Underwater Vortex Source Localization Using an Artificial Lateral Line System with Differential Pressure and Velocity Sensors

Fish can sense the surrounding hydrodynamic stimuli for obstacle recognition and wake tracking with the lateral line system, which has inspired many studies of artificial lateral line systems (ALLS). Here, we propose a fusion sensing modality of differential pressure and velocity for ALLS to localize underwater vortex sources. This ALLS employs a sensor layout strategy based on maximization hydrodynamic stimuli. Dual-modal fusion sensing significantly reduces the vortex source localization error over the single-modal sensing approach due to the anisotropic response properties of the differential pressure and flow velocity sensors to the downstream and lateral distances of the vortex source. Experiments show that in the range of 1 body length (BL), the mean localization error of the vortex source is about 0.11BL. The proposed dual-sensing fusion approach provides new insight into the application of vortex source localization for underwater vehicles.