Giving Fish Robots a Pulse: Implementing Bio-inspired Control Algorithms in Fish Robots

Most fish use undulatory locomotion to control forward swimming and direction change relying heavily on their body and caudal fin to produce the motions. This style of locomotion allows for robust locomotion across aquatic environments. As such they have been models for designing autonomous under water vehicles (AUVs). To date, fish robots have been designed to maneuver using two basic modes of turning. The first is a waveform offset in which the frequency and amplitude of the oscillation remain unchanged, but the entire wave is biased to the right or the left, causing the fish to favor bending in one direction. The second is akin to the C-start maneuver in fish, in which a maximum amplitude deflection is simultaneously applied to all joints of the body to one side, interrupting the typical locomotor body oscillations. We developed a new turning model based on observations from high speed videos of live Giant Danio (Devario aquepinnatus). These videos show that maneuvers consist of propagating pulses of curvature. These pulses are independent events and can be modeled as a transient wave with a speed, amplitude, and width. Using a 3D printed robot, we will be evaluating the performance of the pulse model alongside the offset wave and C-start methods.