Controlling Maneuverability of a Bio-Inspired Swimming Robot Through Morphological Transformation: Morphology Driven Control of a Swimming Robot

Kai Junge, Nana Obayashi, Francesco Stella, Cosimo Della Santina, Josie Hughes

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

1 Citation (Scopus)
20 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Biology provides many examples of how body adaption can be used to achieve a change in functionality. The feather star, an underwater crinoid that uses feather arms to locomote and feed, is one such system; it releases its arms to distract prey and vary its maneuverability to help escape predators. Using this crinoid as inspiration, we develop a robotic system that can alter its interaction with the environment by changing its morphology. We propose a robot that can actuate layers of flexible feathers and detach them at will. We first optimize the geometric and control parameters for a flexible feather using a hydrodynamic simulation followed by physical experiments. Second, we provide a theoretical framework for understanding how body change affects controllability. Third, we present a novel design of a soft swimming robot ( Figure 1 ) with the ability of changing its morphology. Using this optimized feather and theoretical framework, we demonstrate, on a robotic setup, how the detachment of feathers can be used to change the motion path while maintaining the same low-level controller.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)78-91
JournalIEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine
Volume29
Issue number4
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2022

Bibliographical note

Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository 'You share, we take care!' - Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care
Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.

Keywords

  • Biological system modeling
  • Feathers
  • Hydrodynamics
  • Morphology
  • Optimization
  • Robots
  • Stars

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