Novel mechatronics design for a robotic fish

Abstract

This paper presents a novel mechatronics design for a 3D swimming robotic fish, namely MT1 (Mechanical Tail) robotic fish. It has a novel tail structure which uses only one motor to generate fish-like swimming motion using C-bends tail shapes. This design enables MT1 to become the first small size robotic fish (<0.5m in length) and be able to dive over 3 meters deep in water. An effective control method with only 5 parameters is proposed to control its 3D swimming behaviours. Experimental results are presented to show the feasibility and good performance of the proposed control algorithms.