High-Performance Mechanical Sensing: Bionic Theory and Design

As fundamental tools for acquiring external information, sensors have attracted considerable attention in fields such as electronic skin, huma–computer interaction, and precision instrumentation, with mechanical sensors representing a key area of ongoing research. Despite significant progress, existing mechanical quantity sensors still fall short of practical requirements in terms of weak vibration detection, signal discrimination, and vibration source localization, underscoring the urgent need for innovative design strategies. Over billions of years of evolution, organisms have achieved near-perfect integration with their natural environments, offering a rich source of functional inspiration. This report takes the scorpion as a biological model. Through systematic bionic investigations, a set of intrinsic mechanisms underlying the scorpion's remarkable perceptual capabilities has been uncovered. These mechanisms enable the scorpion to detect subtle stimuli, accurately discriminate signals, and rapidly localize vibration sources even under complex environmental conditions-abilities that are essential for predator avoidance and prey capture, and thus critical to its survival. Drawing on these ingenious biological strategies, we have developed corresponding biomimetic sensor designs and fabrication methods. These bio-inspired sensors have been successfully deployed in a range of practical applications, including automotive manufacturing, micro-vibration monitoring of bridges, and fault diagnostics for precision equipment.

Professor Zhiwu Han is a doctoral supervisor at Jilin University. He is a recipient of the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars, a Chang Jiang Scholars Program Distinguished Professor, principal investigator of an Innovative Research Group funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and chief scientist of the National Key Research and Development Program of China. He serves as Executive Vice President of the International Academy of Bionics, a Fellow of the International Society for Bionic Engineering, Associate Editor of the Journal of Bionics Engineering, and Associate Editor of the Chinese Journal of Mechanical Engineering. With a longstanding research focus on mechanical bionics, he has published over 100 SCI-indexed papers in leading journals including Nature, Science Advances, and Advanced Materials. His contributions have been recognized with six national and provincial/ministerial awards, including the Second Prize of the State Technological Invention Award, the First Prize of the Technical Invention Award of the Ministry of Education, the First Prize of the Jilin Provincial Technical Invention Award, and the First Prize of the Machinery Industry Science and Technology Award.