Title :
Octopus-inspired eight-arm robotic swimming by sculling movements
Author :
Sfakiotakis, Michael ; Kazakidi, Asimina ; Pateromichelakis, N. ; Tsakiris, Dimitris P.
Author_Institution :
Inst. of Comput. Sci., Found. for Res. & Technol. - Hellas (FORTH, Heraklion, Greece
Abstract :
Inspired by the octopus arm morphology and exploiting recordings of swimming octopus, we investigate the propulsive capabilities of an 8-arm robotic system under various swimming gaits, including arm sculling and arm undulations, for the generation of forward propulsion. A dynamical model of the robotic system, that considers fluid drag contributions accurately evaluated by CFD methods, was used to study the effects of various kinematic parameters on propulsion. Experiments inside a water tank with an 8-arm robotic prototype successfully demonstrated the sculling-only gaits, attaining a maximum speed of approximately 0.2 body lengths per second. Similar trends were observed, as in the simulation studies, with respect to the effect of the kinematic parameters on propulsion.
Keywords :
computational fluid dynamics; drag; hydrodynamics; manipulator dynamics; manipulator kinematics; marine propulsion; tanks (containers); CFD methods; arm sculling; arm undulations; dynamical model; fluid drag contributions; forward propulsion generation; kinematic parameters; octopus arm morphology; octopus-inspired eight-arm robotic swimming; propulsive capabilities; sculling movements; sculling-only gaits; swimming gaits; swimming octopus recording; water tank; Computational fluid dynamics; Kinematics; Manipulators; Propulsion; Prototypes; Simulation; Biologically-Inspired Robots; Hydrodynamics; Octopus; Underwater Propulsion;
Conference_Titel :
Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2013 IEEE International Conference on
Conference_Location :
Karlsruhe
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4673-5641-1
DOI :
10.1109/ICRA.2013.6631314