IRES: US-China Collaboration: Bats as Model Organisms for Bioinspired Engineering

蝙蝠能够在复杂的自然环境中快速自主导航，这是目前工程师无法复制的壮举。这项研究背后的核心假设是，感知、移动和控制功能之间的系统级协同作用是实现蝙蝠这些无与伦比的能力的关键因素。为了了解这些系统级的协同作用是如何在自然界中产生的，参与学生将由跨越六个部门的教师团队建议进行跨学科的研究项目集中在以下主题之一：自然蝙蝠栖息地的声学场景统计，动态生物声纳传感，机动飞行，神经控制，声音发射和接收的生理基础。所有的学生项目都将在中国山东大学-弗吉尼亚理工大学国际实验室进行，项目的教育成果将是具有生物学和工程学跨学科技能的本科生和研究生，使他们能够从工程学的角度和在各自的生物学背景下解释生物功能。此外，IRES学员将获得跨文化能力，在国际团队中有效工作。该项目的科学成果将使工程师能够设计更好的集成自主系统，例如，自导航无人机，它将拥有蝙蝠般的能力来应对自然的、不受约束的环境，比如茂密的植被。

Bats are capable of swift, autonomous navigation through complex, natural environments - a feat that cannot be replicated by engineers at present. The central hypothesis behind this research is that system-level synergies between sensing, mobility, and control functions are critical factors behind achieving these unmatched capabilities of bats. To understand how these system-level synergies arise in nature, participating students will be advised by faculty teams spanning six departments to conduct interdisciplinary research projects centered on one of the following topics: acoustical scene statistics of natural bat habitats, dynamic biosonar sensing, maneuvering flight, neural control, physiological basis of sound emission and reception. All student projects will be based in the Shandong University - Virginia Tech International Laboratory in China.The educational outcomes of the project will be undergraduate and graduate students with interdisciplinary skills between biology and engineering that will allow them to interpret biological functions from an engineering perspective and within their respective biological contexts. Furthermore, the IRES trainees will acquire intercultural competencies to work effectively in international teams. The project's scientific outcomes will enable engineers to design better integrated autonomous systems, e.g., self-navigating drones, that will have bat-like capabilities to deal with natural, unconstrained environments, such dense vegetation.