Transforming Mobility

Computing on the Edge

You’re on a long road trip. You’re enjoying your favorite tunes as your self-driving car moves you down the road. Then suddenly, a driver going in the other direction swerves into oncoming traffic right at you. Will the artificial intelligence, or AI, in the car have enough time to react and save you from a head-on crash?

Engineers Study Bird Flight

A new study from Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Assistant Professor Christina Harvey uses modeling and aerodynamics to describe how gulls can change the shape of their wings to control their response to gusts or other disturbances. The lessons could one day apply to uncrewed aerial vehicles or other flying machines.

Developing a Fleet of Quiet Rotorcraft

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Associate Professor Seongkyu Lee’s group will apply their expertise in predicting rotorcraft noise to help industry leader Supernal identify noise sources in their aircraft designs and recommend strategies to reduce it.

Your Flying Taxi is Almost Here

In less than a decade, your taxi might come from the sky instead of the street. Once a hallmark of science fiction, flying taxis have become the cutting edge of aerospace engineering thanks to researchers like UC Davis’ Seongkyu Lee, an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering. Lee’s group is conducting groundbreaking aeroacoustics research to lay the computational groundwork to make air taxis a reality.

Paving the Way to Zero Emissions from Cement

In a new perspective article for the journal One Earth, Sabbie Miller, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Davis, Professor John Harvey, director of the Pavement Research Center at UC Davis and colleagues at ETH Zurich and Imperial College London break down the greenhouse emissions challenges facing the cement industry and present a strategy to get to zero emissions.