Centimeter-Scale Underwater Robot With High-Speed Inspired by Jellyfish
Qi Wang, Xiaolong Lu, Ningyi Yuan, Peng Jiang, Junyi Yao, Yu Liu, Jianning Ding
Abstract
Centimeter-scale underwater robots have important applications in underwater resource exploration, environmental monitoring, equipment fault diagnosis, and military applications. However, developing small underwater robots remains a challenge because of the limitation of miniaturized structures. In this study, we developed a small underwater robot (JR) with high-speed, inspired by the jellyfish ephyra, composed of a dish-shaped wing, a flexible joint, a rigid support, a semicircular air chamber, with a magnet and a coil integrated as the driving source. Robot JR combines the advantages of electromagnetic drive, flexible structures, miniaturization of the jellyfish robot is realized and high-speed swimming. The size of robot JR was only <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Φ</i> 5 × 3 cm, which is the smallest besides the jellyfish robot driven by an external magnetic field. Meanwhile, its maximum movement speed reached 4.6 BL/s, which is also considerably faster than that of other jellyfish robots. The design and control strategies of our research will provide a reference for future design and lay a solid foundation for the practical use of small underwater robots.