A fluid-driven soft robotic fish inspired by fish muscle architecture

Abstract

Artificial fish-like robots developed to date often focus on the external morphology of fish and have rarely addressed the contribution of the structure and morphology of biological muscle. However, biological studies have proven that fish utilize the contraction of muscle fibers to drive the protective flexible connective tissue to swim. This paper introduces a pneumatic silicone structure prototype inspired by the red muscle system of fish and applies it to the fish-like robot named Flexi-Tuna. The key innovation is to make the fluid-driven units simulate the red muscle fiber bundles of fish and embed them into a flexible tuna-like matrix. The driving units act as muscle fibers to generate active contraction force, and the flexible matrix as connective tissue to generate passive deformation. Applying alternant pressure to the driving units can produce a bending moment, causing the tail to swing. As a result, the structural design of Flexi-Tuna has excellent bearing capacity compared with the traditional cavity-type and keeps the body smooth. On this basis, a general method is proposed for modeling the fish-like robot based on the independent analysis of the active and passive body, providing a foundation for Flexi-Tuna’s size design. Followed by the robot’s static and underwater dynamic tests, we used finite element static analysis and fluid numerical simulation to compare the results. The experimental results showed that the maximum swing angle of the tuna-like robot reached 20°, and the maximum thrust reached 0.185 N at the optimum frequency of 3.5 Hz. In this study, we designed a unique system that matches the functional level of biological muscles. As a result, we realized the application of fluid-driven artificial muscle to bionic fish and expanded new ideas for the structural design of flexible bionic fish.

Designs, motion mechanism, motion coordination, and communication of bionic robot fishes: a survey

“…Designs, motion mechanism, motion coordination, and communication of bionic robot fishes: a survey Designs, motion mechanism, motion coordination, and communication of bionic robot fishes: a survey gas-driven units to simulate muscle fibers of fish and successfully designed the robot fish Flexi-Tuna [21]. As shown in Figure 3B, 14 drive units were symmetrically distributed on both sides of the robot fish's body.…”

Research and Implementation of Pneumatic Amphibious Soft Bionic Robot

“…Liu S.J. et al [21] from Jilin University developed a tuna-like robot based on simulating fish muscle bundles, with a maximum swing angle of 20 • and a maximum thrust of 0.185 N at the optimal frequency of 3.5 Hz. This type of robot has high flexibility and fast swimming speed, but poor stability.…”

Biomimetic Soft Underwater Robot Inspired by the Red Muscle and Tendon Structure of Fish

“…Soft material robots include robots with a motor and a soft body [ 7 ], robots with a motor/wire mechanism and a soft body [ 8 , 9 , 10 ], and robots with a tensegrity mechanism that allows the rigidity of the body to be set to an arbitrary value at each body length position [ 11 , 12 ]. Meanwhile, robots have been developed using soft actuators such as pneumatic and hydrodynamic actuators that deform by fluid pressure [ 13 , 14 ]; shape memory alloys (SMA) that shorten by heating [ 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 ]; and piezoelectric composite fiber [ 19 ], dielectric elastomer actuators (DEA) [ 20 , 21 ], and hydraulically amplified self-healing electrostatic (HASEL) actuators [ 22 ] that deform by applying a voltage.…”