Hits:

Date of Publication:2016-01-01

Journal:Chinese Science Bulletin

Affiliation of Author(s):机械工程学院

Volume:61

Issue:23

Page Number:2568-2577

ISSN No.:0023-074X

Key Words:"bio-inspired; polarized skylight; navigation sensor; insects"

CN No.:11-1784/N

Abstract:Navigation technology is indispensable for both animal and human. Navigation sensor plays an important role in emergency rescue, precision-guided weapons, ship exploration, aircraft navigation, and satellites positioning system. To reach nests or favorable grounds, many insects have evolved navigational ability that can obtain the solar azimuth by detecting the polarized skylight. This polarized pattern in the sky arises, due to the sunlight scattering in the atmosphere. In the single-scattering Rayleigh atmosphere, the direction of polarization is perpendicular to the scattering plane determined by the observer, the observed celestial point and the sun. Some insects can finish long-distance migration to survive in the seasonal changing environments. Inspired by the amazing capacity, kinds of sensors have been developed depending on the structure of the insectscompound eyes and the insects visual mechanism. Integrated polarization dependent sensors have the features of compact structure, high precision, strong robustness, and simple fabrication process. This kind of sensor is composed of a complementary-metal-oxide-semiconductor sensor integrating with a multiorientation nanowire grid polarizer, and also the working principle of the sensor is described. The astronomy navigation technology based on polarized skylight has already become the innovation and research focus, even though the navigational mechanism of insects is still not very clear. In the meantime, the miniaturization and integration are new directions for the future research of navigation sensors. Additionally, to prevent navigational errors, it is necessary to calibrate orientation compass. Modern navigation technologies such as GPS have made themselves straightforward for mankind to locate global positions. These techniques are classified as satellite navigation, radio navigation, inertia navigation or celestial navigation. Unfortunately each of these techniques has their own weakness. For example, satellite navigation has the possibility of jamming and satellite signal loss. Radio navigation cannot work without base stations. Inertia navigation needs to correct its peculiar accumulated errors. And celestial navigation is complex and very expensive. The existing researches show that the astronomy navigation technology is real-time and autonomous and can work without accumulation of errors. Polarized skylight is one of the multitude of sensory information used by animals, thus there is much future work waiting for researchers to develop.

Note:新增回溯数据