Dataset Information

A Parallel Modular Biomimetic Cilia Sorting Platform.

ABSTRACT: The aquatic unicellular organism Paramecium caudatum uses cilia to swim around its environment and to graze on food particles and bacteria. Paramecia use waves of ciliary beating for locomotion, intake of food particles and sensing. There is some evidence that Paramecia pre-sort food particles by discarding larger particles, but intake the particles matching their mouth cavity. Most prior attempts to mimic cilia-based manipulation merely mimicked the overall action rather than the beating of cilia. The majority of massive-parallel actuators are controlled by a central computer; however, a distributed control would be far more true-to-life. We propose and test a distributed parallel cilia platform where each actuating unit is autonomous, yet exchanging information with its closest neighboring units. The units are arranged in a hexagonal array. Each unit is a tileable circuit board, with a microprocessor, color-based object sensor and servo-actuated biomimetic cilia actuator. Localized synchronous communication between cilia allowed for the emergence of coordinated action, moving different colored objects together. The coordinated beating action was capable of moving objects up to 4 cm/s at its highest beating frequency; however, objects were moved at a speed proportional to the beat frequency. Using the local communication, we were able to detect the shape of objects and rotating an object using edge detection was performed; however, lateral manipulation using shape information was unsuccessful.

SUBMITTER: Whiting JGH

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6352704 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

A Parallel Modular Biomimetic Cilia Sorting Platform.

Whiting James G H JGH Mayne Richard R Adamatzky Andrew A

Biomimetics (Basel, Switzerland) 20180330 2

The aquatic unicellular organism Paramecium caudatum uses cilia to swim around its environment and to graze on food particles and bacteria. Paramecia use waves of ciliary beating for locomotion, intake of food particles and sensing. There is some evidence that Paramecia pre-sort food particles by discarding larger particles, but intake the particles matching their mouth cavity. Most prior attempts to mimic cilia-based manipulation merely mimicked the overall action rather th ...[more]

PMID: 31105227

Similar Datasets

Project description:Tuberculosis (TB) is now the world's leading infectious killer and major programmatic advances will be needed if we are to meet the ambitious new End TB Targets. Although mathematical models are powerful tools for TB control, such models must be flexible enough to capture the complexity and heterogeneity of the global TB epidemic. This includes simulating a disease that affects age groups and other risk groups differently, has varying levels of infectiousness depending upon the organ involved and varying outcomes from treatment depending on the drug resistance pattern of the infecting strain.We adopted sound basic principles of software engineering to develop a modular software platform for simulation of TB control interventions ("AuTuMN"). These included object-oriented programming, logical linkage between modules and consistency of code syntax and variable naming. The underlying transmission dynamic model incorporates optional stratification by age, risk group, strain and organ involvement, while our approach to simulating time-variant programmatic parameters better captures the historical progression of the epidemic. An economic model is overlaid upon this epidemiological model which facilitates comparison between new and existing technologies. A "Model runner" module allows for predictions of future disease burden trajectories under alternative scenario situations, as well as uncertainty, automatic calibration, cost-effectiveness and optimisation. The model has now been used to guide TB control strategies across a range of settings and countries, with our modular approach enabling repeated application of the tool without the need for extensive modification for each application.The modular construction of the platform minimises errors, enhances readability and collaboration between multiple programmers and enables rapid adaptation to answer questions in a broad range of contexts without the need for extensive re-programming. Such features are particularly important in simulating an epidemic as complex and diverse as TB.

Dataset Information

A Parallel Modular Biomimetic Cilia Sorting Platform.

Publications

A Parallel Modular Biomimetic Cilia Sorting Platform.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets