Mechanical models of sandfish locomotion reveal principles of high performance subsurface sand-swimming

Maladen, Ryan D.; Ding, Yanheng; Umbanhowar, Paul B.; Kamor, Adam; Goldman, Daniel I.

doi:10.1098/rsif.2010.0678

Cited by 172 publications

(189 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…highly viscous watery solutions [32]; sandfish and nematodes moving through granular media [33][34][35][36]; and alligators (data in [21]). When facing higher frictional forces, undulatory swimmers swim at lower stride lengths-tail-beat frequency f and amplitude A tail must increase to achieve the same displacement (computational: [2,14,15,37], experimental: [19,32,38,39]).…”

Section: Coping With High-friction Forces: Trading Efficiency For Thrustmentioning

confidence: 99%

How body torque and Strouhal number change with swimming speed and developmental stage in larval zebrafish

Leeuwen

Voesenek

Müller

2015

J. R. Soc. Interface.

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Small undulatory swimmers such as larval zebrafish experience both inertial and viscous forces, the relative importance of which is indicated by the Reynolds number (Re). Re is proportional to swimming speed (v swim ) and body length; faster swimming reduces the relative effect of viscous forces. Compared with adults, larval fish experience relatively high (mainly viscous) drag during cyclic swimming. To enhance thrust to an equally high level, they must employ a high product of tail-beat frequency and ( peakto-peak) amplitude fA tail , resulting in a relatively high fA tail / v swim ratio (Strouhal number, St), and implying relatively high lateral momentum shedding and low propulsive efficiency. Using kinematic and inverse-dynamics analyses, we studied cyclic swimming of larval zebrafish aged 2-5 days post-fertilization (dpf ). Larvae at 4-5 dpf reach higher f (95 Hz) and A tail (2.4 mm) than at 2 dpf (80 Hz, 1.8 mm), increasing swimming speed and Re, indicating increasing muscle powers. As Re increases (60 ! 1400), St (2.5 ! 0.72) decreases nonlinearly towards values of large swimmers (0.2-0.6), indicating increased propulsive efficiency with v swim and age. Swimming at high St is associated with high-amplitude body torques and rotations. Low propulsive efficiencies and large yawing amplitudes are unavoidable physical constraints for small undulatory swimmers.

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Section: Coping With High-friction Forces: Trading Efficiency For Thrustmentioning

confidence: 99%

How body torque and Strouhal number change with swimming speed and developmental stage in larval zebrafish

Leeuwen

Voesenek

Müller

2015

J. R. Soc. Interface.

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“…Robots have been used to study locomotion biomechanics [18][19][20][21][22][23], neural control strategies [24][25][26] and animal behaviours [27,28]. The robots are often reduced-order models of the animals with similarities in certain aspects that are of the interest to investigation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mechanics and energetics in tool manufacture and use: a synthetic approach

Wang

Brodbeck

Iida

2014

J. R. Soc. Interface.

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Tool manufacture and use are observed not only in humans but also in other animals such as mammals, birds and insects. Manufactured tools are used for biomechanical functions such as effective control of fluids and small solid objects and extension of reaching. These tools are passive and used with gravity and the animal users' own energy. From the perspective of evolutionary biology, manufactured tools are extended phenotypes of the genes of the animal and exhibit phenotypic plasticity. This incurs energetic cost of manufacture as compared to the case with a fixed tool. This paper studies mechanics and energetics aspects of tool manufacture and use in non-human beings. Firstly, it investigates possible mechanical mechanisms of the use of passive manufactured tools. Secondly, it formulates the energetic cost of manufacture and analyses when phenotypic plasticity benefits an animal tool maker and user. We take a synthetic approach and use a controlled physical model, i.e. a robot arm. The robot is capable of additively manufacturing scoop and gripper structures from thermoplastic adhesives to pick and place fluid and solid objects, mimicking primates and birds manufacturing tools for a similar function. We evaluate the effectiveness of tool use in pick-and-place and explain the mechanism for gripper tools picking up solid objects with a solid-mechanics model. We propose a way to formulate the energetic cost of tool manufacture that includes modes of addition and reshaping, and use it to analyse the case of scoop tools. Experiment results show that with a single motor trajectory, the robot was able to effectively pick and place water, rice grains, a pebble and a plastic box with a scoop tool or gripper tools that were manufactured by itself. They also show that by changing the dimension of scoop tools, the energetic cost of tool manufacture and use could be reduced. The work should also be interesting for engineers to design adaptive machines.

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“…1 A and B) through water and sandfish lizards ( Fig. 1 C and D) swim through granular media using a single traveling wave along the body (15,16). By contrast, knifefish ( Fig.…”

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confidence: 99%