BE 107, Spring 2015

BE 107: Exploring Biological Principles Through Bio-Inspired Design. 9 units (3-6-0).

Students will formulate and implement an engineering project desired to explore a biological principle or property that is exhibited in nature. Students will work in small teams in which they build a hardware platform that is motivated by a biological example in which a given approach or architecture is used to implement a given behavior. Alternatively, the team will construct new experimental instruments in order to test for the presence of an engineering principle in a biological system. Example topics include bio-inspired control of motion (from bacteria to insects), processing of sensory information (molecules to neurons), and robustness/fault-tolerance. Each project will involve proposing a specific mechanism to be explored, designing an engineering system that can be used to demonstrate and evaluate the mechanism, and building a computer-controlled, electro-mechanical system in the lab that implements or characterizes the proposed mechanism, behavior or architecture.

Instructors: Dickinson and Murray

Week 1

• Tue lecture (31 Mar): Motivation (bio and engineering; 60m) + class logistics (30m) - Michael and Richard
  • Michael: 15 min class motivation and then 30 min on cool biology
  • Richard: 30 min on cool engineering, then 15 min on class logistics
• Wed lab session #1, 7-10 pm
• Thu lecture (2 Apr): Programming concepts - Richard?
• HW out on Tue, due following Tue
• Lab hours on Mon, 1-4 pm

Week 2 (RMM out of town on Wed-Fri)

• Tue lecture (7 Apr): Mechanical design and fabrication - Floris? (or Joel B?)
• Wed lab session #2, 7-10 pm: Solid works, laser cutter
• Thu lecture (9 Apr): Biomechanics - Michael (or Chris)
• HW out on Tue, due following Tue
• Lab hours on Mon, 1-4 pm

Week 3 (RMM out of town on Mon-Thu)

• Tue lecture (14 Apr): Electrical design, sensing and actuation - TAs?
• Wed lab session, 7-10 pm
• Thu lecture (16 Apr): Animal sensors/actuators - Michael
• HW out on Tue, due following Tue
• Lab hours on Mon, 1-4 pm

Week 4 (MHD out of town all week, RMM might be out of town on Thu)

• Tue lecture (21 Apr): Control systems - Richard
• Wed lab session, 7-10 pm
• Thu lecture (23 Apr): Feedback principles in biology - Floris, with input from Michael
• HW out on Tue, due following Tue
• Lab hours on Mon, 1-4 pm

Week 5

• Tue lecture (28 Apr): Image processing - Pietro? (or Floris)
• Wed lab session, 7-10 pm: Arduino
• Thu lecture (30 Apr): Animal vision systems - Michael
• HW out on Tue, due following Tue
• Lab hours on Mon, 1-4 pm

Week 6

• Tue lecture (5 May): estimation - Richard
  • Include things that might mirror what nature does (eg, DGC)
  • Kalman filtering; use in avoiding higher order derivatives
• Wed lab session, 7-10 pm: tracking
• Thu lecture (7 May): animal behavior - Michael
• HW out on Tue, due following Tue
• Lab hours on Mon, 1-4 pm

Week 7

• Tue lecture (12 May): Systems design - Richard
• Lab hours on Wed, 7-10 pm
• Thu lecture (14 May): Evolution - Chris
• Lab hours on Mon, 1-4 pm

Week 8

• Tue lecture (19 May): Robotics/autonomy - Richard
  • Could also be a talk on bioinspired control algorithms - Floris
• Lab hours on Wed, 7-10 pm
• Thu lecture (21 May): Experiment design - Michael (or Chris, but likely to be out of town)
  • This could be swapped with animal navigation lecture
• Lab hours on Mon, 1-4 pm

Week 9

• Tue lecture (26 May): Frontiers I: engineering - Richard
• Lab hours on Wed, 7-10 pm
• Thu lecture (28 May): Frontiers II: biology - Michael
• Lab hours on Mon, 1-4 pm