Development and Performance Analysis of Artificial Muscle for Fish Robots Using Water Pumps

A new method is proposed to build artificial muscle for fish robots using water pumps and bellows rubber pipes. Since bio-mimetic robots mimic the patterns of behaviours of real animals, it is natural for actuators of robots to adopt the actuating patterns of muscle fibres.The proposed actuator, called artificial muscle, has several advantages. The artificial muscle units have been applied in various types of fish robots which have been developed in our lab. The muscle units replace conventional motors for various kinds of movements. When direction changes are necessary for a fish robot, a muscle unit can change the directions of a tail fin or its lower body just like real muscle does. The experimental results in a pond show that fish robots swim smoothly using artificial muscle units.