<aside> 📄 April 24, 2024 A new paper was published in The Journal of the Royal Society Interface! In this paper, an LPV bird flight dynamics model was implemented and the scheduled elbow and wrist angles used to morph between configurations were optimized to obtain optimal flight dynamics characteristics.
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<aside> 👥 March 25, 2024 Welcome to Mija Jovchevska who is visiting us supported by the Journal of Experimental Biology ECR Visiting Fellowship to collaborate with the team on our ongoing projects.
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<aside> 📄 March 21, 2024 A new paper, led by Dr. Kevin Haughn, was published in Communications Engineering! In this paper, we used deep reinforcement learning to develop controllers for a camber morphing wing that were capable of rejecting gust disturbance based on pressure tap readings. Of note, we found that controllers developed with only three pressure taps performed similarly to controllers with six.
Kevin also wrote a blog post about the work!
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<aside> 👥 February 16, 2024 Welcome to Stevi Dunn and Ellie Hintzman the latest BIRD Lab undergraduate researchers! They will be working in collaboration with BIRD lab grad studentsKaleb Bordner and Francisco Jackson, respectively.
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<aside> <img src="/icons/cash_green.svg" alt="/icons/cash_green.svg" width="40px" /> February 1, 2024 We are excited to announce that we were selected to receive a DURIP from the Army Research Office to support the establishment of a bird flight research hall in collaboration with Dr. Michelle Hawkins at the California Raptor Center! The new $2.9M equipment grant will allow the purchase of high speed motion capture and photogrammetry of birds in flight to explore maneuverability, adaptability, and to enhance rehabilitation efforts.
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<aside> <img src="/icons/departures_purple.svg" alt="/icons/departures_purple.svg" width="40px" /> January 17, 2024 Dr. Christina Harvey visited Utah State University to give the Launch Your Engineering Career keynote and meet with collaborators.
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<aside> 🏆 January 12, 2024 Rowan Glenn won the Jefferson Goblet Student Paper Award! This award is given to the highest ranking paper and presentation in aerospace design and structures at AIAA SciTech Forum. Their work was in collaboration with Lucas Dahlke who led the aerodynamic work in the paper and the Museum of Wildlife and Fish Biology. Congrats to all!
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<aside> 👥 November 27, 2023 Welcome to Dr. Alfonso Martinez, the first BIRD Lab post doctoral fellow! He will be leading work relating to unsteady avian maneuvering in collaboration with Dr. Michelle Hawkins and the team at the California Raptor Center.
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<aside> 🏆 October 16, 2023 Dr. Christina Harvey was named as a 2023 Packard Fellow! This grant from The David and Lucile Packard Foundation supports blue sky research and will enable the lab to pursue new and exciting questions in the field!
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<aside> <img src="/icons/cash_green.svg" alt="/icons/cash_green.svg" width="40px" /> October 10, 2023 We are grateful for new funding support from the UC Davis College of Engineering Next Level Research initiative that will supportFrancisco Jackson’s and Alex Kerlee’s projects!
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<aside> 👥 September 25, 2023 Welcome to Huanglun (Adam) Zhu who will be assisting Kiran Weston who is visiting this quarter and will be running some wind tunnel experiments Stay tuned for the results.
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<aside> 👥 September 25, 2023 Welcome to Alex Kerlee the latest BIRD Lab undergraduate researcher! She will be working on a project in collaboration with Prof. Seongkyu Lee using FlightStream.
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<aside> 🏆 August 28, 2023 Congrats to our wonderful collaborator Dr. Michelle Hawkins for winning the T.J. Lafeber Avian Practitioner of the Year Award! We’re so lucky to have you on the team!
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<aside> 👥 August 21, 2023 Welcome to Kaleb Bordner the first PhD student in the BIRD Lab! He will be starting officially this fall, but has already begun work on our project relating to bird flight dynamics.
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<aside> 👥 August 7, 2023 Welcome to Francisco Jackson the newest masters student in the BIRD Lab! He will be starting officially this fall, but has already begun work on our project relating to bird wing animation.
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<aside> 👥 June 9, 2023 Many of the first undergrad students who joined us are graduating and heading off to industry and academia. Thanks to Benjamin Tai-Brownlee, Tejas Lotay, Bryan Tiang and Jackie The for their time and help getting the lab up and running!
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<aside> 📄 April 17, 2023 New paper is published in the Journal of Experimental Biology! In this paper, we reviewed how biological insights have influenced aircraft design and discuss where they can take us next.
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<aside> 📄 April 6, 2023 New preprint is up on arXiv! In this work, led by Dr. Kevin Haughn, we used deep reinforcement learning to develop a controller for autonomous gust alleviation leveraging distributed pressure sensing.
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<aside> <img src="/icons/departures_purple.svg" alt="/icons/departures_purple.svg" width="40px" /> March 21, 2023 Dr. Christina Harvey visited the US Air Force Academy to give a seminar and meet with collaborators. Stay tuned for the ongoing work we have planned!
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