Current unmanned undersea vehicles (UUVs) are almost exclusively propeller driven designs, which must inherently be optimized for a particular speed, sacrificing low speed manoeuvrability for cruising efficiency. Recently, biomimetic approaches to underwater vehicle propulsion have illuminated the exciting possibilities for performance improvements made possible by emulating fish motion. In par...

There has been a spurt of interest in recent years in the area of group coordination and cooperative control among different research communities, involving biology, robotics, artificial intelligence, advanced control, sensor network, etc (Ögren et al., 2004; Kumar et al., 2005; Pettersen et al., 2006). As we know, fish shoals, bird flocks, etc exhibit typical aggregation behaviours, in which c...

We propose to combine a biomimetic navigation model which solves a simultaneous localization and mapping task with a biomimetic sonar mounted on a mobile robot to address two related questions. First, can robotic sonar sensing lead to intelligent interactions with complex environments? Second, can we model sonar based spatial orientation and the construction of spatial maps by bats? To address ...

In this report, I investigate the design and development of an eellike amphibious robot. After reviewing research on dynamic mobile robots and control and motion planning for biomimetic robot systems, I analyzed the prototype created by Kenneth McIsaac and Jim Ostrowski and redesigned its key mechanical, electrical and communication components. The significant changes I implemented affected the...

Flexibility plays an important role in fish behaviors by enabling high maneuverability for predator avoidance and swimming in turbulence. In this paper, we present a novel, flexible fish robot equipped with distributed pressure sensors for flow sensing. The body of the robot is made of a soft, hyperelastic material that provides flexibility. The fish robot features a Joukowskifoil shape conduci...

Bionic propulsion has advantages over traditional blade propellers, such as efficiency and noise control. Existing research on ray-inspired robot fish mainly focused a single type of pectoral fin bionic propeller, which only performed well in terms pure speed or maneuverability. Rarely the performance different types been compared same platform to find an optimal solution. In this paper, modula...

This chapter analyzes a propulsive force generated from pectoral fins for a manta-like fish robot, which is one of rajiform-type fish robot in a classification of swimming mechanism of fishes, from fluid dynamics aspects. The fishes of this type swim underwater with two pectoral fins. A diving method is proposed, assuming that some front fin rays are fixed with a constant angle. The usefulness ...

Accurate oculomotor control is one of the essential pre-requisites of successful visuomotor coordination. Given the variable nonlinearities of the geometry of binocular vision as well as the possible nonlinearities of the oculomotor plant, it is desirable to accomplish accurate oculomotor control through learning approaches. In this paper, we investigate learning control for a biomimetic active...