Title
Hydrodynamic Analysis Of Octopus-Like Robotic Arms
Abstract
We consider robotic analogues of the arms of the octopus, a cephalopod exhibiting a wide variety of dexterous movements and complex shapes, moving in an aquatic environment. Although an invertebrate, the octopus can vary the stiffness of its long arms and generate large forces, while also performing rapid motions within its aquatic environment. Previous studies of elongated robotic systems, moving in fluid environments, have mostly oversimplified the effects of flow and the generated hydrodynamic forces, in their dynamical models. The present paper uses computational fluid dynamic (CFD) analysis to perform high-fidelity numerical simulations of robotic prototypes emulating the morphology of octopus arms. The direction of the flow stream and the arm geometry (e. g., the presence of suckers), were among the parameters that were shown to affect significantly the flow field structure and the resulting hydrodynamic forces, which have a non-uniform distribution along the arm. The CFD results are supported by vortex visualization experiments in a water tank. The results of this investigation are being exploited for the design of soft-bodied robotic systems and the development of related motion control strategies.
Year
DOI
Venue
2012
10.1109/ICRA.2012.6225037
2012 IEEE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ROBOTICS AND AUTOMATION (ICRA)
Keywords
Field
DocType
Biologically-Inspired Robots, Dynamics, Marine Robotics, Hydrodynamics, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), Octopus
Drag,Robotic arm,Motion control,Visualization,Control theory,Vortex,Flow (psychology),Control engineering,Engineering,Computational fluid dynamics,Flow visualization
Conference
Volume
Issue
ISSN
2012
1
1050-4729
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
5
0.64
8
Authors
5