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Horseshoe bats (family Rhinolophidae) are among the bat species that dynamically deform their reception baffles (pinnae) and emission baffles (noseleaves) during signal reception and emissions, respectively. These dynamics are a focus of prior studies that demonstrated that these effects could introduce time-variance within emitted and received signals. Recent lab based experiments with biomimetic hardware have shown that these dynamics can also inject time-variant signatures into echoes from simple targets. However, complex foliage echoes, which comprise a large portion of the received echoes and contain useful information for these bats, have not been studied in prior research. We used a biomimetic sonarhead which replicated these dynamics, to collect a large dataset of foliage echoes (>55,000). To generate a neuromorphic representation of echoes that was representative of the neural spikes in bat brains, we developed an auditory processing model based on Horseshoe bat physiological data. Then, machine learning classifiers were employed to classify these spike representations of echoes into distinct groups, based on the presence or absence of dynamics' effects. Our results showed that classification with up to 80% accuracy was possible, indicating the presence of these effects in foliage echoes, and their persistence through the auditory processing. These results suggest that these dynamics' effects might be present in bat brains, and therefore have the potential to inform behavioral decisions. Our results also indicated that potential benefits from these effects might be location specific, as our classifier was more effective in classifying echoes from the same physical location, compared to a dataset with significant variation in recording locations. This result suggested that advantages of these effects may be limited to the context of particular surroundings if the bat brain similarly fails to generalize over variation in locations. / Master of Science / Horseshoe bats (family Rhinolophidae) are an echolocating bat species, i.e., they emit sound waves and use the corresponding echoes received from the environment to gather information for navigation. This species of bats demonstrate the behavior of deforming their emitter (noseleaf), and ears (pinna), while emitting or receiving echolocation signals. Horseshoe bats are adept at navigating in the dark through dense foliage. Their impressive navigational abilities are of interest to researchers, as their biology can inspire solutions for autonomous drone navigation in foliage and underwater. Prior research, through numerical studies and experimental reproductions, has found that these deformations can introduce time-dependent changes in the emitted and received signals. Furthermore, recent research using a biomimetic robot has found that echoes received from simple shapes, such as cube and sphere, also contain time-dependent changes. However, prior studies have not used foliage echoes in their analysis, which are more complex, since they include a large number of randomly distributed targets (leaves). Foliage echoes also constitute a large share of echoes from the bats' habitats, hence an understanding of the effects of the dynamic deformations on these foliage echoes is of interest. Since echolocation signals exist within bat brains as neural spikes, it is also important to understand if these dynamic effects can be identified within such signal representations, as that would indicate that these effects are available to the bats' brains. In this study, a biomimetic robot that mimicked the dynamic pinna and noseleaf deformation was used to collect a large dataset (>55,000) of echoes from foliage. A signal processing model that mimicked the auditory processing of these bats and generated simulated spike responses was also developed. Supervised machine learning was used to classify these simulated spike responses into two groups based on the presence or absence of these dynamics' effects. The success of the machine learning classifiers of up to 80% accuracy suggested that the dynamic effects exist within foliage echoes and also spike-based representations. The machine learning classifier was more accurate when classifying echoes from a small confined area, as compared to echoes distributed over a larger area with varying foliage. This result suggests that any potential benefits from these effects might be location-specific if the bat brain similarly fails to generalize over the variation in echoes from different locations.

Multibody dynamics simulations are currently widely accepted as valuable means for dynamic performance analysis of mechanical systems. The evolution of theoretical and computational aspects of the multibody dynamics discipline make it conducive these days for other types of applications, in addition to pure simulations. One very important such application is design optimization for multibody systems. Sensitivity analysis of multibody system dynamics, which is performed before optimization or in parallel, is essential for optimization. Current sensitivity approaches have limitations in terms of efficiently performing sensitivity analysis for complex systems with respect to multiple design parameters. Thus, we bring new contributions to the state-of-the-art in analytical sensitivity approaches in this study. A direct differentiation method is developed for multibody dynamic models that employ Maggi's formulation. An adjoint variable method is developed for explicit and implicit first order Maggi's formulations, second order Maggi's formulation, and first and second order penalty formulations. The resulting sensitivities are employed to perform optimization of different multibody systems case studies. The collection of benchmark problems includes a five-bar mechanism, a full vehicle model, and a passive dynamic robot. The five-bar mechanism is used to test and validate the sensitivity approaches derived in this paper by comparing them with other sensitivity approaches. The full vehicle system is used to demonstrate the capability of the adjoint variable method based on the penalty formulation to perform sensitivity analysis and optimization for large and complex multibody systems with respect to multiple design parameters with high efficiency. In addition, a new multibody dynamics software library MBSVT (Multibody Systems at Virginia Tech) is developed in Fortran 2003, with forward kinematics and dynamics, sensitivity analysis, and optimization capabilities. Several different contact and friction models, which can be used to model point contact and surface contact, are developed and included in MBSVT. Finally, this study employs reference point coordinates and the penalty formulation to perform dynamic analysis for the passive dynamic robot, simplifying the modeling stage and making the robotic system more stable. The passive dynamic robot is also used to test and validate all the point contact and surface contact models developed in MBSVT. / Ph. D.

In a stochastic Lotka-Volterra model on a two-dimensional square lattice with periodic boundary conditions and subject to occupation restrictions, there exists an extinction threshold for the predator population that separates a stable active two-species coexistence phase from an inactive state wherein only prey survive. When investigating the non-equilibrium relaxation of the predator density in the vicinity of the phase transition point, we observe critical slowing-down and algebraic decay of the predator density at the extinction critical point. The numerically determined critical exponents are in accord with the established values of the directed percolation universality class. Following a sudden predation rate change to its critical value, one finds critical aging for the predator density autocorrelation function that is also governed by universal scaling exponents. This aging scaling signature of the active-to-absorbing state phase transition emerges at significantly earlier times than the stationary critical power laws, and could thus serve as an advanced indicator of the (predator) population's proximity to its extinction threshold. In order to study boundary effects, we split the system into two patches: Upon setting the predation rates at two distinct values, one half of the system resides in an absorbing state where only the prey survives, while the other half attains a stable coexistence state wherein both species remain active. At the domain boundary, we observe a marked enhancement of the predator population density, the minimum value of the correlation length, and the maximum attenuation rate. Boundary effects become less prominent as the system is successively divided into subdomains in a checkerboard pattern, with two different reaction rates assigned to neighboring patches. We furthermore add another predator species into the system with the purpose of studying possible origins of biodiversity. Predators are characterized with individual predation efficiencies and death rates, to which "Darwinian" evolutionary adaptation is introduced. We find that direct competition between predator species and character displacement together play an important role in yielding stable communities. We develop another variant of the lattice predator-prey model to help understand the killer- prey relationship of two different types of E. coli in a biological experiment, wherein the prey colonies disperse all over the plate while the killer cell population resides at the center, and a "kill zone" of prey forms immediately surrounding the killer, beyond which the prey population gradually increases outward. / Ph. D. / We utilize Monte-Carlo simulations to study population dynamics of Lotka–Volterra model and its variants. Our research topics include the non-equilibrium phase transition from a predator-prey coexistence state to an absorbing state wherein only prey survive, boundary effects in a spatially inhomogeneous system, the stabilization of a three species system with direct competition and “Darwinian” evolutionary adaption introduced, and the formation of spatial patterns in a biological experiment of two killer and prey E. coli species.

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Call number: LD2668 .T4 1960 H48