Bionic Inspirations of Fish-like Robots from Rhinecanthus Aculeatus

Due to oceanic exploitation necessities, such as benthonic archaeology, exploration to benthonic mineral resources and salvaging of sunken ships, a novel kind of fish-like robot has become one of the hot topics in the field of underwater vehicles. For such aquatic robots, high maneuverability and great stability are more important than high speed or remarkable accelerating performance. This paper extracts some interesting and helpful inspirations from Rhinecanthus aculeatus, which belongs to MPF (median and/or paired fin) propulsion fish and impresses researchers with agility by cooperative undulations of the dorsal-and-anal fins. To begin with, a selected specimen of R. aculeatus was filmed in a large aquarium (150 cm times 50 cm times 60 cm) in which artificial seawater was maintained at 26 degC or so, for observations and measurements. Then, several characteristics in morphology and locomotion were respectively analyzed with image processing and other approaches based on the filmed swimming sequences. Finally, we sum up some bionic inspirations of R. aculeatus for a novel robfish which is distinct with an undulatory multi-fin biopropulsor, and this conceptual aquatic vehicle has been expected to exhibit better maneuverability, greater stability, and higher efficiency