Sensing wearables for biology

The natural world serves as an inspiration for many applications in technology. These incredible adaptations have led to the development of many approaches in all domains of sensing, control, actuation, design and more in robotics. In turn, these advancements prove to be useful in understanding biology itself. While imaging techniques are incredibly useful, there are certain phenonmenon that can only be studied by deploying sensors on the organism itself. The biggest priority in deploying any payload on these organisms is their comfort; we do not intend to stress them or restrict their motion in any way. Further, small organisms such as insects and birds have challenges due to their small size and how much they can carry. These are very similar to the SSWaP constraints we face in developing insect-scale robots, therefore the solutions we come up here are well-suited for biological applications as well.

Efforts in developing miniature sensing systems has the potential for opening up a new exploration space for biologists by providing them new tools to add their vast array of amazing research techniques. For instance, my work on lightweight sensing systems is being used to study the flight dynamics of hummingbirds and moths. Key specs of these backpacks:

• features a 6-axis IMU, microcontroller with 2.4 GHz radio, hall-effect sensor as a switch
• weight under 300 mg including battery
• dimensions around 6 x 7 x 10 mm^3
• two way communication over bluetooth low-energy (BLE) for configuration and data streaming
• IMU data is polled and streamed in real-time at 500 Hz, can be increased as needed
• run-time of over 10 mins at 500 Hz with a 0.8 mAh battery

All animal handling done by qualified personnel with required permits.

I am also actively working on building a compact vision system that can be attached to these organisms to help researchers gain insight into their behavior patterns based on their perception of the environment.