Abstract: In nature, with the help of lateral lines, fish is capable of sensing the state of the flow field and recognizing the surrounding near-field hydrodynamic environment in the condition of weak light or even complete darkness. In order to study the application of lateral lines, an improved pressure distribution model was proposed in this paper, and the pressure distributions of the lateral line carrier under different working conditions were obtained using hydrodynamic simulations. Subsequently, a visualized pressure difference matrix was constructed to identify the flow fields under different working conditions. The role of the lateral lines was investigated from a visual image perspective. Instinct features of different flow velocities, flow angles and obstacle offset distances were mapped into the pressure difference matrix. Lastly, a four-layer Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) model was built as a recognition tool to evaluate the effectiveness of the pressure difference matrix method. The recognition results demonstrate that the CNN can identify the flow field state with 2 s earlier than the current time. Hence, the proposed method provides a new way to identify flow field information in engineering applications. 

Key words: artificial lateral line system, bioinspiration, pressure difference matrix, convolutional neural network, flow field visualization