Design of biomimetic soft underwater robots

Abstract

The evolution process for creatures is very, very long, and contains many useful secrets and rationality mostly hidden in their structure, motion and configuration. Biomimetic mechatronic design is a useful approach for future mechatronic innovation, which can significantly enhance the performance of mechatronic systems. As an important issue for biomimetic mechatronic design, it is necessary to make a robot as soft as a natural creature to achieve more efficient, high-performance and creature-like motions. Compared to a conventional rigid robot, the design and control of a soft robot is difficult because the coupling between the flexible structure and surrounding environment should be considered, which is very difficult to resolve due to the large deformations and complicated and coupled dynamics. This is the main reason why design methods for soft robots has not been established, despite the many trial developments of soft robots that have been undertaken to date. The challenges for the design of biomimetic soft underwater robots based on numerical simulation considering the coupling between the flexible structure and surrounding fluid as well as control technologies are described in this chapter.