1P1-E05 Development of biomimetic soft underwater robots : Development of sea snake-like underwater robot(Underwater Robot and Mechatronics (2))

Abstract

Aimming to design a soft robotic fish for more flexible and efficient fish-like motion by biomimetic method, we are developing a snake-like robot with body undulating propulsion using the piezoelectric fiber composite (PFC) as soft actuator by mimicking the sea snake. Due to the large deformation of flexible structure and complicated dynamics with fluid, the design method for soft fish robots has not been established, and we need to study it by considering the coupling between them. In this paper, the sea snake-like robot using PFC is developed by the analytical simulation with considering the coupling between flexible structure and fluid. The efficient body undulating propulsion based on meandering motion is realized successfully from the prototype, and its swimming efficiency is similar to the real sea snake's.