Kulkarni Aditya A, Patel Rahi K, Friedman Chen, Leftwich Megan C
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, The George Washington University.
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, The George Washington University;
J Vis Exp. 2017 Jan 10(119):54909. doi: 10.3791/54909.
The California sea lion (Zalophus californianus), is an agile and powerful swimmer. Unlike many successful swimmers (dolphins, tuna), they generate most of their thrust with their large foreflippers. This protocol describes a robotic platform designed to study the hydrodynamic performance of the swimming California sea lion (Zalophus californianus). The robot is a model of the animal's foreflipper that is actuated by motors to replicate the motion of its propulsive stroke (the 'clap'). The kinematics of the sea lion's propulsive stroke are extracted from video data of unmarked, non-research sea lions at the Smithsonian Zoological Park (SNZ). Those data form the basis of the actuation motion of the robotic flipper presented here. The geometry of the robotic flipper is based a on high-resolution laser scan of a foreflipper of an adult female sea lion, scaled to about 60% of the full-scale flipper. The articulated model has three joints, mimicking the elbow, wrist and knuckle joint of the sea lion foreflipper. The robotic platform matches dynamics properties-Reynolds number and tip speed-of the animal when accelerating from rest. The robotic flipper can be used to determine the performance (forces and torques) and resulting flowfields.
加利福尼亚海狮（Zalophus californianus）是一种敏捷且强大的游泳者。与许多成功的游泳者（海豚、金枪鱼）不同，它们主要通过大型前鳍产生大部分推力。本协议描述了一个旨在研究加利福尼亚海狮（Zalophus californianus）游泳时水动力性能的机器人平台。该机器人是动物前鳍的模型，由电机驱动以复制其推进冲程（“拍击”）的运动。海狮推进冲程的运动学是从史密森尼国家动物园（SNZ）未标记的非研究用海狮的视频数据中提取的。这些数据构成了此处展示的机器人鳍状肢驱动运动的基础。机器人鳍状肢的几何形状基于对一只成年雌性海狮前鳍的高分辨率激光扫描，并按比例缩小至全尺寸鳍状肢的约60%。这个关节模型有三个关节，模仿海狮前鳍的肘部、腕部和指关节。该机器人平台在从静止加速时与动物的动力学特性——雷诺数和尖端速度相匹配。机器人鳍状肢可用于确定性能（力和扭矩）以及由此产生的流场。
