A Platform for Exploring Collective Behavior in Artificial Ciliary Arrays Through Simulation and Hardware in Parallel
Nina Cao, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
In nature, ciliary systems are used for filtering airways, fluid driving, food transportation, and movement of mammalian ova. These versatile structures are a strong source of biological inspiration in soft robotics research. Artificial cilia have been fabricated, studied, and simulated from the micrometer to meter scale in applications including fluid propulsion, filtering, and mixing, as well as object manipulation. The focus of this research is the development of a coupled platform of simulation and hardware for proprioceptive ciliary systems to conduct large-scale analyses of the tradeoffs between distributed and centralized control and also how simulations compare to physical ciliary systems. Hardware efforts focus on the fabrication, sensorization, and actuation of intermediate-scale, pneumatically actuated ciliary systems that integrate segmented control and proprioceptive capabilities.
We present results on fabrication and proprioceptive sensing, including a modular test setup for pressure controlled light sensing that maps the curvature of a cilium to a specific light signal, a fabrication method for liquid gallium sensors, and a modular fluidic drive for actuating ciliary arrays both in unison or in segmented patterns. We also show our preliminary work on simulating fluid flow in a 3-D construction of small ciliary arrays by solving the Navier Stokes equations, which works towards building a 3-D simulation of large arrays of active cilia that drive fluid flow and exhibit collective phenomena. The goal of the computational work is to accurately represent the hardware we are concurrently developing, while also enabling rapid exploration and performance prediction of a larger design space.
Abstract Author(s): Nina Cao, Kaitlyn Becker