With the exponential rise in drone activity, safely managing low-flying airspace has become a major issue. Using a network of small, low-cost radars, engineering professor Cammy Peterson and her colleagues have built an air traffic control system for drones that can effectively and accurately track anything in an identified low-altitude airspace.
BYU robotics experts are building a humanoid robot that can impressively lift large and unwieldy objects such as ladders, kayaks, car tires, chairs, and heavy boxes. And it does so safely because its whole structure is flexible.
BYU’s Compliant Mechanisms Research lab, inspired by the ancient art of origami, is building a foldable, compact design that could help launch satellite systems to space in a rocket. After five years of research, a team led by professors Larry Howell and Spencer Magleby has succeeded in creating foldable antenna systems than can deploy off space rockets and permanently open to enhance satellite systems.
A futuristic BYU-designed, origami-inspired Flex Chair, cut out of a single piece of flat material and folded into shape, has made YouTuber Mark Rober’s Top 10 list. In a Nov. 2 video post, Rober spotlights the chair at #7 on his list of Crunch Lab builds in the past year, and credits BYU compliant mechanisms researchers for the innovative design.
The BYU Rocketry Team and their Utah-inspired rocket named “Alta” got on the podium three times, earning two first prizes and a second-place finish at the 2024 Spaceport America Cup.
In Mark Rober’s latest sure-to-be-viral video, he pursues an epic journey to make the world’s tiniest Nerf blaster. That journey leads the engineer and YouTuber extraordinaire straight to his alma mater, Brigham Young University.
For the BYU Rocketry Team, celebrating the Fourth of July this year with fireworks just isn’t going to cut it. After all, fireworks that might shoot a few hundred feet in the air pale in comparison to the 10,000 feet their BYU rocket reached while winning the 2023 Spaceport America Cup.
To find effective therapies for chronic low back pain, and to help curb opioid addiction, the NIH created the Back Pain Consortium Research Program. BYU is one of 10 major universities (along with Harvard, Ohio State and the University of Utah) tapped to help with this effort, and new work from researchers here has led to a system to prescribe patient-specific back pain remedies like doctors would prescribe medication.
Engineering students at BYU have built a vehicle that can travel from Provo to Niagara Falls on one gallon of gas. To be exact, it can travel 1,915.83 miles per gallon, an astounding distance that is not only the best in the United States, but the best across the Americas.
A group of BYU researchers have traveled back in time to solve a seemingly irreconcilable scientific mystery that has confused engineers and chemists for nearly two decades. And while they didn’t actually hit 88 miles an hour in a DeLorean like Michael J. Fox, the team did end up in the same time frame as Marty McFly, where they found the answer to a metals processing conundrum that has popped up in modern academic research.