news 2020

Students of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Stuttgart have developed and built the unmanned testing platform Aircraft for Research and Applied Science (ARAS). In the process, they designed the components for it to be able to withstand high loads. After the mechanical and electronic integration was finished, the "UAStudents Gruppe" (a compound made up of Unmanned Aerial System, another word for drone, and students) carried out extensive ground testing before the aircraft successfully took off for the first time in October.

Short-term disturbances caused by aircraft noise at night can lead to cardiovascular death within hours. This is shown in analyses by a team of researchers from the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute and Empa. The researchers used a dataset covering the years 2000 to 2015 to investigate how mortality rates in the Zurich airport area are related to acute nighttime aircraft noise exposure; they recently published their findings in the European Heart Journal.

An area in the Olympic Peninsula's Hoh Rain Forest in Washington state for years held the distinction as one of the quietest places in the world. Deep within the diverse, lush, rainy landscape the sounds of human disturbance were noticeably absent.

Aircraft also make noise on approach, which is often underestimated. A research project involving Empa has shown that it is quite possible to reduce noise during approach, to avoid particularly loud approaches and at the same time to reduce fuel consumption. In the future, pilots shall receive software assistance to help them better manage the complex relationships between air traffic control, flight mechanics and environmental impact.

For the first time, a study demonstrated that loud night-time noise from airplanes can trigger a cardiovascular death within two hours. Researchers from the University of Basel, the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Swiss TPH) and partners compared mortality data with acute night-time noise exposure around Zurich airport between 2000 and 2015.

Looking for a bird's'eye view of human impact? A new study provides the most comprehensive picture yet of how human-caused noise and light pollution affect birds in North America, including how these factors may interact with or mask the impacts of climate change. Recent troubling findings suggest that North American bird populations have declined sharply in the last few decades.

Many of us rely on public transport to get to work, school, and to meet friends and family. But in the time of Covid-19, Dr Lena Ciric (UCL Civil, Environmental & Geomatic Engineering) asks: is it safe to use these vehicles and is there a difference between them? Transport has contributed to the spread of coronavirus - locally, regionally and internationally.

In future, commercial vehicles will not only have to emit less CO2 but also meet stricter exhaust emission limits. Many experts expect that this could herald the end for fossil diesel. One possible alternative is dimethyl ether: The highly volatile substance burns very cleanly and can be produced from renewable energy.

Both elements are critical for applications such as self-driving cars Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have developed a new metric for evaluating how well self-driving cars respond to changing road conditions and traffic, making it possible for the first time to compare perception systems for both accuracy and reaction time.

Security software for autonomous vehicles Before autonomous vehicles participate in road traffic, they must demonstrate conclusively that they do not pose a danger to others. New software developed at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) prevents accidents by predicting different variants of a traffic situation every millisecond.

Routing apps such as Google Maps or Nokia's Here platform could offer a cost-effective way of calculating emission hotspots in real time, say researchers at the University of Birmingham. These apps routinely capture detailed information as motorists use the GPS technology to plan and navigate routes.

Drivers and passengers can inhale significantly lower levels of air pollution by setting their vehicle's ventilation systems more effectively and taking a 'cleaner' route to their destination, a new study reveals. Road transport emissions are major source of urban air pollution - nitrogen oxides (NOx) and particulate matter (PM) coming from vehicle exhausts, plus non-exhaust emissions such as brake dust, tyre wear and road dust in the case of PM.

On the ground, windy conditions strengthen these electrical flashes, but new experiments tell a different story for flying objects. At the height of a thunderstorm, the tips of cell towers, telephone poles, and other tall, electrically conductive structures can spontaneously emit a flash of blue light.

Autonomous vehicles come at a cost: increased energy use. Some analysts suggest that these increased power needs are significant enough to drastically reduce vehicle range thus eliminating the possibility of electric autonomous vehicles. Instead, these analysts claim autonomous vehicles must be gas-electric hybrids.

By Susanne Eigner Researchers at TU Graz and AVL focus on software systems of autonomous driving systems. They developed a method for generating safety-critical simulation scenarios and an adaptive control procedure for compensating for internal errors. Additional can be found at the end of the message The future has already arrived.

Additional data boosts accuracy of tracking other cars, pedestrians For safety's sake, a self-driving car must accurately track the movement of pedestrians, bicycles and other vehicles around it. Training those tracking systems may now be more effective thanks to a new method developed at Carnegie Mellon University.

Study finds simple changes in road resurfacing practices could improve gas mileage for heavy vehicles and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Every time you hear a deep rumble and feel your house shake when a big truck roars by, that's partly because the weight of heavy vehicles causes a slight deflection in the road surface under them.

Modeling study shows battery reuse systems could be profitable for both electric vehicle companies and grid-scale solar operations. As electric vehicles rapidly grow in popularity worldwide, there will soon be a wave of used batteries whose performance is no longer sufficient for vehicles that need reliable acceleration and range.

Decision support for car buyers: Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute have developed a web tool called the Carculator that can be used to compare the environmental performance of passenger cars in detail. The program determines the environmental balance of vehicles with different size classes and powertrains, and presents the results in comparative graphics.

Engineers have demonstrated a practical way to use magnetism to transmit electricity wirelessly to recharge electric cars, robots or even drones. The technology could be scaled up to power electric cars as they drive over highways, robots on factory floors and drones hovering over rooftops. Stanford engineers have taken a big step toward making it practical for electric cars to recharge as they speed along futuristic highways built to "refuel" vehicles wirelessly.