Piezoelectric Sensors on American Cockroaches

广泛的跨学科技术将被开发出来，使蟑螂作为一个传感平台，增加我们对蟑螂行为的理解，纳米晶体压电传感器的生长，以及极低功耗电子技术来调节和传输传感数据到基站。纳米晶压电结构以一种新颖的方式生长，将用于制造应变传感器，具有广泛的应用前景。在这个项目中，重点是使用这些传感器来检测和研究美洲蟑螂的运动，并将蟑螂开发为一个感官平台。昆虫的微小尺寸要求设计在极低功率水平下工作的电路的能力（因此需要极小和极轻的电源）。这些技术的广泛应用将在手持、便携式和可穿戴计算机领域。将开发一种原型传感器系统，安装在蟑螂身上，感知和交流蟑螂运动、环境照明和电磁噪声等信息。来自昆虫学、材料科学、低功耗电子电路设计和设计自动化领域的跨学科研究团队正在参与。该研究项目预计将对传感、信号传输、纳米制造、昆虫学和低功耗电子学等领域产生影响。在蟑螂的特定位置安装小型压电应变传感器，在蟑螂移动时产生少量能量，这是一种独特的组合。功耗已被确定为未来VLSI设计的重要障碍之一，因此本提案解决了相关的设计问题。该方案的功耗降低了100- 500X，对于低功耗传感器网络和便携式/可穿戴通信和计算设备的持续成功可能是非常宝贵的。

ABSTRACTNSF-0515930Liang, HongA broad range of inter-disciplinary techniques will be developed to enable the use of cockroaches as a sensory platform, increase our understanding of cockroach behavior,growth of nanocrystalline piezoelectric sensors, and extreme low power electronics to condition and communicate the sensed data to a base station. Nanocrystalline piezoelectric structures are grown in a novel manner and will be used to create strain sensors which can be applied in a wide range of applications. In this project the focus is using these sensors to detect and study the locomotion of an American cockroach and develop the cockroach as a sensory platform. The diminutive size of the insects demands an ability to design circuits which operate at extreme low power levels (and thereby require extremely small and light power sources). The broader application of these techniques will be in the area of hand-held, portable and wearable computers. A prototype sensor system will be developed that will be mounted on a cockroach, sensing and communicating information such as cockroach locomotion as well as environmental lighting and electro-magnetic noise conditions.An interdisciplinary team of researchers from the areas of entomology, materials scienceand low-power electronic circuit design and design automation are participating. The proposed research project is expected to have an impact on the field of sensing, signal transfer, nanofabrication, entomology and low-power electronics. Attaching small piezoelectric strain sensors at strategic locations on a cockroach to produce a small amount of energy as the insect moves is a unique combination. Power consumption has been identified as one of the important hurdles for future VLSI designs, and hence this proposal addresses a pertinent design problem. The approach in this proposal, with its 100- 500X power reduction, may prove invaluable to the continued success of low power sensor networks and portable / wearable communication and computation devices.