Bio-inspired hair flow-sensor arrays : from nature to MEMS

Abstract

Nature offers human being elegant solutions for various engineering problems. Mimicking principles and designs offered by nature enables humans to better understand related phenomena and may help to provide better engineered systems. Hair-based flow sensing in crickets is an example of a biological system that has recently attracted great interest from engineers. This inspired engineers to develop an artificial system, a flow camera, as an alternative to more traditionally engineered systems. The work reported on in this thesis addresses the track to develop highly-sensitive sensor-array systems (made of artificial hair sensors) towards fulfilling the requirements for an airflow camera. The current research could shed some light on the detection and processing of flow phenomena in nature. Additionally, it can be considered one-step further with the tendency of constructing live aerodynamic images.