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Sensing on robots inspired by nature

Sensing on robots inspired by nature
Sensing on robots inspired by nature
Aquatic organisms capable of undergoing extensive volume variation of their body during locomotion can benefit from increased thrust production. This is enabled by making use of not only the expulsion of mass from their body, as documented extensively in the study of pulsed-jet propulsion, but also from the recovery of kinetic energy via the variation of added mass. We use a simplified mechanical system, i.e. a shape-changing linear oscillator, to investigate the phenomenon of added-mass recovery. Our study proves that a deformable oscillator can be set in sustained resonance by exploiting the contribution from shape variation alone which, if appropriately modulated, can annihilate viscous drag. By confirming that a body immersed in a dense fluid which undergoes an abrupt change of its shape experiences a positive feedback on thrust, we prove that soft-bodied vehicles can be designed and actuated in such a way as to exploit their own body deformation to benefit of augmented propulsive forces.
77-110
Springer Cham
Subramaniam, Vignesh
dfac8e77-8f26-4ca5-95e9-9106e71bae9c
Valdivia y Alvarado, Pablo
ee859b00-29d3-4ef8-9ff9-238450e1b653
Weymouth, Gabriel
b0c85fda-dfed-44da-8cc4-9e0cc88e2ca0
Subramaniam, Vignesh
dfac8e77-8f26-4ca5-95e9-9106e71bae9c
Valdivia y Alvarado, Pablo
ee859b00-29d3-4ef8-9ff9-238450e1b653
Weymouth, Gabriel
b0c85fda-dfed-44da-8cc4-9e0cc88e2ca0

Subramaniam, Vignesh, Valdivia y Alvarado, Pablo and Weymouth, Gabriel (2016) Sensing on robots inspired by nature. In, Biomimetic Microsensors Inspired by Marine Life. Springer Cham, pp. 77-110. (doi:10.1007/978-3-319-47500-4_4).

Record type: Book Section

Abstract

Aquatic organisms capable of undergoing extensive volume variation of their body during locomotion can benefit from increased thrust production. This is enabled by making use of not only the expulsion of mass from their body, as documented extensively in the study of pulsed-jet propulsion, but also from the recovery of kinetic energy via the variation of added mass. We use a simplified mechanical system, i.e. a shape-changing linear oscillator, to investigate the phenomenon of added-mass recovery. Our study proves that a deformable oscillator can be set in sustained resonance by exploiting the contribution from shape variation alone which, if appropriately modulated, can annihilate viscous drag. By confirming that a body immersed in a dense fluid which undergoes an abrupt change of its shape experiences a positive feedback on thrust, we prove that soft-bodied vehicles can be designed and actuated in such a way as to exploit their own body deformation to benefit of augmented propulsive forces.

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e-pub ahead of print date: 23 November 2016

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 412692
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/412692
PURE UUID: 692815f4-15bb-4972-8fd7-cc753838bd6c
ORCID for Gabriel Weymouth: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-5080-5016

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Date deposited: 26 Jul 2017 16:30
Last modified: 16 Mar 2024 04:15

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Contributors

Author: Vignesh Subramaniam
Author: Pablo Valdivia y Alvarado

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