Vercruyssen Tim G A, Henrion Sebastian, Müller Ulrike K, van Leeuwen Johan L, van der Helm Frans C T
ExRobotics, Delftechpark, 2629 HS Delft, The Netherlands.
Corporate Research and Development, Royal Boskalis, 3356 LK Papendrecht, The Netherlands.
Biomimetics (Basel). 2023 May 23;8(2):214. doi: 10.3390/biomimetics8020214.
Autonomous robots are used to inspect, repair and maintain underwater assets. These tasks require energy-efficient robots, including efficient movement to extend available operational time. To examine the suitability of a propulsion system based on undulating fins, we built two robots with one and two fins, respectively, and conducted a parametric study for combinations of frequency, amplitude, wavenumber and fin shapes in free-swimming experiments, measuring steady-state swimming speed, power consumption and cost of transport. The following trends emerged for both robots. Swimming speed was more strongly affected by frequency than amplitude across the examined wavenumbers and fin heights. Power consumption was sensitive to frequency at low wavenumbers, and increasingly sensitive to amplitude at high wavenumbers. This increasing sensitivity of amplitude was more pronounced in tall rather than short fins. Cost of transport showed a complex relation with fin size and kinematics and changed drastically across the mapped parameter space. At equal fin kinematics as the single-finned robot, the double-finned robot swam slightly faster (>10%) with slightly lower power consumption (<20%) and cost of transport (<40%). Overall, the robots perform similarly to finned biological swimmers and other bio-inspired robots, but do not outperform robots with conventional propulsion systems.
自主机器人用于检查、维修和维护水下资产。这些任务需要节能机器人，包括高效移动以延长可用运行时间。为了研究基于波动鳍片的推进系统的适用性，我们分别制造了一个鳍片和两个鳍片的两个机器人，并在自由游动实验中对频率、振幅、波数和鳍片形状的组合进行了参数研究，测量了稳态游泳速度、功耗和运输成本。两个机器人都出现了以下趋势。在所研究的波数和鳍片高度范围内，游泳速度受频率的影响比受振幅的影响更大。在低波数下，功耗对频率敏感，在高波数下对振幅越来越敏感。这种振幅敏感性的增加在高鳍片而非短鳍片中更为明显。运输成本与鳍片尺寸和运动学呈现复杂关系，并且在映射的参数空间中变化剧烈。在与单鳍机器人鳍片运动学相同的情况下，双鳍机器人游得稍快（>10%），功耗稍低（<20%），运输成本稍低（<40%）。总体而言，这些机器人的表现与有鳍生物游泳者和其他仿生机器人相似，但并不优于具有传统推进系统的机器人。
