A Study on Perceiving Ship's Generated Wave Using Artificial Lateral Line System
Yu Ling, Teng Ma, Ye Li, Xiangren Sun, Chi Qi · IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics · 2025
The lateral line in fish serves as an essential organ for perceiving the aquatic environment. Drawing inspiration from this biological system, the artificial lateral line system (ALLS), a type of underwater robot sensor, holds significant promise. Understanding the interaction between surface vessels and underwater ecosystems is crucial for environmental monitoring. The wake of a ship can have significant effects on marine life and sediment transport, and measuring these effects from underwater provides valuable data for ecological studies. The primary research objective of this study is to detect ship-generated waves using ALLS. To achieve this, we introduce a pipeline based on the improved multiple signal classification algorithm for detecting these waves with ALLS. The algorithm's effectiveness is verified through computational fluid dynamics simulation experiments. These experiments analyze the impact of the number of array elements, spacing between elements, and distance from the lateral line to the vessel's trajectory on the algorithm's performance. The experimental results reveal that increasing the number of array elements or spacing improves the algorithm's perception accuracy up to a certain extent. Conversely, as the distance from the lateral line to the vessel's trajectory increases, the accuracy of the algorithm decreases. Additionally, the proposed algorithm undergoes validation through water tank experiments, affirming the conclusions derived from the simulation experiments. By providing these research findings, this article offers valuable insights into advancing the understanding of surface moving target perception based on ALLS, which is essential for both technological development and ecological monitoring.