Feb 24 2011
Northwestern University professor of mechanical and electrical engineering and computer science, Chang Liu is deploying nature to build flow and touch sensors.
Liu, a professor at the university’s McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, addressed a symposium at the annual American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting. The meeting was held in Washington on February 19.
For the past 10 years, Liu has led a research group that develops artificial hair cell sensors. Hair cells provide a variety of sensing abilities for different animals: they help humans hear, they help insects detect vibration, and they form a lateral line system that allows fish to sense the flow of water around them.
The group used artificial hair cells to create sensors with micro and nanofabrication techniques. Liu says fish deploy hair cells in a lateral line as sensors, but this property has not been developed by man as yet. This system could prove very useful to submarines in gathering and recording data.
According to Liu, artificial hair cells could help determine acoustics in an artificial cochlea, or be integrated as flow sensors for medical applications. He is also designing touch sensors to enhance the quality of minimal invasive operations. His team includes biologists, engineers, materials scientists and physicians.
Source: http://www.northwestern.edu/