TY - GEN
T1 - Design, Modeling and Testing of a Flagellum-inspired Soft Underwater Propeller Exploiting Passive Elasticity
AU - Calisti, Marcello
AU - Giorgio-Serchi, Francesco
AU - Stefanini, Cesare
AU - Farman, Madiha
AU - Hussain, Irfan
AU - Armanini, Costanza
AU - Gan, Dongming
AU - Seneviratne, Lakmal
AU - Renda, Federico
N1 - Funding Information:
This publication is based upon work supported by the Khalifa University of Science and Technology under Award No. FSU-2018-08.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 IEEE.
PY - 2019/11
Y1 - 2019/11
N2 - Flagellated micro-organism are regarded as excellent swimmers within their size scales. This, along with the simplicity of their actuation and the richness of their dynamics makes them a valuable source of inspiration to design continuum, self-propelled underwater robots. Here we introduce a soft, flagellum-inspired system which exploits the compliance of its own body to passively attain a range of geometrical configurations from the interaction with the surrounding fluid. The spontaneous formation of stable helical waves along the length of the flagellum is responsible for the generation of positive net thrust. We investigate the relationship between actuation frequency and material elasticity in determining the steady-state configuration of the system and its thrust output. This is ultimately used to perform a parameter identification procedure of an elastodynamic model aimed at investigating the scaling laws in the propulsion of flagellated robots.
AB - Flagellated micro-organism are regarded as excellent swimmers within their size scales. This, along with the simplicity of their actuation and the richness of their dynamics makes them a valuable source of inspiration to design continuum, self-propelled underwater robots. Here we introduce a soft, flagellum-inspired system which exploits the compliance of its own body to passively attain a range of geometrical configurations from the interaction with the surrounding fluid. The spontaneous formation of stable helical waves along the length of the flagellum is responsible for the generation of positive net thrust. We investigate the relationship between actuation frequency and material elasticity in determining the steady-state configuration of the system and its thrust output. This is ultimately used to perform a parameter identification procedure of an elastodynamic model aimed at investigating the scaling laws in the propulsion of flagellated robots.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85081159384&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/IROS40897.2019.8967700
DO - 10.1109/IROS40897.2019.8967700
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85081159384
T3 - IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems
SP - 3328
EP - 3334
BT - 2019 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, IROS 2019
PB - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
T2 - 2019 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, IROS 2019
Y2 - 3 November 2019 through 8 November 2019
ER -