Biologically derived models of the sunfish for experimental investigations of multi-fin swimming

Abstract

The remarkable swimming abilities of bony fish are the result of multiple interacting subsystems, each tuned to perform certain roles. These subsystems, which include the statically unstable body, multiple highly actuated fins, oscillatory neural controllers, and distributed senses, are not often studied as mutually dependent systems. This research program is developing biorobotic models of these systems and integrating the systems into a biorobotic fish so that interdependencies can be explored during free swimming. The robot body was derived from a bluegill sunfish, and has a tunable mass distribution and a mixture of rigid and flexible sections so that dynamical characteristics of the fish body can be explored. Five highly deformable fins have structural properties scaled to those of biological fins and can create gait patterns for steady swimming and maneuvers. A first generation artificial CPG has been programmed for each fin on a network of five low power microcontrollers. Finally, a dedicated biorobotic pectoral fin has been developed and instrumented with distributed sensory systems so relevant physical (e.g., fin curvature) and hydrodynamic (e.g., pressure) data can be identified and used to predict fin force for closed loop control.