne, University Lecturer in Computational Biology at the Mathematical Institute of Oxford. The topic of both the research and the lectures will be upscaling in complex, hierarchical biological systems, such as tissues and organs.
The primary aim of the visit is to establish new partnerships between Wood and members of the Mathematical Institute at Oxford who have common interests in the development and application of tissue homogenization in biology and medicine (creating tissue samples that are equal in composition).
Wood’s primary research interests include the description of mass, momentum, and energy transport in natural and engineered multiscale systems. He also specializes in subsurface hydrology; bioremediation and biochemical processes; water and wastewater treatment; and sustainable design and engineering.
The LMS publishes journals and books, provides grants to support mathematics, and organizes scientific meetings and lectures.
Last week, the OSU AIAA Design Build Fly (DBF) team competed for the fourth year at the International Cessna/Raytheon Design Build Fly competition. A team of 12 students went to Wichita, KS from April 15-17 to compete against more than 80 universities from across the world and finished 6th place, the best in the club’s history.
The Design Build Fly competition requires universities to design and construct a radio-controlled aircraft around a set mission profile that changes every year. This year’s profile revolved around the process of distributed manufacturing and required teams to generate two aircraft – a production aircraft (P-plane) optimized to fit inside a larger manufacturing aircraft (M-plane). Planes were designed to complete a set of three missions: The first mission involved the larger plane (M-plane) flying three laps of the flight course within five minutes; the second mission involved the M-plane carrying the P-plane subassemblies and flying a lap for each respective subassembly within ten minutes; and finally, the third mission involved the P-plane flying three laps while carrying an internal payload (a 32 oz Gatorade) within five minutes.
Despite unfavorable wind gusts of up to 30 mph, OSU soared through the missions, successfully completing all on the first attempt as well as passing a bonus mission (assembling the P-plane and installing the Gatorade payload in under 2 minutes). The team’s 6th place finish secured OSU DBF’s reputation as the highest ranking school without an aerospace program for the fourth consecutive year. Congratulations to the team. Keep flying high, Beavers!
The team and planes outside the Cessna Hangar in Wichita.Meet the fleet: The M-plane dubbed “Tilikum” (far right) and the P-plane.
Seeking a way to improve the navigational ability of robots, Colin Comard and his Expo team turned to the animal world — specifically the bat’s remarkable ability to maneuver quickly and precisely using sonar.
