Amphibious Pattern Design of a Robotic Fish with Wheel‐propeller‐fin Mechanisms

Abstract

This paper is devoted to the underwater and terrestrial locomotion aspects of an amphibious robotic fish propelled by modular fish‐like propelling units and a pair of hybrid wheel‐propeller‐fin mechanisms. According to the mechanical structure and locomotion characteristics of the robot, a central pattern generator (CPG) network comprising coupled oscillators is employed to produce signals for swimming, crawling, as well as transitions between them. Specifically, a set of four key parameters including a tonic input drive, a direction factor, and two pitch factors is introduced to serve as input to the CPG network. Meanwhile, a finite state machine is built to trigger locomotor pattern transitions. Field tests on the amphibious patterns and autonomous water‐land transition demonstrate the effectiveness of the adopted CPG‐based control architecture. The latest results show that the robot attained a maximum advancing speed of 1.16 m/s (corresponding to 1.66 body lengths per second), a minimal turning radius of approximately 0.55 m (corresponding to 0.79 body lengths) on land, as well as an average rolling speed of 204 degrees per second in an alligator‐like roll maneuver. It is also found that the dolphin‐like dorsoventral swimming could provide an increase of 10.3% in speed compared to the fish‐like carangiform swimming on the same propulsion platform.