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Planar Multi-Link Swimmers: Experiments and Theoretical Investigation using “Perfect Fluid” Model

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 February 2019

Evgenia Virozub,
Oren WiezelOpen the ORCID record for Oren Wiezel[Opens in a new window],
Alon Wolf and
Yizhar Or
Evgenia Virozub
Affiliation:
Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Technion –Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 32000, Israel. E-mails: jene4k@gmail.com, orenwi@campus.technion.ac.il, alonw@technion.ac.il
Oren Wiezel
Affiliation:
Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Technion –Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 32000, Israel. E-mails: jene4k@gmail.com, orenwi@campus.technion.ac.il, alonw@technion.ac.il
Alon Wolf
Affiliation:
Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Technion –Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 32000, Israel. E-mails: jene4k@gmail.com, orenwi@campus.technion.ac.il, alonw@technion.ac.il
Yizhar Or*
Affiliation:
Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Technion –Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 32000, Israel. E-mails: jene4k@gmail.com, orenwi@campus.technion.ac.il, alonw@technion.ac.il
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: izi@technion.ac.il
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Summary

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Robotic swimmers are currently a subject of extensive research and development for several underwater applications. Clever design and planning must rely on simple theoretical models that account for the swimmer’s hydrodynamics in order to optimize its structure and control inputs. In this work, we study a planar snake-like multi-link swimmer by using the “perfect fluid” model that accounts for inertial hydrodynamic forces while neglecting viscous drag effects. The swimmer’s dynamic equations of motion are formulated and reduced into a first-order system due to symmetries and conservation of generalized momentum variables. Focusing on oscillatory inputs of joint angles, we study optimal gaits for 3-link and 5-link swimmers via numerical integration. For the 3-link swimmer, we also provide a small-amplitude asymptotic solution which enables obtaining closed-form approximations for optimal gaits. The theoretical results are then corroborated by experiments and motion measurement of untethered robotic prototypes with three and five links floating in a water pool, showing a reasonable agreement between the experiments and the theoretical model.

Keywords

Robot dynamicsMarine roboticsControl of robotic systemsRobotic locomotionGait optimization

Information

Type
Articles
Information
Robotica , Volume 37 , Issue 8 , August 2019, pp. 1289 - 1301
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2019 

Footnotes

This work has been supported by the Israeli Science Foundation under Grant 567/14 and Technion Autonomous Systems Program Grant No. 2021776.

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