I participated in the EU project Cilia during the second half of 2008 and the first half of 2009.
Cilia is concerned with natural sensor systems based on arrays of hair. This type occur widely in nature and in diverse sensing scenarios, in both air and water, e.g. in fish, crickets and bats.
The project areas range from biology, fluid mechanics, micro mechanics, programing, algorithms, material sciences and electronics and include nine universities all over Europe.
The goal is to grow a larger understanding of the natural systems, build similar artificial hair arrays and use these in demonstrators.
I joined under the Maersk McKinney Moeller Institute to build a system able to use artificial hair sensors similar to the way fish use arrays of hairs in their lateral lines to avoid objects.
I constructed several different robots similar to the one seen below for collaborating scientists to implement their software on.
Furthermore I constructed several types of vibrating objects able to produce naturally inspired air patterns to use as target points for the robots, see the pictures to the right.