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Behavioral Tracking and Neuromast Imaging of Mexican Cavefish
Published on: April 6, 2019
Bio-inspired all-optical artificial neuromast for 2D flow sensing
Ben J Wolf1, Jonathan A S Morton, William N MacPherson
1Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Engineering, University of Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands.
Abstract:
We present the design, fabrication and testing of a novel all-optical 2D flow velocity sensor, inspired by a fish lateral line neuromast. This artificial neuromast consists of optical fibres inscribed with Bragg gratings supporting a fluid force recipient sphere. Its dynamic response is modelled based on the Stokes solution for unsteady flow around a sphere and found to agree with experimental results. Tuneable mechanical resonance is predicted, allowing a deconvolution scheme to accurately retrieve fluid flow speed and direction from sensor readings. The optical artificial neuromast achieves a low frequency threshold flow sensing of 5 mm s-1 and 5 μm s-1 at resonance, with a typical linear dynamic range of 38 dB at 100 Hz sampling. Furthermore, the optical artificial neuromast is shown to determine flow direction within a few degrees.
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