Scientists from the University of Illinois, inspired by the way mammals use whiskers to sense their way through dark environments, created an array of five super-elastic Nitinol wires covered with plastic straws about 15cm-long to mimic whiskers, which were then hooked up to strain gauges at their base.
Electronic signals from these gauges enabled the researchers to measure movement in each whisker, as motors moved them through an air stream from a hair drier and this data was then used to build up a digital image of the fluid flow past the array.
“When it is dark, whiskers play a key role for animals in exploring, hunting or even just living underground” explains Cagdas Tuna, lead author of a paper on the array published today in journal Bioinspiration and Biomimetics. “For example, seals can catch fish in the dark by following the hydrodynamic wake using their whiskers.”
The array created by the...