PECASE: The Mechanics and Control of Hydrodynamic Schooling

水动力鱼群的力学与控制在鱼群中游动的鱼之间的水动力相互作用可以极大地减少鱼群的集体阻力。这种减阻已经在实验上得到了证明，但其相互作用还没有完全被理解。这个问题具有基本的科学意义，但也具有工程意义。仿生水下机器人正在开发中，以利用海洋动物享有的性能优势；一个共同的目标是同时部署多个水下机器人群体，用于分布式环境传感或军事侦察。为了通过流固相互作用获得能源效率，特别是在学校教育的背景下，实用的水下机器人将需要使用反馈系统，将分布式流量传感器数据结合到运动控制算法中。目前还没有这样的系统，但由微机械毛细胞组成的新型流量传感器为它们的发展提供了一个平台。该项目将产生阐明运动动力学的分析和计算模型，从几何力学领域提出方法，使耦合游泳的能量学和稳定性分析成为可能。将开发一个集成了仿生传感和驱动的机器人原型，并将为该系统推导出控制方法，以演示节能的尾迹绘制和涡流辅助转向，这是学校运动的两个基本组成部分。

The Mechanics and Control of Hydrodynamic SchoolingHydrodynamic interactions among fish swimming in a school can dramatically reduce the school's collective drag. This drag reduction has been documented experimentally, but the interactions responsible are not fully understood. This problem is of basic scientific interest, but it is also of engineering interest. Biomimetic underwater vehicles are being developed within the robotics community to exploit performance advantages enjoyed by marine animals; the concurrent deployment of schools of underwater vehicles for distributed environmental sensing or military reconnaissance is a common objective.In order to derive energy efficiency through fluid-structure interactions, particularly in the context of schooling, practical underwater vehicles will need to employ feedback systems incorporating distributed flow sensor data into motion control algorithms. No such systems exist, but novel flow sensors comprising micromachined hair cells provide a platform for their development.This project will produce analytical and computational models illuminating the dynamics of schooling, advancing methods from the field of geometric mechanics to enable the analysis of both the energetics and the stability of coupled swimming. A robotic prototype will be developed with integrated biomimetic sensing and actuation, and control methods will be derived for this system to demonstrate energy-efficient wake drafting and vortex-assisted turning, two essential components of schooling locomotion.