Faculty Search Research Seminar:  Roni Goldshmid

Faculty Search Research Seminar

“Sensing the wind using computer vision and vegetation” 

 Roni Goldshmid 

Postdoctoral Scholar Research Associate 

California Institute of Technology

Tuesday, March 14, 2023, 11:00 am

GM Room Lurie Engineering Center

Seminar Zoom Link

Add to Google Calendar

Abstract: 

Visual anemometry (VA) leverages observations of fluid-structure interactions to infer incident flow characteristics. Recent work has demonstrated the concept of VA using both data-driven and physical modeling approaches applied to natural vegetation. These methods have not yet achieved generalization across plant species and demonstrated increasing prediction errors at low and high wind speeds. To explore the basis of the measured errors and to aim towards generalizability across plant species, I conducted a laboratory study of VA in an open circuit wind tunnel using eight species of vegetation. A sigmoid shape was found to describe the relationship between the vegetation displacement fields and wind speeds. The physical interpretation of the previously observed errors will be presented along with a direction towards generalization of VA.

Bio: 

I am a postdoc in Aerospace at Caltech. I am broadly interested in solving sustainability challenges using experimental fluid dynamics. More specifically, I focus on developing new measurement techniques, controlling atmospheric scale flows, and leveraging machine learning for imperfect empirical data. My current research project focuses on the development of non-intrusive data-driven and physics-based methods that estimate incident wind speeds from visual observations of natural vegetation. These methods provide physical insights on flow-structure interactions and could be leveraged to improve climate prediction models, predict gusts at renewable energy sites, passively remove air pollution from cities, and contain wildland fires.