Vortex Formation and Acceleration of a Fish-Inspired Robot Performing Starts from Rest

We investigate the unsteady flow of a fish-inspired robot executing starts from rest, with the objective of understanding the connection among the kinematics, vortex formation, and acceleration performance. Several fish perform ``fast starts,'' where the body bends into a ``C'' or ``S'' shape while turning (phase I), followed by a straightening of the body and caudal fin and a linear acceleration (phase II). The resulting highly 3-D, unsteady vortex formation and its relationship to the acceleration are not well understood. The self-propelled robotic model contains motor-driven joints with programmable motion to emulate phase II of a simplified C-start. The experiments are conducted in a water tank, and the model is constrained to 1 direction along rails. The velocity is measured using digital particle image velocimetry (DPIV) in multiple planes. Vortex boundaries are identified using the finite-time Lyapunov exponent, then the unsteady vortex circulation is computed. The thrust is estimated from the identified vortices, and correlated with the circulation and model acceleration for different kinematics.