CREATING INTELLIGENT MOBILITY

UNT researchers from across disciplines work together to deploy intelligent mobility systems, including autonomous vehicle and aerial drone technology, in rural and urban settings.

UNT’s Center for Integrated Intelligent Mobility Systems (CIIMS) is paving the way for the future of transportation and mobility working to accelerate collaboration between manufacturers, logistics professionals and emerging technologies to develop unmanned aerial vehicles, autonomous cars and robots.

Texas Flight Test Center in Justin and UNT’s Discovery Park in Denton, the university announced another new collaboration.

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Established in 2020, the center is focused on integrated, intelligent mobility systems as well as creating solutions for the systems’ complexities, such as the technology, data and policy. It brings together more than 50 researchers across disciplines, from the College of Engineering and the G. Brint Ryan College of Business to the College of Information and College of Health and Public Service.

“The whole concept of mobility we’re tackling is very broad and encompassing,” says Terry Pohlen, senior associate dean of the G. Brint Ryan College of Business, director of UNT’s Jim McNatt Institute for Logistics Research and co-director of CIIMS. “It ranges from personal mobility to supply chains and the movement of freight.”

Industry Partnerships

The center’s projects have tapped into partnerships with national and global implications. In addition to this past October’s live flight test of emerging Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) technologies, including a simulated air route between industry partner Hillwood’s Alliance-

During the summer, UNT partnered with the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma to develop an Advanced Regional Mobility Corridor that will offer future economic opportunity and growth. Leadership from both sides are collaborating to create a plan for facilitating a multi-modal advanced transportation corridor that will leverage progress with emerging transportation technologies, including automated ground vehicles and AAM.

Choctaw Nation also is developing an Emerging Aviation Technology Center on more than 44,500 acres of tribal-owned land within the Choctaw Nation Reservation and has already built an extensive aviation testing safety infrastructure to support research, development and testing of emerging aviation technologies.

“The future opportunities associated with advanced transportation technologies are exciting and are happening faster than we may realize,” says James L. Grimsley, executive director of advanced technology initiatives with the Choctaw Nation Oklahoma and an Oklahoma Transportation Commissioner. “Future economic growth and even quality of life and quality of health in our communities will be directly impacted by emerging transportation technologies.”

And UNT’s expertise and industry connections in North Texas position it at the forefront of the development of intelligent mobility systems that can solve big problems.

“We are advancing all aspects of research from intelligent mobility ideas to business practices to the community acceptance of the autonomous ground and air vehicles with the cooperation of industry,” says Andrey Voevodin, co-director of CIIMS and associate dean for research in the College of Engineering.

Test Flight Facility

The center also is constructing a $1.2 million outdoor Advanced Mobility Test Facility for researching autonomous air and ground vehicles at UNT’s Discovery Park, which will be the first of its kind in Texas. Researchers can conduct field tests in all weather conditions and in full compliance with the Federal Aviation Administration, while ground-based equipment can test communications for autonomous cars. In spring 2022, legislative staffers and industry partners visited Discovery Park to learn more about the center.

“When we develop and integrate the intelligent mobility innovations, business models and technologies into one cohesive focus, and when we co-operate closely with our industry, federal, state and regional government partners and policy makers, all of this is for one purpose,” Voevodin says. “To improve the quality of life for citizens and communities in Texas and beyond.” air taxis, air ambulances and delivery vehicles are a normal part of life,” Namuduri says.

His work is part of CIIMS, in which faculty in various disciplines — from business to engineering — have collaborated and brought their expertise together around intelligent mobility since its founding in 2020.

Namuduri, who has eight active grants and has received research grants from the National Science Foundation, NASA and U.S. Air Force, is principal investigator on another project — funded with a three-year $746,000 grant from NASA — that will explore the supply chain logistics of high-volume manufacturing, such as the gaps that need to be addressed to be able to build drones.

Te research also involves faculty members Terry Pohlen and Ila Manuj from the G. Brint Ryan College of Business and Nandika D’Souza from the College of Engineering. Tey are creating processes for commercialization of unmanned aircraft systems and components. Te research received additional funding from the U.S. Air Force and North Central Texas Council of Governments.

“What we’re doing here at UNT is at the very forefront of the transformation in transportation,” Pohlen says. “With advanced air mobility combined with artifcial intelligence and machine learning, we are going to open up a tremendous amount of opportunities and new applications that we haven’t even dreamed of.”

Shaping Alloys

Marcus Young, associate professor of materials science and engineering, also has his eye on the sky. He used his skills in shape memory alloys — those that can be deformed when cold but return to their pre-deformed “remembered” shape when heated — for a future hypersonic aircraft for NASA.

Young served as part of its University Leadership Initiative, a group of university researchers and industry partners. Team members characterized and processed materials to make torque tubes that extend and contract based on electrical heat and result in shape morphing of the airplane’s body. Tis shape morphing reduces the loudness of the airplane as it travels at hypersonic speeds, since people often complain when it’s 75 decibels or above. Unsurprisingly, the measure of this unit is also known as the “noise annoyance level.”

“If we want to fy fast through residential areas, we need aircraft to be quiet,” Young says.

Te alloys make the fight more efcient as well. Te researchers shaped the panel so it can change from concave to convex and it breaks up the airfow which can be tuned to reduce the noise. His group made new alloys, from which he created wires and tubes that are signifcantly lighter and smaller.

“In doing so, manufacturers can put them in smaller places within the aircraft body that wouldn’t have been possible before,” he says.

Te team was the frst to make a high temperature version of shape memory alloy wire, which has a fatigue lifetime of over 20,000 cycles, meaning it has a longer service time before needing to be replaced. Tis goal is important for opening the door to many more applications in industries including and beyond aerospace. Tey’ve set a goal to extend that to 100,000 cycles.

Shape memory alloys ofer functions here on Earth. Te Jaguar car has used shape memory alloy on the side of its autos so it’s faster and more efcient. Cell phones and cars use the alloys for their antennae. And alloys are used in mechanisms to heat or cool car seats as well.

“Tey end up making their way into things that people often use but wouldn’t think about,” Young says.

Young’s work with metals has varied from his career as a scientist who bends metals to ft the needs for manufacturers and other institutions to his role as an artist who makes sculptures. He has worked with fellow UNT researchers to use shape memory alloy technology for making bulletproof protection material for the U.S. Army and improving superconductive wires. He used a dual beam ultra-high resolution feld emission scanning electron microscope to research the processing and manufacturing techniques such as what base metals were used and details on grain size and plating behind the alterations of a 500-year-old painting for the Dallas Museum of Art.

He won the Visiting Scholar Program Award at Chemnitz University of Technology, where he was a visiting researcher in 2022, and he won the College of Engineering’s PACCAR Distinguished Faculty Fellow Award in 2020.

Young’s membership in the Consortium for the Advancement of Shape Memory Alloy Research and Technology (CASMART) has paved the way in his career. He joined the group when he was a graduate student at Northwestern University and a research metallurgist with ATI, a company that creates specialty alloys. He continued his membership when he joined UNT in 2012 and has brought UNT students with him for its conferences and competitions.

But the ULI project with NASA was unique. Ofcials at the agency provided guidance and helped the group focus on aspects important to NASA based on feedback from annual reviews.

“It was nice to see the big picture of implementing a new device into an aircraft,”Young says.“Te large team with many diferent disciplines interacting was helpful to understand the role of the material within this context. Seeing a fnal shape memory alloy device, which we created as a team, morphing its shape to simulated changing weather conditions in real time was one of the highlights of the fve-year program.”

Gaining Perspective

But the work for NASA isn’t always limited to the sky. Back on the ground, the crops in the Mississippi Alluvial Valley are constantly changing the environment. Some methods to measure the changes such as fux towers collecting data on water vapor and carbon dioxide exchange rates between the Earth and atmosphere, and a census of water assessing its supply and use — may not always be accurate.

“But satellite photos can tell a story,” says Lu Liang, associate professor of geography and the environment, adding that satellite and aerial images cover a broader landscape and allow researchers to see how the sun lies on the felds.

Of the freshwater consumed in the world annually, 70% is used for agricultural irrigation. However, 40% of water used by farmers is wasted through evaporation as well as poor irrigation and water management.

Liang and Xiaohui Yuan, associate professor of computer science and engineering, are examining high-quality satellite and aerial images to see what irrigation techniques farmers in that region are using and to determine how techniques have been changed to accurately assess water use efciency on farmlands.

Tey have received $650,000 in grants from NASA, the U.S. Geological Survey and UNT (as a seed grant). In addition, they have earned other honors. Liang is a 2021-22 Early Career Professorship Award winner for her transformative research. Yuan was an Air Force Summer

Faculty Fellow, Air Force Ofce of Scientifc Research from 2012 to 2013.

Te researchers take the images with each pixel representing one square meter and divide them into small square patches. Using their skill sets and artifcial intelligence for model generation and processing, they can annotate those patterns on the imagery.

“Tere are a lot of things NASA does besides looking outside to space — they also look back toward the Earth for discovery,” Yuan says.

Taking A Moonshot

For the astronauts who are traveling in space — specifcally to the moon — Huseyin Bostanci, associate professor of mechanical engineering, and his students want astronauts to have healthy air.

Tey’re creating solutions for the Artemis mission, which is expected to launch with humans in 2025 as part of the 2022-23 Moon to Mars eXploration Systems and Habitation (M2M X-Hab)

Academic Innovation Challenge, sponsored by NASA and the National Space Grant Foundation.

Te team from UNT — one of only six universities selected for the program — is trying to fnd alternative technologies for removing carbon dioxide from cabin air since the current technology has reliability issues and requires maintenance. Deep space missions, such as trips to Mars, will require months of travel, so the team is working on a prototype system to demonstrate efcient and reliable air revitalization, and enable astronauts to breathe as normally as possible.

“Separation of liquid and gas phases plays a critical role in air revitalization technologies, but it’s very challenging in microgravity conditions,” Bostanci says.

Te project, titled “Regenerable Liquid Desiccants for High-Efciency Humidity Control in Microgravity,” received $50,000 and Bostanci, who has participated in related projects since 2019, has received $340,000 so far in

Ruth grants from NASA. He also received the New Investigator Award from the NASA Texas Space Grant Consortium in 2013.

He notes that he and the students get to work with NASA on developing innovative technologies and students are able to take part in internships and presentations.

“It is a great opportunity for them to collaborate with NASA,” he says.

Data For The Future

For her collaboration with NASA and other researchers, Ruth West is harnessing big data about the planet.

West, professor and director of the xREZ Art + Science Lab in the College of Visual Arts and Design, is part of a team that is creating new approaches to help scientists identify, track and understand the evolution of multidimensional Earth science phenomena, such as wildfre smoke plumes movement throughout the atmosphere, through the GEOS Visualization And Lagrangian dynamics Immersive eXtended Reality (VALIXR) Tool for Scientifc Discovery.

Thanks to a $102,000 grant from NASA, West and other researchers are working on the project with engineers and researchers at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, University of Maryland and University of Maryland Baltimore County.

Te team will develop a scientifc exploration analysis and mixed reality tool with integrated Lagrangian dynamics for the Goddard Earth Observing System numerical weather prediction model. Scientists will be able to see inside of the numerical models underlying the creation of simulations and Digital Twins — a term used to indicate the simulation of something in the real world but in virtual reality so that data updates the simulation continuously — to create new insights through the use of immersive technology.

West says the project will beneft NASA by creating the ability to track and understand the evolution of earth science and phenomena on very large scales.

“We live in an era when big data, machine learning and multidimensional simulation ofer exciting opportunities to gain new insight into ourselves and our world,” West says. “Te data and models are immense and getting larger by the day. New tools and approaches to allow us to gain insight from this data at increasingly larger resolutions in space and time are urgently needed.”

All of these projects require years of research about complicated challenges.

But the researchers also bring great passion to their work. Ohad Shemmer, associate professor of physics, was fascinated with the stars in the sky as a high school student in the late 1980s in his native Israel. Every night, he would keep track of how they varied in brightness over time and mail the information to the American Association of Variable Star Observers, which collected the data. He knew he was able to fill in gaps for a particular night or target, usually a star or sometimes an active galaxy, for a professional astronomer who missed that opportunity.

Now, he studies and measures the mass of black holes — and he’s made signifcant discoveries. In 2019, he was part of a team that found the most remote “cloaked” black hole, thanks to the help of NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory.

“This really is my dream job,” he says. “It’s not only the observation at different wavelengths and frequencies or the study of physics that brings me joy it’s the excitement of never-ending discoveries.”

Working For Nasa

Alumni and students are using their UNT education to make their mark in their respective fields at NASA.

As a young boy growing up in Nigeria, John Femi-Oyetoro (above) (’17 M.S., ’21 Ph.D.) always needed to know things. He was known to tear radios apart to see what was inside them.

“I was curious and I asked questions. ‘Why does this work?’ ‘Why do we look to the sky?’”

Now as a postdoctoral fellow for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, he conducts research and develops infrared detectors for space applications in ground or space telescopes.

He’s not the only UNT community member whose path has led them to the nation’s premier space agency. Members of the Mean Green Family are contributing their research expertise in everything from history to learning technologies.

Janetta Robins Boone, a doctoral student in learning technologies, is an instructional technologist who develops computer and video training modules for the astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Boone uses her coding and graphic design skills to help develop videos, often shot in the Space Vehicle Mockup Facility that is the same scale as the ISS.

“I love contributing any way I can to the mission of NASA and space flight in general,” she says.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal (’21 M.S.) works as a historian at the Johnson Space Center — even publishing the book Making Space for Women: Stories from Trailblazing Women of NASA’s Johnson Space Center.

She relishes talking to people who make NASA work. For an oral history project, she interviewed more than 300 people about their roles at NASA.

“I wonder what more I could learn about women at NASA,” she says. “You can work at NASA even if you’re a non-technical person. Librarians, attorneys and many more are part of that mission to make it successful.”

Femi-Oyetoro says researchers could spend their whole career on a project. But he is hooked, knowing that he’s making a difference for humankind through his work.

“I’m passionate about this research, which helps form the foundation of technologies crucial for enabling science observations giving us a better understanding of Earth-like planets, ocean worlds and science measurements that point to potential hubs of life. Space is vast,” he says, “and there is so much to explore.”