Events Calendar

AME - Department Seminar

Speaker: Part I: Jeannette Yen; Part II: Marc Weissburg, Jeannette Yen: Director in the Center for Biologically Inspired Design at the Georgia Institute of Technology; Marc Weissburg: Professor of Biology and Co-Director of CBID in Center for Biologically Inspired Design at the Georgia Institute of Technology

Talk Title: Part I: Aquatic Propulsion and Wake Signatures at Re = [1,1000]; Part II: What Do Crabs Know, and What Can They Teach Us?

Abstract: Part I: Plankton are aquatic organisms that form the base of the aquatic food web and therefore, aquatic ecosystem balance depends on their survival. Plankton operate at intermediate Reynolds numbers, generating watery signals that can be attenuated by viscosity and confused with small-scale turbulence. Yet messages are created, transmitted, perceived and recognized. These messages guide essential survival tasks of aquatic organisms. At the small-scale where biologically-generated behavior differs from physically-derived flow, we find plankton self-propel themselves, are aware of each other, and evolve in response to the fluid environment in surprising ways.

Part II: We currently lack strategies by which we can implement autonomous chemically-guided navigation in remotely operated or fully independent vehicles. Although this ability would be useful for a variety of purposes, a primary stumbling block is we don't have robust, computationally efficient and adaptive algorithms for encoding information in turbulent chemical plumes. Animals, of course, do this extremely well. I will describe how we have used 3D laser fluorescence measurements around freely navigating animals to analyze the information content of turbulent chemical plumes and understand strategies to encode this information. I will discuss current efforts to develop adaptive and robust algorithms using biological principles and present some tests of our ideas on both hardware and simulations.

Biography: Jeannette Yen is the Director of the Georgia Institute of Technology's Center for Biologically Inspired Design (CBID). The goals of CBID are to bring together a group of interdisciplinary faculty who seek to facilitate interdisciplinary research and education for innovative products and techniques based on biologically-inspired design solutions. The participants of Georgia Tech's CBID believe that science and technology are increasingly hitting the limits of approaches based on traditional disciplines, and Biology may serve as an untapped resource for design methodology, with concept-testing having occurred over millions of years of evolution. Experiencing the benefits of Nature as a source of innovative and inspiring principles encourages us to preserve and protect the natural world rather than simply to harvest its products. Jeannette team-teaches the interdisciplinary course in biologically inspired design.

Marc Weissburg is Professor of Biology and Co-Director of the Center for Biologically Inspired Design. He is an ecologist/sensory biologist who examines the mechanisms and consequences of information transfer via aquatic chemical signals. He uses multidisciplinary approaches and field ecological investigations to study the structure of aquatic plumes and the dynamics of fluids in the marine environment and to behaviorally analyse the sensory strategies of aquatic organisms and their capability to rely on turbulent chemical plumes for guidance and navigation. He has used biological principles to devise artificial sensory processing strategies for autonomous navigation in chemical plumes. He has applied principles of ecological organization to human infrastructure in his search for more sustainable practices. He has co-taught Biologically Inspired Design for seven years to a variety of audiences ranging from undergraduates to professional engineers and scientists.

Host: Professor Spedding

More Info: http://ae-www.usc.edu/seminars/3-27-13-yen-weissburg.shtml

Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - Room 150

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Kristi Villegas

Event Link: http://ae-www.usc.edu/seminars/3-27-13-yen-weissburg.shtml