Once again the Maestro group had a strong presence at the 
SciTech conference, the biggest aerospace conference in the US with more than 4200 participants and 2000 technical papers. Representing the lab, PhD student Pedro Leal and Dr. Darren Hartl presented four technical papers related to the avian-inspired and EVA glove projects (all papers are listed below).
- “Skin-based camber morphing utilizing shape memory alloy composite actuators in a wind tunnel environment” (P. Leal, H. Stroud, E. Sheahan, M. Cabral, D. Hartl)
- “Experimental and computational assessment of a shape memory alloy based morphing wing incorporating linear and non-linear control” (P. Leal, T. White, V. Goecks, J. Valasek, D. Hartl)
- “Control of Morphing Wing Shapes with Deep Reinforcement Learning” (V. Goecks, P. Leal, T. White, D. Hartl, J. Valasek)
- “Finite Element Analysis of an Index Finger Flexion in an Extravehicular Activity Glove” (V. Varya, W. Scholten, R. Fernandes, B. Dunbar, D. Hartl)
This conference included many first-time accomplishments for the lab: the first wind tunnel testing of a morphing wing, the first high-fidelity design of an EVA glove (collaboration with Dr. Dunbar), and the first experimental implementation of control algorithms for morphing structures (collaboration with Dr. Valasek). As usual many networking events took place with colleagues from Boeing, ATA, Utah State, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Georgia Tech, and others.