This grant provides funding to support a U.S.-Japan Workshop on Bio-inspired Engineering of Next-Generation Sensors and Actuators in which U.S. and Japanese participants from various disciplinary backgrounds can begin to grow a trans-Pacific Bio-Inspired Sensing and Bio-Inspired Actuation (BSBA) research community. The workshop objectives are to understand the current state of BSBA research and education in the U.S. and Japan with the aim of identifying strategic BSBA research topics ideally suited for U.S.-Japan teaming. BSBA research topics identified will be based on their ability to enhance the performance and resiliency of civil and mechanical systems while attempting to improve the security of both nations. The primary purpose of the workshop is to identify opportunities and challenges in BSBA research. A new research roadmap tailored for U.S.-Japan collaboration will be created to define BSBA research for years to come. The workshop participants will be invited from a highly diverse set of research communities to ensure a multi-disciplinary research agenda is formulated for U.S.-Japan BSBA research. The workshop agenda will consist of: i) initial presentations on potential research thrusts from both the Japanese and US perspective, ii) intense working group sessions to define and refine key research directions to be pursued, and iii) presentations from the working groups on their recommendations with discussion from all workshop participants. The workshop is designed to have a broader impact by creating next generation sensing and actuation technologies designed through bio-inspiration for aerospace, civil and mechanical systems. The workshop will invite, and make every effort to include, the participation of students and young researchers to create a cadre of BSBA experts at the early stages of their careers. Furthermore, underrepresented groups of researchers will be sought to enhance the diversity of the BSBA research community leading to the avoidance of group-think issues common to homogenous research teams. The workshop will also promote international collaborations by sharing resources, technical data and research ideas for the mutual benefit of the two countries (U.S. and Japan).
The major outcome of the workshop will be a ranked list of critical BSBA research areas that would most benefit from the diversity of technical and cultural perspectives that would be created by collaborative, multidisciplinary research teams consisting of U.S. and Japanese members. The identified research topics would also be selected to fundamentally enhance the performance and resiliency of civil and mechanical systems prevalent in U.S. and Japanese society while attempting to improve the security of both nations. The final report originating from the workshop would be widely distributed to the broader international sensor and actuator communities via a website developed specifically for the U.S.-Japan workshop.
The fields of civil and mechanical engineering rely upon extensive use of sensors and actuators to monitor and control many of the complex engineered systems that are of critical importance to the economic prosperity of society. While the recent emergence of new sensing and actuation technologies have yielded many new and powerful monitoring and control platforms, technological growth has slowed in recent years due to bottlenecks associated with the current design and development paradigm. In contrast, biological systems offer a watershed of exciting examples of how living beings sense and actuate. Based on the principles of sensing and actuation observed in nature, there are opportunities for the engineering community to study these principle to yield new approaches to the design and fabrication of engineered sensors and actuators. The result may be more functional, yet lower cost sensors and actuators for civil and mechanical engineering systems. This new field of bio-inspired sensing and bio-inspired actuation (BSBA) has the potential to offer transformative advances in sensing and actuation not previously witnessed. However, for the engineering community to truly be successful in harnessing the potential of BSBA technology, a lively and devoted community of researchers from differing disciplinary backgrounds (including engineering, biology, computing, material science, etc.) and cultural perspective is absolutely necessary. Towards this end, this NSF-sponsored project provided support to hold a U.S.-Japan Workshop on Bio-inspired Engineering of Next-Generation Sensors and Actuators in which U.S. and Japanese participants from various disciplinary backgrounds could meet to plan for the growth of a trans-Pacific BSBA research community. This workshop was held on November 12 and 13, 2011 on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley. The workshop objective was to understand the current state of BSBA research and education in the U.S. and Japan with the aim of identifying strategic BSBA research topics ideally suited for U.S.-Japan teaming. Intellectual Merit: The project yielded many intellectual contributions to the engineering and biological disciplines. First, the workshop has created a young but vibrant US-Japan research community committed to BSBA research. Five major grand challenge problems were formulated for this community as it moves forward in collaboration: Design of Multi-Level and Multi-Length Hierarchical Systems Inspired by Biology Teaching Bio-inspired Engineering to Undergraduate and Graduate Students in Engineering Biochemical Engineering of Bio-Inspired Systems for Energy, Water, Food, and Medicine Biologically-inspired Robustness: Self-sustaining Sensors and Actuators Biologically Inspired Control, Enhancement and Data Processing Broader Impacts: The workshop will result in a number of broader impacts that project well beyond the US-Japan research community formulated as part of the workshop. Fundamentally, new sensing and actuation technologies designed through bio-inspiration will impact all of the aerospace, civil and mechanical systems that define the quality of life of society. The workshop also invited a number of bright, young students who acquired new perspectives for their own research pursuits. Furthermore, efforts were made to include researchers and students from underrepresented groups with the aim of enhancing the diversity of the BSBA research community. A dedicated website (www.umich.edu/~usjapnws/index.html) was created to report the workshop outcomes to the general public.
