Wang Dehong, Zhang Shijing, Li Jing, He Haoxuan, Chen Weishan, Liu Junkao, Zhao Jie, Deng Jie, Liu Yingxiang
State Key Laboratory of Robotics and System, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China.
Research (Wash D C). 2024 Aug 9;7:0449. doi: 10.34133/research.0449. eCollection 2024.
Vibration is a common strategy for aquatic organisms to achieve their life activities, especially at the air-water interface. For the locomotion of small creatures, the organs with plate features are often used on water surfaces, which inspires relevant studies about using thin plates for robot propulsions. However, the influence of the general deformations of thin plates on the generated flow fields has not been considered. Here, a comprehensive investigation is conducted about the flow fields that arose by vibrations of thin plates and the potential as locomotion strategies are explored. It is discovered that as thin plates are subjected to vibration excitations on the water surface, the produced flow fields are mainly determined by the vibration shapes, and the influence rules of plate deformations on the flow fields are identified. The main factors producing asymmetric flow fields are analyzed to realize the morphology control of the flow fields. Then, to determine effective locomotion strategies on the water surface, the flow fields stimulated by integrated vibration exciters are explored, and 2 water surface robots are developed consequentially, which exhibit superior motion performance. This work reveals the basic rules of the vibration-induced-flow mechanism by thin plates and establishes new locomotion strategies for aquatic robots.
振动是水生生物实现其生命活动的一种常见策略，尤其是在空气 - 水界面处。对于小型生物的运动而言，具有平板特征的器官常用于水面，这激发了关于使用薄板进行机器人推进的相关研究。然而，薄板的一般变形对所产生流场的影响尚未得到考虑。在此，对薄板振动产生的流场进行了全面研究，并探索了其作为运动策略的潜力。研究发现，当薄板在水面上受到振动激励时，所产生的流场主要由振动形状决定，并确定了板变形对流场的影响规律。分析了产生不对称流场的主要因素以实现流场的形态控制。然后，为了确定在水面上有效的运动策略，研究了集成振动激励器激发的流场，并相应地开发了2个水面机器人，它们展现出卓越的运动性能。这项工作揭示了薄板振动诱导流动机理的基本规律，并为水生机器人建立了新的运动策略。
