Flow Detection using an Artificial Vibrissa-Like Sensor – Simulations and Experiments

Several animal species like rats or seals explore the surrounding environment with their sensory hairs, the so-called vibrissae. Regarding to natural vibrissa, the functionalities of tactile object sensing to receive information about, e.g., the shape and/or the surface texture are often discussed. But, the usage of natural vibrissae to detect flows is reported as well. The necessary information about the flow are coded in the signals recorded at the base of the vibrissa. Due to the natural paragon, we adapt this behavior in order to show up how the information about flows can be extracted from these observables. This is an important procedure because the detection and determination of information about flow effects become interesting for several reasons. For example, in the case of other sensing tasks and strategies like object contour scanning, flows are considered as (possible) disturbances that have to be known to reconstruct any sensed boundary. Otherwise, the flow itself can be of interest. In a first step, simulations are performed to examine the relations between the observables at the base of the sensor and the applied velocity of a flow. Here, a steady-state uniform flow is assumed. The simulations are validated by experiments.