Bioinspired Flow Sensing
Artificial lateral line
We develop sensors inspired by lateral line sensing of fish, methods of data acquisition and analysis and apply them to measure, characterize and classify underwater environments.
The latera line is a flow sensing organ of a fish which is sensitive to flow and small fluctuations in water that create turbulence. We have taken the same principle and applied it to make sense of underwater environment in a way that other sensing modalities (vision, sound, etc) cannot do. Lateral lines (both natural and artificial) are distributed and redundant sensor systems and information from them is processed accordingly. Complex natural flows are rich of information and we work on creating methods to perceive and make sense of it.
Classifying natural flows. Artificial lateral lines can perceive flows from a situated perspective (immersed into and interacting with the environment that it is measuring). It can give us a glimpse of what might a fish perceive when swimming in water. We have used artificial lateral lines from fish perspective to understand if fish could distinguish and recognize locations in flow. Results of this analysis have been used to improve the construction of man-made structures in rivers so that they can help fish on their migratory pathways. We have also used artificial lateral lines to classify habitats and to classify river morphology.
Work in robot sensing has been funded by:
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ROBOCADEMY (European Academy for Underwater Robotics) financed by European Commission through Framework 7 in 2014- 2018
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BONUS FISHFIEW (Assessing Fish Passeges by the use of Robotic Fish Sensor) funded by EEIG BONUS and Environmental Investment Center in 2014-2017.