Experimental Investigation to the Kinematics of a Blue Spotted Ray like Underwater Propulsor

Abstract

Engineers have long been impressed by the swimming speed and agility of fish. Their research effort has been focusing on the development of a new technique of propulsion by mimicking biological fish. The aim of the present work is to develop a biological inspired underwater propulsor that emulates the performance of bluspotted ray. We first measured the morphology and captured the movement of a real bluespotted ray to provide some useful references for biomimetic mechanism design. By virtue of the modular and reconfigurable design concept, a bluspotted ray like underwater propulsor was considered and developed. An experiment system was set up to investigate the effect of various kinematic parameters including frequency, amplitude, wavelength on the propulsion velocity, thrust and efficiency of the fish robot. The results show that the designed biomimetic underwater propulsor is able to propel itself effectively.