University of Maryland, 2181 Glenn L. Martin Hall, College Park, MD 20742, United States of America.
Howard University, 2300 Sixth Street NW, Washington, DC 20059, United States of America.
Bioinspir Biomim. 2022 May 13;17(4). doi: 10.1088/1748-3190/ac61e9.
Small-scale unmanned air vehicles require lightweight, compact, and low-power sensors that encompass a variety of sensing modalities to enable flight control and navigation in challenging environments. Flow sensing is one such modality that has attracted much interest in recent years. In this paper, a micro-scale artificial hair sensor is developed to resolve both the direction and magnitude of airflow. The sensor structure employs a high-aspect ratio hair structure and a thin flexible membrane to facilitate the transduction of directional airflow to membrane deflection. The sensor readout is based on capacitive sensing and two pairs of electrodes orthogonal to each other are used to obtain airflow directional information. The sensor structure was fabricated using two-photon polymerization and integration onto a miniature printed circuit board to enable simple measurement. The sensor's responses to static displacement loading from different directions were characterized. The experimental results are in good agreement with the simulation results. Furthermore, the sensor's capability to measure the direction and magnitude of flow was demonstrated. Finally, the sensor was mounted on an airfoil and its ability to detect flow separation was verified.
小型无人机需要重量轻、体积小、功耗低的传感器，这些传感器涵盖多种传感模式，以实现在具有挑战性的环境中的飞行控制和导航。流量感测就是近年来引起广泛关注的一种模式。在本文中，开发了一种微尺度人工毛发传感器来解决气流的方向和大小。传感器结构采用高纵横比的毛发结构和薄的柔性膜，以促进定向气流向膜的偏转转换。传感器的读取基于电容感应，使用两对相互正交的电极来获得气流方向信息。传感器结构使用双光子聚合制造，并集成到微型印刷电路板上，以实现简单的测量。对来自不同方向的静态位移加载的传感器响应进行了表征。实验结果与模拟结果吻合良好。此外，还验证了传感器测量气流方向和大小的能力。最后，将传感器安装在翼型上，并验证了其检测气流分离的能力。
