Cilia

Cilia organises a conference on Natural and Biomimetic Mechano-sensing. Click to see details.

Summary of the
Customized Intelligent Life-Inspired Arrays
program

Sensory systems based on arrays of hairs occur widely in nature and function in diverse sensing scenarios, for instance in air (cerci, external sensing hairs in arthropods), in water (lateral line, neuromasts in fish) and in a fluid-filled compartment coupled to air through impedance matching devices and beamforming baffles (mammalian auditory apparatus). These mechanosensor-systems are amongst the most sensitive sensors known. This suggests that hair-based sensing organs, supported by appropriate neuronal representation and processing, are a model system particularly well-suited for studying the extraction of significant information from noisy environments.

The twofold objective of the CILIA project is to identify the common principles underlying this widespread use in nature of arrays of mechanical sensory cells for the extraction of significant information and to make those principles available for design of engineered systems. Because organisms and their environments form tightly coupled interacting systems in which all components environmental characteristics and dynamics, sensory and physical morphology, peripheral and central neural processing and behavioural patterns play a significant role this analysis will be carried out at three levels simultaneously: the morphology and mechanics, the neuronal processing, and the behavioural strategies of the model-systems. Extraction of significant information is considered an emergent property from processing going on at all three levels. The model systems will be the cerci of crickets, the lateral line system of fish and the auditory system of bats. Knowledge gained from a representative sample of species and individuals from a large phylogenetic and ontogenetic range will be used to formulate design rules for man-made or man-mediated systems. These will include organic neuronal networks (based on neural cells), MEMS based artificial electro-mechanical hair-sensors, and artificial pinnae-movement control.

For related information please visit the following links:

- NGC documentary "Cricket Combat"(showing some of our work)

- VPRO documentary on CILIA (select video)

- the CILIA consortium pages

- the BioEARS pages

- the EU CICADA site

- the TST CICADA site.

- recent publications can be found here.

Contact: Gijs Krijnen

supported by the

European Commission