Design and Control of a Fish-like Robot Using an Electrostatic Motor

Zhang, Zu Guang; Gondo, M.; Yamashita, Norio; Yamamoto, Akihiro; Higuchi, Toshiro

doi:10.1109/robot.2007.363111

Cited by 14 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…The measured capacitance values of the clamped fish samples (in air) are 7.4 nF and 8.6 nF for the configurations without and with a caudal fin, respectively. It is worth mentioning that these capacitance values have been observed to increase during the underwater experiments due to slight water absorption associated with long-term immersion, which is a fabrication-based limitation and is beyond the scope of this work 3 .…”

Section: The Effect Of Caudal Fin On the Thrust Frequency Responsementioning

confidence: 99%

Underwater thrust and power generation using flexible piezoelectric composites: an experimental investigation toward self-powered swimmer-sensor platforms

Ertürk¹,

Delporte²

2011

Smart Mater. Struct.

137

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Fiber-based flexible piezoelectric composites offer several advantages to use in energy harvesting and biomimetic locomotion. These advantages include ease of application, high power density, effective bending actuation, silent operation over a range of frequencies, and light weight. Piezoelectric materials exhibit the well-known direct and converse piezoelectric effects. The direct piezoelectric effect has received growing attention for low-power generation to use in wireless electronic applications while the converse piezoelectric effect constitutes an alternative to replace the conventional actuators used in biomimetic locomotion. In this paper, underwater thrust and electricity generation are investigated experimentally by focusing on biomimetic structures with macro-fiber composite piezoelectrics. Fish-like bimorph configurations with and without a passive caudal fin (tail) are fabricated and compared. The favorable effect of having a passive caudal fin on the frequency bandwidth is reported. The presence of a passive caudal fin is observed to bring the second bending mode close to the first one, yielding a wideband behavior in thrust generation. The same smart fish configuration is tested for underwater piezoelectric power generation in response to harmonic excitation from its head. Resonant piezohydroelastic actuation is reported to generate milli-newton level hydrodynamic thrust using milli-watt level actuation power input. The average actuation power requirement for generating a mean thrust of 19 mN at 6 Hz using a 10 g piezoelastic fish with a caudal fin is measured as 120 mW. This work also discusses the feasibility of thrust generation using the harvested energy toward enabling self-powered swimmer-sensor platforms with comparisons based on the capacity levels of structural thin-film battery layers as well as harvested solar and vibrational energy.

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Section: The Effect Of Caudal Fin On the Thrust Frequency Responsementioning

confidence: 99%

Underwater thrust and power generation using flexible piezoelectric composites: an experimental investigation toward self-powered swimmer-sensor platforms

Ertürk¹,

Delporte²

2011

Smart Mater. Struct.

137

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…for sustainable ecology to drug delivery and disease screening in medicine [1][2][3]. Other than the use of conventional actuators, such as servomotors and hydraulic actuators employed in conjunction with various mechanisms [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13], recently, various smart materials have been utilized for fish-like robotic fish development, such as ionic polymer-metal composites (IPMCs) [14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31], Shape memory alloys (SMAs) [32][33][34][35][36][37], magnetostrictive thin films [38][39][40], among other alternatives [41][42][43]. In particular, the IPMC technology [14][15][16][17]…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bio-inspired aquatic robotics by untethered piezohydroelastic actuation

2013

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This paper investigates fish-like aquatic robotics using flexible bimorphs made of macro-fiber composite (MFC) piezoelectric laminates for carangiform locomotion. In addition to noiseless and efficient actuation over a range of frequencies, geometric scalability, and simple design, bimorph propulsors made of MFCs offer a balance between the actuation force and velocity response for performance enhancement in bio-inspired swimming. The experimental component of the presented work focuses on the characterization of an elastically constrained MFC bimorph propulsor for thrust generation in quiescent water as well as the development of a robotic fish prototype combining a microcontroller and a printed-circuit-board amplifier to generate high actuation voltage for untethered locomotion. From the theoretical standpoint, a distributed-parameter electroelastic model including the hydrodynamic effects and actuator dynamics is coupled with the elongated-body theory for predicting the mean thrust in quiescent water. In-air and underwater experiments are performed to verify the incorporation of hydrodynamic effects in the linear actuation regime. For electroelastically nonlinear actuation levels, experimentally obtained underwater vibration response is coupled with the elongated-body theory to predict the thrust output. The measured mean thrust levels in quiescent water (on the order of ∼10 mN) compare favorably with thrust levels of biological fish. An untethered robotic fish prototype that employs a single bimorph fin (caudal fin) for straight swimming and turning motions is developed and tested in free locomotion. A swimming speed of 0.3 body-length/second (7.5 cm s⁻¹ swimming speed for 24.3 cm body length) is achieved at 5 Hz for a non-optimized main body-propulsor bimorph combination under a moderate actuation voltage level.

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“…Because size and operation condition of the other fish robots in the reference papers are all different, a direct comparison of their swimming speeds does not provide any meaningful insight. Therefore we simply provide available data found in the literatures for relative comparison: the swimming speed of an ICTFdriven fish robot was 0.52 cm/s (Guo et al, 2003) and that of electrostatic motor-driven fish-like robot was 1.8 cm/s in the dielectric liquid (Zhang et al, 2007).…”

Section: Swimming Speedmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Another example of non-conventional underwater swimmer is a fish-like robot proposed by Zhang et al (2007), where an electrostatic film motor was used to create undulating motion of a body.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Design and Experimental Parameteric Study of a Fish Robot Actuated by Piezoelectric Actuators

Wiguna

Heo

Park

et al. 2008

Journal of Intelligent Material Systems and Structures

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This paper presents the design and experimental parametric study of a biomimetic fish robot actuated by two lightweight piezo-composite actuators. The biomimetic aspects in this work are the mimicking of an oscillating tail-beat motion and the shape of an artificial caudal fin. Artificial caudal fins that resemble the fins of fish propelled by the body-and-caudal fin mode are fabricated for a parametric study of the way caudal fin characteristics affect the production of thrust at an operating frequency range. The observed caudal fin characteristics are the shape, area, and aspect ratio. A caudal fin with a high aspect ratio contributes to the high swimming speed of the present fish platform. A fish robot propelled by an artificial caudal fin shaped like the fin of a thunniform fish, which has a relatively high aspect ratio, produces a swimming speed as high as 2.364 cm/s for a 300 Vpp input voltage excited at 0.9Hz. The thrust performance of the biomimetic fish robot is examined in terms of the Strouhal number, the Froude number, the Reynolds number, and power consumption.

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Design and Control of a Fish-like Robot Using an Electrostatic Motor

Cited by 14 publications

References 15 publications

Underwater thrust and power generation using flexible piezoelectric composites: an experimental investigation toward self-powered swimmer-sensor platforms

Underwater thrust and power generation using flexible piezoelectric composites: an experimental investigation toward self-powered swimmer-sensor platforms

Bio-inspired aquatic robotics by untethered piezohydroelastic actuation

Design and Experimental Parameteric Study of a Fish Robot Actuated by Piezoelectric Actuators

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