Being energy efficient is important for a long-distance or deepwater task underwater swimmer. Currently, most of the energy-efficient underwater swimmers are achieved by optimising their undulating gait control strategy, rather than considering the impact of their actuation system. As one energy-consuming component, the energy efficiency of actuation system directly affects the energy efficiency of an underwater swimmer. Therefore, this project focuses on developing an energy-efficient actuation system to achieve the energy efficiency of an underwater swimmer. Two critical aspects should be considered for actuation system design: actuator selection and actuation system configuration. A newly emerging artificial muscle actuator, called Peano-HASEL actuator, shows outstanding performance in energy efficiency. Moreover, the naturally evolved swimmer, natural fish, actually provides a good reference for actuation system configuration design. Thus, the aim of this project is to conceive, design and evaluate an energy-efficient robotic fish by utilising Peano-HASEL actuators, and the robotic fish actuation system configuration is developed with biomimetic approach. To design this Peano-HASEL artificial muscle actuated robotic fish, a design specification is developed. Its locomotion system and actuation system are designed and modelled both in theoretical and numerical way. Its energy efficiency is calculated based on the energy transmitting path within the robotic fish. With actuating energy efficiency achieving 77.03%, the maximum energy efficiency of this prototype robotic fish reaches 34.16%, which is more than threefold of current most energy-efficient robotic fish and nearly sevenfold of current rigid motor actuated robotic fish in theory. This result not only indicates a good energy efficiency of this Peano-HASEL artificial muscle actuated robotic fish, but also implies that embedding an energy-efficient actuation system is one approach to achieving an energy-efficient robotic fish. It should be mentioned that this is a decoupled design. Further work of this project would involve hardware verification of this novel Peano-HASEL artificial muscle actuated energy-efficient robotic fish.
Design, implementation and evaluation of an energy efficient robotic fish using artificial muscles for actuation
He, D. (Author). 1 Aug 2024
Student thesis: Master of Philosophy