PECASE: The Mechanics and Control of Hydrodynamic Schooling

这个教师早期职业发展（Career）项目的研究目标是建立分析和计算模型，阐明学校教育的动力学，推进几何力学领域的方法，使耦合游泳的能量学和稳定性分析成为可能。将开发一个集成仿生传感和驱动的机器人原型，并为该系统导出控制方法，以演示节能尾流牵伸和涡流辅助转弯，这是学校运动的两个重要组成部分。鱼群中游动的鱼之间的流体动力学相互作用可以显著减少鱼群的集体阻力。这种阻力减少已被实验证明，但其相互作用尚未完全理解。这个问题具有基本的科学意义，但也具有工程意义。机器人社区正在开发仿生水下航行器，以利用海洋动物享有的性能优势；同时部署多组水下航行器进行分布式环境传感或军事侦察是一个共同的目标。为了通过流体-结构相互作用获得能源效率，特别是在学校的背景下，实际的水下航行器需要采用反馈系统，将分布式流量传感器数据整合到运动控制算法中。目前还没有这样的系统存在，但是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。

The research objective of this Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program project is to 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. Hydrodynamic 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.