Design and Modeling of a Biomimetic Wire-driven Soft Robotic Fish

Abstract

This paper introduces a new type of soft robotic fish driven by a biomimetic propulsor. The propulsor is composed of a soft tail made of silica gel and two controlling wires. The soft tail can complete oscillatory motion by controlling the two wires. The barycenter control mechanism enables the soft robotic fish to float and sink. The kinematics model is built based on Lighthill's elongated body theory. The biomimetic wire-driven soft robotic fish is simple in structure and easy to manipulate. The simulation results show that this soft robotic fish well resembles the real fish swimming body curve and validate the performance of the wire-driven design.