SIPHON: An Origami Soft Salp Robot
Brian Van Stratum, Nathan Justus, Ross Hatton, Joseph Davidson, Geoffrey Hollinger
Abstract
We present SIPHON, a Salp-Inspired robot designed to utilize Passive Hydrodynamics, and equipped with soft robotic Origami bellows and soft Nozzles. We reveal the construction, including a novel use of an interlocking origami Kresling pattern, along with duckbill and mammal-heart-inspired valves. We derive a physical model for the coupled dynamics of body displacement and body contraction. We show experimental results of pool free swimming trials, and we compare these results to the model. Compared to other power-autonomous, bioinspired pulsed jet swimmers, SIPHON swims with high speed and efficiency, achieving a mean swimming speed of 16.5 cm/s (0.59 Bl/s) and a cost of transport of 4.9 J/m (1.8W s/(N m)).