Development of a New Jellyfish-Type Underwater Microrobot

Shi, Liwei; Guo, Shuxiang; Asaka, Kinji

doi:10.2316/journal.206.2011.2.206-3458

Cited by 32 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…a Stick insect-inspired [2]. b Jellyfish-inspired [1]. c Inchworminspired [26,35] was improved, the prototype was unable to rotate, and the walking motion was unsatisfactory because the center of gravity was located in one of the two halves of the body, causing an imbalance in the overall body and a large amount of slippage.…”

Section: Developed Microrobotsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A jellyfish-inspired biomimetic locomotion prototype with SMA actuators was introduced in [1,33]. The jellyfish-inspired body uses SMA actuators to imitate the circular muscles of a real jellyfish, as shown in Fig.…”

Section: Jellyfish-like Floating Locomotionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Figure 15 shows a single step cycle of the forward motion. Each cycle is divided into four periods as follows [1].…”

Section: Mechanism Of the Walking/rotating Motion In The Lying Attitudementioning

confidence: 99%

“…This trend has continued into underwater monitoring and recovery operations, including pollution detection, submarine sampling and data collection, video mapping, exploration of unstructured underwater environments, object recovery in dangerous places, and other tasks [1,2]. Various configurations, shapes, and sizes of underwater robots are required for different applications or tasks.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Aside from fishlike and manta-ray-like swimming locomotion, we have developed several microrobots that employ biomimetic locomotion to implement walking, floating and swimming motions [1,2,[25][26][27]. However, each of these units implements only some of these motions and none of them are able to carry out simple tasks such as grasping and carrying objects to a desired position, detecting an object, or avoiding an obstacle.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

A Multifunctional Underwater Biomimetic Microrobot

Guo

Shi

2015

Springer Tracts in Mechanical Engineering

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Robots play an important role in underwater monitoring and recovery operations, such as pollution detection, submarine sampling and data collection, video mapping, and object recovery in dangerous places. However, regular-sized robots may not be suitable for applications in some restricted underwater environments. Accordingly, in previous research we designed several novel types of bio-inspired microrobots, using ionic polymer metal composite (IPMC) and shape memory alloy (SMA) actuators. These microrobots possess some of the attributes of compact structure, multifunctionality, flexibility, and precise positioning. However, they lack the attributes of long endurance, stable high speed, and large load capacity necessary for real-world applications. To overcome these disadvantages, we propose a mother-son robot system, composed of several microrobots as sons and a newly designed amphibious spherical robot as the mother. In this system, the mother robot is actuated by four water-jet propellers and eight servomotors, capable of providing stable high speed and carrying the microrobots to the desired target location where tasks are to be performed. Generally speaking, compact structure, multifunctionality, and precise positioning are considered incompatible characteristics for underwater microrobots. To realize the necessary multifunctionality for adapting to complex underwater environments, we introduce a walking biomimetic microrobot with two kinds of motion attitudes: a lying state and a standing state. The microrobot uses eleven IPMC actuators to move and two SMA actuators to change its motion attitude. In the lying state, the microrobot implements stickinsect-inspired walking/rotating motion, fishlike swimming motion, horizontal grasping motion, and floating motion. In the standing state, it implements inchworm-inspired crawling motion in two horizontal directions and grasping motion in the vertical direction. We constructed a prototype of this biomimetic microrobot and evaluated its walking, rotating, and floating speeds experimentally. The experimental results indicated that the robot could attain a maximum walking speed of 3.6 mm/s, a maximum rotational speed of 9°/s, and a maximum floating speed of 7.14 mm/s. Obstacle-avoidance and swimming experiments were also carried out to demonstrate its multifunctionality.

show abstract